[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 85 (Tuesday, June 19, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6387-S6393]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     PRESIDENT BUSH'S EUROPEAN TRIP

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, President Bush has just returned from his 
trip to Europe, and the newspapers are full of glowing accounts. Some 
of the headlines include the following: ``Europe sees Bush's Trip 
Exceeding Expectations.'' That from the New York Times on June 18. The 
International Herald Tribune: ``President Climbs in European Esteem.''
  Similarly, other headlines and stories noted the fact that the 
President was successful in communicating his views on a wide variety 
of subjects, including most especially our view of national security 
issues and specifically the question of missile defense.
  I want to spend a few minutes talking about the President's 
successful trip, his vision for the future in a new post-cold-war era, 
and the acceptance of those views by most of our allies and even, to 
some extent, by those whom he characterizes as friends, countries that 
could, indeed, someday perhaps be allies, countries such as Russia, 
following especially his visit with President Putin during the course 
of this trip.
  I think the pundits had a good time as the President was preparing 
for his

[[Page S6388]]

trip, speculating about whether this President, who had not extensively 
traveled abroad and did not have a great deal of international 
experience, would be able to impress these savvy international leaders.
  What they found--and it was interesting--on the Sunday morning talk 
shows they were all doing a little bit of a retreat, which pleased me 
because I had seen the same kind of questioning of the President when 
he was beginning his run for the Presidency as Governor of Texas.
  There were those who said: He is a very congenial fellow, but does he 
really have what it takes? I think we all saw, and even my Democratic 
colleagues who supported Vice President Gore at the time concluded, 
that this is a man who not only has great charm but also significant 
substance and a view of the world which is in keeping with the times as 
we commence our journey into this 21st century.

  He proved that during the campaign. He proved it in domestic affairs, 
achieving a milestone of success with the tax cuts we passed and he 
signed into law a little over a week ago, and then this foreign trip, 
which was the first major trip, the trip to Europe, to visit with our 
NATO allies and other leaders in the region. We heard the same kind of 
questions: Was the President prepared to meet these leaders?
  There is a problem here, Mr. President, as you know, and that is that 
most of the countries of Western Europe--the majority, I should say--
are governed by left-of-center political leaders. They are, obviously, 
not of the same political viewpoint as President Bush, but our alliance 
with our NATO allies has gone through a series of changes where we have 
had generally conservative leadership, more left-of-center leadership, 
and then a combination of the two.
  We have always been able to accommodate our differences politically 
because of the common goal of providing a defense for the members of 
the NATO alliance and in working together in national security matters 
that go beyond just the question of the NATO alliance, especially 
during the cold war as we were dealing with the then-Soviet Union and 
subsequent to that time dealing with other challenges, including the 
Balkans and, of course, in dealing with the evolution of the changes 
that have been occurring in the country of Russia itself.
  That was the state of play when the President made this journey. Yet 
what we found was, notwithstanding the political differences of these 
leaders, there still is more that binds us than divides us. President 
Bush is one of those innate leaders who has the capacity to bring 
people together because of the force of his personality, which is one 
of reaching out, of showing that he is willing to listen, that he is 
willing to accommodate, but also making it very clear he has some very 
firm principles upon which U.S. policy is going to be based.
  At the conclusion of my remarks, I am going to ask unanimous consent 
to print in the Record two very fine pieces by one of the finest 
columnists and political writers of our time, Charles Krauthammer. One 
of them appeared in the Weekly Standard in the June 4 issue. It is 
entitled ``The Bush Doctrine, ABM, Kyoto, and the New American 
Unilateralism.'' The other is an op-ed the Washington Post carried on 
June 18 in which he makes a similar point that the type of 
unilateralism President Bush took to Europe and is intent on pursuing 
with respect to United States interests throughout the world is not a 
unilateralism that says the United States is going to do what we want 
to do no matter what anybody else thinks and basically ignores their 
points of view at all, but, rather, as Charles Krauthammer carefully 
points out, this new Bush doctrine is a subtle change from the past in 
this regard.
  It says we are going to identify what we believe is in the best 
interests of the United States of America and in the interests of the 
rest of the family of nations of the world.
  We are going to pursue a course that achieves the goals that sustain 
those interests, and we are not going to be deterred by naysayers, by 
countries that, frankly, do not have the same goals in mind or by any 
kind of international view that everything has to be done by 
international accord or it cannot be done at all. We are not going to 
have our national security interests vetoed by any other country of the 
world. So we will pursue our national interests, and we are not going 
to allow other countries of the world that do not share those goals to 
dictate the results.
  However, that does not mean we are simply going to try to impose our 
will on others or that we are going to go our own way and to heck with 
the rest of the world. Not at all. As Mr. Krauthammer points out, 
President Bush has very carefully conducted an overarching strategy, 
and then the tactics of achieving that strategy include a very heavy 
dose of consultation, especially with our allies and particularly with 
our NATO allies. It also involves consultation with other friends of 
the United States, countries such as Russia and India, and other 
countries such as China, with which we have had some difficulties in 
recent times.
  But the point of these consultations is not to tell other leaders 
what we are going to do come heck or high water but, rather, to say: 
Look, this is what we believe is in our best interests and your best 
interests. Let's work together to try to find a way to achieve these 
goals. There is some room for discussion. We have not finalized 
everything we plan to do, so there is an opportunity for everybody to 
help shape the future of the world as we begin this next century. But 
there are certain goals and objectives we are going to attempt to 
achieve. If you want to be with us we would like to have you come along 
and help us find the right way to do that. In that spirit, he visited 
with these European leaders.
  We all know the President is very convincing. I realize the situation 
there is a little different. In politics, it is not the typical kind of 
diplomacy coming out of the State Department or other areas of 
diplomatic expertise, in our country and in others, where subtlety and 
the spoken word are so very important. President Bush is a man who 
means and says what he means very plainly. There is a certain advantage 
to that when you are dealing with foreign leaders who do not know you 
so well. It quickly becomes apparent to them that what you are telling 
them is exactly what you believe, exactly what the United States 
intends to do, and that there is no guile, there is no hidden agenda.
  I think it has an effect of disarming some leaders who might be 
looking for hidden agendas or games that sometimes people in the 
political world like to play. President Bush is not like that. He has 
been very straightforward. He has been very clear about his vision. He 
has not wavered from that, which is, of course, tempting to do when 
visiting with other world leaders who do not totally share your world 
view.
  The net result of that diplomacy and the new American vision of 
national security for the family of nations of the world has been an 
acceptance by many of the European leaders, expressed very overtly. As 
the headlines noted, a view among even those who do not necessarily 
totally share the President's view is that there is room to work with 
this President on these common goals.
  Our NATO allies, countries such as Spain and Italy, the Czech 
Republic, Vaclav Havel, made some very eloquent statements in support 
of the President. The Polish Government, even some statements from 
leaders of the British Government, Hungary, and other countries in 
Europe, have in one way or another expressly supported the President's 
plans for missile defense to protect the United States, our troops 
deployed abroad, and our allies. Vaclav Havel said:

