One Step Forward, Two Back on U.S. Vulnerability: Clinton Announces Defenses, Limits Their Effect - Perhaps Fatally

(Washington, D.C.): In a commencement address to the U.S. Naval Academy last Friday,
President Clinton announced steps to mitigate the Nation’s assured vulnerability to attacks using
such techniques as germ or information warfare to wreak havoc on the American people,
government and/or infrastructure. Such steps — if comprehensive and rigorous — would be as
welcome as they are long overdue. Unfortunately, in two important respects, the
effectiveness
of these measures seems likely to be seriously compromised, and perhaps largely
undermined, by the blinders imposed by the Administration’s ideological commitment to
arms control.

Mr. Clinton’s Initiatives

Highlights of the President’s remarks to the graduating class at Annapolis included the
following:

“As we approach the 21st century, our foes have extended the fields of battle — from
physical
space to cyberspace; from the world’s vast bodies of water to the complex workings of our
own human bodies. Rather than invading our beaches or launching bombers, these
adversaries may attempt cyberattacks against our critical military systems and our
economic base. Or they may deploy compact and relatively cheap weapons of mass
destruction [WMD] — not just nuclear, but also chemical or biological, to use disease as
a weapon of war. Sometimes the terrorists and criminals act alone. But increasingly,
they are
interconnected, and sometimes supported by hostile countries.”

“Today, I come before you to announce three new initiatives — the first
broadly directed at
combating terrorism; the other two addressing two potential threats
from terrorists and
hostile nations, attacks on our computer networks and other critical systems upon which
our society depends, and attacks using biological weapons.”

“To make these three initiatives work we must have the concerted efforts of a whole range
of
federal agencies — from the Armed Forces to law enforcement to intelligence to public
health.
I am appointing a National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and
Counterterrorism, to bring the full force of all our resources to bear swiftly and
effectively.”

“First, we will use our new integrated approach to intensify the fight against all
forms of terrorism — to capture terrorists, no matter where they hide; to work with
other nations to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries overseas; to respond rapidly and
effectively to protect Americans from terrorism at home and abroad….”

“Second, we will launch a comprehensive plan to detect, deter, and defend against
attacks on our critical infrastructures — our power systems, water supplies, police,
fire, and medical services, air traffic control, financial services, telephone systems, and
computer networks….”

“Third, we will undertake a concerted effort to prevent the spread and use of
biological weapons, and to protect our people in the event these terrible weapons
are ever unleashed by a rogue state, a terrorist group or an international criminal
organization….”

Arms Control Can’t Contain the BW Threat

Unfortunately, as he has done repeatedly in the past, President Clinton identified as the
preeminent element — “a major priority” — of his “fight against biological weapons” the
proposition that “We must strengthen the international Biological Weapons Convention
(BWC) with a strong system of inspections to detect and prevent cheating.” As the
Center
for Security Policy has noted previously,⁽¹⁾ this idea is
doomed to fail.

On the one hand, intrusive inspections (for example, along the lines of those authorized by the
Chemical Weapons Convention) will do nothing to detect violations of the BWC or
otherwise
prevent those determined to have and use biological weapons from doing so. This point was
powerfully underscored in a front-page article in yesterday’s New York Times. The
investigative
report described at length repeated — and, miraculously, futile — bioterrorism attacks,
including
against American forces and their dependents. At least nine such attacks were mounted by
the
Japanese Aum Shin Rikyo cult before the lethal use of chemical weapons in Tokyo’s subway
system revealed the extent of its genocidal ambitions.

The following are among the relevant portions from the Times‘ frightening
account (emphasis
added):

“In repeated germ attacks in the early 1990s, an obscure Japanese cult tried to kill millions of
people throughout Tokyo, and, a cultist has now testified, at nearby U.S. bases where
thousands of service people and their families live …. The biological strikes were not
detected at the time, and their significance has only recently become clear to Japanese officials
still investigating the cult’s activities.”

“Hoping to ignite an apocalyptic war, the group sprayed pestilential
microbes and germ
toxins from rooftops and convoys of trucks. Its members have testified that the targets
included the Japanese Legislature, the Imperial Palace, the surrounding city and the
U.S. base at Yokosuka, which is headquarters of the Navy’s 7th Fleet.”

“For Washington officials trying to build up the nation’s defenses against germ terrorism, the
drama has encouraging aspects. It suggests that such attacks can be harder to carry out
than many had thought and that governments can find ways to increase the difficulties
even more.” [N.B. The rest of the article makes clear that incredible luck
(e.g., the use of a
succession of bad batches of virus), rather than inherent difficulties, may have been responsible
for the failure of the cult to effect mass destruction with its bioterrorism.]

“…The cult’s five-year effort to sow terror and death with lethal microbes shows that
germ
warfare, no longer the sole province of rogue states, is within reach of extremists with a
scientific bent.“

“The Times inquiry shows that the cult carried out at least nine
biological attacks and that
the strikes failed largely because Aum never got its hands on germs of sufficient
virulence.“

“Today, Washington sees the cult’s efforts at biologic Armageddon as a wake-up
call and
a spur to curbing the free exchange of microbes that has helped the world’s scientists
crush diseases around the globe.”

