Tag Archives: Ballistic Missile Defense

The Obama doctrine

Undermine our allies.  Embolden our enemies.  Diminish our country. 

Those nine words define the Obama Doctrine with respect to American security policy.  All three elements were much in evidence in the President’s benighted decision last week to cancel the "Third Site" for intercontinental-range missile defenses in Eastern Europe.  They will be on display as well during this week’s several conclaves with foreign leaders. 

The cumulative effect is predictable: A world in which the United States has fewer friends, more enemies and less options for assuring its security.

Let’s start with the decision to abandon defense of our allies and the American people with interceptors based in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic.  President Obama and his minions at the Defense Department tried to confuse the issue by claiming that revised intelligence assessments of the Iranian threat justified such a step. 

Rubbish.  Anyone following Iran’s ballistic missile developments knows that the mullahs are determined to acquire missiles of sufficient range to be able to attack not only Israel and other targets in the Middle East but our allies in Europe and Americans here at home.  This is evident in the strides Tehran has recently made with solid-fuel rockets and with space-launch vehicles. 

If, against all odds, the latest intelligence estimates are right that it will take Iran a bit longer to get such long-range missiles, it would mean that we just might be able to have defenses against them in place before they are needed.  That would have meant a powerful boost to the confidence and solidarity of the NATO alliance, whose Eastern European members could especially use it in the face of ever-more aggressive Russian behavior.

Instead, the Obama administration has: rewarded that Russian behavior; undermined NATO’s confidence and solidarity; and debased American credibility and reliability.  It has also left the United States naked to the sorts of intercontinental-range threats Iranian missiles will constitute in due course.

This will be the case no matter how many additional defenses the Pentagon puts in place at sea or ashore (welcome as those are) against the shorter-range missiles Iran is now deploying.  The difference is, as Mark Twain once put it, like that between lightning and a lightning bug:  Team Obama has unmistakably capitulated at the geo-strategic level and no amount of obfuscations about revised intelligence or "stronger, smarter and swifter" missile defense architectures will conceal that fact.

 Unfortunately, in the process of capitulating, Mr. Obama has not only emboldened the Russians.  To be sure, they will see no reason now to abandon their Iranian allies.  Read: no help to us on new, more effective sanctions against Iran; no cessation of nuclear cooperation with Tehran; completed delivery of advanced S-300 anti-aircraft systems to protect Iran’s nuclear sites from Israeli or (hard as this is to imagine at the moment) our attacks, etc.  The Kremlin will also drive an even harder bargain in the strategic arms negotiations now underway, pressing an all-too-willing American president to denuclearize the U.S. arsenal in ways that may suit Russia’s agenda but disserve our security interests.

 The President has also further emboldened the Iranian mullahs.  They now know that – no matter what they do – they will be able to realize their nuclear weapons ambitions.  They will even be allowed to hold Europe and America at risk.  They need simply run out the clock for a few more months, which can be accomplished with or without further conversations demeaning their feckless Western interlocutors. 

Make no mistake:  With such steps, Mr. Obama is systematically diminishing the United States, effecting its transformation from what was once called "the world’s only superpower" to a nation subordinated to the demands of international consensus, organizations, "peer competitors" and even rogue states.

We can expect to see this doctrine in full flower during the President’s forays this week into Middle East peace-making, nuclear disarmament and reordering the world economic system.  

For example, during President Obama’s scrum with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the so-called "president" of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, he will not only try to coerce our ally to make political and territorial concessions to Palestinians who hate Israelis and us.  There will also likely be a push for a new round of "peace" negotiations in Moscow jointly sponsored by the U.S. and Russia.  No good can come of legitimating, let alone supporting, the machinations of Putin’s Kremlin in the Mideast.

Then, at the UN, Mr. Obama will personally preside over a Security Council session at which he will, evidently, affirm his commitment to a "world without nuclear weapons" – without evident regard for the fact that the only nation he can possibly denuclearize is ours.  Suffice it to say that the exercise will be one big pander to transnationalism and enhancing the preeminence of the United Nations, and America’s submission to its superior moral legitimacy and authority.

Finally, the economic version of the Obama Doctrine will play out in Pittsburgh at the so-called "Group of 20" summit.  There, efforts to affirm and consolidate sovereignty-sapping global financial regulatory schemes will be accompanied by attempts to formalize a new "multi-polar" world.  Bribes will be offered to emerging powers like China, India and Brazil in the form of promises of development assistance, technology transfers and institutionalized power if only they accede to "climate change" arrangements that will savage U.S. and Western economies.

Saul Alinsky would be proud.

         

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated Secure Freedom Radio.

            

No more surprises

Thursday, September 17th 2009 was a busy news day. 

Capitol Hill in Washington continued to be engrossed in the healthcare debate and the uproar over ACORN. But those weren’t the most significant news stories of the day, even if they did garner most of the attention of the media. There were two other news stories which are likely to have much more far-reaching implications for America and the Free World.

First, the Obama administration announced that it was canceling plans to build missile defense installations and deploy interceptor missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Obama team came prepared with a nice spin on the explanation for this terribly myopic decision. Defense secretary Gates trotted out the Obama party line that they were not in fact abandoning missile defense at all, but were merely switching to a much "better’ plan to deploy sea-based missile defense instead.

