9/01/00 3:55 p.m.
Clinton's Missile Defense Misfire
The latest in a series of hash-ups from the Clinton-Gore administration.

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, and the man responsible for missile defense policy in the Reagan Defense Department.

t is poetic justice. President Clinton thought he could pull off one of his classic bury-the-bad-news maneuvers by announcing on the eve of the Labor Day weekend that he was going to fob off on his successor the decision to begin deploying a national missile defense.

This represents just the latest in a series of hash-ups the Clinton-Gore administration has made of what is, arguably, the single most important national security challenge facing the American people today: Our utter, wholly unnecessary and increasingly reckless vulnerability to mass destruction via a ballistic missile-delivered weapon.

In today's announcement, the President tried to justify extending the period during which the American people would be left vulnerable by claiming that:

1) The technology is not ready (never mind that Clinton has done everything imaginable to slow down and dumb-down this development effort) 2) more time is needed to educate the Russians and allies (whose opposition has been intensified - if not actually encouraged - by the Administration's hapless diplomacy and slavish devotion to the obsolete and defunct 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) 3) the Chinese could respond by building up their arsenal and proliferating nuclear missile technology (Guess what: they are going to continue to do both, whether we remain defenseless or not; if anything, they will have a greater incentive to do so if they and their clients need not fear defenses that will make such investments losing propositions).

Unfortunately for the Clinton-Gore team -- which obviously calculated that the timing, excuses and political cover given by Republicans and Democrats who have urged the President to delay his decision would insulate the Vice President against legitimate criticism that he is opposed to defending America -- this announcement was star-crossed.

It coincided with the leak of what appears to be another Clinton stratagem: According to today's Washington Post, the Administration has put a Patriot anti-missile unit on alert that it may need be deployed on an urgent basis to Israel. Why? Because the Clinton-Gore team thinks Iraq might try to launch a missile attack against the Jewish State in the run-up to the election.

Now, set aside for the moment well-deserved skepticism about whether this smacks of another wag-the-dog caper. To be sure, we may well be seeing the groundwork for an "October surprise" -- some new hair-brained military operation calculated principally for domestic consumption in order to demonstrate what superb stewards of the national security Bill Clinton and Al Gore have been, and why the latter's contract should be renewed. Or maybe it is just a cynical play for Jewish votes in case Joe Lieberman cannot offset the hostility engendered by concerns about Hillary's pro-Palestinian and anti-semitic proclivities.

The completely unintended message sent by this drill, however, is an absurd, not to say bizarre, one: The Clinton Administration believes the people of Israel should have the benefit of the relatively primitive missile defense capabilities offered by the Patriot because they are at risk of missile attack. But the American people are not entitled to be given whatever protection we can muster against a threat to our country -- certainly not as long as the Russians, Chinese or other foreign powers object.

As it happens, Israel has had the sense to begin to deploy its own missile defense - the Arrow system collaboratively built with the same Pentagon the Administration thinks is incapable of building an effective U.S. anti-missile system. The Arrow deployment makes Israel only the second state in the world to have such a territorial defense.

It may surprise you to learn that the other defended nation is Russia. The fact that the Soviet Union bequeathed to Russia a strategic anti-missile system that utterly violated the ABM Treaty is an inconvenient fact that neither the Clinton-Gore team nor the Kremlin -- whose party line is that missile defenses are bad things -- have deigned to address.

Ask yourself this question: If the Iraqi missile arsenal that is suddenly causing Bill Clinton and Al Gore to move Patriot batteries around had the kind of missile Saddam would like to have - - and is almost certainly trying to acquire -- namely, an intercontinental one armed with a chemical or biological if not a crude atomic weapon, wouldn't the people of this country expect their leaders to protect them against it?

Doesn't the same hold true, for that matter, for the missiles we know do exist and that could be used against our country by Russia, China or North Korea?

The unpleasant truth of the matter is that Mr. Clinton has failed for eight years to provide such protection. Now we know he will leave office having refused even to set into motion steps that would have bought some time for his successor to bring an anti-missile system on-line.

It is damning enough that this failure was due, in part, to a successful Soviet-style agitation operation. If Ronald Reagan had caved in the face of the last of these campaigns and the Pershings and cruise missiles were not deployed in Western Europe in 1993 as agreed by NATO, the Cold War might have ended very differently.

The error of Mr. Clinton's balk is, moreover, not appreciably alleviated by the misgivings many of us feel about the ground-based missile defense system he was thinking about deploying. While it would have been better than nothing, such a defense is more costly, less effective and less quickly accomplished than would be a sea-based defense utilizing the existing infrastructure already in place in the form of the Navy's Aegis fleet air defense system.

The only possible, and very dull, silver lining that might come out of the Clinton decision not to decide on deploying missile defenses is that this action should mark the end of Mr. Clinton's insidious mismanagement of this portfolio. He must not now be allowed to compound his record to date by sealing a deal with Vladimir Putin or others that will make it still harder for his successor to take the sorts of steps American security so clearly requires, today and in the future.

Toward that end, George Bush should make clear immediately that he does not approve of this Clinton-Gore decision to leave the American people vulnerable to missile attack - and pledge to undo it as a first order of business upon entering the Oval Office.