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>From www.security-policy.org/papers/1999/99-D118.html
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Publications of the Center for Security Policy
No. 99-D 118
DECISION BRIEF
18 October 1999
Clinton Legacy Watch # 43: Hard Questions About
Effort to Bribe Russia into Amending the A.B.M. Treaty
(Washington, D.C.): Fresh from its problematic efforts to purchase North Korean
restraint on the development of threatening long-range ballistic missiles, the
Clinton Administration has decided to try to purchase Russia's acquiescence to
its plan to build defenses against such missiles. According to officially
backgrounded reports published in yesterday's New York Times, if the Russians
will agree to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty so as to
permit the United States to deploy very limited ground-based anti-missile
interceptors,(1) the United States is prepared to "help Russia complete a large
missile-tracking radar" in Siberia and "upgrade a Russian-operated radar" in
Kazakhstan.
Why Now?
For seven years, the Clinton-Gore Administration has assiduously delayed,
dumbed-down and otherwise sought to undermine the deployment of effective anti-
missile systems. As recently as last January, the National Security Council and
State Department repudiated Secretary of Defense William Cohen for his temerity
in suggesting that the threat now justified the deployment of missile defenses,
that the decision to deploy them would be taken and that the ABM Treaty would
not be allowed to stand in the way.(2)
The question occurs: Is the Administration's new-found desire to defend the
American people against missile attack genuine? Or is it but the latest in a
series of cynical maneuvers -- this time designed to protect only Vice
President Gore against a field of Republican presidential candidates who have
declared their determination to begin defending America from ballistic missile
attack as an immediate priority?
The answer may be determined by the Administration's attitude toward the
following:
Why pay the Russians to amend a treaty that no longer exists? A rigorous legal
analysis performed earlier this year for the Center for Security Policy by
former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith and former
Justice Department attorney George Miron has established that under
international legal practice and precedent, the ABM Treaty lapsed when the
other party -- the Soviet Union became extinct in 1991.(3) Neither the Clinton
Administration nor its supporters among the Nation's anti-defense, pro-arms
control elite have yet found persuasive grounds to rebut the Feith-Miron
study's central conclusion: We have spent the past eight years observing the
ABM Treaty not as a matter of legal necessity, but as one of political choice.
Before the U.S. taxpayer is asked to spend a plug-nickel -- let alone pouring
tens, if not hundreds, of additional millions of dollars into Russia's black
hole -- to build up the Kremlin's already quite formidable territorial anti-
missile defense system,(4) the Administration must explain why such bakshish is
required to purchase relief from a treaty that can no longer be in force. If
the Clinton-Gore team continues to be unable to explain how the ABM Treaty
could legally bind the United States, it may nonetheless wish to make a case
for improving Russia's ABM radar capabilities. But the Congress would then be
able to judge such an idea on its merits, not as a necessary precondition to
building the missile defenses that the legislative branch has made it U.S.
policy to deploy as soon "as technologically possible."
Why settle for less than the most effective, most flexible, earliest and least
expensive way to begin defending America? The Clinton Administration is seeking
the Russians' permission to deploy a National Missile Defense system that would
give the United States very limited protection against ballistic missile
attacks -- and some parts of the country probably none at all. It would
certainly not be useful in defending American forces or allies overseas.
According to the March 1999 report of the Heritage Foundation's blue-ribbon
Commission on Missile Defense,(5) the first ground-based site alone "would be
likely to cost about $25 billion and take eight-to-nine years to build....A
multi-site system could cost an additional $25 billion and take another five-to-
seven years to complete, depending on how many sites were to be built."
Even the Clinton Pentagon has belatedly begun to acknowledge the merits of an
alternative approach recommended repeatedly since 1995 by the Heritage
commission -- a sea-based missile defense built upon the 55 cruisers and
destroyers currently equipped with the AEGIS fleet air defense system.(6) Using
Navy data, the panel members estimated that the Nation could adapt these
existing assets and achieve an initial deployment of 650 missiles starting
within 3 years or so at an additional incremental cost of $2-3 billion
(expended over the next five years). The United States would thus achieve a
highly mobile and flexible missile defense for both its own territory and for
its forces and allies overseas. The difference between the "AEGIS Option" and
the Clinton NMD system may prove to be the difference between having an
effective missile defense system in place before we need it, rather than after.
There is only one reason why this commonsensical sea-based approach is not the
baseline program for the United States' near-term missile defense effort -- to
be complemented by space- and/or ground-based components over time: Flexible
and inherently robust sea-based defenses are banned by and would be wholly
inconsistent with the central idea of the ABM Treaty.