Gates said that this decision came as a result of intelligence that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ballistic missile program had not developed as fast as previously thought and that this meant that the chief threat from Iran was not its planned Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) but rather its short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. (We’ll get into the flaws in Gates’ assertion a little later.)

No doubt feeling mighty proud of themselves, Team Obama went back to the much more important task of trying to sell Obamacare to the American people. Unfortunately for the Obamanistas, they hadn’t bothered to coordinate their spin on missile defense with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Just a few hours after Team Obama had declared victory over the Poles and Czechs on missile defense, the Associated Press released a breaking story about a secret IAEA statement that seemed to contradict most of what that agency has been putting out about Iran for the past several years.

The AP reported that the nuclear experts at the IAEA were in agreement that Iran already possesses the capability to build a nuclear bomb and is "on its way" to developing a missile system capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. Specifically, the report declared that Iran was likely to "overcome problems" on developing a delivery system.

There have been times in the past when US intelligence estimates were proved wrong, but Secretary Gates had barely climbed down from the podium when his homily about the Iranian threat proved to be, well, hogwash. Congratulations Secretary Gates. You’ve set a new record.

Some members of the media professed shock and surprise at the IAEA announcement. They shouldn’t have been surprised at all. Why?

With regard to Iran’s nuclear program, sober and serious Americans have known for some time that Iran has been hell-bent-for-leather to build a nuclear bomb.

Consider this statement in USA Today from January 4, 1994, by Clinton administration Undersecretary of State Lynn Davis: "Iran’s actions leave little doubt that Tehran is intent upon developing a nuclear weapons capability. They are inconsistent with any rational civil nuclear program."

That’s almost 16 years ago. What did the Clinton administration do to attempt to stop Iran’s nuclear program? Nothing.

But before Republicans start pointing fingers, they might want to remind themselves that during 8 years of the Bush administration, no effective action was taken to stop Iran either: not even any meaningfully enforced economic sanctions.

So, for 16 years, we have known and for 16 years we have pulled the blanket over our heads and hoped that the problem would just go away. No one should be surprised that Iran is on the cusp of having a nuclear weapon. We watched carefully for 16 years and let it happen. Of course, as they say, hindsight is 20/20 and we have to deal with today.

And today, Barack Obama has selected policies that will reduce and inhibit our ability to defend ourselves and our allies against the Iranian nuclear and missile threat. Despite the shameless spin that Secretary of Defense Gates tried to put on the announcement to abandon missile defense in Europe, the Obama administration has in fact abandoned a key component in our ability to defend ourselves and it has done so based on what is likely flawed intelligence.

There are 3 basic and tragic flaws in Gates’ story:

1. Our ability to gauge and estimate the capabilities of rogue nations like Iran is notoriously poor. If you just look back at the history of CIA estimates of Iran’s nuclear program, you discover that they have been all over the map, bobbing back and forth like a yo-yo. At one point, for a brief period, the CIA even thought that Iran already had a nuclear bomb. More recently, they claimed that Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons program years ago. That assertion has since been discredited-in fact it was actually contradicted in the footnotes of the very same report in which the assertion was made.

2. Gates says that his plan for missile defense is better than the plan to deploy interceptors in eastern Europe. The basic problem with this argument is that the two plans are not mutually exclusive to begin with-that is, not if you are truly serious about defending America, our allies and our forces overseas against ballistic missile attack. That’s why both systems were developed in the first place. Sea-based missile defense is vital to our overall ability to defend ourselves, but it is not a substitute for the land-based system which is designed to provide defense against longer range ballistic missiles. By abandoning the sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, Obama is leaving a hole in our defense.

To use a football analogy, we will have linemen and linebackers, but we will have no defensive backs under the Obama scheme and if the Iranians decide to throw the Bomb on us, we’ll have nothing back there to cover it.

Obama’s decision is multi-generational. He is sacrificing the safety and security of your children and grandchildren by abandoning a system/plan that has been in the works for several years. When that plan is shut down, it may not be possible for a more responsible and less myopic president to resurrect it. First of all, the Poles were so angry about the decision (On the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland no less; someone buy the Keystone cops in the White House an almanac!) that when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton placed a call to that nation’s leader, he refused to take the call. Second, all of the scientists and engineers who worked on the European land-based missile defense project will now scatter to the winds, some taking early retirement, some getting assigned to other projects and others perhaps going into different industries altogether.

3. On the morning of September 17, we were expected to believe that Iran’s ballistic missile program was not a significant threat. But by the afternoon, the IAEA had rained all over the Krewe of Obama-Gates parade and warned the world that Iran was likely to overcome the challenges of putting a nuclear warhead on top of a ballistic missile delivery vehicle. Again, this should not have come as a surprise because the Obama-Gates story was never believable anyway. We know this because there were two aspects of Iran’s missile program which we knew about which already indicated significant progress:

  •  Iran had already mastered solid-fuel technology. This is important because it enables them to launch missiles with little in the way of obvious preparation. In contrast, Iran’s old liquid-fueled rockets had to be erected on their launchers for at least 30 minutes to be fueled just prior to launching. This creates a serious challenge for missile defense because there is no longer any warning time ahead of launch.
  • Iran had already put a satellite into orbit. The multi-stage technology involved in this feat is applicable to intercontinental ballistic missiles.

