PROFILES IN COURAGE: SENS. INHOFE AND SMITH INSIST ON DEFENDING AMERICA BEFORE RATIFYING START II

(Washington, D.C.): As expected ⁽¹⁾, President
Clinton last week vetoed the Fiscal Year 1996 Defense
authorization bill. His principal rationale for doing so
was this legislation’s statutory requirement that a
missile defense for the entire United States be put into
place by the year 2003. In an Administration not
otherwise known for its commitment to principle, the
President’s unwavering determination to leave the
American people unprotected against ballistic missile
attack is as extraordinary as it is reprehensible.

Last night, the House of Representatives failed to
override the Defense bill veto. Mr. Clinton may believe
he has prevailed, therefore, in his assertion that the
1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty — which
effectively precludes the United States from deploying
effective territorial defenses — is more important than
the protection such defenses could afford.

In the hope of cementing that outcome, his
Administration has been frantically seeking Senate advice
and consent to another arms control accord — the START
II Treaty. Mr. Clinton and his senior subordinates
contend that this agreement can only be implemented if
the U.S. adheres in perpetuity to the ABM Treaty. For
reasons that remain something of a mystery ⁽²⁾, Majority
Leader Robert Dole has tried to accommodate the
Administration’s desire for prompt and favorable action
on START II.

As a result, the START II Treaty was brought up just
before Christmas for perfunctory consideration. A package
of “managers’ amendments” acceptable to the
Clinton Administration — and therefore, by
definition, unlikely to prove very therapeutic —
were unceremoniously adopted. All further amendments are
foreclosed. A vote approving START II is expected after
just six additional hours of what passes for
“debate” these days in “The World’s
Greatest Deliberative Body” (i.e., for the most
part, Senators reading a series formal statements written
by others and seemingly little understood by the
speakers).

Enter Sens. Inhofe and Smith

Fortunately, the Clinton Administration’s
bid to have the Senate rubber-stamp START II — and, in
the process, affirm the fealty Mr. Clinton swears to the
ABM Treaty — has just run into serious opposition.
In a floor statement yesterday, Senator Jim Inhofe, a
Republican from Oklahoma who was elected president of the
influential freshman class and serves on the Armed
Services and Intelligence Committees, raised a series of
objections to both treaties and to any effort to link
the two. He said, in part:

“Missile defense is among our highest
national security priorities. If the President
believes this priority must be sacrificed to gain
Russia’s approval of START II, then I would suggest
it is too high a price to pay. This is why I believe
it is imperative to resolve the impasse over the
Defense authorization bill before we move to final
passage of the START II Treaty.”

Toward that end, Sen. Inhofe announced that he and a
senior Armed Services Committee colleague, Sen. Bob Smith
(R-NH), sent “a letter to the [Senate] Majority
Leader stating we will object to proceeding to final
action on the START II Treaty until an arrangement has
been made with the Clinton Administration enabling the
people of the United States to be defended against
missile attack.” (A reproduction
of that letter is attached.)

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy commends Senators
Inhofe and Smith for their courageous insistence that
America’s vulnerability to missile attack be corrected
before the Senate gives its advice and consent to START
II. They are absolutely correct in their bottom
line: “Only by making [a national missile
defense] program a preexisting condition to START II can
we prevent that Treaty’s adoption from being made a new
excuse for executive branch inaction on this front — and
a new basis for a Russian veto of vital American defense
capabilities.”

The Center urges Senator Dole, who has forcefully and
repeatedly endorsed the need for missile defense in
recent months, and the majority of U.S. Senators who
voted to defend America in the FY96 Defense authorization
bill to join Sens. Inhofe and Smith. For Senator
Dole, this will be a particularly important test: In the
words of one of his rivals for the Republican
presidential nomination, Steve Forbes,
“Senator Dole’s leadership on overriding this veto
— and…forestall[ing] action on START II if that effort
fails — will be viewed as a bellwether of his
determination to redress the Nation’s single [greatest]
defense shortcoming — the absence of effective missile
protection from ballistic missiles.”

(1) See the Center’s recent Decision
Brief entitled Clinton’s Determination To Leave
America Defenseless Should Doom START II ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_108″>No. 95-D 108, 20 December
1995).

(2) For more on the peculiar
circumstances leading to the Senate’s hasty consideration
of the START II Treaty, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Will the ‘World’s Greatest
Deliberative Body’ Deliberate About the Flawed START II
Treaty? (No. 95-D
103, 11 December 1995).