Too Clever By Half: Bob Bell’s Sophistry Must Not Be Allowed To Jeopardize U.S. Military’s Ability To Use Landmines

(Washington, D.C.): Today’s Washington
Post offers a riveting insight into
much of what ails the Clinton
Administration’s conduct of foreign
policy, in general — and its arms
control policies, in particular. Under
the headline “Clinton Directive on
Mines: New Form, Old Function,”
reporter Dana Priest describes how Robert
Bell, Senior Director for Defense Policy
and Arms Control at the National Security
Council, recently announced that certain
types of U.S. anti-personnel landmines
(APLs) were not, in fact, anti-personnel
landmines.

According to the Post, Bell
has announced that the APLs in so-called
“mixed systems” — weapons that
combine anti-personnel and anti-tank
landmines — are not to be considered
anti-personnel landmines but
“anti-handling devices.” This
characteristic bit of Bob Bell sophistry
is calculated to allow President Clinton
simultaneously to: 1) respect the U.S.
military’s view that such mixed systems
are vital to American troops’ survival
and success on the battlefield and 2)
honor Mr. Clinton’s pledge to pursue the
development of alternative technologies,
which he has described as a “program
[that] will eliminate all
anti-personnel landmines from America’s
arsenal.”

An APL By Any Other Name…

Unfortunately, calling weapon systems
that are anti-personnel
landmines — and that have long been
identified as such⁽¹⁾
— something else does not alter the fact
that they continue to be anti-personnel
landmines. What needs to be
adjusted is not their description (so as
to obscure the nature or mission of these
devices) but the policy that
seemingly would result in the complete
elimination of all such systems from the
U.S. arsenal.

Indeed, it was upon this rock (among
others) that the campaign to euchre the
United States into joining the Oslo
landmine ban ultimately foundered. In the
end, the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to
accede to the bullying of Clinton
Administration officials like Bob Bell
who were ready to compromise the U.S.
military’s right to utilize
self-destructing/self-deactivating
anti-personnel landmines (as long as they
were packaged together with so-called
“smart” anti-tank landmines) if
that proved to be the price for American
accession to the Oslo treaty.⁽²⁾

The Bottom Line

Diplomatic history is riddled with
instances in which language was used to
obscure or otherwise to paper-over
fundamental differences. Generally, the
result of such imprecision or calculated
ambiguity has been disastrous for U.S.
and Western interests.

Few employ this practice more
skillfully, cynically or insidiously than
the NSC’s Robert Bell. (The Senate will
shortly be asked to review some such Bell
handiwork in a series of agreements
concerning nuclear testing, successors to
and the scope of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, and changes to the START
II accord — agreements whose
verifiability, enforceability and
effectiveness suffer as a result.)

If the Nation’s armed forces hope to
retain the right to use anti-personnel
landmines in a discriminate, responsible
manner to protect their troops and to
accomplish their missions, they
had better insist that the Clinton
Administration’s political appointees
stop dissembling about the character of
their weaponry. The result of
doing otherwise is predictable: The
pressure will inexorably build to
stigmatize and prohibit such capabilities
(whether by unilateral action —
executive or legislative — or
multilateral agreement), pressure that
will ultimately deny the American
military a capability their new senior
officer, incoming Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff General Henry
Shelton, has correctly described
as “critical”
and “essential.”⁽³⁾

– 30 –

1. Priest cites
half-a-dozen instances during the Clinton
Administration’s tenure in which
“mixed systems” with names like
Gator, Volcano, MOPMS and Area Denial
Artillery Munitions have been called as
“anti-personnel landmines.”

2. See the
Center’s Press Release
entitled Back From The Brink:
Center Commends President Clinton For
Rejecting A Defective, Unverifiable
Landmine Ban ( href=”
index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-P_14″>No. 97-P 141, 18
September 1997).

3. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled New Chairman Of The
Joint Chiefs Of Staff Draws Line In The
Sand: No Exceptions, No Military ‘Chop’
On Landmine Ban ( href=”
index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_136″>No. 97-D 136, 16
September 1997).