       The new world we are entering cannot be based on mutually 
     assured destruction. An increasingly important role should be 
     played by defense systems.

  There are many similar quotations in these various news stories that 
were filed by the reporters covering the President's trip.
  While there were many European leaders who overtly expressed support 
for what the President was trying to do, as I said, there were others 
who were not specific in their endorsement but who made it very clear 
they believed President Bush was somebody with whom they could sit 
down, talk these things over with, and reach some kind of mutual 
conclusion.
  I was especially pleased this morning to find President Putin being 
quoted over and over again, in the lead story

[[Page S6389]]

in the Washington Post saying he believed there was room for the United 
States and Russia to talk about these issues.
  He was talking about something that has been very fundamental, from 
the Russian point of view, to the relationship between Russia and the 
United States, the ABM Treaty. There is a suggestion it is no longer 
absolutely necessary that that treaty remain in existence as the 
cornerstone of the strategic relationship between Russia and the United 
States, as he has characterized it. President Bush has said it no 
longer is the cornerstone. That was a treaty developed during the 
height of the cold war when the Soviet Union and the United States 
totally mistrusted each other. Whether or not it helped keep the peace 
during that time is totally irrelevant to the circumstances of today, 
where the threat of mutually assured destruction simply cannot be the 
basis for the relationship, the strategic relationship between the 
Russian people and the American people.
  It has even been put into the context of a moral statement. Dr. Henry 
Kissinger was one of the architects of the ABM Treaty. He was there at 
the creation. He has testified to Congress, and he has told many of us, 
that it is time to scrap this treaty. He knew why it was put into place 
in 1972. He knew the function it might perform at that time. But he now 
fully appreciates that it no longer serves that function and, more 
importantly, leaves us nude, unprotected, vulnerable to attack by 
countries that were not parties to that treaty and never would be. Here 
is what he said during testimony in 1999:

       The circumstances that existed when the treaty was agreed 
     to were notably different from the situation today. The 
     threat to the United States from missile proliferation is 
     growing and is, today, coming from a number of hostile Third 
     World countries. The United States has to recognize that the 
     ABM Treaty constrains the nation's missile defense programs 
     to an intolerable degree in the day and age when ballistic 
     missiles are attractive to so many countries because there 
     are currently no defenses against them. This treaty may have 
     worked in a two-power nuclear world, although even that is 
     questionable. But in a multinuclear world it is reckless.

  He was even more blunt during a press conference with then-Governor 
Bush on May 23, 2000, when he said:

       Deliberate vulnerability when the technologies are 
     available to avoid it cannot be a strategic objective, 
     cannot be a political objective, and cannot be a moral 
     objective of any American President.

  He is correct. For any President of the United States or Congress to 
deliberately leave the United States vulnerable to attack when we 
understand that there is a growing threat of that attack, and to leave 
in place any kind of legal regimes that would inhibit us from 
developing the means of protecting ourselves, is intolerable; it is 
morally indefensible, especially, as Dr. Kissinger says, when the 
technology is there to provide a defense.
  One of the questions raised by some of our European friends was, Is 
the technology really there?
  By the way, I am somewhat amused by the twin arguments of opponents. 
``This thing will be so effective that it will start another arms 
race.'' That is argument No. 1. Argument No. 2: ``It will never be 
effective.'' It is going to be effective or it is not going to be 
effective. I think it will be effective. I also do not think it will 
start another arms race.
  But what about the state of technology?
  The Bush administration has decided that, because of the immediacy of 
the threat identified in the Rumsfeld Commission report 3 years ago, we 
need to get on with this now; that we cannot test forever to try to 
develop the perfect system. There will never be a perfect system, at 
least for the amount of money we are willing to spend, and right now we 
do not need a perfect system. The threat is from an accidental launch 
or rogue nation, and those are not the most robust threats to have to 
defeat.
  So I think what Secretary Rumsfeld and the President have in mind 
doing is fielding, as soon as possible, whatever technology we have, 
understanding that it is not necessarily the best and it may not work 
in all circumstances.
  Now, is that an indictment of what they intend to do? I do not think 
so. It is an honest acknowledgement of the fact that there is no such 
thing as a perfect shield, and that we are in the beginning stages of 
actually fielding this equipment.
  We have done a lot of research, to be sure. But, frankly, for 
political reasons, a lot of that research has been wasted because the 
systems that could take advantage of that research have been stopped 
from development and eventual deployment. So we have had a lot of 
starts and stops, but we have never gone the next step, which is to 
actually put it out in the field and see how it works.
  What Secretary Rumsfeld has said is go back to the gulf war. That was 
an emergency. We knew the Iraqis had Scud missiles. In fact, they were 
beginning to shoot them toward Israel. We did not have a missile 
defense. But Secretary of Defense Cheney at that time said: Don't we 
have anything that we might employ here? And the answer from the 
Pentagon was: Yes, we have the Patriot. It is an anti-aircraft system, 
but it is very good at that, and it might be able to shoot down some 
Scud missiles.
  So they tinkered with it. They took the Patriot batteries that we 
had--I think some of them were even test batteries--and put them into 
the field. And those Patriots did a remarkably good job. I think that 
the end result was somewhere in the neighborhood of about one-third of 
the Scud missiles were brought down by the Patriot.
  That is important when you recognize--and you will recall, Mr. 
President--that the single biggest loss of life of U.S. servicemen in 
the gulf war occurred when 28 American soldiers were killed by one Scud 
missile.
  It is a very lethal weapon if you don't have a defense against it. So 
what Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush have decided to do is to 
take what we have--such as the Patriot missile of the gulf war time--
get it into the field and begin working with it, all the while 
continuing to test more and more advanced systems. In this way, we will 
actually have a rudimentary defense to begin with, and we can continue 
to build on that as the technology evolves.
  I will give you an analogy. We build ships in classes. We will start 
the Los Angeles class of attack submarines, for example. The first of 
the Los Angeles class submarines that came out of the dock was a good 
submarine, but it was not nearly as good as the last Los Angeles class 
submarine that came out many years later. Throughout the time that 
basic class of submarines was built, changes were being made and 
embodied in that submarine, so that the last one that came off the 
dock, in many respects, was not much like the very first one; it was 
much, much improved and, frankly, was the basis for the evolution to 
the next generation of attack submarines.
  And so it is with missile defenses. I believe what the Secretary and 
the President have in mind is fielding a combination of air and space 
and land systems, combined with the satellite and radar that is 
necessary to detect a launch, and continue to follow a rogue missile, 
and then provide information at the very end of its flight for 
intercept and shootdown.
  That combination might include the airborne laser, something with 
great promise. It might include standard missiles aboard the so-called 
Aegis cruisers, cruisers with very good radar, and a missile which 
today is, obviously, not capable against the most robust of 
intercontinental ballistic missiles but at least has some capability if 
especially you are able to sail the cruisers close enough to the 
launching point of the missile.

