Tag Archives: Defense Budget & Expenditures

Deploy Missile Defenses Now

(Washington, D.C.): The General’s words were soothing but their implications were chilling. Supporters of Governor George W. Bush had been deeply impressed by his unwavering commitment during the campaign to deploy ballistic missile defenses “as soon as possible.” But Colin Powell’s response to a question on Saturday about how the new Administration would proceed sounded a lot more like “not any time soon.”

To be sure, the Secretary of State-designate did say that “a national missile defense is an essential part of our overall strategic force posture, which consists of offensive weapons, command and control systems, intelligence systems and a national missile defense.” He emphasized that it is necessary to devalue “the currency associated with strategic offensive weapons and the blackmail that is inherent in some regime having that kind of weapon and thinking they can hold us hostage.”

The Pause that Precludes?

But the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also declared that, “When a Secretary of Defense is named, that person will go into the Pentagon and make a full assessment of the state of technology — where are we, what can we accomplish — and structure a plan….” Then he added: “We have to spend time discussing it with our allies, discussing it with other nations in the world that possess strategic offensive weapons and do not yet understand our thinking in respect to national missile defense. These will be tough negotiations. I don’t expect them to be easy. But they will come to the understanding that we feel this is in the best interest of the American people.”

While it sounds reasonable for a new President to take some time to “review” his options and present his plans to America’s allies and potential adversaries, time is the enemy of a presidential initiative on missile defense. This is doubly true if — as Robert Kagan reports in an important op.ed. article in today’s Washington Post — the Bush team believes it may take “as long as a year” to do accomplish all this.

Especially worrisome to supporters of missile defense is the prospect that such a review and negotiations may be conducted by people who have, heretofore at least, evinced little enthusiasm for actually deploying a U.S. anti-missile system. For example, during his stint as President Reagan’s National Security Advisor and President George H.W. Bush’s JCS Chairman, Gen. Powell was notably tepid on the subject, at best; at worst, he viewed it as an unjustifiable drain on resources needed for other Pentagon priorities and a bargaining chip in negotiations with the Soviet Union.

The Scowcroft National Security Council on which Condeleeza Rice had the Soviet portfolio during Bush I was hostile to efforts to deploy missile defenses from 1989 to 1983. And Gen. Powell’s reported pick for Secretary of Defense, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, repeatedly voted as a Congressman to slash billions of dollars from the budget for the Strategic Defense Initiative. Of course, people change their minds and certainly the changed strategic circumstances over the past decade and strong presidential direction can make a huge difference in attitudes.

If the Bush-Cheney Administration fails to act swiftly on what was the campaign’s most explicit foreign and defense policy plank, however, it will only embolden opponents of missile defenses on Capitol Hill and overseas. As Bob Kagan sagely observes:

“Contrary to what many Bush officials may think, it will be harder, not easier, to gain support for missile defense if Bush waits until 2002. Bush politicos think missile defense is unappetizing this year. But guess what? They won’t find it any tastier next year. Meanwhile, once the world figures out that Bush is reluctant to press the issue at home, the aura of inevitability will vanish, and Bush officials…will have a harder time convincing the Europeans and Russians that they have to make a deal. Persistent international opposition will strengthen the hand of opponents in Congress.”

What Mr. Bush Should Do

Accordingly, if Mr. Bush is serious about implementing his pledge to defend America against missile attack, he must seize the initiative immediately. On Day One of his presidency, he should announce that in six-months’ time, the United States will begin the process of deploying anti-missile defenses for our forces and allies overseas and the American people here at home.

Toward that end, he should order the U.S. Navy and the Pentagon’s Ballistic Missile Defense Organization to take steps to modify one or more AEGIS fleet air defense ships so as to prepare them to serve as anti-ballistic missile platforms. Gov. Bush spoke favorably of this idea in the campaign and successive Pentagon analyses confirm its inherent feasibility, affordability and strategic utility.

