Superpower ignores little mines

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): At a press conference called by U.S. President Bill Clinton to explain his rejection of a ban on land-mines just agreed in Oslo by 89 other countries, a reporter mischievously pointed out that the United States thereby found itself in the company of China, Russia, North Korea and Libya. Clinton was not amused.

"We're not in their company," he replied stiffly -- but of course that is precisely where he is. Which is puzzling, for it is not immediately obvious why the U.S. government clings to its land-mines so fiercely.

The total ban on anti-personnel mines negotiated in Oslo over the past two weeks has been the surprise diplomatic success of the decade. Two years ago, only 14 countries responded positively to Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy's call for a ban on the weapons that kill or maim 26,000 innocent civilians each year.

The U.S. didn't even take part in the first Ottawa conference, but the 'Ottawa process' picked up support like a snowball rolling downhill. Celebrity endorsement by Princess Diana gave the project more momentum, and her death last month had such an impact on American public opinion that President Clinton had to get publicly involved in the issue.

But his intervention was just a disguised attempt to subvert the process. On Sept. 15 Washington requested a one-day pause while the Oslo meeting considered new U.S. proposals that would, if accepted, have gutted the treaty: a nine-year exemption for American mines in Korea, an exception for 'smart' anti-personnel mines, and the right to withdraw from the treaty on six months' notice.

The conference rejected the proposals -- "we are not prepared to pay any price" for Washington's approval, said Axworthy -- and so on Sept. 17 Clinton found himself trying to justify a decision to boycott an arms control treaty endorsed by its own NATO allies. But why is it the United States, of all places, that takes the lead in fighting a ban on land mines?

Being on the same side of the argument as North Korea and Libya rightly makes Clinton uncomfortable, but he also has more reputable company: India and Pakistan, for example, and Israel and most of its Arab neighbors. But almost all the other countries that oppose a ban on land-mines, including China and Russia, have serious military confrontations along their own borders.

The United States has not. Strategically it is an island, protected by oceans that have spared it the experience of having hostile foreign troops on its territory for the past 180 years. Canada and Mexico, its only land neighbors, are both friendly and incapable of posing military threats. And its troops abroad have less need of mines than almost anybody else's.

Clinton made a great show of his reluctance to expose the 37.000 American troops in Korea to greater danger by depriving them of the protection of mines -- "There is a line that I simply cannot cross, and that line is the safety and security of our men and women in uniform," he intoned reverently -- but it was not clear why U.S. troops had a special need for the protection of mines.

In military terms, indeed, they have less need, since they benefit from a more lavish array of weapons technology, especially in terms of air support, than any other army in the world.

Anybody who believes that North Korean troops, armed with 1970s technology and operating in the face of complete American air superiority, would fare any better in war than the Iraqi forces in 1991, has simply not been paying attention to modern military technology. "You can move a million (North Korean troops) into Seoul pretty quickly," said Clinton, playing up the threat, but his own experts must be telling him the exact opposite in private.

The Pentagon itself admitted recently that more American troops have been killed or maimed by anti-personnel mines than have been saved by them. Mines are a cheap and nasty way for a low-tech opponent to even the odds against a high-tech opponent, and it even makes military sense for the U.S. to back a ban on them.

Many senior American retired officers do support such a ban. Gen. David Jones, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, U.S. commander in the Gulf War, argue that a ban on anti-personnel mines would be "not only humane, but also militarily responsible." Officers still in uniform sing a different song, but they are obliged to back the official line.

The U.S. has less military reason to want land mines than other major military powers, and banning them would have no serious domestic impact in terms of money and jobs: more Americans are employed making Barbie dolls and their equivalents than in the land-mine industry. So why has the U.S. administration paid a very large price, in diplomatic and public relations terms, to fight an arms-control treaty so popular both at home and abroad?

At one level, the reason Clinton took this stand is crassly political. Treaties like the land-mine ban must be approved by the Senate, and Neanderthals like Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Jesse Helms, who regard agreement with foreigners that restrict the United States's right to do absolutely anything it wants as close to treasonous, might well be able to block ratification.

But at another level the White House's reasoning is almost theological. The United States, as the world's leading great power, must not accept any curbs on its behavior that are not also binding on all the other major military powers. So since Russia and China were not ready to sign the treaty, the U.S. must not do so either -- even if it is in America's own military interest. In many ways, Washington is a very traditional place.

This antiquated thinking will keep the U.S. from signing the treaty for at least a couple of years, and it will lessen the pressure on the other hold-outs to do the same. But as in the Law of the Sea Treaty, they will probably all come round in the end; from a practical point of view, the Oslo conference did the right thing in rejecting the U.S. attempt to water the treaty down.

"We have a treaty that in an unambiguous way bans anti- personnel mines," said Axworthy after the Oslo vote. "We have support from every region in the world and there are no exceptions and no loopholes. It really sets a new standard for a weapons treaty."