320 Nelson Street, P.O. Box 778, Tiffin, OH 44883
Phone (419) 448-3200 Fax (419) 447-3274
General E-Mail: adtrib@bright.net
Newsroom E-Mail: atnews@bright.net

Next president must clean up the mess

The fact that a Russian spy has been arrested for placing a bug in a State Department conference room certainly speaks well of FBI and CIA counterintelligence operations. But it also serves as a stern warning that Russia remains hostile to American interests. Friends don't put bugs in friends' diplomatic offices.

Indeed, the Russian S.V.R., the successor to the old KGB, reportedly has nearly as large a presence in Washington as the KGB did. Those spies are there for a reason, and that reason is to gather information about U.S. intentions and use that information against the United States. All the backslapping in the world between the feckless Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin won't change that.

There is very little the U.S. can do to stop spying except to maintain a robust counterintelligence operation. Spying is a fact of life in the modern world, and the best any administration can do is fully back efforts to discover it and stop it.

The fact that Russian (and other, particularly Communist Chinese) espionage continues reinforces the need for a strong defense and a robust, clear-eyed foreign policy. The Clinton administration has gutted the military by cutting forces and weapons procurement while increasing deployments, and it has run foreign policy by photo-op instead of a coherent strategy to advance and defend U.S. interests.

The next American president will be stuck with cleaning up the defense and foreign policy mess created by Clinton. Of the leading candidates, Bill Bradley pitches new age isolationism, delegating foreign affairs to the United Nations and other international bureaucracies. Al Gore has not explained what he would do differently or what, if anything, he has found objectionable among Clinton policies. Republicans John McCain and George W. Bush have made foreign policy centerpieces of their campaigns. But all need to more clearly answer how they plan to handle an increasingly hostile Russia and Communist China, the two largest potential threats to U.S. security in the next decade.