In addition, this “AEGIS Option” enjoys bipartisan support. It has been explicitly endorsed by a number of prominent Democrats including former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and former Deputy Secretaries of Defense John White and John Deutch. A number of congressional Democrats have also publicly supported it, as have leading Republicans — including Senator John McCain.

It will, of course, take some time to complete this transformation. The anti-missile systems deployed initially will have limited, if any, capability against most fast-flying long-range ballistic missiles. They will, however, be effective against shorter-range missile threats to our troops and friends overseas with which we must deal immediately. What is more — if the President: personally directs the Pentagon to take this step; authorizes such funds as are needed to be provided for the work immediately at hand out of existing missile defense funds and prepares to secure additional funding from Congress on an emergency basis; and mandates that streamlined acquisition procedures be followed, this approach will permit an effective, limited national missile defense to be deployed as soon as technologically possible.

As it happens, that is not only what Candidate Bush pledged to do. It is precisely what the law of the land requires, pursuant to the Missile Defense Act of 1999 — a statute passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in the Senate and House and signed into law in August of last year by President Clinton.

The Bottom Line

Once President Bush gets the first stage of his missile defense initiative underway, there will be time to review other options that will further enhance its effectiveness.

Since he will be pursuing an approach that will provide anti-missile protection to America’s allies, he will be in a far stronger position to discuss with them our commitment to missile defense. And, by giving the Russians six-months’ advance notice of our deployment plans, he can either explicitly or simply de facto meet the requirements for withdrawal from the obsolete and legally defunct Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, that prohibited such defenses. Those six months can also be used to address Russian and others’ concerns, provided it is understood that the decision to proceed with deployment has been made.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, if not now, when will missile defenses be deployed? If not by George W. Bush, who promised to do that “at the earliest possible time,” by whom?

Commandant Jones Makes Case that a Strong U.S. Economy Depends Upon a Strong U.S. Military

(Washington, D.C.): Marine Corps Commandant James L. Jones recently took
the case for
increased defense spending to a constituency that has been largely AWOL to date in the debate
about the present and future readiness of the U.S. military: Corporate America. Gen. Jones —
who is reportedly under active consideration by the incoming Bush-Cheney Administration to
replace Gen. Hugh Shelton as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — challenged industry
representatives present at a conference convened on 30 November by the Center for Naval
Analyses in Virginia, saying: “It is time for corporate America to understand that they have benn
getting a free ride for fifty years.”

Gen. Jones, the recipient of the Center for Security Policy’s 1999 “Keeper of the Flame”
award,
is to be commended for this important effort to enlist those who benefit most from the United
States’ military strength — and who are in the best position to carry the case for restoring that
strength to the American people and their elected representatives.

MARINE COMMANDANT URGES CORPORATE SUPPORT
FOR HIGHER
MILITARY SPENDING

by Frank Wolfe

Defense Daily

December 1, 2000

Marine Commandant Gen. James Jones yesterday urged American
companies that have global
interests to make the case for higher military spending, arguing that the U.S. military has
guaranteed such companies global access.

“It is time for corporate America to understand they have been getting a free ride for 50
years,”
Jones told a Center for Naval Analyses conference in Arlington, Va. In the
same speech, Jones
said that the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) should be strategy, not resource,
driven, unlike the 1997 QDR. If the Pentagon outlines needed capabilities without regard to
budget considerations, the 2001 QDR could provide the impetus to boost defense spending.

“At the end of the day, if you want to be the most influential nation on earth, it will not
come for
one or two percent of our gross domestic product,” Jones said yesterday,
arguing that the next
administration should pursue a gradual increase in defense spending to “somewhere between
three and four and a half percent.”

After his speech, Jones expanded on his remarks on the military’s
guaranteeing of U.S. global
economic interests in a question and answer session with reporters.

“We’ve had this capability for so long I think it’s under appreciated.

I think CEOs of major corporations that are global in nature ought to articulate in any way
they
want, when they try to leverage their interests herein Washington, D.C., the importance of
forward engaged U.S. military presence to our economic prosperity,”
Jones said. “What is the
link between what the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard do for our economy?
To me, there is a direct link, but you never hear it articulated by the captains of industry.”