  As those missiles are made bigger, and another stage is added to 
them, and a more sophisticated seeker is put on top of that missile, it 
will become more and more robust, to the point that at some point it 
will have the capability of stopping just about any missile that might 
be launched against us. We also have the potential for land-based 
systems.
  The point is this: The President has in mind moving forward, getting 
off the dime. Almost no one, any longer, denies the threat. Even 
President Putin has pointed that out.
  So the question is: Do you test forever, until you are absolutely 
certain, or do you move forward?
  I saw my little nephew over the weekend. He is just now trying to 
crawl and walk; and he is falling down

[[Page S6390]]

more than he is walking, but he is trying. And the next time I see him, 
I suspect he is going to be walking. You don't quit just because you 
fell down the first time. And we don't stop just because we had a 
couple tests that were not totally successful.
  The point is, we will continue to test; we will continue to develop; 
we will deploy what we have as we get it ready to deploy, and we will 
continue to evolve those systems until we are satisfied that we have a 
system that can work.
  To those critics who say we don't have the technology or we won't 
have it, I say, give us a chance. Let's try. Let's see. Don't say, you 
can't do it, and we never start and we never try. The consequences are 
simply too great. As Dr. Kissinger said, it would be literally reckless 
and immoral for us not to try when the technology is there.
  Another question in this respect that the allies asked is, What would 
the reaction from Russia be? It is a fair question. Russia has some 
concerns. But Russia should not have concerns. Does anybody believe 
that the United States intends to attack Russia? Even the Russians have 
to acknowledge that is no longer the relationship between our two 
countries. And we don't believe they intend to attack us. Why would 
they?
  So these large inventories of nuclear weapons that both sides have, 
frankly, are going to come down. We are not going to maintain that 
level of warhead, and we do not think the Russians are either. In fact, 
they have made it clear they cannot afford to do so. Frankly, we would 
rather not have to spend the money on all those weapons so both sides 
can draw down their nuclear weapons.
  For anybody to suggest that our building the rudimentary defense is 
going to cause the Russians to begin spending billions more to build 
new weapons, when they cannot afford to keep the ones they have, is, I 
think, ludicrous. It is not going to happen. It is a misplaced fear.
  I acknowledge the concern that these people express, but I ask them 
to think about the facts. Even Russian leaders have acknowledged they 
would not be able to maintain more than about 1,500 warheads--down from 
about 6,000 or more that they have today.
  So I do not think it makes sense to argue that we should not prepare 
to defend ourselves just because the Russians might be fearful somehow 
and, therefore, might decide to spend billions more that they do not 
have in developing new weapons. Nor do I think that argument applies to 
anyone else.
  What we are talking about is building a defense that rogue nations 
will understand, making it unprofitable for them to develop and deploy 
the technology of missile defenses.
  Are there other threats out there from these countries such as the 
so-called suitcase bomb? Yes, we are spending a lot to try to deal with 
that, too. The cruise missile is another challenge that we have to 
meet. But the mere fact that we have other kinds of challenges as well 
does not mean that we ignore the one that is first and foremost on the 
minds of these rogue leaders. Why else would they be spending the 
billions of dollars they are spending to develop or buy the technology 
for these missiles and the weapons of mass destruction that they put on 
top of the missiles? Why?
  This kind of weapon offers them a blackmail potential. In the wrong 
hands, with this kind of weapon a country can essentially say to the 
rest of the world--at the time they intend to attack someone else, or 
want to get something from the rest of the world--look, you know we can 
launch this missile against you. We have done it in the past. We will 
do it again. So you better give us what we want, or you better stay out 
of our way, or you better do whatever we want you to do. It is that 
blackmail component that worries so many of our leaders the most.
  Go back to the Persian Gulf war again. If Saddam Hussein had had the 
weapons that could put a missile on London or Paris or Berlin or Rome 
or any other country in that area of the world, do you think we would 
have had the same quality of allied contingent to face him down in that 
Persian Gulf war? Do you think other countries would have been as 
willing to join the United States? And if, in fact, those weapons could 
have killed a lot more Americans, would the United States have been as 
anxious to kick him out of Kuwait?
  The argument would have been: Kuwait is of no interest to us, 
especially when he can rain so much destruction down upon us. So you 
need the kinds of defenses that prevent these rogue nations from 
carrying out their aggressive intentions.
  That is why--just getting back to the President's visit in Europe 
this week--I am so heartened by not only the way he has laid this 
vision out but the way he has stuck to his guns, all the while being 
very open in his discussions with allied leaders, as well as the 
Russians.
  I must say, I was also heartened by the descriptions of the policy, 
and the steadiness with which Secretary of State Colin Powell and 
National Secretary Adviser Condoleezza Rice presented this case again 
Sunday on the talk shows. Dr. Rice, despite, I would say, bating by the 
questioner, was very calm and very firm in articulating that the United 
States will do what it takes to protect the citizens of the United 
States and the interests of other freedom-loving people around the 
world but that we will do so in a way in which we engage these other 
leaders. We will listen to what they have to say, and to the extent we 
are able to do so, within the confines of what is necessary for the 
United States, we will find ways to accommodate their needs as well.
  One of these would be to actually provide that kind of missile 
defense protection for them as well.
  I applaud the President. I congratulate him for a successful trip. I 
hope we will have more opportunities to discuss this important issue in 
the future.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that two articles by Charles 
Krauthammer be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Weekly Standard, June 4, 2001]

