What can explain the sudden drop in effectiveness of United States intelligence agencies? In 1995 and 1996 United States intelligence agencies timely detected India's preparations for nuclear tests. Resulting diplomacy persuaded India to refrain from detonating nuclear devices.
However, now India has conducted a series of nuclear tests which apparently caught the CIA, National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office completely by surprise. As the world plays catch-up to avert a regional arms race in Asia, Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has announced that he will hold hearings to find the cause of a "colossal failure" of intelligence.
Sen. Shelby should look at more than technical data, since the Clinton Administration's formal adoption of a New Age religion-based national security policy in 1997 coincides with this disaster. This New Age policy has drained technical, financial and personnel resources from traditional intelligence, defense and diplomatic programs and has clouded the perspective of national security analysts.
What is the Clinton Administration's New Age foreign policy? Trumpeted in association with Earth Day 1997, "Environmental Diplomacy" was declared to be the defining center of United States' strategic interests in place of "outmoded" Cold War worries. "We have moved beyond the Cold War definition of the United States' strategic interests," stated Vice President Al Gore in the foreword to the State Department's First Annual Assessment of the Global Environment. "Our foreign policy must now address a broad range of threats--including damage to the world's environment--that transcends countries and continents, and require international cooperation to solve," he said.
What has happened to the nation's security and intelligence resources in the last twelve months as the result of New Age policy would almost be comical, if not for its disastrous consequences. In June, 1997 Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Timothy Wirth told the Western Hemisphere Defense Environmental Conference of plans for 6,200 members from all of the United States armed forces to be assigned to protect rain forests and endangered species in Central and South America.
In September, 1997, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, while receiving an EPA award for the military's significant reduction of the use of ozone depleting substances, delivered remarks, not on external threats to United States' security, but on "global climate change." Also, in September, Mr. Wirth discussed the significance of "dolphin safe" tuna labels in light of changes in the International Dolphin Conservation Program.
Thereafter, Mr. Gore proposed that reconnaissance satellites be used by NASA to do nothing but show the entire planet rotating live on an Internet page 24 hours per day, thereby continuously showing all humanity that we share the same Mother Earth. In November, 1997, the Los Angeles Times reported a Department of Defense program using satellites to track endangered species. "The U.S. Department of Defense is funding the work because the Pentagon is under increasing public pressure to defend endangered species as vigorously as it does U.S. citizens," stated the Times.
In March, 1998, during his African trip, President Clinton announced that NASA would commit satellites and ground-based surveillance equipment to a project to monitor land-use changes in southern Africa. About the same time the CIA happily reported, that it was providing reconnaissance photographs of Siberian forests to the Russians as part of the assessment of the threats of global warming. CIA officials boasted that they were monitoring imminent and long term environmental crises and that they were confident that they could accurately forecast many environmental problems.
One may only wish that the CIA could have with such confidence foreseen the Indian nuclear tests. The potential for thermonuclear exchange should logically be a part of a New Age national security policy since nuclear warfare could wipe out many species, including human beings. However, the Clinton Administration's New Age foreign policy is simply too visionary to enlist "Cold War"-type analysis.
Of grave concern is that the Indian crisis has probably resulted not merely from absurd mis-allocation of intelligence resources, but from New Age religious beliefs which have been openly proclaimed as the guiding philosophy of the Clinton-Gore administration. Thus, we may not only deal with inadequately gathered intelligence information, but also with true believers' inability to accept logical conclusions from data accurately gathered where they conflict with accepted dogma.
The Clinton Administration's New Age security policy is built upon Gore's 1992 book, "Earth in the Balance, Ecology and the Human Spirit" which is a manifesto of New Age religious beliefs. At the base of Gore's and other New Age priests' beliefs is the conviction that the planet is in jeopardy of ecological death, but if humanity will just get busy loving rocks, plants, animals and each other an Aquarian age will evolve with ultimate human goodness and world peace. As the Clinton-Gore New Age national security policy has initiated trans-national environmental initiatives around the Indian sub-continent, Indians, Pakistanis and Chinese should be coming together in harmony; not making and setting off huge bombs. Clinton, Gore and their enlightened security analysts must truly be struggling to understand what has happened.
The Founding Fathers did not share a New Age view of humanity and accordingly framed a government of checks and balances complete with separation of church and state. However, the Clinton administration looks to Gore's spiritual guidance in setting national security policy rather than relying on empirical guidance. National and world security will remain in jeopardy until America returns to a reality-based national security policy stripped of New Age religious agenda.
May 22, 1998
Copyright 1998 Jefferson 21st Century Institute