A real national emergency
By Notra Trulock
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, December 18, 2000
Did you know that we are in the midst of a national emergency? No, not the
one down in Florida. This national emergency was declared by President
Clinton in 1994 in Executive Order 12938. The President declared that "the
proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons ('weapons of mass
destruction') and of the means of delivering such weapons constitutes an
unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy,
and economy of the United States..." This Executive Order mandated new
foreign policy initiatives, changes in export controls, and the stern use of
economic sanctions against foreign countries, business firms, and even
individuals engaged in proliferation activities. Coupled with other
presidential mandates and Congressional funding, it seemed that U.S.
diplomatic, intelligence and military resources would be devoted to
reducing, if not eliminating altogether the proliferation threat. In other
words, the Administration seemed to be serious about the gravity of the
proliferation threat.
So how did the Clinton Administration do and what's left for the next
Administration to beyond mopping up? The Clinton legacy on this as with so
many other national security issues is simply awful. The world is a much
more dangerous place today than it was 8 years ago; even the thoroughly
politicized CIA believes that it is more likely that U.S. forces will be
attacked by ballistic missiles carrying WMD weapons than ever before. Ever
before... that includes even in the depths of the Cold War. What happened?
First, the center of gravity in WMD matters shifted away from Central Europe
into the regions generally associated with the U.S. Pacific Command. North
Korea and South Asia went nuclear and continue to develop ever longer-range
missiles to deliver their new weapons. China expanded its efforts to
modernize and upgrade its nuclear forces using technologies and knowledge
sold to it by the Clinton Administration or acquired through espionage
against the United States. In the middle east, Iran is developing a missile
force capable of delivering WMD and Iraq has nearly thrown off the sanction
regime imposed after the Gulf War; recent revelations by Sadism Housing's
chief nuclear weapons designer indicates that Iraq lacks only fissile
material to join the nuclear club.
It is the question of the availability of fissile material that raises the
second new aspect of proliferation. The supply and demand aspect of
proliferation changed profoundly during the 1990s. Important new suppliers
came into the market. Russia pushed China out of the market in Iran and
elsewhere and became the supplier of choice for Iranian acquisitions of
missile technology, nuclear expertise, and maybe even fissile materials.
Not to be outdone, China continued to supply WMD technologies and assistance
to its client Pakistan and others. Meanwhile, lateral relationships between
newly emerging WMD capable states sprang up. North Korea became a major
supplier of missiles and associated technologies to Pakistan, Iran, and
others. In return, the question must be - did Pakistan share its nuclear
secrets with North Korea, as China had done with that country in an earlier
period?
The Executive Order to the contrary, the Clinton Administration's response
has been limited to ever increasing blandishments or looking the other way.
In short, we have tried to buy compliance with meaningless arms control
obligations. To the Chinese, the Administration offered U.S. missile and
nuclear technology in exchange for promises of good behavior. New nuclear
reactors and tons of fuel oil and other assistance later, we still don't
know if North Korea has stopped its drive to develop its own nuclear
weapons. All this assistance sure hasn't stopped North Korean missile
developments or supplies to other WMD wannabes. Ever more funding has been
pumped into Russia to buy off nuclear institutes shopping their wares to
Iran or to prevent Russian scientists from heading south or east with their
knowledge and experience. Has it worked? Who knows? There has been no
effective audit to measure progress and we are left with assurances from
Energy Department officials that this program has been a resounding success.
Many of the same officials who assured us that our nuclear secrets were
safe, remember?
Meanwhile, export control regimes, supposedly tightened by executive order,
were loosened to give U.S. firms the latitude to penetrate hitherto closed
markets. Missile technologies, high-performance computers, and
sophisticated machine tools to make new and better weapons all became
available to nuclear states and would-be proliferators alike. In nearly all
cases the mantra was "if we don't sell to them, our global economic
competitors will." This rationale was repeatedly cited to justify selling
high speed computing capabilities to China. Except that the study
supporting this policy was flawed; its projections regarding our competitors
for this "market" were wrong; in fact, our main competitor in this market
enforces stricter controls over the export of its high-performance computers
than we do. The study would have been more accurate had it been done from
our foreign competitor's perspective, because the U.S. will sell just about
anything to anybody.
China, of course, is the most glaring example of the abject failure of U.S.
export controls and nonproliferation policies. It is now evident that
"three strikes and you're out" doesn't apply to China. For the third time,
reports the Washington Time's Bill Gertz, the Clinton Administration has
accepted Chinese assurances that it won't proliferate missile technology to
Pakistan again...really, it won't. U.S. sanctions against Russian missile
firms and nuclear establishments have been toothless, short-lived and
ineffective. Thanks to Russia, Iran is developing missiles of
ever-increasing range and lethality. In fact, Congressman Curt Weldon (R.
Pa) says that these two have been caught 36 times breaking their
nonproliferation agreements. Guess how many times they were
sanctioned...twice. I guess even "34 strikes and you're out" doesn't apply.
You can also bet that even in those two cases, Administration officials were
"winking" at their Russian or Chinese counterparts implying that it would
business as usual again soon.
So, despite the declaration of a national emergency, we are seeing the
spread of missiles of ever-increasing range capable of delivering warheads
of ever-increasing lethality including nuclear, chemical, and even
biological agents. These missiles may not be able to reach the U.S.
homeland yet, but our critical regional allies are certainly at risk as are
U.S. servicemen sent into those regions to protect those allies. So now
what?
First and foremost, we must stop dawdling over the development of an
effective ballistic missile defense. Our military forces and our most
important allies are completely vulnerable to missile attacks; the
implications for our sustained forward presence in a crisis are ominous.
Second, we must reconstitute our intelligence capabilities against the
proliferation threat. The Clinton Administration's abuse of intelligence
over the past 8 years borders on the criminal. Our intelligence collection
capabilities have atrophied as Administration officials "shared" ever more
precious intelligence information to convince proliferators that we could
catch them in the act. Energy Department officials routinely told their
Russian interlocutors about U.S. intelligence on Russian-Iranian deals. Bill
Richardson and Frank Wisner "shared" information about our overheard
photography capabilities with both India and Pakistan in an attempt to
dissuade them from testing new missile and nuclear weapons. Surely the most
outrageous case involved a White House "leak" to the Washington Post
identifying the source of CIA reports on Iran's nuclear developments. The
purpose of the "leak" appeared to be to discredit the reports by dismissing
the source as "flaky". But over and over again Administration abuse of
intelligence sources and methods resulted in lost "access." Foreign
intelligence services went to school on U.S. intelligence capabilities and
fashioned robust denial and deception plans to thwart collection of
indications of proliferation violations. Given all this and the scorched
earth policy of the administration and its allies in the Intelligence
Community against the integrity of our analytic capability, it is little
wonder that we are surprised time and again. Our concern has to be that
someday soon these "surprises" are going to end up killing U.S. servicemen
or our most valuable allies. Try buying your way out of that one.
Notra Trulock is the Director of Media Relations at the Free Congress
Foundation. For comments and inquiries contact: awheeler@freecongress.org
Monday, December 18, 2000
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