Such companies approach military leaders individually and say that military presence is
important, but those leaders are not part of the public discussion, Jones said.

“If we’re going to do what we have to do and get the investment I think we need, they have
to be
part of the dialogue that says this is important, that says, ‘My company does depend on having a
stable playing field in Europe or the (Persian) Gulf, Pacific Rim or South America. The only
people that guarantee that are the armed forces of the United States,'” Jones
said. “If that’s not
true, and I’m confident it is, and we think the world is just a great big marketplace and
everybody is going to welcome us with open arms all the time, then go ahead and take your
chances because sooner or later at the current level of investment, there are some things we’re
not going to be able to do and places we’re not going to be able to be, unless it’s a worst case
scenario.”

Senior Military Leaders Urge Rejection of Ill-Considered U.S.-Russian Launch Notification Accord

(Washington, D.C.): Nineteen distinguished retired U.S. military commanders today warned President Clinton that a U.S.-Russian agreement expected to be signed later this week in Brussels is inconsistent with his declared space policy — and with the Nation’s national security and economic interests.

In their Open Letter to the President, the seven four-star generals and admirals and their colleagues expressed strong support for the President’s official policy, which calls for “U.S. leadership in space.” Specifically, it states that:

Unimpeded access to and use of space is a vital national interest….We will deter threats to our interest in space, counter hostile efforts against U.S. access to and use of space and maintain the ability to counter space systems and services that could be used for hostile purposes against our military forces….We will maintain our technological superiority in space systems….

The signatories observe, however, that there are “serious shortfalls in our capabilities to implement such a space power strategy.” This is especially true with respect to limitations that effectively deny the Nation “unimpeded access” to space.

The senior military leaders note that:

Unfortunately, that objective appears to be at cross-purposes with the new agreement your Administration has negotiated with the Russian Federation. If anything, this “Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Missile Launch Notifications” seems likely to add to the existing impediments to more expeditious and efficient access to space by requiring prior notice to the Kremlin of all ballistic missile launches and virtually all space launches. Operational security and counter-intelligence considerations, as well as 21st Century military doctrines calling for routine and expeditious space launch capabilities, strongly argue against our assuming such obligations.

The letter was released this morning at a High-Level Roundtable Discussion on “Space Power: What are the Stakes, What Will it Take?” convened by the Center for Security Policy in the Hart Senate Office Building. Lead discussants included: Senator Robert Smith of New Hampshire, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee; former Secretary of Defense and Energy James Schlesinger; former Commander of U.S. Space Command General Charles Horner; Marty Faga, former Director of the National Reconnaissance Office; Dr. Larry Gershwin, National Intelligence Officer for Space; and Major General Brian Arnold USAF, the Air Force’s Director for Space and Nuclear Deterrence.

Rumsfeld II: The Secretary Strikes Back

(Washington, D.C.): In the Summer of 1998, the Clinton-Gore Administration was suddenly traumatized by a man named Donald Rumsfeld. For the preceding five years, its senior officials had been manfully arguing that the Nation faced no threat from ballistic missile attack. They even manipulated the available intelligence data and analyses to support the party line that such a danger would not materialize for at least fifteen years.

For five years, it worked, and the Administration was able to stave off successive efforts by congressional Republicans to deploy anti-missile defenses.

Then suddenly everything changed. A blue-ribbon commission, comprised of members appointed by both Republicans and Democrats and brilliantly led by former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, rendered its findings. The Rumsfeld Commission concluded that the evidence and more realistic assumptions made it likely that, in addition to existing threats to the American homeland from Russia and China, the United States would face the possibility of ballistic missile attack from Iran and North Korea within as little as five years of a decision by these rogue states to acquire long-range missiles. Since the U.S. could not be sure when such a decision was taken, the Commission warned that the Nation could have “little or no warning” that a threat was emerging from these quarters.