                           The Bush Doctrine

             ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism

                        (By Charles Krauthammer)


                         i. the world as it is

       Between 1989 and 1991 the world changed so radically so 
     suddenly that even today the implications have not adequately 
     been grasped. The great ideological wars of the twentieth 
     century, which began in the '30s and lasted six decades, came 
     to an end overnight. And the Soviet Union died in its sleep, 
     and with it the last great existential threat to America, the 
     West, and the liberal idea.
       So fantastic was the change that, at first, most analysts 
     and political thinkers refused to recognize the new 
     unipolarity. In the early '90s, conventional wisdom held that 
     we were in a quick transition from a bipolar to a multipolar 
     world: Japan was rising, Europe was uniting, China was 
     emerging, sleeping giants like India were stirring, and 
     America was in decline. It seems absurd today, but this 
     belief in American decline was all the rage.
       Ten years later, the fog has cleared. No one is saying that 
     Japan will overtake the United States economically, or Europe 
     will overtake the United States diplomatically, or that some 
     new anti-American coalition of powers will rise to replace 
     the Communist block militarily. Today, the United States 
     remains the preeminent economic, military, diplomatic, and 
     cultural power on a scale not seen since the fall of the 
     Roman Empire.
       Oddly enough, the uniqueness of this structure is only 
     dimly understood in the United States. It is the rest of the 
     world that sees it--undoubtedly, because it feels it--
     acutely. Russia and China never fail in their summits to 
     denounce explicitly the ``unipolarity'' of the current world 
     structure and to pledge to do everything to abolish it. The 
     French--elegant, caustic, and as ever the intellectual leader 
     in things anti-American--have coined the term ``hyperpower'' 
     to describe America's new condition.
       And a new condition it is. It is not, as we in America tend 
     to imagine, just the super-powerdom of the Cold War writ 
     large. It is something never seen before in the modern world. 
     Yet during the first decade of unipolarity, the United States 
     acted much as it had during the preceding half-century.
       In part, this was because many in the political and foreign 
     policy elite refused to recognize the new reality. But more 
     important, it was because those in power who did recognize it 
     were deeply distrustful of American power. They saw their 
     mission as seeking a new world harmony by constraining this 
     overwhelming American power within a web of international 
     obligations--rather than maintaining, augmenting, and 
     exploiting the American predominance they had inherited.
       This wish to maintain, augment, and exploit that 
     predominance is what distinguishes the new foreign policy of 
     the Bush administration. If successful, it would do what 
     Teddy Roosevelt did exactly a century ago: adapt America's 
     foreign policy and military posture to its new position in 
     the world. At the dawn of the 20th century, that meant

[[Page S6391]]

     entry into the club of Great Powers. Roosevelt both urged and 
     assured such entry with a Big Stick foreign policy that built 
     the Panama Canal and sent a blue water navy around the world 
     to formally announce our arrival.
       At the dawn of the 21st century, the task of the new 
     administration is to develop a military and foreign policy 
     appropriate to our position of overwhelming dominance. In its 
     first four months in office, the Bush administration has 
     begun the task: reversing the premises of Clinton foreign 
     policy and adopting policies that recognize the new 
     unipolarity and the unilateralism necessary to maintain it.