So, even if Iran’s ballistic missile program has not progressed as rapidly as previously predicted, it is still on an upward trajectory (pun intended) and our track record of predicting the outcome of such things has been dirt poor.

At this point, no one should ever be surprised again about the continued progress of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Least surprised of all should be Obama and Gates, because the IAEA just threw egg all over their faces.

 

Christopher Holton is a Vice President at the Center for Security Policy.

‘Reset’ translates as ‘capitulation’

Last March, during a visit to Moscow, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was made to look foolish when she presented her host, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, with a box festooned with a button marked "Reset" in English.  The idea was to have a photo-op designed to symbolize President Obama’s ambition to put U.S. relations with the Kremlin on a new, more positive footing after the bilateral strains of the George W. Bush years.

Unfortunately for the Secretary, her crack State Department team mistranslated the term and the word on the box in Russian meant "overcharge" not "reset."  Based on the President’s decision announced to scrap the planned deployment of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, however, we now know, that Team Obama’s version of resetting would best be translated as "capitulation."

Mr. Obama came to office evincing the reflexive hostility of many partisan Democrats to the idea of anti-missile protection for the United States.  This bizarre, not to say dangerous, attitude has its roots in the theology of the Cold War during which the Left embraced arms control in general and, above all, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.  In practice, that accord precluded the United States from deploying any missile defense of its territory – a state of grace Democratic legislators and operatives were horrified to see President Bush abandon in December 2001 with the formal abrogation of the ABM Treaty and the subsequent installation of interceptors and radars at two sites, one in Alaska and the other in California.

In addition, to enhance the protection of American territory and to provide at least a modest defense of Europe against the growing threat of ballistic missile attack, Mr. Bush proposed a so-called "Third Site" in Eastern Europe.  The Polish and Czech governments saw this collaborative effort as a means not only of contributing to their own security and that of their NATO allies (who voted twice unanimously for the Third Site) against Iranian missiles.  These key post-Cold War allies also saw it as a tangible expression of the U.S. commitment to their security in the face of assiduous Russian efforts to reassert a sphere of influence that would turn the clock back, reestablishing in some form their unhappy status under the Kremlin’s thumb.

It was precisely in the interests of advancing that ambition that the Russians assiduously opposed the deployment of the Third Site.  They absurdly claimed the ten interceptors in Poland would threaten the deterrent power of the many hundreds of nuclear warheads they could rain down on Europe.  Vladimir Putin even threatened thermonuclear attacks on the Poles and Czechs if they did not abandon the NATO-agreed plan.

Despite efforts by the then-Bush administration Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his Foggy Bottom counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, to try to find some programmatic accommodation with the Russians, in the end President Bush stood firm.  And fierce opposition in certain quarters domestically did not preclude the Polish and Czech governments from doing the same.

Today, however, President Obama pulled the plug on the Bush Third Site.  Although he professed an abiding commitment to the security of Poland and the Czech Republic and pledged "a new missile defense architecture in Europe will provide stronger, smarter, and swifter defenses of American forces and America’s allies," no one should be under any illusion: With his capitulation to Russia, Barack Obama has just affirmed what I call the Obama Doctrine:  Undermining our friends, emboldening our enemies and diminishing our country.

The claim made by the President and Bob Gates, still serving as the Pentagon chief, that revisions in the U.S. intelligence assessments justifies cancelling the Third Site is preposterous.  Even if it were true that Iran’s longer-range missiles are coming along more slowly than had previously been anticipated (which seems unlikely, given the intelligence community’s past, politicized and erroneous judgments about Iranian weapons programs), no one should assume that such missiles will not be deployed and threaten our allies and us in due course.  The idea that we would eliminate now our capability to deal with them down the road is transparently a political decision, not a national security-minded one. 

The true nature of that political decision is also clear:  Team Obama believes that by cancelling missile defenses we absolutely will need in the future and leaving our allies in the lurch, the United States will secure assistance from the Russians in minimizing the Iranian threat.  There is, sadly, no reason to believe that such help will be forthcoming. 

To the contrary, all the evidence suggests otherwise:  Vladimir Putin is enabling that Iranian threat, with nuclear technology, anti-aircraft defenses and political protection against any effective international sanctions on Tehran.  Worse yet, he has now been rewarded for such behavior by an act of naked appeasement with respect to the Third Site.

These strategically tectonic shifts will have far-reaching, if not entirely predictable, consequences.  The U.S. deployment of additional sea-based defenses and ultimately the placing more ashore somewhere may help mitigate some of the near-term missile threats Iran is now posing to our allies and forces in the Mideast. But it is a safe bet that they will not begin to offset the damage that the Obama administration has done to our own security and to our relations with key allies worldwide by resetting" relations with Russia in a manner that amounts to rank capitulation.

 

Originally published in Newsmax

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and host of the nationally syndicated talk show, Secure Freedom Radio.