Within a month, the Rumsfeld Commission’s “second opinion” was confirmed. North Korea demonstrated that it had mastered the capability to design, produce and fly a three-stage ballistic missile. Thanks to this technology, Pyongyang — and anybody dictator Kim Jong-Il cared to share it with — could quickly have an intercontinental range missile capable of attacking the United States with weapons of mass destruction. The debate in this country changed profoundly; today, with the imminent installation of President-elect Bush, the Nation is at last poised to begin deploying defenses against such a threat.

The Nation Faces a Space Power Crisis

Now, the Clinton-Gore team appears to have learned its lesson about Don Rumsfeld. Earlier this year, Congress turned to the former Secretary of Defense once again to lead yet another high-level, bipartisan effort. This one is charged with sorting out the facts and recommending changes with regard to a national policy issue every bit as momentous as defending America against missile threats: This country’s urgent — and growing — need to be able to exercise space power.

Broadly defined, space power requires having assured access to and use of space — and the ability, if necessary, to deny such access and use to potential adversaries. The United States’ dependence upon outer space for both its national and economic security is immense. Prospective adversaries recognize this as a potentially decisive vulnerability; several are working hard at acquiring the means to impede, if not to deny altogether, America’s exploitation of space and/or to use space against us (for example, by acquiring near-real-time intelligence about U.S. force movements) in any future conflicts.

Unfortunately, the Clinton-Gore Administration has left the Nation ill-prepared to exercise space power. Before the Supreme Court took away the line-item veto, Mr. Clinton used it to try to terminate three Defense Department programs that would have afforded some limited capability to operate in and control outer space. Despite its laudable rhetorical policies concerning the need for American space power, the Administration has yet to provide the capabilities needed to implement such policies.

Nowhere is this more true than with respect to the necessary, if not sufficient, precondition to space power: reliable, ready and affordable access to space. The United States today is locked into space launch systems and their large and ponderous infrastructure that have had problems with reliability, are incapable of rapidly placing payloads in orbit and are staggeringly expensive to operate.

The Administration has made matters worse by encouraging the use of foreign launch services. It has, notably, transferred militarily relevant space technology to Communist China so that Beijing can offer access to space to American businesses and other users — effectively precluding the sort of indigenous U.S. launch industry upon which the country’s future economic competitiveness and national security will depend.

Prepare for Another Earthquake

Given the composition of the current Rumsfeld Commission — an impressive array of knowledgeable and thoughtful national security practitioners — and its chairman’s demonstrated leadership abilities, it seems highly likely that their findings about the need for space power will be roughly as momentous as the earlier Rumsfeld panel’s conclusions about the missile threat.

In particular, the current effort will surely conclude that the United States must have the means to get into space whenever the need arises. Done properly, this would mean having access to the exoatmosphere comparable to that afforded by military, or even commercial, aircraft to the endoatmosphere — that is, employing reusable spacecraft on a sortie-like basis. The result would be rapid turn-arounds and costs so low that not even the heavily subsidized expendable launch systems of socialist nations would be able to compete. The technology for such a revolutionary capability and the space power it would afford the United States could be rapidly brought to bear were there a will to do so.

The Bottom Line

Unfortunately, the Clinton-Gore Administration hopes this week to preempt the new Rumsfeld Commission. It intends to sign a bilateral agreement with the Russians that would oblige the United States to provide between thirty days and twenty-four hours advance notice of virtually any space launches. The practical effect of such an arrangement — which the Administration hopes shortly to multilateralize — would be to lock the Nation into the existing way of doing business, precluding sortie-like operations in space and, thereby, creating new bureaucratic impediments to giving such an approach to space access the priority and funds it requires.

This is too high a price to pay for a Clinton “legacy.” The deal with Russia should be put on ice at least until after the current Rumsfeld Commission issues its report in mid-January. All we are saying is give space power a chance.

Clinton Legacy Watch # 53 A Preemptive Strike on Banning landmines?

