[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 10 (Thursday, January 25, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S365-S368]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             MAJOR CONCERNS


                        War on Drugs in America

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I listened with interest when the Senator 
from Utah was talking about some of the drug problems that are facing 
this Nation and that concern all of us deeply. He made a comment that 
we are all pleased that Barry McCaffrey, if he is confirmed, will be 
taking over as drug czar to actually do something about it. It is long 
overdue.
  I sat in the other Chamber and listened to the President during his 
State of the Union Message 2 days ago. He expressed this great concern 
about the drug problem in America. Yet he has done nothing for the 
first 3 years about the drug problem.
  We did, I guess, have a drug czar, but the number of personnel who 
were supposed to be participating in the program to address the drug 
problem in America was cut by 75 percent, from 100 down to 25 people. 
The amount of money that was spent on the drug problem was actually cut 
in half. 

[[Page S366]]

  I hope that Gen. Barry McCaffrey will be confirmed and will come out 
with a very aggressive drug program. I only regret that we lost 3 years 
in the battle against drugs in America. Everything that the Senator 
from Utah said made a lot of sense to me.


                              Peacemaking

  I am also concerned about two other things that no one is talking 
about, Mr. President. One is a statement that was made by the President 
of the United States, not one time but twice during his State of the 
Union Message. He said that ``Americans should no longer have to fend 
for themselves.'' Americans should no longer have to fend for 
themselves. I got to thinking--and maybe I am making the wrong 
interpretation on this--but is that not what made America great, what 
distinguishes us from other countries? If you say that Americans should 
no longer have to fend for themselves, then that leads you to the 
incontrovertible conclusion that the Government should take care of us 
instead. I think, in a subliminal way, that is perhaps what the 
President was saying.

