FOREIGN POLICY
The Putin Democrats
Democrats are loyal to the wrong president.
One of the most deeply ingrained beliefs of the first President Bush was that politics should stop at the water's edge. The second President Bush can't afford such a quaint illusion, so redolent of the glory days of bipartisan defense policy. Bush the Younger, after all, governs in the age of the Putin Democrats.
In the brewing fight over defense spending, Democrats are playing subtly to two overseas constituencies, the Russians and the social-democratic governments in Europe, in a shrewd effort to block one of the president's highest-priority goals: the deployment of a missile-defense system.
Democrats have learned the lesson of the 1970s and 1980s, and won't allow themselves again to be painted as anti-defense. So, Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D., Mich.) has left the $330 billion requested by Mr. Bush for 2002 mostly intact.
Instead, Democrats hope to delay consideration of a defense bill until the end of the appropriations process when the non-Social Security surplus has already been spent, so it will appear that Mr. Bush must choose between his defense increase and "raiding" Social Security.
If Mr. Bush scales back his defense request, the Democrats have a storyline ready to go: The president put his fiscally irresponsible tax cut over the nation's security. A newly hawkish Sen. Hillary Clinton lamented a few weeks ago, "We squandered the opportunity of the accumulated surpluses to do the kind of things with defense . . . that would make us, as a nation, richer, safer, smarter and stronger in the future."
If, on the other hand, Mr. Bush decides to dip into the Social Security "trust fund," well, then it's granny bar the door. It will be 1986, 1996--in fact, most past election years--all over again, as Democrats accuse the GOP of jeopardizing America's favorite entitlement program.
Mr. Levin targets the technologies that have the promise to move missile defense beyond the rudimentary land-based system planned by the Clinton administration. He cuts about $400 million from research into sea- and air-based approaches, and nearly $100 million more from the infrared satellites that are crucial to a sophisticated missile-tracking capability (being able to distinguish the "decoys" that missile-defense critics always talk about).
The cuts are meant, as one congressional aide says, to create a system that is vulnerable to a very simple critique from the Democrats: "What is this piece of junk?"
That is, if it ever gets built. Mr. Levin takes roughly $400 million out of the land-based system as well, meaning there will be money to continue research and development, but not enough to push a system into actual deployment.
And here is where the overseas constituencies come into play. In forcing any sort of major political change--such as ditching the old Cold War paradigm in arms control--momentum is important. When it seems a new departure is inevitable, the forces of the status quo reluctantly resign themselves to the reform.
So, when Mr. Bush first took office in a blaze of "we really mean it" rhetoric on missile defense, he collected of bunch of supportive (or at least accommodating) statements from leaders across Europe that could have served as blurbs for the back of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's next missile report.
But, as it became clear there wouldn't be a dash to deployment, European and Russian resistance began to stiffen again. It's probably no accident that the same day the Washington Post reported on Mr. Levin's defense mark-up--Sept. 6--it quoted a Russian official in another story saying: "This is exactly the occasion when there is no place for bargaining." The Democrats, the Europeans, and the Russians operate on an endless feedback loop.
So long as Levin and Co. can make missile defense seem an unlikely proposition, it lessens the incentive for the Russians to negotiate in good faith. As long as the Russians oppose changing the ABM treaty, our European allies can oppose it too, on the grounds that it will start another "arms race." And that, finally, makes it possible for American Democrats to oppose it because even our allies oppose it, neatly completing the circle.
This is why earlier this year we witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of one of Bill Clinton's former top diplomats, Richard Holbrooke, lecturing the Europeans that they have to be firmer in opposing Mr. Bush's missile-defense plans.
One provision in the Levin bill in particular couldn't be more blatantly aimed at a Russian audience if it were drafted in Cyrillic letters. It would require a congressional vote to approve each and every missile test that would violate the ABM treaty, whether the U.S. remains in the treaty or not.
The message to Vladimir Putin and Russian negotiators is clear: Don't bother changing the ABM treaty, we'll keep it intact for you no matter what.
All this explains how Mr. Levin has managed both to approve almost all of a Republican president's defense-spending increase, and, at the same time, to over-reach. Sen. John Warner (R., Va.) says privately that Mr. Levin's bill is the worst defense mark-up that he has ever seen.
Defense authorization bills usually pass out of committee by large back-slapping majorities. On Friday, the Levin bill passed by a 13-12 party-line vote, and Mr. Rumsfeld has raised the prospect of a presidential veto.
First, he should veto an early appropriations bill, as the Democrats send every conceivable spending bill to him before getting to the military. A veto would make it clear that Mr. Bush won't stand for the tactic of leaving defense for last, that he won't let non-defense spending spiral out of control (thus leaving less of the non-Social Security surplus available), and that, in general, he means business about getting all of his defense increase.
Second, Mr. Bush should give six-months notice that the U.S. is withdrawing from the ABM treaty. Such notice would not represent the failure of missile-defense negotiations with the Russians, but the precondition for them to start in earnest. Otherwise, the Russians will stall, with the complicity of the Europeans and--most importantly--Carl Levin.
In battling the Putin Democrats, Mr. Bush must realize that politics doesn't end at the water's edge. It only gets started there.
Mr. Lowry is editor of National Review.