                      ii. abm: burying bipolarity

       In May 2000, while still a presidential candidate, George 
     W. Bush gave a speech at the National Press Club pledging to 
     build a national missile defense for the United States. A 
     year later, as president, he repeated that in a speech at the 
     National Defense University. This set off the usual reflexive 
     reaction of longtime missile defense opponents. What was 
     missed both times, however, was that Bush was proposing far 
     more than a revival of the missile defense idea that had been 
     put on hold during the Clinton years. Bush also declared that 
     he would make unilateral cuts in American offensive nuclear 
     arms. Taken together, what he proposed was a radical new 
     nuclear doctrine: the end of arms control.
       Henceforth, the United States would build nuclear weapons, 
     both offensive and defensive, to suit its needs--regardless 
     of what others, particularly the Russians, thought. Sure, 
     there would be consultation--no need to be impolite. Humble 
     unilateralism, the oxymoron that best describes this 
     approach, requires it: Be nice, be understanding. But, in the 
     end, be undeterred.
       Liberal critics argue that a missile defense would launch a 
     new arms race, with the Russians building new warheads to 
     ensure that they could overcome our defenses. The response of 
     the Bush administration is: So what? If the Russians want to 
     waste what little remains of their economy on such weapons, 
     let them. These nukes are of no use. Whether or not Russia 
     builds new missiles, no American defense will stop a massive 
     Russian first strike anyway. And if Russia decides to enlarge 
     its already massive second strike capacity, in a world in 
     which the very idea of a first strike between us and the 
     Russians is preposterous, then fine again.
       The premises underlying the new Bush nuclear doctrine are 
     simple: (1) There is no Soviet Union. (2) Russia--no longer 
     either a superpower or an enemy, and therefore neither a 
     plausibly viable nor an ideological threat--does not 
     count. (3) Therefore, the entire structure of bilateral 
     arms control, both offensive and defensive, which was an 
     American obsession during the last quarter-century of the 
     Cold War, is a useless relic. Indeed, it is seriously 
     damaging to American security.
       Henceforth, America will build the best weaponry it can to 
     meet its needs. And those needs are new. The coming threat is 
     not from Russia, but from the inevitable proliferation of 
     missiles into the hands of heretofore insignificant enemies.
       Critics can downplay and discount one such threat or 
     another. North Korea, they say, is incapable of building an 
     intercontinental ballistic missile. (They were saying that 
     right up to the time when it launched a three-stage rocket 
     over Japan in 1998). Or they will protest that Iraq cannot 
     possibly build an effective nuclear capacity clandestinely. 
     They are wrong on the details, but, even more important, they 
     are wrong in principle: Missile technology is to the 21st 
     century what airpower was to the 20th. In 1901, there was not 
     an airplane in the world. Most people did not think a 
     heavier-than-air machine could in theory ever fly. Yet 38 
     years later, the world experienced the greatest war in 
     history, whose outcome was crucially affected by air power 
     and air defenses in a bewildering proliferation of new 
     technologies: bombers, fighters, transports, gliders, 
     carriers, radar.
       It is inconceivable that 38 years from now, we will not be 
     living in a world where missile technology is equally 
     routine, and thus routinely in the hands of bad guys.
       It is therefore inexplicable why the United States should 
     not use its unique technology to build the necessary defense 
     against the next inevitable threat.
       Yet for eight years, the U.S. government did nothing on the 
     grounds that true safety lay in a doctrine (mutually assured 
     destruction) and a treaty (the antiballistic missile treaty) 
     that codifies it. The logic of MAD is simple: If either side 
     can ever launch a first. And because missile defenses cast 
     doubt on the efficacy of a second strike capacity, they make 
     the nuclear balance more unstable.
       This argument against missile defense was plausible during 
     the Cold War. True, it hinged on the very implausible notion 
     of a first strike. But at the time, the United States and the 
     Soviet Union were mortal ideological enemies. We came 
     close enough in Berlin and Cuba to know that war was 
     plausible. But even then the idea of a first strike 
     remained quite fantastic because it meant initiating the 
     most destructive war in human history.
       Today, the idea of Russia or America launching a bolt from 
     the blue is merely absurd. Russia does not define itself as 
     our existential adversary. It no longer sees its mission as 
     the abolition of our very way of life. We no longer are nose-
     to-nose in flashpoints like Berlin. Ask yourself: Did you 
     ever in the darkest days of the Cold War lie awake at night 
     wondering whether Britain or France or Israel had enough of a 
     second strike capacity to deter an American first strike 
     against them? Of course not. Nuclear weapons are not in 
     themselves threats. They become so in conditions of extreme 
     hostility. It all depends on the intent of the political 
     authorities who control them. A Russian or an American first 
     strike? We are no longer contending over the fate of the 
     earth, over the future of Korea and Germany and Europe. Our 
     worst confrontation in the last decade was over the Pristina 
     airport!
       What about China? The fallback for some missile defense 
     opponents is that China will feel the need to develop a 
     second strike capacity to overcome our defenses. But this too 
     is absurd. China does not have a second strike capacity. If 
     it has never had one in the absence of an American missile 
     defense, why should the construction of an American missile 
     defense create a crisis of strategic instability between us?
       But the new Bush nuclear doctrine does not just bury MAD. 
     It buries the ABM treaty and the very idea of bilateral 
     nuclear coordination with another superpower. Those 
     agreements, on both offensive and defensive nuclear weapons, 
     are a relic of the bipolar world. In the absence of 
     bipolarity, there is no need to tailor our weapons to the 
     needs or threat or wishes of a rival superpower.
       Yet the Clinton administration for eight years carried on 
     as if it did. It spent enormous amounts of energy trying to 
     get the START treaties refined and passed in Russia. It went 
     to great lengths to constrain and dumb down the testing of 
     high-tech weaponry (particularly on missile defense) to be 
     ``treaty compliant.'' It spent even more energy negotiating 
     baroque extensions, elaborations, and amendments to the ABM 
     treaty. Its goal was to make the treaty more enduring, at a 
     time when it had already become obsolete. In fact, in one 
     agreement, negotiated in New York in 1997, the Clinton 
     administration amended the ABM treaty to include as 
     signatories Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus, thus making 
     any future changes in the treaty require five signatures 
     rather than only two. It is as if Britain and Germany had 
     spent the 1930s regulating the levels of their horse 
     cavalries.
       That era is over.


