Rumsfeld Tells Senators His Views on Drug War

Secretary of Defense-designate Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress on Thursday that the nation’s drug problem can best be attacked by drying up demand rather than targeting foreign traffickers, as the U.S. military is trying to do in Colombia.

At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld said that he cannot yet offer a specific opinion on the U.S. military’s $1.6-billion effort in Colombia but believes that illicit drug use is “overwhelmingly a demand problem.”

“If demand persists, it’s going to find ways to get what it wants,” Rumsfeld said. “And if it isn’t from Colombia, it’s going to be from someplace else.”

Rumsfeld, who served as Defense secretary for 13 months in 1975 and 1976, noted that efforts to halt the drug trade in Colombia may hurt neighboring countries, as traffickers migrate across borders in search of safer ground. “If I were the neighboring countries, I’d worry about the spillover as well,” he told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Rumsfeld emphasized that he has yet to be briefed in detail on the U.S. effort, which involves equipping and training Colombia’s military to fight narcotics traffickers. But his comments seemed to suggest philosophical distance between his views and those expressed by the incoming Bush team.

During the campaign, President-elect George W. Bush indicated his general support for the Clinton administration’s effort in Colombia, which has bipartisan backing on Capitol Hill. Comments by some members of the Bush team have been taken to suggest that the new administration might even step up the Colombia campaign.

Rumsfeld in the past has expressed skepticism about using the military to counter drug trafficking.

At a 1997 round-table discussion among former Defense secretaries at the Southern Center for International Studies in Atlanta, Rumsfeld said that efforts to use the military in this way are “nonsense,” a transcript of the session shows.

If the drug problem is ever solved, he said, it will be the result of concerted efforts by “families, and by people, and by schools, and by churches, not by the military.”

The contents of the transcript were reported Wednesday by the Washington Post and confirmed by Hodding Carter III, a former State Department spokesman who moderated the 1997 session.

Rumsfeld, who is the first member of the administration’s national security team to face a confirmation hearing, was praised by Democrats and Republicans alike for his skills and public service. Committee members of both parties, including Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the current chairman, said that they support his nomination.

Rumsfeld is a former Illinois congressman, White House chief of staff, ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and corporate chief executive.

National missile defense is likely to be the most prominent defense issue in coming months, as the Bush administration considers whether to continue the Clinton administration’s plans to build a limited, land-based system to intercept a small number of enemy missiles.

Rumsfeld told the panel that he is firmly committed to deploying a missile shield as a means of countering the intercontinental threat from countries such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq, nations that have been acquiring missile technology.

He said that the failure of the most recent two flight tests should pose no obstacle to the project. He recalled that the Corona satellite program, in the 1950s and 1960s, was marred by a dozen test failures, yet “they stuck with it and it worked and it ended up saving billions of dollars.”

Critics of the program have argued that it could cost $60 billion to $120 billion and unravel international arms control treaties, with no certainty it will ever work as planned.

But Rumsfeld said Americans should consider the risks they will face if no missile shield is built. Unless the United States finds a way to protect allies from enemy missiles, those nations are likely to acquire missile technology and fuel a new arms race.

And despite the presence of the huge U.S. nuclear arsenal, the threat of a small-scale missile attack could force the White House one day either to capitulate on national strategic goals or try to “preempt” an enemy strike, as the Israelis did when they struck an Iraqi nuclear plant.

“Either we acquiesce and change our behavior . . . or we have to preempt,” he said.

Rumsfeld argued that the United States should reduce its peacekeeping role around the world and leave such missions to a greater extent to allies.

“When we’re on the ground, we tend to become a bit more attractive . . . as a target,” he said.

Rumsfeld came under sharp questioning from Levin on comments he had made in a conversation with President Nixon 29 years ago at the White House, where Rumsfeld was then an aide.

In the comments, which were taped, Nixon used racist language in criticizing his vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, for remarks Agnew had made on a trip about Africans and African Americans. Rumsfeld acknowledged Nixon’s words, though it is not clear from the tape whether he shared Nixon’s views or simply didn’t want to contradict his boss.

Rumsfeld told the committee that he “didn’t remember the meeting or the conversation at all.” But he insisted that he did not agree with “offensive and wrong characterizations.”

Coincidentally, as Rumsfeld was testifying, the bipartisan space panel he formerly headed was issuing its final report.

The report called for the United States to step up protection of satellites and other equipment in space, even though such steps are likely to provoke widespread objections abroad.