THE NEW ‘AMEN CORNER’: JAMES BAKER ECHOES PARTY LINE, SAYS IT’S ‘PREMATURE’ TO TALK ABOUT A U.S. GOLAN DEPLOYMENT

(Washington, D.C.): Former Secretary of State James Baker
made peculiar use of the occasion of his testimony before the
new, Republican-controlled House International Relations
Committee yesterday: He simultaneously 1) used the occasion to
give great prominence and personal support to the Clinton
Administration’s plan to “provide security assurances”
— including a controversial deployment of U.S. troops on the
Golan Heights — in support of a peace agreement between Israel
and Syria but 2) discouraged any congressional consideration of
that plan for the foreseeable future.

In response to several Members’ questions, Secretary Baker
parroted the Administration’s party line that the United States
has not been formally “requested” to provide troops for
a Golan deployment and, until it is, that it would be
“premature” to discuss or consider the implications of
such a step. For example in response to a question from the
Committee’s new chairman, Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), Mr. Baker
said:

“…We must do everything in the world that we can,
including…being willing, if the parties want us to, to
provide monitors or peacekeepers on the Golan. That’s not
something we haven’t done before. We did it in order to make
Camp David possible, in order for Israel to reach peace with
Egypt. And its something that we ought to do today.

“Above all else, Mr. Chairman, we should resist
efforts by extremists on both sides to subvert or
torpedo the peace process. And that would include efforts
to preemptively rule out, before the facts are presented,
such things as the possibility of American monitors or
peacekeepers on the Golan. That’s an issue that ought to be
debated and looked at when it is ripe, and it won’t be until
the…governments of both countries say, ‘This is what we
want,’ and the executive branch of the United States says,
‘This is what it’s going to take to bring peace.’ So we
ought not to rule [this out]. We ought to give short shrift
to efforts to rule that out preemptively.” (Emphasis
added.)

Son of the ‘Baker Plan’

Mr. Baker’s ringing endorsement of the idea of U.S.
forces on the Golan Heights is not exactly surprising. He was,
after all, the author of the so-called “Baker Plan”
which the United States tried to force upon the Israeli
government of Yitzhak Shamir when James Baker was the Bush
Administration’s Secretary of State.⁽¹⁾
The intellectual force behind this plan, former Baker aide Dennis
Ross, was retained by the Clinton Administration as its senior
Mideast policy-maker at the State Department. In that position,
he — like many in the government of Shamir’s successor, Yitzhak
Rabin — has embraced the view that an American deployment on the
Golan is essential if there is to be any chance of
persuading a deeply skeptical Israeli public to surrender the
strategic Heights to Syria.

That shared conviction on the part of U.S., Israeli and
Syrian officials makes a mockery of contentions like
Secretary Baker’s that the United States has not yet been
“requested” to provide monitors or peacekeepers on the
Golan Heights. In his words, “…Questions [about a Golan
deployment, for example concerning an “exit strategy”]
are proper but they should be, I think, focused upon and
addressed if, as and when the request is ever made. We don’t know
whether it’s going to be made or not.” The truth is that,
while other aspects of the deal have not yet been finalized
(although they are the subject of intense secret diplomacy, ^[2]) the parties have
clearly agreed in principle that an American deployment will be a
feature of the final agreement.

Snare and Delusion

Even more troubling than the disingenuousness exhibited by
both Mr. Baker and by the Clinton Administration about the true
status of the American Golan deployment initiative is their
insouciance about the risks of such a step. When Rep. Michael
McNulty (D-NY) strongly opposed the idea, Secretary Baker
replied: “If the governments of Israel and Syria come to us
and ask us to do this [i.e., to undertake a deployment on the
Golan], we should do it. I don’t see how there could be any
argument with that.”

Then, in response to pointed questioning by Rep. Robert
Andrews (D-NJ) suggesting that a U.S. Golan mission would more
closely resemble the disastrous peacekeeping operation in Lebanon
in 1982 than the ongoing American deployment in the Sinai in
connection with monitoring the Camp David accords, Mr. Baker
opined that U.S. forces on the Golan would not be in danger
because there would be a peace treaty between Syria and Israel.
He said:

“I don’t think much of that argument at all. I don’t
think the two situations are analogous because there wouldn’t
be any [U.S.] troops there — either as monitors or
peacekeepers — until after both Syria and Israel had
requested it, and had signed an agreement for full
peace….The border [between Egypt and Israel] has been
extraordinarily peaceful because there’s been peace between
Egypt and Israel.”

In fact, as documented in a major study of the Golan
deployment issue authored by eleven former senior U.S. officials
— including five former four-star general officers, three of
whom were members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — released last
October by the Center for Security Policy ⁽³⁾, there are factors
that have contributed to a tranquility of the Israeli- Egyptian
border that have little to do with the quality of the peace
between the two nations. These factors do not apply in the Sinai.
For example:

“…There are important differences in geography,
topography and demography between the Golan and Sinai. The
Sinai is approximately 120 miles wide and has no appreciable
population. As such it constitutes strategic depth for Israel
even if it is not under Israeli control. By contrast, in the
event of Israeli withdrawal, the narrow Golan Heights
(approximately ten miles wide and forty miles long) could be
rapidly remilitarized by Syrian forces. It also contains and
is accessible to substantial local populations that Syria has
said it will augment after Israeli withdrawal. This means
that risks of terrorism, under cover of the local population,
exist on the Golan that do not exist in the Sinai.”