On Eve of Obama’s Moscow Summit, Experts Warn of Growing Risks to U.S. Nuclear Deterrent

(Washington, D.C.):  As President Obama prepares to depart for Moscow next week, few Americans have any idea that his administration is in the process of negotiating a follow-on to the START treaty framework that appears likely to leave the United States and its allies substantially less secure.

Fortunately, an alarm about this prospect was published in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal by the U.S. Senate’s top authority on the subject, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and veteran national security practitioner, Richard Perle.  And on Wednesday, 1 July, that warning will be strongly seconded and amplified by a team of experts on nuclear weapons policy and programs.

Toward this end, members of the New Deterrent Working Group – an informal team with hundreds of man-years of experience with America’s nuclear forces, doctrine, operations and arms control that is sponsored by the Center for Security Policy – have prepared for Members of Congress, the executive branch, the press and the public at large a comprehensive Briefing Book entitled, U.S. Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Getting It Right.  This publication, with a foreword by former Clinton CIA Director R. James Woolsey, will be released at the National Press Club at 3:00 p.m. on 1 July 2009.

Getting it Right draws on a wealth of official documents, congressional testimony and other materials to demonstrate the abiding requirement in the 21st Century for an American nuclear deterrent that is reliable, credible, and effective – especially so in the face of present dangers and emerging threats to the United States and its allies.  The Briefing Book provides, among other information: (1) assessments of the nuclear policies of America’s allies and peer competitors, as well as rogue nations that have acquired, or are on the verge of acquiring, a nuclear weapons capability; (2) a review of the declining quality and reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the infrastructure that supports it; and (3) a series of recommendations to ensure that both the quality and quantity of U.S. nuclear weapons remain at levels necessary to protect  American national security and international stability.

In particular, the Briefing Book draws on recent and authoritative declarations made by those at the highest levels of the U.S. government with responsibility for assuring the viability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.  These include: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, U.S. Strategic Command Commander General Kevin P. Chilton, National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator James P. D’Agostino as well as the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Michael R. Anastasio.  Getting it Right also excerpts and illuminates the most important findings and recommendations of such entities as the Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.

U.S. Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Getting it Right  (PDF) (Web)

Members of the New Deterrent Working Group who co-authored the Briefing Book include:

  • Hon. Henry F. Cooper, Former Director of the Defense Strategic Initiative (SDI); Former U.S. Representative to the Defense and Space Talks;
  • Hon. Paula DeSutter, Former Assistant Secretary of State – Bureau of Verification, Compliance and Implementation;
  • Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy (Acting);
  • Hon. Peter Huessy, Former Assistant Secretary of the Interior.
  • Hon. Sven F. Kraemer, Former Director of Arms Control, National Security Council, 1981-1987;
  • Admiral James “Ace” Lyons, Jr., U.S. Navy (Ret.), Former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet;
  • Vice Admiral Robert Monroe, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Former Director, Defense Nuclear Agency; Former Director of Navy Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E);
  • Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University; President, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis; and
  • Hon. Troy Wade, Former Director, Defense Programs, Department of Energy

Messrs. Huessy, Lyons, Monroe, and Gaffney will participate in a panel discussion of the highlights of Getting it Right and take questions from the press about the ominous implications of the upcoming Obama summit in Moscow and his administration’s national security and arms control agenda more generally.

In announcing Wednesday’s event, New Deterrent Working Group member Frank Gaffney said:

“President Obama – taking cues from the dangerously misguided “Global Zero” campaign he has embraced – is by all indications going to Moscow with the intent of drastically reducing the number of deployed U.S. nuclear weapons and making related concessions.  To date, he appears to have failed to consider the potentially dire ramifications of such actions, let alone to have taken any steps to redress the woeful state of America’s nuclear arsenal or supporting infrastructure.

“At a time when so many actual or potential adversaries are improving their existing nuclear capabilities or acquiring such capabilities, the United States cannot afford to labor under the illusion that unilateral American disarmament and a lack of U.S. nuclear modernization will make the world safer, when it is clear that the opposite is true.”

 

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Missile defense misjudgment

What on earth are they thinking?  The Obama administration and its Democratic allies on Capitol Hill are significantly reducing America’s missile defense programs at the very moment when the need for such systems is becoming ever more palpable.  It is hard to believe – especially in the wake of the President’s much-ridiculed decision to close Guantanamo Bay without a better plan for safely incarcerating its dangerous detainees – that either the Chief Executive or legislators really want to impale themselves on another national security decision that defies common sense. 

The issue will be joined this week when the House of Representatives debates a GOP-sponsored amendment to the defense authorization bill that would restore funding for anti-missile systems cut or terminated by Team Obama and the majority on the House Armed Services Committee.  The backdrop will be reported preparations by North Korea to launch a ballistic missile in the direction of Hawaii, possibly on the Fourth of July.

In the face of this emerging threat to one of America’s fifty states, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has, to his credit, announced that he is moving missile defenses into place to protect our countrymen in Hawaii.  Yet, at the same time, he and President Obama are insisting that we can safely do without fourteen more long-range missile interceptors, a second airborne laser and various other enhancements to our relatively rudimentary anti-missile deployments.