  If I were to single out the thing that bothered me the most about the 
message--not just the inconsistencies and the talk about the role of 
Government and the one-liners about large Government coming to an end 
and all of that--it was the statement that he made that almost went 
unnoticed regarding a new national policy that our military is no 
longer to be used to defend America, but for peacemaking.
  I have watched this progress, first when we made the commitment into 
Somalia--and that was not President Clinton, that was actually 
President Bush that made that decision after he had lost the election 
and before President Clinton was sworn into office--when our troops 
were supposed to be there for 45 days. It was not until 18 of our 
Rangers were killed almost a year later that President Clinton agreed 
to bring the troops home. Well, that was a concern to me. Haiti was a 
concern, and Rwanda was, and now, of course, Bosnia is. We had our 
debate on Bosnia, and now we are going to support our troops all we 
can. I kept thinking that all these humanitarian gestures were kind of 
incidental things, or accidents that, well, if there is something that 
the President seems to think is very significant in a part of the 
world, we need to get involved because there are human rights 
violations and murders going on and things that we all find deplorable.
  But in his State of the Union Message, he made it national policy for 
the first time, that our role is now peacemaking throughout the world. 
This is not some idle remark--it is the President of the United States 
who is making this statement, in a State of the Union Message which all 
of the world was watching. If I were sitting out there listening in any 
number of countries that are having problems right now, I would say, 
``Good, we do not have to worry because the good old United States is 
going to come in and solve our problems.''
  Now, with a starved military budget--which in purchasing dollars is 
less than it was in 1980 when we could not even afford spare parts--we 
are diluting our force by sending troops around the world on 
peacekeeping missions. We now have a vetoed Department of Defense 
authorization bill. In the veto message the President says he is 
vetoing it because we have money in there to complete our national 
missile defense system, which I contend is about 85 percent complete 
today--as if there is something wrong with defending America.
  We keep going back and talking about the 1972 ABM Treaty. Mr. 
President, as you will remember, that treaty was constructed back at a 
time when our policy was one of mutual assured destruction. The 
justification was that we had two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the 
United States, and if we both agreed not to defend ourselves, not to 
have the capability to knock down missiles as they were coming over to 
our countries, neither country would attack the other. Well, that was 
the policy. Frankly, I did not agree with it at the time, but it at 
least made some sense in that there were two superpowers.
  Now we have a totally different environment. The interesting thing 
about this is that Henry Kissinger, the architect of the ABM Treaty, 
told me not long ago that it no longer has application today. Today we 
have a proliferation of threats from places all over the world and it 
is not isolated in one place. To quote Dr. Kissinger, ``it is nuts to 
make a virtue out of our vulnerability.'' That is the situation we are 
in today, which disturbs me so much as a member of the Intelligence 
Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee. But you do not have 
to go to those of us who may be accused of being overly concerned about 
missile attacks on the United States of America. You can go to James 
Woolsey, former CIA Director, who was appointed not by a Republican 
President, but by President Clinton. Jim Woolsey said there are between 
20 and 25 nations that either are developing or have developed weapons 
of mass destruction, either chemical, biological, or nuclear, and are 
working on the means to deliver those warheads.
  This is what concerns me because we know right now that the threat is 
greater than it was during the cold war. During the State of the Union 
Message, the President said--and he got a rousing ovation--``For the 
first time, Russian missiles are not pointing at America's children.'' 
But I can say this: At least when the Russian missiles were pointing at 
America's children, we knew where they were. Now it could be Iran, 
Iraq, Syria, North Korea, or China, any number of places. We do not 
know where they are. But we know there are two dozen countries that are 
developing the technology and capability of delivering missiles to the 
United States.
  Mr. President, the ABM Treaty stated that it is all right to have a 
theater missile defense system in place. It is all right if you are in 
the Sea of Japan and you see two missiles coming out of North Korea, 
one going toward Japan, which you can shoot down; but if one is going 
to the United States, you cannot shoot it down because that would 
violate the ABM Treaty of 1972. I also have contended that the ABM 
Treaty was between two parties, one party of which no longer exists 
today.
  So I will support the DOD authorization bill, even though I think it 
was a bad decision to take the national missile defense language out of 
the bill.
  Before somebody comes running in the Chamber and starts talking about 
star wars and all of these mythical things and making people believe 
there is not a threat out there, let me just suggest, Mr. President, 
that I am not talking, even right now, about space-launched missiles to 
intercept missiles. We are talking now about surface-launched missiles, 
the technology of which we already have.
  Anybody who watched CNN during the Persian Gulf war watched missiles 
knock down missiles. That is not supernatural; that is not something 
out of Buck Rogers or Star Wars; that is a technology that works today. 
We have an investment of $40 billion in the Aegis system, which is 
about 22 ships that have launching capability. We are trying to spend a 
little bit more over a 5-year period, approximately $5 billion more, 
for that capability to reach to the upper tier. That would mean that if 
a missile were launched from North Korea, taking about 30 minutes to 
get over here, we would be able to do something about it and knock it 
down before it came into the United States. Between that and the THAAD 
missile technology, which is already here, we could upgrade what we 
already have billions of dollars invested in, and defend America.
  I do not understand why this aversion toward defending America keeps 
coming out of the White House. We know the technology that is here, and 
we know what the North Koreans are doing. We know the type of missile 
North Korea is developing is going to be capable of reaching Alaska and 
Hawaii by the year 2000 and the continental United States by 2002.
  I saw something only yesterday that I would like to share.
  I ask unanimous consent that the entire article in yesterday's New 
York Times entitled ``As China Threatens Taiwan, It Makes Sure U.S. 
Listens'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S367]]


                [From the New York Times, Jan. 25, 1996]

         As China Threatens Taiwan, It Makes Sure U.S. Listens

                         (By Patrick E. Tyler)

