October 13, 2000

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: Russia & Nonproliferation

I would like to draw your attention to two items related to the Clinton Administration’s handling of U.S.-Russian relations and weapons nonproliferation.
On the front page of today’s New York Times (“Despite Secret ‘95 Pact by Gore, Russian Arms Sales to Iran Go On”), reporter John Broder provides a remarkable account of a secret deal between Vice President Gore and then Russian Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin in which Washington agreed to close it eyes to Russia’s on-going weapons sales to Iran in exchange for a pledge from it to end all weapons assistance to Tehran by the end of 1999. The sales -- which included a Russian Kilo-class attack submarine -- almost certainly contravened the1992 Iran-Iraq Arms Nonproliferation Act. Moreover, Moscow has not kept its world.

According to Broder, Leon Fuerth, Vice president Gore's chief foreign policy aide and a key architect of the administration's Russian policy, argues that the sales were not sanctionable because they consisted neither of “advanced conventional weapons” nor weapons that could be judged militarily destabilizing -- criteria set out by the act. Fuerth, who is expected to become Gore's national security advisor if the vice president wins in November, has obviously never asked a captain of a U.S. Navy destroyer or aircraft carrier being deployed to the Persian Gulf whether Iran's acquisition of a Russian attack submarine can be so readily dismissed.

The second item of note was yesterday’s hearing before the House International Relations Committee on the administration's willful disregard of the recently-passed Iran Nonproliferation Act. As Committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) noted in his opening statement: “The law only requires two things. First, it requires the President to report periodically to Congress about proliferation to Iran from other countries. Second, it prohibits NASA from buying new goods and services from Russia for the International Space Station until the President determines that all of the approximately 400 entities under the Russian Aviation and Space Agency have gotten out of the business of proliferation to Iran.” The first requirement has not been met and, now, the administration, through NASA, is planning to buy a host of new goods and services from the Russian space agency -- in effect, subsidizing the entities still engaged in providing missile-related assistance to Iran.

As in the case above, the administration has resorted to a disingenuous reading of the law to sanction this assistance. Under the act, NASA can make “extraordinary” payments to the Russian space agency in order to prevent the “imminent loss of life or grievous injury to individuals” aboard the space station. It is simply sophistry to argue that the planned payments meet the “imminent” and “extraordinary” criteria.

Both instances provide striking examples of the administration's willingness to ignore duly enacted laws -- and, to do so in service of a Russian policy that has little to show in the way of success.*

* Of note, the Fox News Channel is airing a one hour special this coming Sunday at 8pm built around Russia's Road to Corruption, the highly critical review of the administration's U.S. policy toward Russia conducted by the leadership of six House committees and chaired by House Policy Committee Chairman Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA).