October 24, 2000

Europe Nervous About Taking Responsibility for its Security
Christmas Comes Early for Tobacco Trial Lawyers
White House to Watch the Watchers

Europe Nervous About Taking Responsibility for its Security

A proposal by Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush to remove American troops from peacekeeping missions in the Balkans has provoked a wave of anxiety among the European allies, who fear such a move would split the NATO alliance and damage faith in U.S. leadership, according to The Washington Post.

Senior European diplomats and officials at NATO headquarters said the Bush campaign's call for a "new division of labor" within the Western alliance threatens to erode principles of shared risk and collective security that have sustained the Atlantic military partnership for more than a half-century.

"If the United States says it will not perform certain tasks, then the basic consensus of 'all for one and one for all' begins to unravel," said a European ambassador. "Once you allow NATO members to pick and choose their operations, then where does it all end? The integrated military command could soon fall apart and so would the alliance."

In "Kosovo Intervention Highlights European Free Riding," Director of Defense Policy Studies Ivan Eland writes that "to support the fiction that NATO is the driving force behind the military action, the Pentagon has seen to it that European NATO officials in Brussels brief the world about the ongoing operations in the Balkans. They stand behind podiums emblazoned with the alliance logo and hand out briefing papers that are stamped 'NATO.' But the forces in harm's way are primarily American. And the United States has contributed an estimated 65-75 percent of the cost of the war effort to date."

Eland stresses that if the United States continues to bail out Europeans from even minor security scrapes, such as small civil wars in remote parts of Europe like Kosovo, they'll never spend the money needed to provide military capabilities adequate to handle such situations themselves.

Christmas Comes Early for Tobacco Trial Lawyers

According to the Associated Press, an $82.5 million fee awarded to lawyers representing South Carolina against tobacco companies was "fair and reasonable," said two panelists who set the amount. But a third member of the Tobacco Fee Arbitration Panel, which ruled on the fees following a $2.6 billion settlement, said the award was "grossly excessive."

Under a $206 billion settlement between 46 states and the tobacco industry over health care costs, South Carolina will receive $2.3 billion over 25 years as well as $357 million in subsidies to tobacco growers.

Panel chairman John Calhoun Wells and member Harry Huge praised the eight law firms involved in the 1997 case, saying they had been "torchbearers for not just the South Carolina tobacco farmers but the tobacco farmers in all the states." But dissenting panelist Charles Renfrew, a former U.S. district judge appointed by the tobacco industry, said he was "baffled by the size of the award" and called it "a windfall to South Carolina outside counsel."

In "States' Share Blame for Tobacco Lawyer's Greed," Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies Robert A. Levy shows how members of the private bar were hired as government subcontractors with their remuneration tied to the magnitude of their conquest in the tobacco lawsuits. He explains that there is no possible basis for the astronomical fees that are being paid out.

White House to Watch the Watchers

The Clinton administration is stepping up its efforts to ensure that the government protects Americans' personal privacy after a congressional report alleged federal agencies electronically track users online, according to the Associated Press.

When asked about the report, which said 13 federal agencies ignored a directive against tracking visitors to government Web sites, White House spokesman Jake Siewert said the administration is starting to keep tabs on agencies.

"What we've done concretely is to ask them, when they submit their budget requests in December, to give us an update on exactly where they are in the process and how they're correcting their policy if it's out of compliance with our regulations," Siewert told reporters.

In "The Feds and Your Privacy," information studies researcher Lucas Mast writes that out of 20 federal agencies audited for computer security by the General Accounting Office, 18 received a grade of C or less. Seven got Fs. Government Web sites make great targets for hackers because they are often weaker than commercial systems and contain a jackpot of information on Americans, including such things as name, age, birth date and place, sex, race, home and business phone numbers and addresses, family size and composition, patterns of product use, drug sensitivity and medical history, mortgages and income patterns.

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