Welcome to the New World Order: U.S. ‘Red Lines’ On The Landmine Treaty Are Being Crossed With Impunity, Contempt

(Washington, D.C.): What will
assuredly be marketed as the
“Princess Diana Memorial
Anti-Personnel Landmine (APL) Ban”
is taking shape in Oslo and the process
is a bitter foretaste of the shape of
things to come, pursuant to the
international community’s “global
agenda”: The United States
is being relegated to the role of just
another nation — not even primer
inter pares — with no more say or
influence on decisions that will affect
vital American interests and the lives of
U.S. servicemen and women than
Mauritania, Malta or Malaysia.

Indeed, the radical tyranny of the
majority of states that is all too
familiar to observers of the UN General
Assembly is much in evidence at the Oslo
negotiations: Language to which the
United States is adamantly opposed is
adopted, at best, by simple majority
vote; at worse, the Chairman, an African
diplomat by the name of Selabi, gavels
the discussion to a close on the grounds
that there is so much opposition to the
U.S. position that it no longer warrants
debate or deserves a formal poll.

The early returns are in on the
Clinton Administration’s effort to
appease those unwilling to put up with
the ponderous process of achieving
consensus — the principle that has
traditionally governed the work of the
Conference on Disarmament (except when,
as in the case of the Comprehensive Test
Ban, the United States rashly decides to
dispense with that procedure)⁽¹⁾:
As was entirely predictable (and
predicted⁽²⁾),
U.S. positions that have been
formally described as irreducible
“red lines” are being
contemptuously spurned.

For example, an exception permitting
the continued deployment of
anti-personnel landmines near the Korean
Demilitarized Zone has been
rejected (all that remains to be decided
is the length of time we have to remove
them); a caveat that the ban applies only
to “primarily designed”
for anti-personnel purposes has been
defeated; and the effort to defer entry
into force for 9 years was
repudiated without even holding a vote.
Even an ordinarily boiler-plate provision
permitting nations to withdraw from the
treaty if their “supreme
national interests” are
jeopardized appears likely to be dissed.
There are, moreover, indications that the
International Committee of the Red Cross
and the other, like-minded abolitionists
running the “Ottawa Process”
may be so bold as to insist that anti-tank
landmines be explicitly banned,
as well — weapons even General Norman
Schwarzkopf and other ex-military
proponents of the APL ban have said are
necessary.⁽³⁾

The Bottom Line

Events in Oslo add further impetus to
the warning issued by the Center on the
eve of the current talks:

“The stakes for the U.S.
military are extremely high.
After all, the abolitionists have
already made clear that they
intend, after work on the
landmine ban is completed, to
seek new agreements leading to
prohibitions on the following
weapon systems: anti-tank
mines, depleted uranium rounds,
small-caliber (so-called
‘fragmenting’) ammunition,
fuel-air explosives, naval mines,
directed energy systems and
nuclear weapons.

“If the Joint Chiefs of
Staff wish to avoid being
disarmed in detail, they must
defend their present red lines
and, when those lines are
breached, be prepared to urge
defeat of a defective and
dangerously precedential ban on
anti-personnel weapons.”

It is becoming increasingly clear,
moreover, that what is at stake now is
not merely national security equities.
There will be no end of grief for U.S.
diplomatic, economic and strategic
interests — and ultimately, American
rights and liberties — if the Clinton
Administration allows them to be
subordinated at every turn to the
lowest-common-denominator,
one-nation-one-vote mechanics of the
one-worlders.

Having
had its red lines repeatedly crossed with
utter contempt, the U.S. delegation
should have the dignity to leave the Oslo
negotiations and announce its refusal to
sign the unverifiable, unenforceable and
ineffective treaty that is emerging from
them. Ironically, under present
circumstances, only by so doing can the
United States hope to have real influence
on the future of landmine arms control —
and, for that matter, other international
“processes.”

– 30 –

1. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Don’t Fall For It,
Mr. President: Landmine Ban Is Seductive,
But A Bad Public Policy And A Formula For
Killing U.S. Personnel ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_111″>No. 97-D 111, 13
August 1997).

2. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled ‘Welcome To Oslo’:
When the U.S. Gets Rolled On Its
Landmines Exceptions, Will The Joint
Chiefs Hold The (Red) Line(s)?
(No. 97-D 120,
29 August 1997).

3. For more on the
opposition to the ban, see the following
Center products: Celestial
Navigation: Pentagon’s Extraordinary
’64-Star’ Letter Shows Why The U.S.
Cannot Agree to Ban All Landmines
(No. 97-D 97,
14 July 1997) and Many of
Nation’s Most Respected Military Leaders
Join Forces to Oppose Bans On Use of
Self-Destructing Landmines
(No. 97-P 101,
21 July 1997).