Pull The Plug On Mir

(Washington, D.C.): Against the backdrop of renewed rumors of war with Iraq and mounting
evidence of an emerging Russian-abetted Iranian missile threat, both of the Nation’s top elected
Republican officials have issued a warning — and an urgent personal appeal to President Clinton:
According to both Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich
(R-GA) and
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS), the United States must
begin deploying
effective ballistic missile defenses.

Speaker Gingrich Puts His Marker Down

On 20 January, Speaker Gingrich pointedly wrote Mr. Clinton:

“As you know, should any of our adversaries around the globe today fire a ballistic
missile capped with a nuclear, chemical, or biological warhead at the people of the
United States, we have no defense capability to prevent the destruction of its
intended target and the death of hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of
American men, women and children. In our arsenal, there is not one
defense system
or weapon that could be used to prevent the devastation of our country.

“Our Nation’s policy of relying solely on offensive weapons to deter a nuclear
missile attack from the Soviet Union has been overtaken by events. The Soviet
Union no longer exists and our multiple adversaries in this more complicated
world no longer play by the familiar Cold War rules….

“In this rapidly changing context, continuing to hold the security of the
American people hostage to what is, in effect, a policy of ‘assured
vulnerability’ makes no sense and could be characterized as irresponsible.

“There is a solution. We have the technical capability to correct this glaring hole
in our Nation’s defense. Congress has for three years been urging, cajoling,
legislating, and appropriating in an effort to convince you of the importance
of committing your Administration to the deployment of ballistic missile
defense systems to protect all Americans.

“Until now, you have prevented us from achieving this objective. I urge you to
reconsider your opposition and use the opportunity of your State of the
Union speech to announce your commitment and intent to deploy a national
missile defense system.”⁽¹⁾

Clinton’s ‘Response’ — Samo, Samo

Unfortunately, if to no one’s great surprise, President Clinton chose to ignore the Speaker’s
sound advice in the State of the Union address.⁽²⁾
Active defenses against missile attack
remain ideologically taboo in the Clinton Administration. While it continues to pay lip
service to the problem posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the Clinton
team proposes to do nothing about it, except to promote ineffectual — and probably
counterproductive — arms control regimes.⁽³⁾

For example, the one concrete proposal concerning the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction that was unveiled in the State of the Union address was Mr. Clinton’s intention to
“strengthen [the Biological Weapons Convention] with a new international inspection regime to
detect and deter cheating.”

It is ironic that this statement was juxtaposed with a pronouncement that Saddam Hussein
would
not be allowed to have biological and other WMD capabilities. href=”#N_4_”>⁽⁴⁾ After all, the fact that such a
threat has to be made at all is evidence of the utter futility of seeking verifiable arms
control
limitations on biological weaponry. Indeed, the President is reportedly considering air
strikes
against Saddam’s covert weapons programs precisely because the latter has, over the
past six
years, successfully thwarted a far more intrusive and robust on-site inspection regime than any
that could be negotiated in an arms control context.

More likely than not, the upshot of the Clinton Administration’s misplaced reliance
upon
phony arms control agreements to deal with real security threats will once again turn out to
be a net liability for U.S. interests. As with the Chemical Weapons Convention — seen
by some
members of the Clinton team as the template for comprehensive verification arrangements href=”#N_5_”>⁽⁵⁾ — the
inspection regime will be insufficient either to detect or deter cheating on the BWC.
It will,
however, be plenty intrusive to open unprecedented opportunities for commercial and
militarily-relevant espionage against one of the United States’ most dynamic and competitive
business
sectors — the biotech and pharmaceutical industries.

Enter Senator Lott

To his great credit, Senator Lott affirmed the essence of Speaker Gingrich’s missive in his
rejoinder to the President’s State of the Union address. As Sen. Lott put it:

“You know, as hard as it is to believe, right now our country has no national defense
against missiles carrying nuclear, chemical or biological warheads. Those who hate
America most in Iraq, in Iran and elsewhere, they know that.