Then, there is the Iranian missile threat. As the Obama administration refuses to do anything to help the people of Iran free themselves from the repression, corruption and malfeasance of the mullahocracy that has for thirty years misruled them and threatened us, we face the prospect of much more of the same.  Should Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his puppet master, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, survive the present crisis, it is absolutely predictable that the range and lethality of the Tehran regime’s ballistic missiles will only grow.

Worse yet, all other things being equal, these missiles will, in due course, be nuclear-armed – no matter how much President Obama tries to appease the mullahs.  As the brilliant syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer noted last week, "The only hope for a resolution of the nuclear question is regime change."

In the face of this threat, what are the Obama administration and the Democrats on Capitol Hill doing?  They are abandoning the Poles and Czechs who agreed – with the backing, not once but twice, of all of NATO – to deploy anti-missile systems on their territory so as to protect Europe and us from Iranian missiles.  The so-called "Third Site" European-based missile defense will certainly not be built any time soon, if at all.

The anti-anti-missile crowd is, moreover, trying to sweet-talk the Kremlin into dropping its hysterical objections to limited missile defenses in Europe by making them dependent on Russian systems.  This idea is transparently ludicrous.  Moscow views the Islamic Republic of Iran as an important client, not a threat.  It has helped build the Iranians a nuclear power plant at Bushehr which will, inevitably, contribute to Tehran’s weapons program, if only through technology transfers, training and political cover.

The Kremlin has also demonstrated where its loyalties lie by contracting over two years ago to provide state-of-the-art S-300 anti-aircraft systems to Iran.  If and when these lethal defenses are delivered, they will be used to protect the mullahs’ nuclear weapons facilities from attack by American and/or Israeli aircraft.

Could we safely rely on the same folks who are helping Iran’s loathsome regime amass the destructive capability it may well use against Israel, Europe or the United States to help us defend against that very threat?  Not bloody likely.

Finally, there is the problem that even some Democrats on Capitol Hill – notably, Senator Joe Lieberman (technically an Independent who caucuses with Democrats) and Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairmen respectively of the Senate and House Homeland Security Committees – recognize could eventuate at any time: an attack involving relatively short-range, ship-borne ballistic missiles used to launch a strategic electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against this country.

In his new, New York Times best-selling novel entitled One Second After, historian and author Bill Forstchen describes the devastating effect such a strike could have on America.  In the absence of comprehensive missile defenses and/or "hardening" of our electrical grid, a missile-borne nuclear payload detonated high in space over the United States would unleash an intense burst of energy with what are predicted to be "catastrophic" results.  According to a congressional commission charged with evaluating the EMP threat, there would be extensive damage to the electricity and other infrastructures on which our 21st Century society critically depends.  As a result, the commission’s chairman, Dr. William Graham, says "nine-out-of-ten Americans would be dead within a year" from starvation, disease or exposure.

Do Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill really want to be seen as the party that – out of an ideological opposition to national anti-missile systems that is a throwback to utterly irrelevant Cold War security paradigms – fails to provide for the common defense?  In the face of present and growing missile threats, it is imperative that sensible members of the Democratic caucus do what they have done in droves on Gitmo: Ignore their leadership and cross the aisle, this time to join Republicans in defending America, before it’s too late.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy.  His support for missile defense dates to his service in the Reagan Pentagon where he was responsible for the policy aspects of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

 

Obama’s shrinking deterrent

North Korea celebrated Memorial Day with an underground test of a nuclear weapon reportedly the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.  When combined with a series of missile launches that day and subsequently, the regime in Pyongyang has sent an unmistakable signal: The Hermit Kingdom has nothing but contempt for the so-called "international community" and the empty rhetoric and diplomatic posturing that usually precedes new rewards for the North’s bad behavior.

The seismic waves precipitated by the latest detonation seem likely to rattle more than the windows and members of the UN Security Council.  Even as that body huffs and puffs about Kim Jong-il’s belligerence, Japan and South Korea are coming to grips with an unhappy reality:  They are increasingly on their own in contending with a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Until now, both countries have nestled under the U.S. nuclear umbrella.  This posture has been made possible by what is known in the national security community as "extended deterrence."  Thanks to the credibility of U.S. security guarantees backed by America’s massive arsenal, both countries have been able safely to forego the option their respective nuclear power programs long afforded them, namely becoming nuclear weapon states in their own right.

A blue-ribbon, bipartisan panel recently warned the Obama administration that extended deterrence cannot be taken for granted.  In its final report, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States unanimously concluded that: "Our military capabilities, both nuclear and conventional, underwrite U.S. security guarantees to our allies, without which many of them would feel enormous pressures to create their own nuclear arsenals….The U.S. deterrent must be both visible and credible, not only to our possible adversaries, but to our allies as well."

Unfortunately, the Obama administration is moving in exactly the opposite direction.  Far from taking the myriad steps needed to assure both the visibility and credibility of the U.S. deterrent, Mr. Obama has embraced the idea of eliminating that arsenal as part of a bid for "a nuclear-free world."

