No secure day on the beach

by Frank Gaffney Jr.
The Washington Times, 26 March 1996

Shakespeare wrote that “There is a tide in the
affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to
fortune.”

He went on to suggest that missing that opportunity
would leave one in “shallows and in miseries.”
Unsaid, but every bit as true, is the fact that when men
– or nations – plunge into a rip-tide, they and their
interests are likely to suffer grievous harm.

The Clinton administration’s current arms control
agenda represents such a rip-tide. It is striving to
complete work before the November presidential election
on international treaties banning chemical weapons, land
mines and nuclear tests. In so doing, the administration
is fostering arrangements that will jeopardize U.S.
national security, not advance it.

Take, for example, the Chemical Weapons Convention
(CWC) to which the Clintonistas are urging the U.S.
Senate to advise and consent. With each passing day, it
is becoming ever more apparent that no arms control
agreement will be able to “rid the world of chemical
weapons,” as the CWC purports to do. Instead, it
will rid them only from the arsenals of law-abiding
nations like the United States. This will be the result
whether rogue states with large chemical weapon
stockpiles choose not to sign the treaty or simply choose
to exploit its unverifiable provisions.

In recent weeks, two knowledgeable former senior
Pentagon officials have warned the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee about the dangers associated with
such a dubious agreement. Bush Administration Principal
Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary J.D. Crouch testified
on March 13: “The United States is abandoning, with
the CWC, one of the most effective deterrents to chemical
use against itself and its allies: the right to an extant
and mature offensive chemical weapons program. No matter
what the perceived benefits of the CWC from a diplomatic
or political standpoint, the Senate should understand
that it will contribute to the weakening of deterrence,
not to its strengthening, by eliminating the ability of
the United States to respond in kind to chemical attack.
A weakening of deterrence means in practical terms that
American and allied soldiers are more, not less, likely
to be attacked with chemical weapons.”

Eight days later Reagan administration Deputy
Assistant Defense Secretary Douglas J. Feith added:
“Though it will not be effective, the [CWC] will be
talked of as a comprehensive, global ban on the
possession of chemical weapons. It will commonly be
viewed as having reduced the worldwide threat from such
weapons. The CWC will therefore tend to reduce concern
about a problem that deserves increased concern. Reduced
concern translates into reduced investment in defenses
against chemical weapons. This, in turn, will result in
greater incentives for outlaw actors to use chemical
weapons against their inadequately defended enemies among
the law-abiding countries.”

A similar problem is likely to arise with the ban on
land mines the Clinton administration is pressing the
Joint Chiefs of Staff to accept. Indeed, the New York
Times reported on March 17 that a Hillary Clinton
Pentagon appointee, Timothy Connally, believes “land
mines should be put in the same category as chemical
weapons.” Mr. Connally believes they should be
treated alike – and banned – since both have devastating
effects on civilian as well as military populations.

What causes land mines to be “in the same
category as chemical weapons,” however, is that they
are inexpensive means of accomplishing certain military
tasks. As such, both are especially valuable to
relatively low-tech nations or subnational forces. They
both are widely available around the world. And, thanks
to the ease with which both chemical weapons and land
mines can be covertly produced in quantity, no treaty can
presume to prevent the continued manufacture and
possession of such weapons.

Were the United States nonetheless to sign up to a
land mine ban, it would simply be denying itself an
important means of defending its personnel and
battlefield positions with no prospect of actually
eliminating the production or use of these weapons by
others. It is utterly delusional to suggest that a ban –
especially an ineffectual, unverifiable one – will in any
way redress the significant problem posed by the
estimated 10 million mines already scattered about the
world’s battlegrounds.

Fresh from declaring the Southwest Pacific a nuclear
free zone -a measure that will either prove to be
approximately as irrelevant as that declared years ago by
Takoma Park or else develop into an impediment to U.S.
operations in the region and an incentive for such
dubious zones to be declared elsewhere – the Clinton team
is anxious to nail down a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban
(CTB). A recent covert Russian nuclear test is a reminder
that, like the aforementioned initiatives, a CTB will not
constrain potential U.S. adversaries but will serve to
weaken America’s ability to defend itself against them.

Before the United States is swept out to sea on the
dangerous ebb tide of Clinton utopian arms control
delusions, sober heads on Capitol Hill should tell the
administration not to go near the water. The Chemical
Weapons Convention should not receive Senate approval;
the U.S. military should reaffirm its sensible view that
land mines cannot be banned; and Congress should reject
the administration’s bid to leave the nation unable to
assure the safety, reliability and effectiveness of its
nuclear deterrent, the inevitable result of a permanent,
“comprehensive” ban on future nuclear testing.