       Beijing, January 23.--The Chinese leadership has sent 
     unusually explicit warnings to the Clinton Administration 
     that China has completed plans for a limited attack on Taiwan 
     that could be mounted in the weeks after Taiwan's President, 
     Lee Tenghui, wins the first democratic balloting for the 
     presidency in March.
       The purpose of this saber-rattling is apparently to prod 
     the United States to rein in Taiwan and President Lee, whose 
     push for greater international recognition for the island of 
     21 million people, has been condemned here as a drive for 
     independence.
       While no one familiar with the threats thinks China is on 
     the verge of risking a catastrophic war against Taiwan, some 
     China experts fear that the Taiwan issue has become such a 
     test of national pride for Chinese leaders that the danger of 
     war should be taken seriously.
       A senior American official said the Administration has ``no 
     independent confirmation or even credible evidence'' that the 
     Chinese are contemplating an attack, and spoke almost 
     dismissively of the prospect.
       ``They can fire missiles, but Taiwan has some teeth of its 
     own,'' the official said. ``And does China want to risk that 
     and the international effects?''
       The most pointed of the Chinese warnings was conveyed 
     recently through a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, 
     Chas. W. Freeman Jr., who traveled to China this winter or 
     discussions with senior Chinese officials. On Jan. 4, after 
     returning to Washington, Mr. Freeman informed President 
     Clinton's national security adviser, Anthony Lake, that the 
     People's Liberation Army had prepared plans for a missile 
     attack against Taiwan consisting of one conventional missile 
     strike a day for 30 days.
       This warning followed similar statements relayed to 
     Administration officials by John W. Lewis, a Stanford 
     University political scientist who meets frequently with 
     senior Chinese military figures here.
       These warnings do not mean that an attack on Taiwan is 
     certain or imminent. Instead, a number of China specialists 
     say that China, through ``credible preparations'' for an 
     attack, hopes to intimidate the Taiwanese and to influence 
     American policy toward Taiwan. The goal, these experts say, 
     is to force Taiwan to abandon the campaign initiated by 
     President Lee, including his effort to have Taiwan seated at 
     the United Nations, and to end high-profile visits by 
     President Lee to the United States and to other countries.
       If the threats fail to rein in Mr. Lee, however, a number 
     of experts now express the view that China could resort to 
     force, despite the enormous consequences for its economy and 
     for political stability in Asia.
       Since last summer, when the White House allowed Mr. Lee to 
     visit the United States, the Chinese leadership has escalated 
     its attacks on the Taiwan leader, accusing him of seeking to 
     ``split the motherland'' and undermine the ``one China'' 
     policy that had been the bedrock of relations between Beijing 
     and its estranged province since 1949.
       A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, asked to comment on 
     reports that the Chinese military has prepared plans for 
     military action against Taiwan, said he was awaiting a 
     response from his superiors. Last month, a senior ministry 
     official said privately that China's obvious preparations for 
     military action have been intended to head off an unwanted 
     conflict.
       ``We have been trying to do all we can to avoid a scenario 
     in which we are confronted in the end with no other option 
     but a military one,'' the official said. He said that if 
     China does not succeed in changing Taiwan's course, ``then I 
     am afraid there is going to be a war.''
       Mr. Freeman described the most recent warning during a 
     meeting Mr. Lake had called with nongovernmental China 
     specialists.
       Participants said that Mr. Freeman's presentation was 
     arresting as he described being told by a Chinese official of 
     the advanced state of military planning. Preparations for a 
     missile attack on Taiwan, he said, and the target selection 
     to carry it out, have been completed and await a final 
     decision by the Politburo in Beijing.
       One of the most dramatic moments came when Mr. Freeman 
     quoted a Chinese official as asserting that China could 
     act militarily against Taiwan without fear of intervention 
     by the United States because American leaders ``care more 