The practical effect of such a policy direction is to eschew the steps called for by the Strategic Posture Commission and, indeed, the recommendations of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the commander of Strategic Command, General Kevin Chilton and the director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, Thomas D’Agostino.  Each has recognized the need for modernization of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, enhanced "stewardship" of the obsolescent weapons that will likely continue to comprise the bulk of the arsenal for years to come and sustained investment in the infrastructure – both human and industrial – needed to perform such tasks.

The Obama administration is, nonetheless, seeking no funds for replacing existing weapons with designs that include modern safety features, let alone ones that are more suited to the deterrent missions of today – against states like North Korea and Iran, rather than the hardened silos of the Soviet Union.  It is allowing the steady atrophying of the work force and facilities of the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons complex.

Arguably worst of all, Team Obama is pursuing an arms control agenda that risks making matters substantially worse.  Using the pretext of the years’ end expiration of the U.S.-Soviet START Treaty, the President has dispatched an inveterate denuclearizer, Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, to negotiate in haste a new bilateral agreement with the Russians.  By all accounts, she is seeking a deal that will: reduce by perhaps as much as a third what is left of our arsenal (leaving as few as 1500 nuclear weapons); preserve the Kremlin’s unilateral and vast advantage in modern tactical and theater nuclear weapons; and limit U.S. ballistic missile defenses.

The administration is equally fixated on another non-solution to today’s threats: ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) rejected by a majority of the U.S. Senate a decade ago.  That accord would permanently preclude this country from assuring the viability of its arsenal through the one means absolutely proven to be effective – underground nuclear testing. Meanwhile, non-party North Korea and its partner in nuclear crime, Iran (which has signed but not ratified the treaty), would not be hindered from developing their arsenals. And Republican members of the Strategic Posture Commission, who all opposed CTBT ratification, believe the Russians are continuing to do valuable underground testing, as well.

The Obama agenda will not make the United States safer.  If anything, it will increase international perceptions of an America that is ever less willing to provide for its own security.  States like Russia and China that are actual or prospective "peer competitors" are building up their respective nuclear arsenals.  They and even smaller powers like North Korea and Iran increasingly feel they can assert themselves with impunity.

In such a strategic environment, America’s allies will go their own way.  Some may seek a more independent stance or try to strike a separate peace with emerging powers like China.  Others may exercise their option to "go nuclear," contributing to regional arms build-ups and proliferation.

If President Obama wishes to avoid such outcomes, he would be well-advised to heed the advice of the Strategic Posture Commission: "The conditions that might make the elimination of nuclear weapons possible are not present today and establishing such conditions would require a fundamental transformation of the world political order."  Until then, we better do all that is needed to maintain a safe, reliable, effective and, yes, extended deterrent.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.

 

Get real on nuclear deterrence

President Obama proposes to deal with the proliferating threat of nuclear weapons and associated ballistic missiles by savaging the nuclear deterrent force and missile defenses that keep us safe.  If actually implemented, his proposals will contribute to a more dangerous planet and a less secure America.

Mr. Obama’s ideas are a throwback to a world that no longer exists – one in which there were two nuclear superpowers who believed that bilateral agreements on offensive forces and missile defenses were necessary to manage their relations and prevent Armageddon.  Today, Russia is no superpower, although it is keen to parlay the vestiges of its once-vast nuclear arsenal into restored international prestige and power.  The real danger is emerging from actual or incipient nuclear-armed rogue states like North Korea and Iran, an unstable Pakistan and a militaristic China.

Far from discouraging proliferation, gutting our strategic forces in a new treaty with the Kremlin will increase that phenomenon.  Our severe reductions will only embolden China and other prospective foes to build-up.  Meanwhile, allies who have heretofore relied on our nuclear “umbrella” will lose confidence in us and go nuclear themselves.

Particularly insidious is President Obama’s call for the Senate to ratify the discredited, unverifiable and previously rejected Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The practical effect would be lopsidedly against American interests:  Permanently untested, the U.S. arsenal will inevitably become obsolete, unsafe and unsustainable. But, thanks to the likes of Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan and his ‘Nukes-r-Us’ operation, those with cash can acquire crude, but functional – and previously tested – atomic weapons.  Others can confidently get away with testing covertly.

Cold War-era “old think” that would impose new limitations on U.S. and Russian anti-ballistic missile defenses is similarly not just ill-advised.  It is reckless at a time when countries like North Korea and Iran are acquiring missiles capable of delivering devastating electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) or other nuclear attacks against this country.

America needs an informed and rigorous national debate before adopting defense budget cuts and arms control initiatives that reflect nostalgia for a world now gone –but that risk blowing up the one we now inhabit.

 

Published in USA Today

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy in Washington.  He was responsible for nuclear weapons policy in the Reagan Defense Department.

 

Obama’s unreal nuclear agenda

When it comes to security policy, it seems everyone wants to be a "realist" these days. If that term has any meaning at all, though, Barack Obama’s nuclear weapons and missile defense policies certainly would not qualify.

To the contrary, these examples of what some call "progressive realism" constitute a near-parody of the ideologically driven disarmament agenda of the radical left.  If the implications were not so serious, the discrepancy between Mr. Obama’s plans and real world conditions would be hilarious.