For that reason, it is a non-starter with the Clinton Administration, which
insists that that accord is and must remain "the cornerstone of strategic
stability." Insult is added to injury by an its approach that not only denies
the United States the most straight-forward, most capable and cheapest means of
providing global anti-missile protection in deference to a lapsed treaty. Now,
it is being asked to pay for the privilege of doing so.
What will the Clinton Administration do about defending America if the Russians
continue to say 'Nyet' to changing the ABM Treaty? Last January, Secretary
Cohen responded to a similar question by saying "We can always withdraw from
the treaty." At the time, he was sharply rebuked for even broaching that
idea.(7) And as recently as a month ago, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe
Talbott -- the notoriously pro-Moscow journalist/Friend of Bill who has been
the Administration's point-man on U.S.-Russia relations and arms control --
asserted that it "will be decided by Russia - not the United States" whether we
deploy missile defenses.
If the Administration is now genuinely convinced that the United States must
have missile defenses, then the Russians obviously cannot be permitted to
exercise a veto. That being the case, we need feel no obligation to pay for
and/or provide technology to improve their missile defense capabilities.
On the other hand, if the Administration remains determined to cede to the
Kremlin decision-making responsibility about what kind of missile defense the
United States might have, where it will be deployed and with what capabilities,
the Congress would be well-advised not to exacerbate such folly by endorsing
Talbott's efforts to reward the Russians for securing such a de facto veto over
America's security policy-making.
The Bottom Line
The American people and their elected representatives need to remember that the
folks who are bringing the Nation this dubious proposal -- aimed at building up
the Kremlin's (largely illegal) anti-missile capabilities so as to breath new
life into U.S.-Russian negotiations on amending the ABM Treaty and, thereby to
resuscitate the Treaty itself -- now have a track record: They are the same
people who tried to foist the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on the United
States.
In the wake of the crushing rejection of that fatally flawed accord, the
Clinton-Gore Administration would do well to follow Ambassador Richard Burt's
advice in today's Washington Post: "In any arms negotiation, if you want Senate
support at the landing, you had better arrange for heavy Senate involvement at
the take-off." If the executive branch once again chooses to go its own way in
arms control talks, it risks both another harsh repudiation on Capitol Hill and
allowing the already unacceptable grave danger to this country to intensify
further.
Since the Administration seems to care more about the former than the latter,
it falls to Senate leaders of the successful fight against the CTBT to ensure
that notice is served immediately: Efforts to bribe Russia -- and, in so doing,
that would revalidate the ABM Treaty and justify more, open-ended negotiations
concerning its constraints -- will not be acceptable.
It is time to serve notice that the United States will be defended in the most
cost- and militarily effective way, as soon as technologically possible and
without further regard to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. If the Russians
wish to benefit from the protection offered by such an American missile defense
system -- as opposed to simply gaining access to more U.S. defense resources
and technology (both of which are extremely subject to abuse) -- that
proposition could be explored, but only outside of, not within, the obsolete
and increasingly dangerous ABM Treaty paradigm.
- 30 -
1. The limited "national" anti-missile system that the Clinton Administration
proposes to purchase in this fashion would reportedly involve the upgrading of
several early warning radar systems and the deployment over the next decade of
two sets of interceptors missiles with Alaska and North Dakota getting one 100
missiles or less each.
2. See the Center's Decision Brief entitled Clinton Legacy Watch # 37: An End
to the U.S. Posture of 'Assured Vulnerability'? (No. 99-D 12, 27 January 1999)
3. See Definitive Study Shows Russians Have No Veto Over Defending U.S. (No. 99-
P 11, 22 January 1999).
4. See The ABM Treaty Charade: A Study in Elite Illusion and Delusion by
William T. Lee, Council for Social & Economic Studies, Washington, D.C., 1997.
5. See The Heritage Foundation's study entitled Defending America. This study
can be accessed via the world wide web at the following address:
www.heritage.org/missile_defense/.
6. See Mirabile Dictu: Even the Clinton Pentagon Now Recognizes the Necessity
for the 'Aegis Option' to Defend America (No. 99-D 95, 2 September 1999).
7. A fact that puts into unflattering perspective Mr. Cohen's claims that the
United States can always withdraw from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty if it
doesn't work out.
NOTE: The Center's publications are intended to invigorate and enrich the
debate on foreign policy and defense issues. The views expressed do not
necessarily reflect those of all members of the Center's Board of Advisors.
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© 1988-1999, Center for Security Policy
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