Words to the Wise on Missile Defense: Woolsey Confirms the A.B.M. Treaty Has Lapsed; Kim Jong-Il Confirms the Threat

(Washington, D.C.): Against the backdrop of a presidential campaign in which differences between the Republican and Democratic contenders¹ on the question of deploying missile defenses are becoming a major focus (as even the New York Times acknowledged in its editions yesterday), two signal developments have occurred within the past forty-eight hours.

Jim Woolsey: What ABM Treaty?’

First, in the attached op.ed. article which appeared in the Washington Post on 15 August, President Clinton’s former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey pronounced that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty no longer can, under international legal practice and precedent, be considered legally binding on the United States. In so doing, Mr. Woolsey — an eminent Washington attorney and experienced arms control negotiator — lent his considerable authority to the definitive legal analysis of this question produced last year for the Center for Security Policy by Douglas J. Feith and George Miron. ²

This study (which agrees in virtually all particulars with two others — the first of which was performed for the Heritage Foundation by David Rivkin and Lee Casey; the second (to which Mr. Woolsey alludes) by Professor Robert Turner of the University of Virginia law school — concluded that, as Mr. Feith stated in a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May 1999: “When the USSR became extinct, its bilateral, non-dispositive treaties lapsed. Hence, the ABM Treaty lapsed by operation of law — that is, automatically — when the USSR dissolved in 1991. It did not become a treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation.

Accordingly, in Mr. Woolsey’s words:

“The next President should [confer with our allies and Russia about his plans for missile defense]…but [he] need not, indeed he should not, do so from the disadvantaged position that he will have to abrogate a treaty before he proceeds to deployment….Unless some president submits the 1972 ABM Treaty, with its new parties, to the Senate and obtains its consent to the substantive changes, there is nothing to abrogate.”

This finding is especially relevant insofar as the Clinton-Gore Administration — which has yet to provide an authoritative response to any of these legal analyses, despite having been formally asked to do so last year by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jesse Helms in connection with the Feith-Miron study — has made every effort to encourage both the Russians and America’s allies to believe that the ABM Treaty remains in force. Worse yet, it has implied (if not explicitly communicated a commitment) that the United States will not deviate from the ABM Treaty without the Kremlin’s permission. This premise should be debunked officially; if neither Mr. Clinton nor Mr. Gore will do so, Governor Bush should.

Kim Jong-Il: Just Kidding’

The second development was the revelation by the dictator of North Korea that he was only joking last month when he and Russian President Vladimir Putin cooked up a scheme whereby Pyongyang might be induced to give up its ballistic missile program — and the overseas sales it involves to other, dangerous nations like Iran and Syria — if only the West gave it enough inducements (e.g., satellite launches, help with space technology, etc.)

This gambit gave impetus to a formal Russian diplomatic proposal for a “Global Monitoring System.” As the Center for Security Policy noted earlier this week³, this is an initiative “whose ostensible purpose is to enhance efforts to curb the proliferation of ballistic missiles. In fact, it is a transparent Soviet-style ploy, aimed at creating further impediments to U.S. ballistic missile programs (including cooperation with allies like Britain and Israel) and undercutting the rationale behind efforts to deploy national missile defenses for the American people.”

The Bottom Line

Fortunately, as the attached editorial in today’s Washington Post makes clear, Kim’s latest statements serve to underscore the folly of ignoring decades of North Korean behavior — to say nothing of abandoning needed U.S. efforts promptly to deploy national missile defenses — on the basis of romantic illusions spawned by his much-ballyhooed summit with South Korea’s president.

The North Korean’s ridicule also makes a mockery of the new “Code of Conduct” on missile proliferation Under Secretary of State John Hollum is currently trying to cobble together with the Russians in Geneva. That potentially profoundly insidious exercise should be brought to an immediate halt, as should companion efforts to prepare arms control agreements (e.g., START III, new codicils to the ABM Treaty, space arms negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament⁴, etc.) in the whose effects will be to make it still more difficult to deploy needed American missile defenses.

¹As the attached article published by the Center for Security Policy’s President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., in National Review On-Line makes clear, a more accurate way to describe these differences would be between Governor Bush, Secretary Cheney and Senator Lieberman — all of whom favor the prompt deployment of effective, layered missile defenses (including, as needed, in space) — and Vice President Gore, who appears still to be more committed to protecting the ABM Treaty than the American people.

²See Definitive Study Shows Russians Have No Veto Over Defending U.S. (No. 99-P 11, 22 January 1999).

³See Clinton’s October Surprise(s) ( No. 00-D 74, 14 August 2000).

⁴See the Center’s National Security Alerts for the Weeks of 7 August 2000 (No. 00-A 30, 4 August 2000); 22 May 2000 (No. 00-A 19, 22 May 2000); and 10 January 2000 (No. 00-A 01, 10 January 2000).