     about Los Angeles than they do about Taiwan,'' a statement 
     that Mr. Freeman characterized as an indirect threat by 
     China to use nuclear weapons against the United States.
       An account of the White House meeting was provided by some 
     of the participants. Mr. Freeman, reached by telephone, 
     confirmed the gist of his remarks, reiterating that he 
     believes that while ``Beijing clearly prefers negotiation to 
     combat,'' there is a new sense of urgency in Beijing to end 
     Taiwan's quest for ``independent international status.''
       Mr. Freeman said that President Lee's behavior ``in the 
     weeks following his re-election will determine'' whether 
     Beijing's Communist Party leaders feel they must act ``by 
     direct military means'' to change his behavior.
       In recent months, Mr. Freeman said he has relayed a number 
     of warnings to United States Government officials. ``I have 
     quoted senior Chinese who told me'' that China ``would 
     sacrifice `millions of men' and `entire cities' to assure the 
     unity of China and who opined that the United States would 
     not make comparable sacrifices.''
       He also asserted that ``some in Beijing may be prepared to 
     engage in nuclear blackmail against the U.S. to ensure that 
     Americans do not obstruct'' efforts by the People's 
     Liberation Army ``to defend the principles of Chinese 
     sovereignty over Taiwan and Chinese national unity.''
       Some specialists at the meeting wondered if Mr. Freeman's 
     presentation was too alarmist and suggested that 
     parliamentary elections on Taiwan in December had resulted in 
     losses for the ruling Nationalist Party and that President 
     Lee appeared to be moderating his behavior to avoid a crisis.
       ``I am not alarmist at this point,'' said one specialist, 
     who would not comment on the substance of the White House 
     meeting. ``I don't think the evidence is developing in that 
     direction.''
       Other participants in the White House meeting, who said 
     they would not violate the confidentiality pledge of the 
     private session, separately expressed their concern that a 
     potential military crisis is building in the Taiwan Strait.
       ``I think there is evidence to suggest that the Chinese are 
     creating at least the option to apply military pressure to 
     Taiwan if they feel that Taiwan is effectively moving out of 
     China's orbit politically,'' said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China 
     scholar at the University of Michigan and an informal adviser 
     to the Administration.
       Mr. Lieberthal, who also has traveled to China in recent 
     months, said Beijing has redeployed forces from other parts 
     of the country to the coastal areas facing Taiwan and set up 
     new command structures ``for various kinds of military action 
     against Taiwan.''
       ``They have done all this in a fashion they know Taiwan can 
     monitor,'' he said, ``so as to become credible on the use of 
     force.''
       ``I believe there has been no decision to use military 
     force,'' he continued, ``and they recognize that it would be 
     a policy failure for them to have to resort to force; but 
     they have set up the option, they have communicated that in 
     the most credible fashion and, I believe, the danger is that 
     they would exercise it in certain circumstances.''
       Several experts cited their concern that actions by 
     Congress in the aftermath of President Lee's expected 
     election could be a critical factor contributing to a 
     military confrontation. If President Lee perceives that he 
     has a strong base of support in the United States Congress 
     and presses forward with his campaign to raise Taiwan's 
     status, the risk of a military crisis is greater, they said. 
     A chief concern is that Congress would seek to invite the 
     Taiwan leader back to the United States as a gesture of 
     American support. A Chinese military leader warned in 
     November that such a step could have ``explosive'' results.
       In recent months, American statements on whether United 
     States forces would come to the defense of Taiwan if it came 
     under attack have been deliberately vague so as to deter 
     Beijing through a posture of what the Pentagon calls 
     ``strategic ambiguity.''
       Some members of Congress assert that the Taiwan Relations 
     Act of 1979 includes an implicit pledge to defend Taiwan if 
     attacked, but Administration officials say that, in the end, 
     the decision would depend on the timing, pretext and nature 
     of Chinese aggression.

