People will not fight for freedom if they must stand alone while their enemies enjoy carte blanche at the near-limitless Soviet arsenal. If we fail to provide our allies and friends with adequate military assistance, Moscow’s clients will advance on every front. We will then face a stark choice: we can either forfeit our interests or forfeit the lives of American troops to defend them. We must recognize the fact that if we spend a little money on military assistance now, we will avoid having to expend blood, as well as money, later.
Military power. Since the Vietnam War, many have argued that military power no longer has any utility in international politics. American military interventions or American security guarantees and military presence have prevented 707 million people from falling under Soviet domination. Without American support, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, and the countries of Southwest Asia would all now have to defer to the demands of the Soviet Union. American military power achieved our objectives in Korea in the early 1950s, in Lebanon in 1957, in the Dominican Republic in 1965, and in Grenada in 1983.
It would be dangerous to assume that because we succeeded in those instances a military intervention can succeed anywhere. But it is more dangerous to assume that because we failed in Vietnam, we can succeed nowhere. We must not allow our failure in Vietnam to blind us to the stark reality that without military power and the will to use it surgically and selectively in crucial conflicts, we will be routed in our rivalry with the Soviet Union.
Ironically, the strongest ally of those who oppose any military interventions in Third World conflicts is the American military establishment. Since Vietnam, the only battle the Pentagon seems ready to wage is the battle to get more money from the Congress. The Defense Department has laid down five conditions which must be met before the United States intervenes militarily. First, the actions must be “vital to our national interests” or those of our allies. Second, we should commit forces only as a last resort. Third, when we commit our troops, we must do so with the sole object of winning. Fourth, we must enter conflicts only if they are winnable in the sense that we have the means to achieve quick and certain victory. Fifth, we must have assurance—ahead of time—of the support of the Congress and the public.
While no one would question many of those conditions if properly defined, taken as a whole they are unreasonably restrictive. In effect, these require that we intervene only if victory is guaranteed in advance. If these had been applied in the past, they would have ruled out the intervention not only in Vietnam but also in Korea. Even our role in the European Theater in World War II—in which victory was in doubt as late as 1944—would have been out of bounds. For the future, these ground rules would prohibit any U.S. intervention in virtually all conflicts in the Third World.
No one disputes the military’s understandable reluctance to become bogged down in another Vietnam. But the lesson of Vietnam was not that we should never intervene. Rather, it was that any future U.S. intervention must be decisive, not tentative, guided by strategy, not improvisation, and carried through with force adequate to achieve our goal, not just to avoid defeat.
Since Vietnam, the American military establishment has concentrated its resources on maintaining its forces in Europe and the Far East. It has devoted a disproportionate share to preparing for the big war that will probably never be fought and has virtually ignored the need to be ready for the smaller wars that we might be forced to fight. It has woefully neglected to develop our ability to intervene in conflicts in the Third World. That would not be a problem if we knew that the Soviets were likely to challenge us in the central theaters where our nuclear power deters them. But in fact the opposite is true: Moscow is most likely to seek to outflank Europe and Japan with aggression in the Third World, where our nuclear power is useless. We should intervene militarily in such conflicts only as a last resort. But if we fail to develop the capability to parry Soviet thrusts in the Third World, we will find ourselves unable to compete with Moscow.
Another legacy of the Vietnam War is the War Powers Act. It was passed over my veto in 1973. The law stipulates that first the President must consult with Congress before intervening with our forces in an armed conflict. Then he is permitted to continue the intervention for sixty days without congressional approval and another thirty days if he certifies in writing that the safety of our fighting men requires it. If the Congress does not by that time authorize his actions by a declaration of war or other legislation, the War Powers Act requires that our forces must be pulled out.
The law is not only unconstitutional but also unsound. It infringes on the authority of the President as commander in chief of the armed forces. Congressional-veto clauses in other laws but similar to the one in the War Powers Act have been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. It is with good reason that the Founding Fathers put authority over the armed forces into the President’s hands. Congress is incapable of acting as commander in chief. As de Gaulle once said, “Parliaments can only paralyze policy; they cannot initiate it.”
Given the realities of the world, the United States will sometimes need to use force in actions short of all-out war and will have to be able to act quickly and decisively. While 535 would-be commanders in chief dissect the merits and demerits of the intervention, the President will have to keep glancing over his shoulder to check the clock while fighting to defend American interests. Anyone who has witnessed the gridlock on Capitol Hill over the budget deficit and other critical issues in the last few years knows that the most likely action would turn out to be no action. As a result, by doing nothing—or by filibustering to ensure that outcome—opponents of the President’s actions can achieve the same result as if their view prevailed in both houses of the Congress.