(Washington, D.C.): Today, there are no fewer than three different inquiries underway aimed at assessing shortfalls in what the military calls “force protection” that led to the death and wounding of scores of American sailors and the near loss of their ship, the U.S.S. Cole. When all is said and done, heads will likely roll, as otherwise unblemished records of service and command are destroyed over the failure to provide adequately for the security of our uniformed personnel as they went into harm’s way in service to their country.

This tragic reminder of the vulnerability of the men and women in uniform and the solemn responsibility their leaders — civilian and military — have to ensure that they are not unnecessarily put at risk comes to mind as one considers a letter sent to President Clinton on October 5 by more than ninety Members of Congress. In this missive, the predominantly liberal Democratic signatories called on Mr. Clinton before leaving office to deny ground-based American troops one of the most tested and dependable means of force protection ever invented: anti-personnel landmines (APL).

Specifically, this group led by Reps. Lane Evans, Democrat of Illinois, and Jack Quinn, Republican of New York, appeal to the President “before leaving office” to take such steps as: “announcing a permanent ban, or at least a moratorium, on the production of APLs and their components”; “deciding not to produce the RADAM mixed mine system [which employs anti- personnel devices to prevent the rapid neutralizing of accompanying anti-vehicle landmines]”; and “placing in inactive status” existing APLs immediately, “with the intent to destroy as soon as possible.”

Well-intentioned, Misguided

To be sure, most — if not all — of these Congressmen and women are motivated by the plight of the thousands of innocent civilians all over the world who are harmed each year by so- called “dumb,” long-duration APLs. Frequently, they are terribly maimed, rather than killed outright, by landmines left behind from wars long past. These victims become burdens on their usually impoverished families and communities, and are vivid reminders of obscene efforts by earlier combatants to “cleanse” contested territory of rival ethnic, religious or other communities.

Unfortunately, such legislators — and most of those whose heartstrings are similarly pulled by the ongoing blight APLs represent in places like Afghanistan, Cambodia, Bosnia, Angola and Nicaragua — fail to appreciate a basic reality: Banning the responsible use by the American military of short-duration, self-destructing anti-personnel landmines (the only exception being the Korean de-militarized zone, where “dumb” APLs are deployed in a no-man’s land barred to civilian and are critical to deterring any renewed North Korean aggression against the South) will not contribute in any way to the enormous humanitarian challenge of finding and destroying what are estimated to be many millions of APLs already in the ground around the world.

Such a ban — whether imposed unilaterally or via U.S. enrollment in the 1997 Ottawa Convention that prohibits the “use, stockpiling, production and transfer” of APLs — would, however, ensure that American troops forward-deployed in dangerous parts of the world would be denied a tool understood by them and their military commanders to be absolutely essential to force protection. In fact, it was the unprecedented unanimous and forceful opposition in 1997 of every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and every regional commander-in-chief to the Ottawa Convention that dissuaded President Clinton from signing on. This was all the more remarkable since he had been, as noted in the legislators’ letter, “the very first world leader to call for the eventual elimination of all landmines in [his] 1994 address before the United Nations General Assembly.”

The U.S. is Making a Difference Where it Counts

As it happens, the congressional correspondence unintentionally underscores how irrelevant the U.S. armed forces’ retention of the ability to employ APLs for force protection and in support of combat operations is to the problem at hand. The legislators note that, notwithstanding American refusal to join the Ottawa ban: “Exports of APLs have slowed to a trickle. The number of new mine victims is decreasing in heavily infested nations….Global funding for mine clearance programs has increased greatly, and funding for victim assistance programs is also on the rise, although at a slower pace than demand requires.”

In other words, things that can make a difference vis a vis the humanitarian problem are going forward. That said, it is not clear that the progress is quite as great as claimed (particularly with respect to exports of landmines, an activity that can be — and almost certainly is being — pursued covertly by countries like China that profit greatly from manufacturing “dumb” landmines for a dollar or so apiece).

