-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- {{<Begin>}} Publications of the Center for Security Policy No. 00-F 11 SECURITY FORUM 29 February 2000 Restoration Watch: Putin's 'Remilitarization' Campaign (Washington, D.C.): In a courageous op.ed. article in today's New York Times, a Russian journalist by the name of Masha Gessen has written a stark warning to the West: Vladimir Putin is "rapidly remilitarizing Russian society." She paints a picture of a Kremlin leader taking a series of steps -- many of which go unnoticed, or at least unchallenged, by Western governments -- that seem to be steadily, if incrementally, moving his country in a direction that will be neither conducive to a free and peaceable Russia nor to the interest of the United States and international stability. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was au courant to declare that Russia had undergone such a free-fall in terms of its military power that the West would have at least 5-10 years of warning before it would confront a renewed threat from that quarter. Few of the proponents of this sanguine view ever described what the early stages of such warning would look like. It seems reasonable to believe it would include the sorts of ominous signs described by Ms. Gessen. The New York Times, 29 February 2000 Lockstep to Putin's New Military Order By Masha Gessen In the nearly two months since Vladimir V. Putin became acting president of Russia, the world has barely begun getting to know him. But already, he is building a clear record in one area of policy: little noticed by the West, Mr. Putin, a former lieutenant colonel in the K.G.B., is rapidly remilitarizing Russian society. Visitors to the old Soviet Union used to be surprised at the sheer number of people in uniform in the streets. At 18, men were conscripted for two years of mandatory military service. Virtually everyone who had graduated from a technical, medical or foreign-languages college was considered an officer of the reserves and required to report for regular training exercises. Young schoolchildren had to take part in bomb drills and survival games, complete with toy guns for boys and nurse training for girls. Starting at 14, students learned warfare in a mandatory class called primary military preparation; one activity was taking apart and cleaning the famous Kalashnikov rifle. All men and many women were required to carry military cards, and the all-important internal passport also indicated military status. In the 1990's the number of people in the services dwindled as budgets were cut and opportunities increased in the private sector. When Russia ended its involvement in Afghanistan, more young men began to be exempted from the draft. The 1993 Russian constitution guaranteed the right to alternative civilian service, and a few hundred men managed to claim it by going to court. The military preparation class in schools was abolished in 1989. Training exercises for reservists were quietly discontinued. But like other Soviet legacies, the institutionalized military nature of Russian society remained ready to be resurrected. Since Vladimir Putin took office on Dec. 31, he has issued 11 presidential decrees. Six concerned the military. Mr. Putin's second decree -- after the one granting immunity from prosecution to Boris Yeltsin, the former president -- established a new Russian military doctrine abandoning the old no-first-strike policy toward nuclear weapons and emphasizing a right to use them against aggressors "if other means of conflict resolution have been exhausted or deemed ineffective." Soon another decree re-established mandatory training exercises for reservists. How many will be called up this year and whether they may be required to serve in Chechnya is unclear, since two of the decree's six paragraphs are classified as secret. (This, incidentally, is the sort of problem that journalists in Russia will be encountering often, since a Jan. 17 Putin order granted 40 government ministers and other officials the right to classify information as secret.) Other decrees related to military administration, public information about the war in Chechnya and commemoration of a general's death. Mr. Putin has also focused on the military in his capacity as acting prime minister. His government's first legislative action re-established military training in secondary schools, both public and private. Russian teenagers will once again become intimate with the Kalashnikov. The Ministry of Education's plans to expand the school curriculum to 12 years will also have a military impact. Boys will graduate from high school not at 17, as now, but at the conscription age of 18, and will not have time to try to gain acceptance to colleges that could grant draft exemptions. As for alternative service, Russians can forget about it: the first young man who went to court to claim this right in the Putin era was jailed for avoiding the draft. On Jan. 27 Mr. Putin's finance minister announced that defense spending will be increased by 50 percent. Where will the country get the money, when it consistently fails to meet its obligations to an increasingly impoverished population? The government's latest resolution contains an eerily ingenious solution to one urgent social problem: from now on, military detachments will be encouraged to "adopt" boys 14 and older who are orphaned or have single mothers. Russia's remilitarization not only testifies to Mr. Putin's resolve to press on with the war in Chechnya, but signals a return to the besieged, us-against-the- world mindset that Russia had begun to leave behind. Yet as the March 26 election approaches, Mr. Putin has been complimented as a reformer and an inevitability by President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, NATO Secretary General James Robertson and British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. Such overtures make those of us in Russia who hope never again to touch a Kalashnikov feel very lonely indeed. Masha Gessen is chief correspondent at the Russian news weekly Itogi. 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. Top of Page © 1988-2000, Center for Security Policy Publications of the Center for Security Policy No. 00-F 12 SECURITY FORUM 29 February 2000 ' 'This is no Drill': China's Latest Threat to Attack America Demands Urgent Deployment of Missile Defenses, Other Actions (Washington, D.C.): Under the lead headline "China Warns U.S. of Missile Strike," Washington Times National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz reported today: China stepped up its war of words over Taiwan yesterday, bluntly threatening to fire long-range nuclear missiles at the United States if it defends the island....The official military newspaper, Liberation Army Daily, stated in a commentary made public in Beijing that U.S. intervention in a conflict between China and Taiwan would result in "serious damage" to U.S. security interests in Asia...."China...is a country that has certain abilities of launching strategic counterattack and the capacity of launching a long-distance strike." As Mr. Gertz notes, this warning is reminiscent of a threat of nuclear attack against Los Angeles issued during the run-up to Taiwan's presidential elections four years ago by Lieutenant General Xiong Guangkai, the PRC's Deputy Chief of Staff. Gen. Xiong, who was recently feted by the Clinton Administration during an official visit to Washington, was doubtless also involved in China's latest effort to blackmail America. These worrisome pronouncements -- and those aimed directly at Taiwan -- are further evidence of just how out-of-touch with the real nature of China the Clinton-Gore Administration has become. In his column also published in today's Washington Times, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney identified some of the serious implications of this disconnect, and the need for corrective action to support Taiwan, protect America and prevent the penetration of the U.S. capital markets by dubious Chinese companies. The Washington Times, 29 February 2000 China's Cashing in on Clinton By Frank J. Gaffney Jr. Once upon a time, a mother fatuously watching her uncoordinated son in a parade with his military unit was heard to declare: "Look, everybody's out of step but Johnnie." Increasingly, a similar myopia seems to be afflicting the Clinton- Gore administration with respect to China. President Clinton is evidently oblivious to an ominous new reality: Beijing appears to have concluded that there is a window of opportunity for bringing Taiwan to heel. For the next 10 months, the White House will be occupied by a man who has accepted campaign contributions from Chinese agents of influence; a man who has formally, if ignominiously, embraced Beijing's line on its sovereignty over 22 million democratic Taiwanese. The alarming prospect is that the Chinese Politburo calculates it is far more likely to get away with murder - or more precisely, what might be called, "stateicide" - on Mr. Clinton's watch than on that of any of his prospective successors. Even Vice President Al Gore might prove less reliable from Beijing's point of view than the man he currently serves. Hence, we appear to have entered a period of particular danger, when an attack by China against Taiwan seems a distinct possibility, if not actually a probability. Of course, this ominous conclusion has only been reinforced by China's threat to its "renegade province" issued last week in an 11,000-word manifesto - released, not coincidentally, in the immediate aftermath of the departure from Beijing of President Clinton's friend and Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and his high-level delegation. As the Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist William Safire observed in the New York Times, China may have been encouraged to take this step by the Clinton-Gore team's feckless response to Vladimir Putin's ruthless bid to consolidate his political position. Mr. Safire correctly suggests that Taiwan may be seen by a Chinese government seeking legitimacy to be every bit as convenient a target as Chechnya was for the new leader of Russia. Even more relevant to China's calculations than the kid-glove treatment the United States is giving China's new-found "strategic partner" - Russia - however, is the message being sent by the administration when Mr. Clinton promises to "do whatever it takes" to secure congressional approval of permanent trading status for China. Beijing sees him muting concerns about its latest, explicit threat to Taiwan. They can only be heartened by his actions on three other fronts: Mr. Clinton insists he will veto the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act (TSEA) - legislation designed to improve U.S.-Taiwan military ties and facilitate the transfer to Taipei of defensive equipment needed to offset the growing threat posed to that democratic nation by China's aggressive build-up of ballistic missiles and other offensive hardware. Especially urgently needed are the sort of flexible anti-missile defenses Taiwan has sought to purchase aboard U.S.- built Aegis fleet air defense ships. (Interestingly, the chief of naval operations, Adm. Jay Johnson, has just written Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen calling for the fullest possible utilization of these ships to defend not only U.S. allies and forces overseas, but the people and territory of the United States as well.) The TSEA passed the House a few weeks ago by a veto-proof margin. In the wake of China's latest belligerence, the Senate should follow suit, if its leadership will bring the bill up for a vote. Such an action takes on all the greater importance in underscoring U.S. commitment to the security of Taiwan insofar as the executive branch's calculated ambiguity on this point is only feeding the perception in ruling Chinese circles that an attack on Taiwan will - at least until November - be essentially cost-free. The Clinton administration has announced its intention to launch a campaign to resuscitate the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) rejected last October by a majority of the Senate. A recent op-ed article in The Washington Post by former President Jimmy Carter signaled that this campaign will exploit pressure generated by an international conference in April called to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. On that occasion, China and its friends in the Third World can be expected to cavil that the failure of the United States to ratify the CTBT will prompt many nations to "go nuclear" despite their treaty obligations not to do so. As a recent symposium sponsored by the Center for Security Policy made clear, however, the relatively slow pace with which proliferation has proceeded to date actually owes more to the credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent than any arms-control accord. The Senate was right in deciding that the CTBT would grievously erode the safety, reliability and effectiveness of that deterrent - an outcome all the more ill-advised in light of nuclear-modernization efforts by China, Russia and other dangerous "rogue" states. Unfortunately, the lack of U.S. nuclear testing since 1992 has also contributed to uncertainty about the adequacy of steps to protect conventional military gear from the effects of high-energy, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks. This vulnerability has not escaped the attention of the Chinese military. China's Shanghai Jiefang Ribao newspaper recently revealed that Chinese military strategists seek to accelerate the development of EMP bombs or missiles for the purpose of destroying, among other targets, U.S. aircraft carrier fleets. Mr. Clinton has rejected appeals from champions of human rights, religious freedom and national security that he block the impending penetration of the U.S. stock market by a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Company (CNPC). This state-owned enterprise's involvement in Sudan has been determined by the U.S. and Canadian governments to be materially supporting genocidal attacks by the Islamic extremist regime in Khartoum against Christians and others in Sudan's oil-rich southern regions. As a result, a pending $ 5 billion to $ 7 billion initial public offering by CNPC's PetroChina holding company on the New York Stock Exchange could soon be allowing huge quantities of unwitting U.S. investors' funds to be put to unacceptable uses by communist China and/or Sudan. In each of these areas, the Clinton-Gore administration is clearly out of step with U.S. security and other interests. The outstanding question is: How high a price will we - and other freedom-loving people - pay for its incompetence, if not its malfeasance? Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times. 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. Top of Page © 1988-2000, Center for Security Policy {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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