Those who passed the War Powers Act believed that the United States should rule out the use of force in the world. While such forbearance might be considered an act of virtue in the West, the Soviets and other potential adversaries consider it a sign of weakness and a green light to press forward with their aggression. A unilateral American renunciation of the use of force would provoke the use of force against us. In the U.S.–Soviet contest, Gorbachev has the freedom to conduct a freewheeling foreign policy. If we restrict the President’s ability to act, America will be like a prizefighter boxing with one hand tied behind his back.
Covert operations. Overt economic or military aid is sometimes enough to achieve our goals. Only a direct military intervention can do so in others. But between the two lies a vast area where the United States must be able to undertake covert actions. Without this capability, we will be unable to protect important U.S. interests.
There are those who argue that the United States should not engage in covert operations, especially after the disaster of the Iran-contra affair. The administration’s opening to Iran did not become a fiasco because it was a covert operation. It did so because it was ineptly conducted. A covert operation must serve an important strategic purpose. Initially, the contacts with Tehran sought the worthy objective of a rapprochement with Iran. The administration went astray as soon as it allowed Israel and Iran to introduce the question of arms sales into the negotiations, especially because only a rank amateur could imagine such deals staying secret for long in the Middle East. Arms transfers should only follow, not precede, a diplomatic opening. (Almost a decade passed after the rapprochement with China before the United States sold weapons to Beijing.) This error was compounded when the administration let its obsession with the fate of the hostages in Lebanon lead to the bartering of American lives for American weapons. It became a debacle when National Security Council staff members chose to divert profits from the Iranian arms deal to the Nicaraguan contras.
It would be a fatal mistake for the United States to renounce covert action as a foreign-policy instrument. We must ask ourselves whether giving up this capability would be sensible given the fact that the Soviet Union continues to exploit it. Through covert action, the Kremlin arms communist insurgencies, funds comm
unist and other leftist parties, disseminates disinformation, trains international terrorists, assassinates opponents, to name just a few of its activities. We do not and should not emulate the Soviet Union’s behavior. But if we were to abandon covert action as an instrument of foreign policy, we would be in effect donning a straitjacket in our competition with Moscow.
Successful covert operations seldom receive publicity, but they have often protected vital American interests. One took place in 1953, when the Eisenhower administration gave covert support to help the Shah take power in Iran. The Shah displaced an incompetent left-wing government which had been blissfully ignoring Soviet efforts to exploit Iranian instability to propel the communist Tudeh party into power. Eisenhower’s covert operation produced a regime in Iran that served not only American interests but also those of the Iranian people and of our friends and allies in the region for a quarter of a century.
Another has been in operation over the past eight years. The United States has sent hundreds of millions of dollars in covert assistance to the resistance in Afghanistan. That covert operation not only has created the possibility of rolling back a forward position of the Soviet empire, but also has inflicted such cost on the Kremlin that its leaders will have to think twice before again embarking on such an adventure in the future.
Contrary to popular mythology, most covert operations do not involve support for insurgent groups. More often, a covert operation involves giving money to individuals or groups who support American objectives. An example was our support for democratic political forces in Europe immediately after World War II. A continent was in ruins, and the Soviet Union was funneling huge resources into exploiting the situation to bring communists to power in countries like Italy. Our financial support to those who sought to rebuild democracy in Western Europe was absolutely indispensable to keeping our allies free.
Those who deride the need for the United States to be able to conduct covert operations should ask themselves whether we should have accepted a communist Iran in 1953, whether we should abandon the Afghan resistance today, or whether we should have looked the other way as the Kremlin foisted totalitarian dictatorship onto the peoples of Eastern Europe in the late 1940s.
After the Iran-contra affair, many advocate imposing new restrictions on covert actions. Some say we should stop helping insurgencies and only give military assistance to governments in power. But this policy not only would doom the United States to a purely reactive policy around the world but also would abandon those who want to fight for their freedom. At the same time, those who advocate this approach often reluctantly make an exception in the case of the Afghan resistance because Moscow brazenly invaded their country. The assumption is that somehow the Afghan resistance leaders are more legitimate than those of other anti-communist insurgencies. But the resistance leaders were no more elected than those of the contras. This is not to say that the Afghan leaders are not their people’s legitimate leaders. They clearly are. What it does mean is that we must judge whether to support anti-communist insurgencies on a case-by-case basis.
Others argue that everything the United States has been doing by covert actions should be done overtly. That is impractical. In the case of supporting freedom fighters, if we were to acknowledge our assistance we would heighten the conflict to the government-to-goverment level, and our friends would soon be accused of acting as American puppets. But arming, training, and supporting freedom fighters are not typical covert actions. Far more often, covert actions involve things like support for a democratic political movement or funding labor unions or newspapers in a repressive state. We serve worthy ends through covert actions, but our activities would be instantly compromised if we acted overtly.