                iii. kyoto: escape from multilateralism

       It was expected that a Republican administration would 
     abrogate the ABM treaty. It was not expected that a 
     Republican administration would even more decisively discard 
     the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gases. Yet this step may be 
     even more far-reaching.
       To be sure, Bush had good political and economic reasons to 
     discard Kyoto. The Senate had expressed its rejection of what 
     Clinton had negotiated 95-0. The treaty had no domestic 
     constituency of any significance. Its substance bordered on 
     the comic: It exempted China, India, and the other massively 
     industrializing polluters in the Third World from 
     CO2 restrictions. The cost for the United States 
     was staggering, while the environmental benefit was 
     negligible. The exempted 1.3 billion Chinese and billion 
     Indians alone would have been pumping out CO2 
     emissions equal to those the United States was cutting. In 
     reality, Kyoto was a huge transfer of resources from the 
     United States to the Third World, under the guise of 
     environmental protection.
       All very good reasons. Nonetheless, the alacrity and almost 
     casualness with which Bush withdrew from Kyoto sent a message 
     that the United States would no longer acquiesce in 
     multilateral nonsense just because it had pages of 
     signatories and bore the sheen of international comity. 
     Nonsense was nonsense, and would be treated as such.
       That alarmed the usual suspects. They were further alarmed 
     when word leaked that the administration rejected the 
     protocol negotiated by the Clinton administration for 
     enforcing the biological weapons treaty of 1972. The reason 
     here is even more obvious. The protocol does nothing of the 
     sort. Biological weapons are inherently unverifiable. You can 
     make biological weapons in a laboratory, in a bunker, in a 
     closet. In a police state, these are unfindable. And police 
     states are what we worry about. The countries effectively 
     restricted would be open societies with a free press--
     precisely the countries that we do not worry about. Even 
     worse, the protocol would have a perverse effect. It would 
     allow extensive inspection of American anti-biological-
     warfare facilities--where we develop vaccines, protective 
     gear, and the like--and thus give information to potential 
     enemies on how to make their biological agents more 
     effective against us.
       Given the storm over Kyoto, the administration is looking 
     for a delicate way to get out of this one. There is nothing 
     wrong with delicacy. But the thrust of the administration--to 
     free itself from the thrall of international treaty-signing 
     that has characterized U.S. foreign policy for nearly a 
     decade--is refreshing.
       One can only marvel at the enthusiasm with which the 
     Clinton administration pursued not just Kyoto and the 
     biological protocol but multilateral treaties on everything 
     from chemical weapons to nuclear testing. Treaty-signing was 
     portrayed as a way to build a new structure of legality and 
     regularity in the world, to establish new moral norms that 
     would in and of themselves restrain bad behavior. But the 
     very idea of a Saddam Hussein being morally constrained by, 
     say, a treaty on chemical weapons is simply silly.

[[Page S6392]]

       This reality could not have escaped the liberal 
     internationalists who spent the '90s pursuing such toothless 
     agreements. Why then did they do it? The deeper reason is 
     that these treaties offered an opportunity for those who 
     distrusted American power (and have ever since the Vietnam 
     era) to constrain it--and constrain it in ways that give the 
     appearance of altruism and good international citizenship.
       Moreover, it was clear that the constraints on American 
     power imposed by U.S.-Soviet bipolarity and the agreements it 
     spawned would soon and inevitably come to an end. Even the 
     ABM treaty, the last of these relics, would have to expire of 
     its own obsolescent dead weight. In the absence of 
     bipolarity, what was there to hold America back--from, say, 
     building ``Star Wars'' weaponry or raping the global 
     environment or otherwise indulging in the arrogance of power? 
     Hence the mania during the last decade for the multilateral 
     treaties that would impose a new structure of constraint on 
     American freedom of action.
       Kyoto and the biological weapons protocol are the models 
     for the new structure of ``strategic stability'' that would 
     succeed the ABM treaty and its relatives. By summarily 
     rejecting Kyoto, the Bush administration radically redefines 
     the direction of American foreign policy: rejecting the 
     multilateral straitjacket, disenthralling the United 
     States from the notion there is real safety or benefit 
     from internationally endorsed parchment barriers, and 
     asserting a new American unilateralism.


                   IV. The Purposes of Unilateralism

       This is a posture that fits the unipolarity of the 21st 
     century world. Its aim is to restore American freedom of 
     action. But as yet it is defined only negatively. The 
     question remains: freedom of action to do what?
       First and foremost, to maintain our preeminence. Not just 
     because we enjoy our own power (``It's good to be the 
     king''--Mel Brooks), but because it is more likely to keep 
     the peace. It is hard to understand the enthusiasm of so many 
     for a diminished America and a world reverted to 
     multipolarity. Multipolar international structures are 
     inherently less stable, as the catastrophic collapse of the 
     delicate alliance system of 1914 definitively demonstrated.
       Multipolarity, yes, when there is no alternative. But not 
     when there is. Not when we have the unique imbalance of power 
     that we enjoy today--and that has given the international 
     system a stability and essential tranquility it had not known 
     for at least a century.
       The international environment is far more likely to enjoy 
     peace under a single hegemon. Moreover, we are not just any 
     hegemon. We run a uniquely benign imperium. This is not mere 
     self-congratulation; it is a fact manifest in the way others 
     welcome our power. It is the reason, for example, the Pacific 
     Rim countries are loath to see our military presence 
     diminished.
       Unlike other hegemons and would-be hegemons, we do not 
     entertain a grand vision of a new world. No Thousand Year 
     Reich. No New Soviet Man. By position and nature, we are 
     essentially a status quo power. We have no particular desire 
     to remake human nature, to conquer for the extraction of 
     natural resources, or to rule for the simple pleasure of 
     dominion. We could not wait to get out of Haiti, and we would 
     get out of Kosovo and Bosnia today if we could. Our principal 
     aim is to maintain the stability and relative tranquility of 
     the current international system by enforcing, maintaining, 
     and extending the current peace. Our goals include:
       (1) To enforce the peace by acting, uniquely, as the 
     balancer of last resort everywhere. Britain was the 
     balancer of power in Europe for over two centuries, always 
     joining the weaker coalition against the stronger to 
     create equilibrium. Our unique reach around the world 
     allows us to be--indeed dictates that we be--the ultimate 
     balancer in every region. We balanced Iraq by supporting 
     its weaker neighbors in the Gulf War. We balance China by 
     supporting the ring of smaller states at her periphery 
     (from South Korea to Taiwan, even to Vietnam). One can 
     argue whether we should have gone there, but our role in 
     the Balkans was essentially to create a micro-balance: to 
     support the weaker Bosnia Muslims against their more 
     dominant ethnic neighbors, and subsequently to support the 
     (at the time) weaker Kosovo Albanians against the dominant 
     Serbs.
       (2) To maintain the peace by acting as the world's foremost 
     anti-proliferator. Weapons of mass destruction and missiles 
     to deliver them are the greatest threat of the 21st century. 
     Non-proliferation is not enough. Passive steps to deny rogue 
     states the technology for deadly missiles and weapons of mass 
     destruction is, of course, necessary. But it is insufficient. 
     Ultimately the stuff gets through.
       What to do when it does? It may become necessary in the 
     future actually to preempt rogue states' weapons of mass 
     destruction, as Israel did in 1981 by destroying the Osirak 
     nuclear reactor in Iraq. Premption is, of course, very 
     difficult. Which is why we must begin thinking of moving to a 
     higher platform. Space is the ultimate high ground. For 30 
     years, we have been reluctant even to think about placing 
     weapons in space, but it is inevitable that space will become 
     militarized. The only question is: Who will get there first 
     and how will they use it?
       The demilitarization of space is a fine idea and utterly 
     utopian. Space will be an avenue for projection of national 
     power as were the oceans 500 years ago. The Great Powers that 
     emerged in the modern world were those that, above all, 
     mastered control of the high seas. The only reason space has 
     not yet been militarized is that none but a handful of 
     countries are yet able to do so. And none is remotely as 
     technologically and industrially and economically prepared to 
     do so as is the United States.
       This is not as radical an idea as one might think. When 
     President Kennedy committed the United States to a breakneck 
     program of manned space flight, he understood full well the 
     symbiosis between civilian and military space power. It is 
     inevitable that within a generation the United States will 
     have an Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Space Force. 
     Space is already used militarily for spying, sensing, and 
     targeting. It could be uniquely useful, among other 
     things, for finding and destroying rogue-state missile 
     forces.
       (3) To extend the peace by spreading democracy and free 
     institutions. This is an unassailable goal and probably the 
     most enduring method of promoting peace. The liberation of 
     the Warsaw Pact states, for example, relieved us of the 
     enormous burden of physically manning the ramparts of Western 
     Europe with huge land armies. The zone of democracy is almost 
     invariably a zone of peace.
       There is a significant disagreement, however, as to how far 
     to go and how much blood and treasure to expend in pursuit of 
     this goal. The ``globalist'' school favors vigorous 
     intervention and use of force to promote the spread of our 
     values where they are threatened or where they need 
     protection to burgeon. Globalists supported the U.S. 
     intervention in the Balkans not just on humanitarian grounds, 
     but on the grounds that ultimately we might widen the zone of 
     democracy in Europe and thus eliminate a festering source of 
     armed conflict, terror, and instability.
       The ``realist'' school is more skeptical that these goals 
     can be achieved at the point of a bayonet. True, democracy 
     can be imposed by force, as both Germany and Japan can 
     attest. But those occurred in the highly unusual circumstance 
     of total military occupation following a war for 
     unconditional surrender. Unless we are willing to wage such 
     wars and follow up with the kind of trusteeship we enjoyed 
     over Germany and Japan, we will find that our interventions 
     on behalf of democracy will leave little mark, as we learned 
     with some chagrin in Haiti and Bosnia.
       Nonetheless, although they disagree on the stringency of 
     criteria for unleashing American power, both schools share 
     the premise that overwhelming American power is good not just 
     for the United States but for the world. The Bush 
     administration is the first administration of the post-Cold 
     War era to share that premise and act accordingly. It 
     welcomes the U.S. role of, well, hyperpower. In its first few 
     months, its policies have reflected a comfort with the 
     unipolarity of the world today, a desire to maintain and 
     enhance it, and a willingness to act unilaterally to do so. 
     It is a vision of America's role very different from that 
     elaborated in the first post-Cold War decade--and far more 
     radical than has generally been noted. The French, though, 
     should be onto it very soon.
                                  ____


                [From the Weekly Standard, June 4, 2001]

                            Big Rotten Apple


                      New York City after Giuliani

                           (By James Higgins)

       Liberalism, or paleoliberalism to some, is what New Yorkers 
     are told will return to City Hall when term limits force 
     mayor Rudolph Giuliani to depart in 2002. Four Democrats are 
     vying to succeed him.
       But the potential return of unreconstructed liberalism is 
     not the most menacing aspect of this fall's election. The 
     greater threat is the potential return of unreconstructed 
     crime. Not the kind in the streets, but the kind in the 
     suites--the suites of city government and the Democratic 
     party.
       Everyone old enough to have watched TV in the 1980s and 
     early 1990s knows that New York City before Giuliani was 
     where foreign tourists came to pay the world's highest hotel 
     taxes while waiting to be robbed and shot. But the depth and 
     breadth of corruption in the city's Democratic establishment 
     during the pre-Giuliani years may be difficult for non-New 
     Yorkers to grasp. The problem was not just a few rotten 
     apples at the top. Under a series of Democratic mayors--
     Abraham Beame, Edward Koch, and David Dinkins--the whole tree 
     was rotten. It was corruption that the New York City 
     Democrats stood for even more than liberalism, and it was 
     corruption at least as much as liberalism that brought 
     Giuliani to office. It was as if, having jailed much of the 
     leadership of New York's ``Five Families'' of crime while he 
     was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, 
     Giuliani had to become mayor to flush out this Sixth Family.
       To appreciate the significance of the upcoming election, 
     it's essential to know this background. The chief reason the 
     rot was not always visible to outsiders is the canniness of 
     Dems in the Big Apple. Unlike their counterpart New Jersey 
     crew, the New York City Democratic leadership has refrained 
     from putting into the highest offices sticky-fingered 
     characters like U.S. senators Harrison Williams and Robert 
     Torricelli. The New York Democrats could have been working 
     from the template of the mobsters who once

[[Page S6393]]