“President Clinton, I urge you to reconsider your opposition to having a
national missile defense for America. Join us in taking the steps that will
actually deploy a national missile defense system for the United States.“

The Gathering Storm

Recent developments in the Middle East have only reinforced the nature of the warning issued
by
the Republican leaders — and the urgency of their call for action. Consider the following:

• Iran: In his 20 January letter, Speaker Gingrich advised the
  President that “fears of the
  proliferation of Russian ballistic missiles and related technology have been confirmed.
  Iran
  reportedly has dramatically accelerated ongoing improvements in its offensive missile
  capability as a result of acquisitions from Russia, and is now poised to produce
  ballistic
  missiles capable of reaching American forces in the Persian Gulf and even NATO.”

Interestingly, in testimony this week before the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, CIA Director George Tenet confirmed that the Russo-Iranian axis
is
greatly contracting the time before Tehran fields such long-range ballistic missiles:

“When I testified here a year ago, Mr. Chairman, I said that Iran, which had received
extensive missile assistance from North Korea, would probably have medium-range missiles
capable of hitting Saudi Arabia and Israel in less than ten years. href=”#N_6_”>⁽⁶⁾

“Since I testified, Iran’s success in gaining technology and materials from Russian
companies, combined with recent indigenous Iranian advances, means that it could have a
medium range missile much sooner than I assessed last year.”

While Director Tenet refused further to specify in open session when such a threat
would be realized, the Washington Times’ national security correspondent
Bill Gertz
reported yesterday that “a classified U.S. intelligence report, based on U.S. and
Israeli sources and obtained by The Washington Times, concluded last year that
Iran is expected to field the first prototype of its Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missiles
within 18 months.” (Emphasis added.)

• Iraq: If the danger arising from Iran’s emerging missile
  programs were not worrisome
  enough, that already posed by Iraqi missiles should be downright alarming. The
  New York
  Times reported on 26 January that, in a meeting with its editorial board,
  “[UNSCOM
  Chairman, Richard] Butler confirmed earlier reports that his team had evidence that Iraq
  has
  loaded biological weapons onto missile warheads.” The paper went on to add:

“Mr. Butler said the biological weapons were loaded onto missiles that could be put on
mobile launchers and driven away to avoid being hit by bombs. While he did not specify the nature
of the evidence or exactly how the team obtained it, he said Iraqis had enough biological
material like anthrax or botulin toxin to ‘blow away Tel Aviv’ and that some of the
missiles
‘were very crude, but they work.’ He also said the team did not know how many missile
systems the Iraqis had.”

What is more, on 21 January, British Foreign Minister Robin Cook
made clear just
how pressing the Iraqi biological weapons problem is becoming. Speaking at a press
conference in Hong Kong Cook warned, “With every passing day, Saddam Hussein can
continue to expand his arsenal of chemical or biological weapons. Every
week,
Saddam Hussein is creating enough additional anthrax to fill two missile
warheads.”

The Aegis Option

In the horrible event that ballistic missiles are indeed used to “blow away” Tel Aviv — or a
European capital or American city — it is a safe bet that the United States will promptly field an
effective, global missile defense system. It will almost certainly involve, at a minimum, a system
recommended three years ago by a blue-ribbon committee sponsored by the Heritage
Foundation.⁽⁷⁾ This program could be rapidly and highly
cost-effectively brought on-line thanks to
the nearly $50 billion investment already made to date in the Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense
system. According to the Heritage “Team B” study, within two-to-three years for a
further
investment of as little as $2-3 billion, the United States could begin to deploy effective,
mobile, world-wide defenses against shorter- and longer-range missiles.

Of course, it will then be too late for those who were needlessly sacrificed as a result of the
failure
first and foremost of President Clinton to field the AEGIS option and the inability of the Congress
to muster the majorities necessary to overcome his opposition. The blame will probably
be
widely shared, however — unless the Messrs. Gingrich and Lott take steps now to translate
their welcome rhetoric into the required action.