“In recent years the [U.S.] government has begun a quiet campaign to tighten up access to
hazardous germs. So far, however, it has had little success getting similar safeguards
adopted by hundreds of foreign germ repositories, including those in Japan …. Today,
there are more than 1,500 microbe banks around the world, and they work hard to
maintain the purity and accessibility of a million or so strains of disparate
microorganisms, many deadly.”

In other words, the unpleasant reality is that there are ample sources of toxic viruses,
both
legal and illegal, around the world. There is simply no way to eliminate them all — or to verify the
efficacy of such efforts as might be made to that end, given the ease with which small source
materials can be concealed and used rapidly to produce large quantities of lethal agent for
biological warfare purposes. Under these circumstances, there is no benefit to trying to
“strengthen” the BWC. There will, however, be very real costs.

Arms Control Will Hurt the Fight Against Biowarfare

For example, at Annapolis, President Clinton emphasized that, in response to the danger
posed by
bioterrorism:

creating stockpiles of
medicines and vaccines to protect our civilian population against the kind of
biological agents our adversaries are most likely to obtain or develop

we
will pursue research and development to create the next generation of vaccines,
medicines and diagnostic tools

With the possible exception of the President’s announcement that he was appointing yet
another “czar” to marshal the resources of the federal government to deal with cyberattacks,
bioterrorism and the like, the single most tangible and important parts of his Naval
Academy
graduation address was the declaration that the Nation would begin stockpiling medicines
and vaccines and developing new ones. For this declaration to translate into actual
capability,
however, the Clinton Administration must implement another key section of that speech:

Because
so
many key components of our society are operated by the private sector, we must
create a genuine public-private partnership to protect America in the 21st
century. Together, we can

create the means to minimize
damage and rapidly recover in the event attacks occur.

Unfortunately, the Administration cannot have it both ways. Either
the Clinton team
will pursue an arms control agenda (i.e., “strengthening” the BWC) that will do
nothing to
prevent proliferation of biological weapons but will impose an immense, and quite possibly
unsustainable, burden upon the very private sector entities (pharmaceutical firms, biotech
companies, etc.) with whom it professes to want to work. Or the Administration must eschew
ineffectual, intrusive inspections that will assuredly translate into opportunities for devastating
corporate espionage against these same American businesses and secure their full cooperation in
the sort of high-priority national undertaking the President is now calling for to protect our people
against BW attacks.

What About Missile Defense?

Curiously absent from the President’s litany of initiatives aimed at protecting the American
people
and their national infrastructure from devastating attack was one of the most obviously needed
ones: Effective, global defenses against ballistic missile attack.

This is, of course, no accident. The Clinton Administration is in the absurd position of
declaring
its determination to defend the United States against biological, chemical or nuclear weapons
as
long as they are not delivered by ballistic missiles — but leaving the country for the
foreseeable
future absolutely vulnerable to such weapons if they are missile-borne — for one reason
only: an
arms control agreement — the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed in 1972 with the Soviet Union
— which effectively bans U.S. missile defenses. The Clinton team believes this accord is “the
cornerstone of strategic stability” and it refuses to deploy defenses that would supplant the
Treaty-dictated policy of “assured destruction” with one of “assured survival.” href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

On the face of it, this policy is self-defeating. Leaving the United States unprotected against
missiles places an international premium on such weapons. It is hard to imagine an
approach
more suited to encouraging the proliferation of ballistic missiles as the vehicle of choice for
weapons of mass destruction than the continuing absence of American anti-missile
defenses.

What is more, to a far greater degree than the threat of terrorism, the mere possession of
WMD-equipped ballistic missiles can influence policy decisions — perhaps even deterring the
United
States or its allies from acting in their own interest. Under some circumstances, the result may
prove as costly for the American people as those attacks against which the President says he
is
prepared to defend us.

The Bottom Line

Up to a point, President Clinton’s new-found concern about ending the United States’ posture
of
assured vulnerability is welcome. For it to be coherent, convincing and effective, however, his
agenda must be stripped of its arms control fetters, creating conditions for a genuine
private-public sector partnership and including defenses against all means by which
weapons of mass
destruction might be delivered to American shores.

– 30 –

1. See, for example, the following Center Decision
Briefs: Memo to the President ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_71″>No. 98-D 71,
27 April 1998); On Eve of Kyl Hearings on Bioterrorism, A Helpful
Prescription (No. 98-D 68,
21 April 1998); and Clinton Legacy Watch # 20: More Evidence of the Mounting
Biological
Warfare Threat and the Inadequate U.S. Response (No.
98-D 44, 10 March 1998).

2. One can only wonder whether, had a previous American
government reached a treaty with the
USSR banning defenses against terrorist attack the Clinton Administration would now be refusing
to take the steps the President outlined in Annapolis.