Still others believe the government should undertake covert actions only if they are legal, are vetted through congressional committees, are supportive of U.S. policy, and would be supported by the American people if they became public. No one would contest the first three conditions. But American foreign policy in general, and covert action in particular, should not be determined by the vagaries of public opinion. Most of the time, if our covert actions became known, they would be endorsed by the American people. But there will be exceptions. When President Roosevelt covertly provided assistance to Britain early in World War II, he not only violated the Neutrality Act but also acted contrary to the public’s overwhelming neutralist sentiment. But in retrospect we know he was right. We must accept the fact that we elect our leaders to lead the country, not to follow the opinion polls.
While all these restrictions fail to pass the test of common sense, we did learn from the Iran-contra affair that the National Security Council should not be involved operationally in covert actions. To succeed, such activities must be deniable. They must be conducted in a way so that the United States can plausibly deny its involvement. But if covert actions are run out of the Old Executive Office Building, that becomes impossible. We must, however, keep a distinction between covert actions and secret negotiations. A President should be able, if he wishes, to use his national-security adviser as his negotiator. Often, particularly in sensitive talks with totalitarian leaders, the NSC head would be a better choice than the Secretary of State.
Our inability to keep a secret represents the greatest threat to our capability for covert action. Given the widespread dissemination of classified information and the relentless sniffing of the hundreds of Pulitzer hounds in the media, it is a wonder any covert actions remain secret. But the problem lies not just in Congress. Officials in the NSC, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the Defense Department all leak out information. The answer is not to force those suspected of leaking to take lie detector tests. We should not destroy someone’s career on the basis of a test that is hardly foolproof. Instead, the President should reduce drastically the number of people in the executive branch who have access to information about covert activities.
He should establish a new special “need to know” classification covering information which, if exposed, would risk the lives of those involved in a covert operation. Only statutory members of the NSC should be given authority to put this classification onto materials and documents. The present system, under which literally thousands of low-level bureaucrats can stamp a document top secret, is ridiculous. Those found guilty of releasing information about truly sensitive covert operations—regardless of motivation—should receive mandatory prison sentences. The present espionage laws are not adequate to cover such actions. Someone who leaks information out of spite or because of bureaucratic infighting should receive the same sentence as someone who provides the information to a foreign power with the intention of hurting the United States.
In addition, Congress must create a single joint intelligence oversight committee of no more than eight members, staffed by professionals, to receive briefings on covert activities. In the long term, we must cultivate among the American people the attitude that those who leak secrets should be discharged in disgrace rather than receive a badge of honor, as did Daniel Ellsberg.
While the United States must have those six key capabilities, it must also have the skill to implement a strategy that uses each at the right time. We must understand where and how each instrument should be employed.
Our first task is to distinguish between vital interests, critical interests, and peripheral interests. No country has the resources to defend all its interests with its own forces all the time. Strategy means making choices, and making choices means enforcing a set of strategic priorities. We must react with flexibility in tactics to Soviet threats, but we must do so with a set of priorities firmly in mind.
An interest is vital if its loss, in and of itself, directly endangers the security of the United States. The survival and independence of Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and the Persian Gulf are vital interests of the United States. The loss of any of these to the Soviet Union would imperil our own security. We have no choice but to respond with military fo
rce if necessary should the Kremlin attempt to dominate these areas.
A critical interest is one which, if lost, would create a direct threat to one of our vital interests. If Moscow were to achieve domination over South Korea, the Kremlin leaders would be in an ideal position to threaten Japan. If they were able to dominate Pakistan, they could put their naval power on the doorstep of the Persian Gulf. If they were able to consolidate their Nicaraguan beachhead in Central America, they could begin the campaign to destabilize the region as a whole, including Mexico.
We must recognize that the United States often must treat critical interests as if they were vital because a Soviet move against them could only be a prelude to the main challenge. If Britain and France had done so when Hitler moved against Czechoslovakia—which Neville Chamberlain called “a far away land populated by a people with whom we have nothing in common”—they would not have had to go to war ten months later over the German invasion of Poland. If we wait to oppose Soviet expansionism until Moscow threatens vital U.S. interests, we will soon find those interests at risk—and will have to defend them under the worst of circumstances.
A peripheral interest is one which, if lost, would only distantly threaten a vital or critical interest. While we would not want to see a pro-Soviet government take power in a country like Mali, we cannot conclude that such an event would endanger important American interests or those of our allies.
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