     controlled Las Vegas: They've always chosen clean front 
     men. There was never a hint of personal corruption on the 
     part of Beame, Koch, or Dinkins. Their administrations 
     were another story. Consider:
       Under Ed Koch, the entire city department charged with 
     inspecting restaurants had to be closed because there was 
     almost no one left to do the job after investigators arrested 
     the inspectors who were taking bribes. Not long afterwards, 
     the department that inspected taxicabs had to be closed for 
     exactly the same reason.
       Over an extended period of the '80s and early '90s, the 
     felony rate among Democratic borough leaders in New York City 
     approached 50 percent. Criminal defense lawyers tell me that 
     if senior managers of a private business used their jobs to 
     commit crimes at this rate, the entire enterprise would be 
     inviting a RICO indictment.
       The Beame, Koch, and Dinkins administrations approved a 
     contract with school custodians that was close to being 
     criminal on its face: The custodians were required only to 
     maintain schools to ``minimum standards,'' and the contract 
     precluded any effective enforcement mechanism. The lucky 
     custodians then personally got to keep whatever money in 
     their budgets they didn't spend doing their jobs. This type 
     of contract came to an end only after a 1992 60 Minutes 
     segment showed the custodians spending less time at the 
     filthy schools they were ostensibly maintaining than 
     attending to the yachts they acquired--and did maintain--at 
     taxpayer expense.
       As pre-Giuliani taxi and limousine commissioner Herb Ryan 
     described the system after he was caught taking bribes, 
     ``Everybody else has their own thing. I just wanted to get my 
     own thing.'' The literal translation of ``Our Thing'' is, of 
     course, La Cosa Nostra.
       This is just a small sample of what the Sixth Family 
     Democrats and their appointees did--indeed, just a small 
     sample of what they were caught doing. That predicate 
     criminal activity is a major part of what in 1989 lured 
     political rising star and crime-fighter Rudy Giuliani to run 
     for mayor, a job that for more than a century had been a 
     political dead end.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, June 18, 2001]

                      . . . From a No-Wobble Bush

                        (By Charles Krauthammer)

       ``Remember George, this is no time to go wobbly.'' So said 
     Margaret Thatcher to the first President Bush just days after 
     Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait. Bush did not go wobbly. He 
     invaded.
       A decade later, the second George Bush came into office and 
     immediately began a radical reorientation of U.S. foreign 
     policy. Now, however the conventional wisdom is that in the 
     face of criticism from domestic opponents and foreign allies, 
     Bush is backing down.
       Has W. gone wobbly? In his first days, he offered a new 
     American nuclear policy that scraps the 1972 anti-Ballistic 
     Missile Treaty, builds defenses against ballistic missile 
     attack and unilaterally cuts U.S. offensive nuclear forces 
     without wrangling with the Russians over arms control, the 
     way of the past 30 years. He then summarily rejected the 
     Kyoto protocol on climate control, which would have forced 
     the United States to undertake a ruinous 30 percent cut in 
     CO2 emissions while permitting China, India and most of 
     humanity to pollute at will.
       Bush's assertion of American freedom of action outraged 
     those--U.S. Democrats, Europeans, Russians--who prefer to see 
     the world's only superpower bound and restrained by treaty 
     constraints, whether bipolar (ABM) or multipolar (Kyoto), in 
     the name of good international citizenship.
       The word now, however, is that Bush has gone soft. He sends 
     Secretary of State Colin Powell to Europe to try to get 
     agreement on missile defenses. He tries, reports the New York 
     Times in high scoop mode, to cook an ABM deal with the 
     Russians--shades of the old days. He then concedes there is 
     global warming and promises action. ``When President Bush 
     announces . . . that he will seek millions of dollars for new 
     research into the causes of global warming,'' reported the 
     Times just one week ago, ``. . . it will mark yet another 
     example of how global and domestic politics have forced him 
     to back away from the hairline pronouncements of his first 
     five months in the White House.''
       The Bush administration, explained Newsweek, began by 
     ``playing the bully.'' But then ``the Bushies began to see 
     that they could not simply impose their agenda on a balky and 
     complex world.''
       The alleged cave has been greeted with smug satisfaction 
     from those on the left who see Bush returning, after a brief 
     flirtation with the mad-dog ideological right, to the basic 
     soundness of post-Cold War foreign policy as established by 
     the Clinton administration.
       Dream on.
       Has Bush gone wobbly? Not at all.
       Ask yourself: If you really wanted to reassert American 
     unilateralism, to get rid of the cobwebs of the bipolar era 
     and the myriad Clinton-era treaty strings trying Gulliver 
     down, what would you do? No need for in-your-face arrogance. 
     No need to humiliate. No need to proclaim that you will 
     ignore nattering allies and nervous enemies.
       Journalists can talk like that because the trust is 
     clarifying. Governments cannot talk like that because the 
     truth is scary. The trick to unilateralism--doing what you 
     think is right, regardless of what others think--is to 
     pretend you are not acting unilaterally at all. Thus if you 
     really want to junk the ABM Treaty, and the Europeans and 
     Russians and Chinese start screaming bloody murder, the trick 
     is to send Colin Powell to smooth and sooth and schmooze 
     every foreign leader in sight, have Condoleezza Rica talk 
     about how much we value allied input, have President Bush in 
     Europe stress how missile defense will help the security of 
     everybody. And then go ahead and junk the ABM Treaty 
     regardless. Make nice, then carry on.
       Or, say you want to kill the Kyoto protocol (which the 
     Senate rejected 95-0 and which not a single EU country has 
     ratified) and the Eueopeans hypocritically complain. The 
     trick is to have the president go to Europe to stress, both 
     sincerely and correctly, that the United States wants to be 
     in the forefront of using science and technology to attack 
     the problem--but make absolutely clear that you'll accept no 
     mandatory cuts and tolerate no treaty that penalizes the 
     United States and lets China, India and the Third World off 
     the hook.
       Be nice, but be undeterred. The best unlateralism is 
     velvet-glove unilateralism.
       At the end of the day, for all the rhetorical bows to 
     Russia, European and liberal sensibilities, look at how Bush 
     returns from Europe: Kyoto is dead. The ABM Treaty is 
     history, Missile defense is on. NATO expansion is relaunched. 
     And just to italicize the new turn in American foreign 
     policy, the number of those annual, vaporous U.S.-EU summits 
     has been cut from two to one.
       Might the administration yet bend to the critics and 
     abandon the new unilateralism? Perhaps. But the crowing of 
     the Washington foreign policy establishment that this has 
     already occurred is wishful thinking.
       Will he wobble? Everything is possible. But anyone who has 
     watched Defense Secretary Rumsfield, read Deputy Secretary 
     Wolfowitz known Vice President Cheney or listened to 
     President Bush would be wise to place his bet at the ``no 
     wobble'' window.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the time 
until 10:45 a.m. shall be under the control of the Senator from Kansas, 
Mr. Brownback.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Thank you, Mr. President.

                          ____________________