It would have been appropriate, if out of character for most of the congressional signatories, to note that much of the progress that is being made is a function of very substantial efforts on the part of the American military. The latter’s help with de-mining and the development of new technologies holds promise that the effectiveness of such efforts will continue to increase, while the inherent risks are greatly reduced. (On the latter front there has been a possible breakthrough, thanks to the private development of a technology dubbed the ELF system now being tested in the field in Croatia and Cambodia.)

The Bottom Line

Regrettably, the zealots bent on banning landmines are not swayed by such inconvenient facts. They are typically indifferent to force protection considerations or assert blithely that they can be addressed by some new, as-yet-unidentified technology. They subscribe to the “disarm the one you’re with” school; America must adhere to the “international norm” they believe they are creating, irrespective of whether it is real, verifiable or responsible for the U.S. do so.

The pressure is on now, as they fear a President George W. Bush would sensibly want no part of a landmine ban opposed by his armed forces and likely to cost them dearly in unnecessary loss of life and perhaps successful missions in future overseas operations. The question is: Will the lameduck Bill Clinton try with respect to APLs to do what he is working on in so many other areas — from normalizing relations with rogue states like North Korea and Cuba, to euchring Israel into a phony and highly dangerous peace deal with the Palestinians, to giving the Chinese renewed access to American missile-related technology — namely, preempting his successor?

If Mr. Clinton gets away with it on landmines, the inquiries into the failure of force protection that are sure to arise down the road will be obliged to hold him, and his congressional correspondents, responsible.

The United States Cannot Maintain a Safe, Reliable and Effective Nuclear Deterrent Without Nuclear Testing

(Washington, D.C.): One of the early agenda items for the next President will be the matter of what to do about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty — an accord that was negotiated and signed by Bill Clinton in 1996 but considered to be so fatally flawed that it was rejected by a majority of the U.S. Senate in 1999.

The CTBT will require priority attention even if, as seems likely at the moment, the 43rd President is not Al Gore — who explicitly promised, if elected, to try to ram the CTBT through the Senate as his first order of foreign policy business. George W. Bush, who expressed his opposition to the Treaty when it was being considered by the Senate, must nonetheless address this accord as soon as possible for two pressing reasons:

1) Notwithstanding blithe assurances by the Clinton-Gore Administration and other CTBT proponents, the U.S. nuclear deterrent cannot be sustained indefinitely without a resumption of nuclear testing; and

2) the Administration has stealthily proceeded with the Treaty’s implementation, as though the Senate had approved its ratification, rather than rejected it. As a result, the United States is being inexorably drawn into legal, technical and political arrangements that will make it difficult, if not as a practical matter impossible, for the next President to resume nuclear testing if and when he decides to do so.

The New York Times Confirms Critics’ Warnings about Stockpile Stewardship

Incredibly, the gravity of the problem confronting the Nation’s nuclear forces was documented in a lengthy article in today’s New York Times1. The following are among the more noteworthy points made in the course of the Times‘ documentation of the inadequacies of the Administration’s so-called Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) (Emphasis added throughout):

  • The SSP is not up to the job. “Since [1992, when the United States began a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing], the Nation has evaluated the thousands of warheads in its aging arsenal in a program called science-based stockpile stewardship, using computer simulations, experiments on bomb components and other methods to assess the condition of the weapons without actually exploding them.

    “Program officials have been confident that the stockpile is safe and secure and that the stewardship program can fully maintain the weapons. Now, however, some of the masters of nuclear weapons design are expressing concern over whether this program is up to the task. Concerns about the program take a variety of forms, including criticisms of its underlying technical rationale and warnings that the program’s base of talented scientists is eroding….”

  • “A stewardship program with no testing is a religious exercise, not science,’ said Dr. Merri Wood, a senior designer of nuclear weaponry at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Wood said that as the weapons aged, it was becoming impossible to say with certainty that the stockpile was entirely functional. I can’t give anybody a safe period,’ she said of the possibility that some weapons could become unreliable. It could happen at anytime.‘”

    “Dr. Charles Nakhleh, another weapons designer at Los Alamos, said doubts about the stewardship program were widespread among weapons designers. The vast, vast majority would say there are questions you can answer relatively definitively with nuclear testing that would be very difficult to answer without nuclear testing,’ he said.”

