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Clinton
Will Miss His Historic Opportunity
at
Moscow Summit
By JONATHAN
POWER
May 31, 2000
LONDON - If President Bill Clinton had all his wits
about him he would challenge the toughest hard-liners on
the Republican right to posit a plausible scenario for
modern day Russia wanting to go to war with the West. Can
anyone really make a case that if the U.S. dropped its
guard- and its nuclear allies Britain and France did too
- that Russia would move into western Europe and bomb
America's industrial heart-lands?
It is simply intellectually outrageous, which is why
no one spells it out. Even Henry Kissinger, Brent
Scowcroft and Condoleezza Rice choose to speak in more
general, vague, even elliptical terms, the content of
which is more insinuation and prejudice than rational
argument. As for General Colin Powell, the former chief
of staff of the U.S. armed forces, the black man who
could have been president instead of Clinton almost for
the asking, and now being paraded as a possible top
foreign policy appointee in the putative cabinet of
would-be president George W. Bush, he doesn't even try.
An eminently sensible man he knows better and keeps his
mouth shut.
Yet as Mr Clinton prepares for his meeting on Sunday
with Russian president Vladimir Putin, the White House
has been letting it be known that the world should expect
little from the summit in terms of arms control. The
promise of a quick move to Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty 3 (START 3) that would cut nuclear weapons on both
sides, as agreed by Clinton and Boris Yeltsin in Helsinki
in 1997, to between 2,500 and 2,000 nuclear warheads
looks remote. (At present there are around 7,000 but
under START 2 they will fall to 3,000.) As for the
briefly considered Russian wish that they be cut to
1,500, the Pentagon has just rubbished the idea in
reports to the president and congress. Clinton has
returned to the position where he seems most comfortable:
the do-nothing arms controller, who decided early on in
his presidency that tussling with the Pentagon and its
powerful Congressional allies was not his vocation.
There is an enormous built-in inertia to the nuclear
arms business on the western side. (On the Russian side
less so thanks to lack of means- the Russian defense
minister has said publicly that Russia could not afford
to possess more than 500 warheads by 2012.) Western
public opinion, in as much as it is roused at all, is
more interested in the fate of civilian nuclear power
stations and nuclear waste disposal than it is in nuclear
armaments. Not even India's and Pakistan's graduation to
the nuclear club seems to have shaken the torpor, though
it is indisputable that if the nuclear powers had
contributed their part to the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty (NPT) and honoured their commitment to make rapid
progress on arms control India would never had had the
political face to start the nuclear ball rolling on the
sub-continent.
Now on May 8th at the NPT review conference in New
York the five established nuclear powers for the first
time made an "unequivocal undertaking.... to accomplish
the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals".
Yet if the process doesn't begin in Moscow on Sunday
where and when does it begin? This summit should be the
defining moment of the Clinton presidency, when he
summons up all his reserves of political capital and
deploys his precious ability to speak to rank and file
Americans. (Many people judge him even more persuasive
than Ronald Reagan who, by the way, hatched an apparently
forgotten understanding with Gorbachev to reduce nuclear
armaments to zero.) Clinton also needs to convey to
public opinion his sense of Russia's place in the order
of contemporary life (as Putin said earlier this week,
echoing Gorbachev, Russia's home is in western
civilization).
Instead Clinton has found himself hoisted on the
petard of anti-missile defense and, in calling for a
revision of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, shown
himself to be a prisoner of the old Cold war Warriors
who, having "no demons" left, as General Powell used to
say when in office, conjured them up. Not only have they
managed to stymie the nuclear disarmament which should
have come hard on the heels of the end of the Cold War,
they have found new would-be nuclear enemies that require
not just missile defenses in Alaska but will require a
re-writing of "the cornerstone treaty" (to quote Richard
Nixon) ensuring nuclear stability between the
superpowers. So narrow are their perspectives it seems to
worry them not one wit that they will trigger in Russia a
sense of vulnerability combined with a deep suspicion of
America's real intentions that will be quite
counterproductive to future attempts at arms control. It
will also persuade China that it should build up its
presently surprisingly small stock of long range
intercontinental nuclear missiles. This in turn could
trigger India to build a bigger nuclear armoury than
presently intended. All this, combined with continuing
American tolerance of Israel's nuclear armoury, could, in
time, persuade presently non-nuclear armed powers like
Egypt, Iran or even Brazil that they too should revise
their self-denying ordinances. (This is not to
exaggerate. Do not put too much store in the "wise old
men" of American politics. There was not one American
political scientist who predicted the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991. And probably the only place you
read a month before it happened that India would soon
test a nuclear weapon was in this column.)
A month or two ago it was being said in some circles
in Moscow that if Washington would agree to a START 3
that would mandate a 1,500 ceiling on warheads, Putin
might agree to amend the ABM treaty. Washington has
turned this apparent flexibility on its head by saying it
will only agree to a START 3 on the old terms of a
ceiling of 2,500 to 2,000 if Moscow says yes to modifying
the ABM treaty. It is Washington that has moved the
goalposts. (If Moscow did momentarily consider a
compromise it has now shelved the idea, convinced it has
more to lose from agreeing to restraints on U.S. missile
defense that it does from U.S. nuclear warhead
superiority. Besides, it has read the tea leaves in
Washington. Clinton is not prepared to stand up to
Senator Jesse Helms who says he will block any treaty
negotiated by Clinton.)
Not surprisingly, Moscow does not see why it has to
compromise. It has right, if not might, on its side. But
it does have one card- Clinton's historical reputation.
Is he as oblivious of this as his behaviour sometimes
suggests? Does he want to limp to the end of his
presidency, and beyond, recalled in faint memory as the
man who lacked moral conviction on the greatest issue of
his day and allowed himself to become the prisoner of
those who make a living by crying "wolf"? Perhaps if
Putin can get that thought through to Clinton then the
present American president might decide go out with
something other than a whimper.
I can be reached by phone: +44 385 351172 or by
e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2000 By JONATHAN POWER
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