New Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs of Staff Draws Line In The Sand: No Exceptions, No Military ‘Chop’ on Landmine Ban

(Washington, D.C.): Today in a display
of confidence in President Clinton’s
choice to fill the armed forces’ top job,
the U.S. Senate voted to confirm General
Henry H. Shelton to be the next
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
If, as it must be assumed is the case,
that the voice vote reflects not only
admiration for Gen. Shelton’s
distinguished military record — notably
with the Army’s ground combat arms and
the Nation’s special forces — but also
respect for his military judgment,
the Senate must give great weight to his
views on a pending, highly controversial
issue: Whether the United States should
endorse a treaty that imposes a complete
ban on anti-personnel landmines (APLs).

On the eve of the vote on his
confirmation, Gen. Shelton responded to
written questions about the landmine ban
now emerging in negotiations in Oslo. The
questions were posed by the influential
chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee’s Readiness Subcommittee, Sen. Jim
Inhofe (R-OK). In his response
(see the
attached), Gen. Shelton used forceful
language to describe the importance of
exceptions (‘red lines’) to the ban upon
which the Joint Chiefs of Staff have been
insisting.⁽¹⁾
Among the more important passages are the
following:

• An Exception for
  Korea: “Anti-personnel
  landmines are integral
  to the defense of the Republic of
  Korea, and as long as there
  is risk of aggression in Korea
  and we do not have suitable
  alternatives fielded, we
  must ensure the best protection
  of our forces and those of our
  allies….[B]ecause of
  the unique situation on the
  Korean Peninsula,
  non-self-destructing (NSD) or
  ‘dumb’ mines are essential to our
  commanders in the Republic of
  Korea as long as there is risk of
  aggression and we have not
  fielded suitable alternatives to
  the NSD mines used in Korea.“
• Properly Defining APLs
  (‘Primarily Designed As’):
  “I … believe that an
  accurate definition of
  anti-personnel (AP) landmines is essential
  to prevent the banning of mixed
  munitions under the treaty.”
• An Exception for
  Packaged Smart Anti-Personnel and
  Anti-Tank Landmines:
  “I firmly believe that our
  anti-tank (AT) and anti-vehicle
  (AV) munitions – which are mixed
  systems composed entirely of
  smart AT and AP mines that
  self-destruct or self-deactivate
  in a relatively short period of
  time – are vital to the
  protection of our men and women
  in the field….Our
  smart, mixed AT/AV munitions are critical
  to our efforts to protect our men
  and women in the field….The
  military utility of these systems
  is, in my mind,
  unquestionable.” (Emphasis
  added throughout.)

Interestingly, Gen. Sheldon’s view of
the need for smart landmines coincides
with that of Gen. Norman
Schwarzkopf — the field
commander of Operation Desert Storm who
has been systematically exploited as a
kind of poster-child for the landmine
abolitionists. In fact, as Gen.
Schwarzkopf told the Baltimore Sun
on 8 September, he actually favors retaining
smart landmines — which he described as
a “military capability we can
use” — as opposed to
“dumb” or long-duration ones
(whose banning he supports).

The Bottom Line

The timing of the release of Gen.
Shelton’s letter to Senator Inhofe is of
surpassing importance. It was issued just
as President Clinton was ordering the
U.S. military to agree to still more
concessions — concessions that are eroding
to the vanishing point the American
position on the aforementioned ‘red
lines,’ each of which Gen. Shelton
describes as “critical.” The
measure of the man, and the respect he is
due from his troops and from the
Senate that just confirmed him may
be found in the courage he now displays
in objecting to the emerging Oslo treaty,
a treaty that, in his words, “would
not be in the national security interests
of the United States.”

– 30 –

1. The record of
opposition by the Joint Chiefs to a
complete ban on anti-personnel landmines
that would include long-duration APLs in
Korea and
self-destructing/self-deactivating
devices elsewhere is very clear. So are
the concurrent views of twenty-four of
the Nation’s most distinguished four-star
generals. In this connection, see the
Center’s Press Release entitled
Many of Nation’s Most
Respected Military Leaders Join Forces to
Oppose Bans on Use of Self-Destructing
Landmines ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-P_101″>No. 97-P 101, 21
July 1997) and Decision
Brief entitled Celestial
Navigation: Pentagon’s Extraordinary
’64-Star’ Letter Shows Why the U.S.
Cannot Agree to Ban All Landmines
(No. 97-D 97,
14 July 1997).