As a result, the Center’s study concluded: “The risks
of a Golan deployment, however, are significantly greater than
those attending the Sinai mission.”

Remember Haiti?

It is worth noting that Secretary Baker’s testimony
low-balling the dangers to American servicemen and women on the
Golan coincided with the first combat death of an American
serviceman in Haiti — notwithstanding the fact that the United
States was invited to send troops to the island by its elected
government and despite the temporary tranquility imposed on that
nation by virtue of the U.S. military occupation. Perhaps when
casualties are taken by a U.S. detachment on the Golan, Secretary
Baker will endorse the line now being served up by the Clinton
Administration in connection with the murder of a U.S. soldier
north of Port au Prince: “It was a criminal activity and not
directed at the United States.”⁽⁴⁾
Such characterizations of intent are, of course, of small comfort
to those in the armed forces — and their families — who must
bear the sacrifice.

Interestingly, however, the comparison to Haiti proved an
uncomfortable one for the former Secretary of State at
yesterday’s hearing. On the one hand, he was quite critical of
the Clinton Administration’s “lack of proportionality”
reflected in an “extended military occupation” of
Haiti. When asked, though, by Rep. Andrews whether it was not
appropriate to establish — before becoming committed to an
extended military presence on the Golan Heights — how the U.S.
would extricate itself from that operation, the following
exchange occurred:

Baker: “…I don’t think you can prejudge — you
can’t make that determination today, because you can’t make
the determination, first of all, whether [U.S. troops] are
even going to go in and, secondly, under what conditions and
to what extent they’re going to go in.”

Rep. Andrews: “I’m not asking for predetermination.
I’m simply asking that we set forth the criteria for removal
before we make the commitment to place them there.”

Baker: “Well –”

Rep. Andrews: “I realize you cannot set a time
certain.”

Baker: “I wouldn’t — ”

Rep. Andrews: “But I think we certainly have the
right to insist on an articulation of the criteria for their
removal.”

Baker: “Sure. But if I were president, I wouldn’t
be inclined to set out any criteria. I’d reserve the complete
flexibility that I think the Commander-in-Chief has to take
them out when he determines it [to be] in the best interest
of the United States.”

Rep. Andrews: “Much like the present Administration
did in Haiti?” Baker: “Well –”

Rep. Andrews: “Or like what they are trying to do
in Haiti?”

Baker: “Well, that’s right. But — that’s right. Much
like they’ve done in Haiti. My argument is not that the
president ought not to have the determination power. My
argument is, he told us they were going in there to restore
Aristide and not to police and not to peace — not to
nation-build. And they’re still there, and we don’t know when
they’re coming out.”

The Bottom Line

The International Relations Committee may be chastened by
having invited Secretary Baker to be the keynote witness at its
maiden hearing on U.S. foreign policy. After all, the Committee
was rewarded with a kick to the teeth for giving an Olympian
platform to an individual generally held in low esteem by the
conservative Americans whose votes made the new Republican
majority possible. Mr. Baker used the occasion to repudiate
important parts of the “Contract With America” and —
apart from a few nods in the direction of the new correlation of
forces on Capitol Hill — generally exhibited the disdain for the
legislature all too frequently exhibited by executive branch
officials, past and present.

Secretary Baker also took advantage of the Committee’s
hospitality to dissemble on his own record. When, in response to
Mr. Baker’s criticisms of the Clinton foreign policy, Rep. Tom
Moran (D-VA) correctly observed that “no prior
administration has followed a more consistent foreign policy with
the previous administration, given a partisan transition in the
White House, than…the Clinton Administration has followed the
Bush Administration foreign policy.” The truth is, many
of the most egregious failures of the Clinton security policy are
the linear extrapolation of failed policies promulgated largely
by James Baker in the years that preceded President Clinton’s
election.

The Center for Security Policy nonetheless welcomes the
former Secretary of State’s testimony for one reason: The
prominence he has given in his remarks to the prospective Golan
Heights deployment clearly puts the onus on the International
Relations Committee — and other relevant congressional panels —
to take testimony from knowledgeable individuals who disagree
with his judgment that it is “premature” to discuss
this initiative now. The Center and its distinguished
experts stand ready to rebut this premise and to discuss the
wisdom of the “security assurances” that Secretary
Baker wants Congress to extend to Israel and Syria .

(1) This was just one of a number of
initiatives with which James Baker was associated while Secretary
of State which bespoke an antipathy to Israel or, at a minimum,
an indifference to its legitimate security needs. Mr. Baker was
instrumental in the strategy of using loan guarantees to coerce
Israel to modify its settlements policy — a strategy that
ultimately helped to topple the elected government of Israel.
Repeated press reports also attributed to Mr. Baker sentiments
that were hostile to the Israeli government and American Jews, if
not downright anti-semitic. Arguably, the Bush-Baker
Administration’s conduct of U.S.-Israeli relations contributed to
the circumstances that cause Mr. Baker to be a former
Secretary of State today.

(2) For more on the covert
“backchannel” negotiations, see Clinton’s Next
Foreign Policy Fiasco: Athwart the Public, Congress on the Golan?
(No. 95-P 03, 10 January 1995.)

(3) See href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=00-golan94″>U.S. Forces on the Golan Heights:
An Assessment of Benefits and Costs (25 October 1994).

(4) Quote attributed to U.S. Embassy Port
au Prince spokesman Stan Schrager by Associated Press, 12 January
1995.