Take, for example, Mr. Obama’s announced intention to rid the planet of nuclear weapons.  The truth is that, no matter how many world leaders, elder statesmen and other advocates champion this goal, it is not going to happen.  The associated technology is too widely available, the strategic value of nuclear weapons too great and the possibilities of concealment in closed societies too immutable for all nations actually to forego the temptation to retain covert arsenals.

There is only one country on earth that Team Obama can absolutely, positively denuclearize: Ours.  To be sure, the President professes his realism by recognizing that, even as he declares a goal of no nukes, he emphasizes it is unlikely to be achieved any time soon.  Still, the cumulative effect of his nuclear agenda would be to advance inexorably the denuclearization of the United States.

This is how Mr. Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, described our nuclear posture before last Fall’s election:  "Currently, the United States is the only declared nuclear power that is neither modernizing its nuclear arsenal nor has the capability to produce a new nuclear warhead." By contrast, he noted, "China and Russia have embarked on an ambitious path to design and field new weapons."  Even "the United Kingdom and France have programs to maintain their deterrent capabilities."  In fact, every other actual nuclear power and wannabe is building up as we are going out of the business.

President Obama not only refuses to modernize our deterrent and establish the capability to produce new warheads.  His administration is doing nothing to slow, let alone reverse, the steady decline of the infrastructure – both human and physical – required to maintain the nuclear weapons upon which we currently rely.

In addition, Mr. Obama insists that the United States must become a party to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty – an accord a majority of the U.S. Senate rejected ten years ago on the grounds that it was unverifiable and inconsistent with the nation’s need to maintain a safe, reliable and therefore credible nuclear deterrent.  The effect of such a reversal would be permanently to preclude underground tests of the American arsenal, condemning it to assured obsolescence and evaporating credibility.

Far from reducing the global proliferation of nuclear weaponry, the decline of confidence in America’s deterrent is likely to exacerbate that trend.  As the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States put it in an interim report last December: "Our non-proliferation strategy will continue to depend upon U.S. extended deterrence strategy as one of its pillars. Our military capabilities, both nuclear and conventional, underwrite U.S. security guarantees to our allies, without which many of them would feel enormous pressures to create their own nuclear arsenals….The U.S. deterrent must be both visible and credible, not only to our possible adversaries, but to our allies as well." (Emphasis in the original.)

Ironically, these acts of U.S. self-restraint in the interest of setting an "example" for the rest of the world are quintessential progressive realism – a practice that reflexively believes America must stop doing things in its self-defense that, in light of world conditions and hard experience, are perfectly sensible, all in the hope that the rest of the world will behave in ways that history suggests are not in the cards.

An even more dramatic example of this vaulting unrealism is the Obama administration’s response to the growing threat of ballistic missiles in the hands of actual and potential U.S. adversaries.  The Russians and Chinese are perfecting new generations of advanced missiles, including some designed to defeat defenses and destroy carrier battle groups.  Meanwhile, the Iranians and North Koreans are testing ever-longer-range "space-launch vehicles" and other ballistic missiles, apparently with a view to being able to execute strategic electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attacks against the United States.  (For a vivid insight into the horror such an attack would inflict on our society, see the best-selling new novel by Bill Forstchen, One Second After.)

Incredibly, Team Obama thinks the way to address this grave and growing danger is: to cut billions from our anti-missile defense programs – especially those designed to protect our homeland against EMP and other attacks; to forego deployment in Europe of missile defense radars and interceptors as NATO has twice agreed to do; and to resuscitate preposterously out-dated Cold War notions of U.S.-Russian "stability" by imposing new bilateral restrictions on defenses.  The only realistic prognosis from such a U.S. approach would be more threatening missiles around the world and fewer American capabilities to defeat them.

American security policy needs to be rooted in realism, alright.  But that should be in the sense of what might be called "conservative realism" – in accordance with which the United States needs to equip itself and behave in light of the way the world really is, not on the basis of some fantasy about how it might be if only we disarmed.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.

 

Missile defense funds need support

On July 4, 2006, while Americans celebrated the anniversary of our nation’s independence, North Korea test-fired a volley of seven ballistic missiles, some of which were capable of reaching the United States.

It wasn’t the first time North Korea had acted aggressively and irresponsibly. Fortunately, had any of these missiles been launched as an attack on the United States or our allies, for the first time, the president could defend against such an attack by using an operational missile defense system.

Since then, though, rogue states have continued to seek the means to attack us and the U.S. has continued to develop its system.

For example, unclassified reports have detailed North Korea’s preparations for the launch, possibly within days, of a new, even longer-range Taepo Dong 2 missile. This kind of missile is a threat, not just to some of America’s closest allies in the region (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) but to the U.S. itself.

Moreover, North Korea continues to be the world’s greatest proliferator of ballistic missile technology and nuclear weapons know-how. We should be very concerned about with whom North Korea does business.

And then there’s Iran.

On Feb. 2, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proudly announced that his country had successfully launched its first satellite. If it were any other country, such a launch would seem of little consequence. However, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, recently noted, space launch technologies “are compatible with an intercontinental ballistic missile-type capability.”

