General Wesley Clark, (Ret.)

Education
U.S. Military Academy at West Point, B.S., 1966; Oxford University, Rhodes scholar, M.A., 1968

Military Service
U.S. Army 1966-2000; highlights: company commander, Vietnam, 1969-70; director of strategic plans and policy for Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1994-96; commander-in-chief of U.S. Southern Command, 1996-97; NATO Supreme Allied Commander and commander-in-chief of U.S. European Command, 1997-2000

Post-military Career
Managing director, Stephens Group, Inc., 2001-2003; chairman, Wesley K. Clark & Assoc., 2003; author, Waging Modern War and Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire

Foreign Policy Advisers
Exclusive adviser: James Rubin; also consults with Gordon Adams, Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, Richard Holbrooke, Samantha Power

Campaign Website
www.clark04.com

As a retired four-star general and former NATO commander, a President Wesley Clark would focus heavily on restoring alliances with Europe and reinvigorating NATO.

“I will rebuild our relationships abroad and the alliances which maintain them,” Clark stated Nov. 20 at the Council on Foreign Relations. “And I will strengthen them so that we can solve problems together, so that the use of military force is our last resort not our first, and [so that] if America must act with force we can call on the military, financial, and moral resources of others.”

Prior to entering the race for the Democratic nomination, Clark told ABC News that, in order for the invasion of Iraq to be justified, the Bush administration will need to find that Saddam Hussein had “not only the capabilities to produce the weapons but the weapons [themselves], and then I think you’d need something more. I think you’d need the documents or the discussion that there was in fact a program to threaten the United States or its allies with those weapons in the immediate future.” Shortly after entering the race, Clark told The New York Times that he probably would have voted to authorize force in Iraq. He soon reversed that statement, calling the invasion a “major blunder” he would not have supported. He remains highly critical of the decision to go to war.

As president, one of Clark’s first orders of business would be to sit down with the United States’ European allies and agree upon a new Atlantic charter—one that would begin with a declaration from the United States on its commitment to work with democratic allies on security issues. Most importantly, according to Clark, the new charter would call on NATO to confront the “fundamental security challenge” of the 21st century: the possibility that terrorists or rogue states will acquire and use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.
“We will need to agree to do more, far more, to control weapons of mass destruction,” Clark stressed Dec. 15 in a speech given at The Hague. “We must remove nuclear material entirely from the world’s most vulnerable sites, destroy remaining stocks of chemical weapons, and upgrade public health systems worldwide to deal with the threat of biological weapons.”

The former Rhodes scholar also stressed that the United States and its allies “must review and strengthen treaties and norms and recommit ourselves to enforce the norms currently in place.” In terms of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, he said, this means the United States needs to remedy a loophole that allows states to comply with the treaty but then break out of it to build a nuclear weapon once they have acquired sufficient fissile material. “Together we must be prepared to impose sanctions on countries that seek nuclear weapons under the cover of this treaty regime,” Clark asserted.

Clark also advocates giving full support to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Biological Weapons Convention “instead of opting out or spurning” those regimes.

Like the other Democratic candidates, Clark is fully supportive of efforts to reduce Russia’s Cold War arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and pledges to accelerate and expand these programs if elected.

Clark supports negotiations with North Korea that would include providing the country with strong incentives to verifiably end its nuclear weapons program. “He’s not afraid of negotiating directly with the North Koreans,” James Rubin, the former State Department spokesperson now serving as Clark’s senior foreign policy adviser, told Arms Control Today.

Clark opposes plans to research and possibly develop and test a new generation of nuclear weapons. Instead, he would make sure that the Stockpile Stewardship Program—the Department of Energy’s program to maintain the existing nuclear arsenal without testing—is sufficiently funded. According to Rubin, Clark would want to spend “substantial resources to develop defenses against a possible missile attack.” But Rubin says Clark is concerned that the Bush administration’s plan “is oriented toward the earliest possible deployment, rather than the best possible system.”