Congratulations to presumptive GOP presidential nominee George W. Bush, whose proposal for a global missile defense system to protect American allies -- coupled with dramatic reductions in offensive ballistic weapons -- won a partial endorsement last week from . . . Bill Clinton. Vice President Al Gore, who generally likes to broadcast his intimate involvement in the administration's national security deliberations, appears to have been left out of the loop on this one.
In late May, during a commencement address at West Point, and on Air Force Two immediately thereafter, the vice president did one of his patented "mean Al" routines on the subject of Bush and missile defense. Bush's plan, Gore thundered, would "hinder, rather than help, arms control." Combining "serious unilateral reductions with an attempt to build a massive defensive system would create instability and thus undermine our security." Gore's aides later restated the vice president's support for research and development of a limited national missile defense system, but argued that any broad-scale program extending beyond our borders would prove destabilizing.
Yet there was Clinton in Queluz, Portugal, on May 31, telling reporters, essentially, that he sided with Bush -- and not his own vice president -- on this question. If national missile defense proves feasible, Clinton was asked, shouldn't the technology be shared with the European democracies and America's other allies around the world? Yes, it should, the president responded; "it would be unethical not to do so."
That, by the way, is a position first staked out by Ronald Reagan, who told the disbelieving Soviets in the 1980s that he meant to share the missile defenses America developed, not monopolize them.
Memo to the vice president: Clinton just called your position on missile defenses "unethical."