Add to that the latest news that Iran has enriched one-third more uranium than was previously understood — more than enough to build a nuclear bomb — and the potential threat is clear.

These examples should underscore the necessity for an effective, operational missile defense system. Yet the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are now seeking ways to halt the progress that’s been made in defending against these threats.

In the past two weeks, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee announced that he would “love” to cut missile defense funding. Newspaper headlines report that the Obama administration is planning to make significant cuts in the missile defense budget. These cuts could include funds that would be used to deploy our missile defense assets to Europe — which NATO has twice stated is necessary to deal with the threat from Iran.

That such a rollback of the system is being discussed is dangerous. That it is being discussed at the same time North Korea and Iran are carrying out aggressive, threatening activities is irresponsible and unacceptable.

When President Obama campaigned last year, he said that he supported missile defense systems that work. Our systems have shown through numerous tests that they work — that is not in doubt. So why cut the budget for continued missile defense deployment? It sounds like some old “research forever, deploy never” mantra of anti-missile defense ideologues.

President Barack Obama also campaigned on a platform of improving America’s image abroad. We stand ready to work with him to do that. So why pull the rug out from under our plans to deploy missile defense assets in Europe, thereby alienating two of our best allies — Poland and the Czech Republic — in the war against terrorists? Moreover, the U.S. should not leave itself defenseless because of a potential promise of cooperation from Russia, which it is unlikely to give and which past experience informs us will not be honored in any event. The European deployment is the only system that can protect both the U.S. and Europe against the common threat of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them.

We must take necessary steps now to protect against the gathering threats we know are coming. Rogue nations that seek to do us harm will not sit idle, so neither can we. Funding research and development of the nation’s missile defense program must continue.

Ballistic missile defense is the most moral and effective deterrent to the threat of ballistic missile attack. The American people deserve to be protected, and national security is too important to be politicized. Obama and congressional Democrats should work with Republicans to protect the American people and our allies against ballistic missile attack.

Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl is Senate Republican whip and Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor is House Republican whip.

 

Missile defense funds need support

On July 4, 2006, while Americans celebrated the anniversary of our nation’s independence, North Korea test-fired a volley of seven ballistic missiles, some of which were capable of reaching the United States.

It wasn’t the first time North Korea had acted aggressively and irresponsibly. Fortunately, had any of these missiles been launched as an attack on the United States or our allies, for the first time, the president could defend against such an attack by using an operational missile defense system.

Since then, though, rogue states have continued to seek the means to attack us and the U.S. has continued to develop its system.

For example, unclassified reports have detailed North Korea’s preparations for the launch, possibly within days, of a new, even longer-range Taepo Dong 2 missile. This kind of missile is a threat, not just to some of America’s closest allies in the region (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) but to the U.S. itself.

Moreover, North Korea continues to be the world’s greatest proliferator of ballistic missile technology and nuclear weapons know-how. We should be very concerned about with whom North Korea does business.

And then there’s Iran.

On Feb. 2, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proudly announced that his country had successfully launched its first satellite. If it were any other country, such a launch would seem of little consequence. However, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, recently noted, space launch technologies “are compatible with an intercontinental ballistic missile-type capability.”

Add to that the latest news that Iran has enriched one-third more uranium than was previously understood — more than enough to build a nuclear bomb — and the potential threat is clear.

These examples should underscore the necessity for an effective, operational missile defense system. Yet the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are now seeking ways to halt the progress that’s been made in defending against these threats.

In the past two weeks, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee announced that he would “love” to cut missile defense funding. Newspaper headlines report that the Obama administration is planning to make significant cuts in the missile defense budget. These cuts could include funds that would be used to deploy our missile defense assets to Europe — which NATO has twice stated is necessary to deal with the threat from Iran.

That such a rollback of the system is being discussed is dangerous. That it is being discussed at the same time North Korea and Iran are carrying out aggressive, threatening activities is irresponsible and unacceptable.

When President Obama campaigned last year, he said that he supported missile defense systems that work. Our systems have shown through numerous tests that they work — that is not in doubt. So why cut the budget for continued missile defense deployment? It sounds like some old “research forever, deploy never” mantra of anti-missile defense ideologues.

President Barack Obama also campaigned on a platform of improving America’s image abroad. We stand ready to work with him to do that. So why pull the rug out from under our plans to deploy missile defense assets in Europe, thereby alienating two of our best allies — Poland and the Czech Republic — in the war against terrorists? Moreover, the U.S. should not leave itself defenseless because of a potential promise of cooperation from Russia, which it is unlikely to give and which past experience informs us will not be honored in any event. The European deployment is the only system that can protect both the U.S. and Europe against the common threat of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them.

We must take necessary steps now to protect against the gathering threats we know are coming. Rogue nations that seek to do us harm will not sit idle, so neither can we. Funding research and development of the nation’s missile defense program must continue.

Ballistic missile defense is the most moral and effective deterrent to the threat of ballistic missile attack. The American people deserve to be protected, and national security is too important to be politicized. Obama and congressional Democrats should work with Republicans to protect the American people and our allies against ballistic missile attack.

Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl is Senate Republican whip and Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor is House Republican whip.