Cato Daily Dispatch for November 29, 2001
Testing Times for Missile DefenseCuba Buys American Food
Military Trials and Tribulations
Testing Times for Missile Defense
The U.S. military plans to conduct its fifth "hit-to-kill" missile defense test in space over the Pacific Ocean on Saturday as Moscow and Washington remain at odds over the American anti-missile program, Reuters reports.
"It is scheduled for Saturday night. It is just part of an ongoing and robust missile defense program," Defense Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told reporters.
Defense officials have stressed that the test, in which a projectile fired from Kwajalein island in the Pacific will attempt to intercept and shatter a dummy warhead launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, would not violate the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Two of four former U.S. hit-to-kill tests have been successful and two have failed. But Russia remains strongly opposed to plans by the Bush administration to move beyond the controversial ABM treaty.
In "What's the Right Missile Defense System for America?" written just before the recent Bush-Putin summit, senior defense policy analyst Charles Pena said: "If the United States is going to build a new strategic framework with Russia and eventually scrap the ABM Treaty (although Russia still considers the treaty central to nuclear stability), it should do so to provide real national security for the U.S. homeland and not to be the world's policeman. Advocates of missile defense are quick to paint a 'doom and gloom' picture that America and Americans are defenseless against attacks from ballistic missiles. Why then are we pursuing a system that will defend the world and will be significantly more expensive than a system designed to defend the United States?"
Cuba Buys American Food
For the first time since Cuba became communist, the United States has sold food to the Caribbean island. The U.S. Agriculture Department on Thursday confirmed the first export sales of American wheat, corn, rice, and soy products to Cuba in 41 years, Reuters reports.
In its weekly export sales report, the USDA said Cuba purchased 50,000 tons of U.S. wheat, 43,000 tons of corn, 12,000 tons of soybeans, 20,000 tons of soymeal, 5,000 tons of soyoil and 12,500 tons of rice for the week ended Nov 22.
Devastated by Hurricane Michelle earlier this month, Cuba last week reached out to the United States for food. The U.S. slapped an embargo on trade with Cuba soon after President Fidel Castro swept into power in 1959 and installed a communist government. But last fall Congress enacted legislation that eased some restrictions to allow cash sales of food and medicine to the island.
According to Jonathan G. Clarke, Cato research fellow, and William Ratliff, senior research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, the embargo is not responsible for Cuba's poor economic condition--as Havana claims--nor has it been effective at achieving Washington's goal of isolating the Cuban regime. Their study, "Report from Havana: Time for a Reality Check on U.S. Policy toward Cuba," draws on their interviews with officials, dissidents, and private citizens in Cuba.
In "A Policy toward Cuba That Serves U.S. Interests," Philip Peters, vice president of the Lexington Institute, argues that the wide array of U.S. sanctions has failed to promote change in Cuba and has allowed Castro to reinforce his arguments that the United States promotes economic deprivation in Cuba. "It is time for the United States to turn to economic engagement," he says. "Whether or not the embargo is lifted completely, a policy that respects the rights of Americans to trade with, invest in, and travel to Cuba would more effectively serve U.S. interests in post-Soviet Cuba: defending human rights, helping the Cuban people, and connecting with the generation of Cubans that will govern that country in the early 21st century."
Military Trials and Tribulations
The White House said today that U.S. military tribunals for suspected terrorists, a plan that has drawn criticism at home and abroad, have not yet been established and would only be used in "limited cases, if any develop," Reuters reports.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer insisted that President Bush was not retreating from the secret panels, repeating that Bush has always said they were one option for use in the war on terrorism.
He also defended Attorney General John Ashcroft against criticism that he was eroding civil liberties with anti-terrorism measures like the tribunals, as well as decisions to permit the questioning of thousands of young men from the Middle East and the monitoring of conversations between lawyers and suspected terrorists.
Bush on Nov. 13 ordered the military courts set up as a way to put on trial suspected terrorists from abroad linked to the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks.
In "Tribunals, Trials and Tribulations," Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies Robert Levy argues that tribunals are "law on the fly: Secret trials, unilaterally decreed by the executive branch, without judicial affirmation that secrecy is necessary; due process, turned on its head, renouncing the values that distinguish us from the fanatics we seek to punish."
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