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| April 15, 1999 |
| April 15, 1999 |
Diplomacy vs. Bombs: Congress' Wrong Turn
By Tomas Valasek, Research Analyst, tvalasek@cdi.org
Firepower instead of diplomacy is Congress' answer to approaching future Kosovos. The proposed FY 2000 budget ups the defense budget by $16 billion over levels proposed last year, and it does so by cutting Department of State's budget by one-third (for more details see "Congress Moves to Boost Military Spending," CDI Weekly Defense Monitor, April 8, 1999).
The State Department pays for U.S. participation in the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is currently trying to find peaceful solutions to the long-standing conflicts in the former Soviet Union and other areas. State Department funds also cover democratization programs in the newly independent states in Central and Eastern Europe, pay for preventive force deployments in the Golan Heights and on the demilitarized zone between Iraq and Kuwait, and finance the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
While the Congressionally-approved State Department cuts do not specify which programs will be reduced or scratched, the Department's remaining activities aimed at democratization, ethnic reconciliation and objective reporting -- are unlikely to be spared.
The impact of preventive diplomacy is hard to assess -- by definition it is the absence of clear, violent acts that indicate success of preventive diplomacy. Peaceful resolution of a tense conflict can often be attributed to other factors, such as a reluctance to fight rooted in the country's politics, culture or religion. Failure of preventive diplomacy, or the failure to use preventive tools, however, is easy to detect. And Kosovo may be a prime example of the latter.
Signs of a potential conflict between the Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo were telegraphed well in advance. In the mid-1980s Serbian police killed ethnic Albanians demonstrating for release of political prisoners and a status of a republic for Kosovo. Albanians in return bombed and sabotaged Serbian property. Dozens of people died in riots following Yugoslavia's abolishment of autonomy for Kosovo in 1989. The Kosovo Liberation Army, an ethnic Albanian guerilla group, claimed its first attacks as early as 1996.
This decade-long window of opportunity remained unused. The United States failed to support the non-violent movement of Kosovar leader Ibrahim Rugova. The Administration refused to address the grievances of the Kosovars at the 1995 Dayton conference when NATO and the U.S. Administration summoned Yugoslav president Milosevic to the United States, under threat of more bombing, to negotiate an end to the Bosnian conflict.
Preventive diplomacy can be an effective tool, and is extremely cheap compared to the costs of military operations. Yet it is by no means an answer to all wars. Measures such as international mediation, power-sharing, and politically-conditioned economic assistance only work if the parties to the conflict have some will to settle their differences peacefully.
In cases where protagonists are determined to fight, preventive diplomacy often makes little difference. In the case of Kosovo, Yugoslavia actually expelled some organizations, such as the Soros Foundation, which funded independent media in Belgrade and in Kosovo. Moreover, Yugoslav President Milosevic built his political career on fanning nationalist flames over Kosovo and actually used the unrest and violence to crack down on critics and independent media, thus strengthening his hold on power. A credible threat of force may help break logjams in which parties to a conflict are determined to fight. But no force should be used or even threatened unless all diplomatic means have been exhausted.
The proposed budget cuts for the State Department would effectively close the door on future preventive diplomacy programs. Already, in a more favorable environment (from the budgetary point of view), department-wide programs died for lack of funding or interagency infighting. USAID's RADAR (Conflict Prevention Reporting, Analysis, Decision-making & Response System) and the Secretary's Early Warning Initiative conceived under Warren Christopher, were rejected or discontinued, according to Julianne Smith of the British American Security Information Council, who researched preventive diplomacy programs in the State Department.
Even disregarding the cost in human suffering brought about by war, preventive diplomacy makes sense from a purely fiscal point of view. The Department of Defense is already asking for $3-4 billion in funding the Kosovo war, and this is likely just a down-payment. The budget request for all of the Department of Defense is $289 billion.
In contrast, the International Affairs budget -- without the cuts proposed by Congress -- is only $21 billion, less than 10% of the Pentagon's budget. The cost of preventive deployment of a modest U.S. force in Macedonia, which has been credited with helping to keep this country out of the Balkan wars, only amounted to $11 million a year. Since March, 1995, when the U.N.-sponsored force was deployed in Macedonia, U.S. expenses were about one-half of the cost of the one F-117 fighter plane lost over Yugoslavia two weeks ago.
For a detailed timeline of Kosovo's descent into war see the International Crisis Group's report, "Kosovo Spring."
New Bill Would Increase United States Arms Exports to Taiwan
By Rachel Stohl, Research Analyst, rstohl@cdi.org
In an attempt to highlight concerns about Chinese policy towards Taiwan, and carefully timed to coincide with the visit of Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji to the United States, Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Senator Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) introduced legislation that would significantly increase U.S. arm sales to Taiwan. The bill, S.693, "The Taiwan Security Enhancement Act," was introduced on March 24, 1999 and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, which is chaired by Senator Helms.
If the bill passes, the act would authorize the sale of theater missile defense equipment and related systems, satellite early warning data, air defense equipment including AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles and advanced fighters and airborne warning and control systems (AWACS), and naval defense systems including diesel submarines, anti-submarine systems, and naval anti-missile systems including Aegis destroyers. There has been much talk surrounding the potential sale of the Aegis destroyers, which could severely shift the balance of naval power in the region.
Large numbers of U.S. weapons sold to Taiwan is not a new aspect of U.S. policy. For two decades Taiwan has received a large percentage of U.S. arms exports. The U.S. has sold weapons to Taiwan since 1979 as a provision of the Taiwan Relations Act. A communique with the People's Republic of China in 1982 resulted in pressures to "delay, deny, and reduce, arms sales to Taiwan." The bill's co-sponsors fear that such pressures could prevent Taiwan "from maintaining a sufficient capability for self-defense," a premise the U.S. is eager to ensure, even though the Taiwan Relations Act takes legal precedence over the communique. However, the proposed legislation is significant because it would boost the level of high-tech weapons made available to Taiwan.
However, even increased pressure from China has not erased Taiwan as a favorite destination for U.S. arms exports. In fact, according to the "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1990-1997," released by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in August 1998, Taiwan received $9.3 billion in U.S. arms deliveries in 1997, the second highest amount of U.S. exports in the developing world (For more information see, "Developing World Receives $28.6 Billion in Conventional Arms in 1997," by Rachel Stohl, Weekly Defense Monitor, August 28, 1998.) Further, data provided by the U.S. Government for the 1997 United Nations Register of Conventional Arms shows the U.S. sold or gave Taiwan 30 battle tanks, 60 combat aircraft, 9 attack helicopters, and 248 missiles and launchers in 1996 alone.
The current legislation allows for high-tech weapons to be sold to Taiwan with the underlying principle of the "maintenance of sufficient self-defense capabilities of Taiwan." In addition, it calls for the "Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to develop a plan for the enhancement of programs and arrangements for operational training and exchanges of personnel between the armed forces of the United States and Taiwan for work in threat analysis, doctrine, force planning, operational methods, and other areas."
The U.S. should be wary of introducing a level of high-tech weapons previously unavailable in any region, and specifically one with such a tenuous political situation. Responding to China's acquisition of Russian weapons system by raising the stakes in a regional arms race is not the answer. Although the U.S. has repeatedly enunciated its commitment to Taiwan, increasing weapons exports is not the best method of demonstrating U.S. friendship and support and encouraging global security.
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