The Bottom Line

Speaker Gingrich and Senator Lott are to be commended for their leadership in defining, at
long
last, one of the most profound differences on national security matters that exist between the
Republican-led Congress and the Clinton Administration. Now they must sharpen this difference
further — and translate it into an issue of real political accountability. President Clinton
must be
compelled at the earliest possible moment, ideally on the expected FY 1998 supplemental
appropriation measure, either to accept or to veto funds appropriated to complete
development and concurrently to begin deployment of the AEGIS-based missile defense
system the United States and its allies and forces overseas so urgently require.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Words to Live By: Speaker Gingrich Asks Clinton
to Use Speech to the Nation to Begin Protecting It From Missile Attack ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_15″>No. 98-D 15, 23
January 1998).

2. On the other hand, the President did throw a sop to Speaker
Gingrich by not repeating the
offensive statement he has made on more than ninety occasions — including last year’s State of the
Union — to the effect that “there are no missiles pointed at America’s children.” As the Center
observed in its 23 January Decision Brief, Mr. Gingrich and the
rest of the House Republican
leadership felt constrained to write the President last May objecting to this statement on the
grounds that it “distorts the truth, misrepresents the facts and, sadly, is a terribly misleading
statement to make to the American people.”

3. A detailed analysis of the Clinton Administration’s sorry
performance on the non-proliferation
front can be obtained from The Proliferation Primer, a report recently released by the
Senate
Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation and Federal Services.
For highlights of this report, see the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
A Policy Indictment: Sen.
Cochran’s Subcommittee Documents Clinton Incompetence/Malfeasance On
Proliferation
(No. 98-D 4, 12 January 1998). The Primer itself may
obtained via the Subcommittee’s Web site
at www.senate.gov/~gov affairs/ispfs.htm.
Please note that if you “click” to this site, you will
leave the Center for Security Policy’s World Wide Web site.

4. The credibility of this bit of saber rattling is, unfortunately,
diminished by the eerie parallels
between it and Mr. Clinton’s earlier pledge that North Korea would not be allowed to obtain a
nuclear weapon — a pledge he has ever since failed to make good.

5. See the following Center Decision Briefs:
CWC Watch # 3: U.S. Underestimating the Costs
of One Ineffective Ban; Will It Repeat Them In Another? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_05″>No. 98-D 5, 12 January 1998) and
Truth or Consequences # 5: The CWC Will Not Be Good for Business — To Say
Nothing of
the National Interest (No. 97-D 27, 17
February 1997).

6. This pollyannish assessment squared with a National Intelligence
Estimate first disclosed by the
Clinton Administration in the midst of a contentious Senate debate on missile defenses. Its
preposterous conclusion that no long-range missile threat to the continental United States could
emerge in less than ten to fifteen years were properly regarded by knowledgeable experts to have
been driven by seriously flawed — and highly politicized — assumptions. One of these was the
premise that rogue states would not secure missile-related technology or expertise from either
Russia or China.

Presumably, this dark day in the annals of U.S. intelligence was what Senate Intelligence
Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) had in mind when he said in his opening statement
at the Tenet hearing: “To be useful, intelligence must be timely and accurate. Equally
important, the Intelligence Community must ‘call it as it sees it’ reporting the facts to
policy-makers without bias, even if the intelligence findings do not support a particular
policy or decision.“

7. See, for example the following Center products:
Unhappy Birthday: Twenty-Five Years of the
AMB Treaty Is Enough: Sen. Kyl Points Way To Begin Defending America ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_72″>No. 97-D 72, 23
May 1997); Validation of the Aegis Option: Successful Test Is First Step From
Promising
Concept To Global Anti-Missile Capability (No.
97-D 17, 29 January 1997); Unfinished
Business: Defending America (No. 96-T
132, 19 November 1996); and Why Doesn’t Rep.
John Spratt Want His Colleagues To Know About A Cheap, Effective, Near-Term Missile
Defense Option? (No. 96-D 51, 31 May
1996).

The Heritage Foundation’s blue-ribbon study can be accessed via the World Wide Web at
the
following address: href=”https://www.heritage.org/nationalsecurity/teamb”>www.heritage.org/nationalsecurity/teamb.