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, in this article, entitled ``As China 
Threatens Taiwan, It Makes Sure U.S. Listens,'' the Times reporter 
reports on some ominous information recently passed to the National 
Security Adviser, Anthony Lake, concerning measures being taken by 
Beijing to facilitate military action against Taiwan and statements 
intended to deter the United States from coming to Taipei's assistance.
  According to Charles Freeman, former United States Ambassador to 
China and now an Assistant Secretary of Defense, a Chinese official 
told him of the advanced state of military planning and that 
preparations for missile attack on Taiwan and the target selection to 
carry it out have been completed and await a final decision by the 
Politburo in Beijing. Freeman reported to Mr. Lake that a Chinese 
official had asserted that the Chinese could act militarily against 
Taiwan without fear of intervention by the United States because 
American leaders ``care more about Los Angeles than they do about 
Taiwan,'' a statement Mr. Freeman characterized as an indirect threat 
by China to use nuclear weapons against the United States.
  I do not think anyone who is watching what is going on in the world 
today can miss the threats that come both subliminally and directly 
from various countries. If those people watched Saddam Hussein during 
the Persian Gulf war, they know that he would not have hesitated to use 
this capability on the United States if he had had it. But today we 
have more than two dozen countries that are developing such a 
capability. 

[[Page S368]]

  If I could single out this one thing that I heard from the 
President's State of the Union Message 2 days ago, this is the most 
disturbing thing that came out of his message. We can concentrate on 
the inconsistencies or the statements he made about wanting to have 
welfare reform, when in fact he vetoed the very bill he says he now 
wants; and when Americans stood up and applauded when he said he was 
going to downsize Government, when he, in fact, is increasing the size 
of Government every day in assigning new tasks and putting more jobs 
into job programs and into retirement programs and into environmental 
programs--he mentioned 14 different areas of Government he wanted to 
increase--in every area except for defense, he wants to increase 
government.
  ``Wait a minute,'' he said, ``Now I am very proud to tell you we have 
200,000 fewer Government employees than when I took office.'' Let me 
tell you where the employees came from. They came from the Defense 
Department. They came from our defense system. If you exclude the 
defense system, our Government has grown dramatically, whether you talk 
about the budget or whether you talk about the number of employees. It 
is very deceptive for the President to say that.
  Again, all of that aside, as offensive as that may be to thinking 
Americans, the thing that has to be looked at is this new role that our 
military has of peacemaking as opposed to the role of defending 
America.
  I wish that more people in this Senate Chamber had been able to be 
with me on the days following April 19 in Oklahoma City, in my 
beautiful State of Oklahoma, where the most devastating terrorist 
attack, domestic attack, in the history of the world took place. When 
you saw, as we saw in the Chamber the other day, Richard Dean, who went 
in there after he himself had gotten out of the building and dragged 
out three or four other people. The stories of the heroes of that 
disaster were just incredible. Jennifer Rodgers, the police officer 
acknowledged during the State of the Union Message--and I appreciate 
the President doing that--sure, ask Jennifer Rodgers or Richard Dean 
about the devastation of that bomb in Oklahoma City. That bomb was 
measured as equal to 1 ton of TNT. The smallest warhead we know of 
today, nuclear warhead, is equal to 1,000 tons of TNT.
  Now, that has to tell you, if you are concerned as we were about what 
happened in one building and all the tragedy surrounding that, that if 
you multiply that by 1,000--and I do not care if it is a city in 
Oklahoma or New York or Washington or anywhere else in the world--that 
is a pretty huge threat that is out there. It is a very real threat. As 
yesterday's paper indicates, it is even a greater threat and a more 
documented threat than it was before. Yet the President has shown no 
regard for the defense of this country against this threat.
  Mr. President, we will have a chance to address this. Yes, we do want 
to pass the Defense authorization bill even though missile defense has 
been taken out of it. But we will return to the battle over missile 
defense, and to this new humanitarian role that our military has, in 
future debates.
  I guess I will conclude with another concern that is not as life-
threatening. Of course, we are concerned about the lives that would be 
lost if we failed to defend ourselves, but in these various 
humanitarian peacemaking missions that is the new rule of our military, 
somebody has to ask the question: Who is going to pay for this? We have 
a President who has taken virtually all of the money out of the 
military budget that would go into equipment to defend America, and yet 
we are going to have to come around and pay for all this stuff that is 
going on in Bosnia and elsewhere.
  I picked up something the other day in last week's Defense News that 
I guess has the solution. Pentagon officials said on January 3 that the 
budget cuts could come from areas where Congress has increased funding, 
such as missile defense, to pay the bill for these missions. This is 
from Pentagon officials. ``Congress increased Clinton's overall budget 
request by $7 billion in 1996. It is intuitive that any money above the 
President's request would be reprogrammed to pay for Bosnia,'' one 
senior Pentagon official said on January 2.
  That tells us two things. First of all, the $1.5 billion that the 
President says it will cost for the humanitarian exercise in Bosnia is 
grossly understated. It could be up to $7 billion. The studies I have 
seen show it around $5 billion. I guess we not only are redirecting our 
military to a new role and that new role is peacemaking, but we are 
also going to pay for it with the dollars we would otherwise use to 
defend America. This is wrong.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thompson). The Senator from Arkansas.

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