  • The arsenal was built for a limited shelf-life. “The program is a fiendish technical challenge, and even its backers concede that science-based stockpile stewardship can never offer the certainty of the big explosions. The thousands of bombs in the stockpile are highly complex devices. Each is made up of a forest of electronics and missile components surrounding a sort of atomic fuse, or primary,’ that holds chemical explosives and a fission bomb containing a fuel like plutonium. In addition, there is a secondary,’ whose thermonuclear fusion reaction is set off when the primary explodes.

    “Most of the weapons in the stockpile were not built with longevity in mind. It was expected that they would be replaced by a continuing stream of new and improved designs, checked in tests until weapons production abruptly stopped in 1992. But the basic design of the newest of the bombs, a version called the W-88, received crucial tests in the 1970’s and was fully designed by the mid-1980’s. Production of the weapon ended by 1991. The oldest of the bombs date from 1970.”

  • Uncertainties abound. “Assessing the changes can be bewilderingly difficult. The degradation turns symmetrical components shaped like spheres or cylinders into irregular shapes whose properties are a nightmare to model in computer simulations. Inspectors, who typically tear apart one weapon of each design per year and less intrusively check others, find weapons components deteriorating in various ways because the materials age, and because they are exposed to the radioactivity of their own fuel. Even tiny changes in those materials can lead to large changes in bomb performance, weapons designers say.”
  • Whistling past the graveyard. “Supporters of the program say that regular inspections of the weapons will turn up any serious problems as the stockpile ages and that those problems can be addressed. You’ll get the warning bell and you’ll know what to do,’ said Dr. Sidney Drell, a physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, who led a study in 1995 that underlies the stewardship program. Dr. Drell said he remained optimistic about scientists’ ability to limit that element of doubt, which he called genuine and serious.’

    “But other experts at the nation’s weapons laboratories are challenging this view. Designers say the sensitivity of the bombs to slight changes means that age could modify the bombs so that they do not work as they are supposed to. While program supporters believe those problems can be found and fixed, virtually everyone agrees that if any major redesign is needed, those new bombs could not be certified as reliable under the current program.

    “Dr. Harold Agnew, a former director of Los Alamos, said that to consider putting those things in the stockpile without testing is nonsense.'”

  • Decline is inevitable. “In a blink, I would prefer to go back to testing,’ said Dr. Carol T. Alonso, a weapons designer for 20 years who is now assistant associate director for national security at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

    “Thomas Thomson, a weapons designer at Livermore, said that under the current program, I think you just accept the fact that you’re going to have a decline” in the reliability of the stockpile. “You try to make it as gradual as possible,’ he added.”

  • No comparable experience by which to be guided. “Even with all the [advanced diagnostic tools the SSP is supposed to provide], critics say, crucial questions about the performance of aging bombs must still be answered directly by data from old tests. Because bombs this old were never tested, they say, computer simulations cannot definitively determine the seriousness of new types of changes caused by continued aging….

    “Serious questions about the operation of the stockpile program are being heard at all three of the major American weapons laboratories: Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia.

  • Brain drain. “As a result [in part of security investigations at the labs and their repercussions] according to officials at the weapons labs and at the Energy Department, which runs them, there has been a flight of scientific talent and a decline of top-flight applicants, problems exacerbated by a rise in lucrative job offers from the private sector. Weapons experts say the frustration over tighter security procedures comes at a particularly unfortunate time, as the scientists who designed and tested the weapons in the stockpile try to pass their knowledge and experience to new caretakers before retiring or dying. We have a five- year window to make this transfer,’ Dr. [Michael] Bernardin, [a senior weapons designer at Los Alamos], said.”
  • Remanufacturing not an option. “One way to get around all these criticisms of the program and still avoid testing, some scientists outside the laboratories say, would be simply to remanufacture’ new, nearly exact replicas of existing weapons in the stockpile and replace them on a regular basis as they age. Neither very much science nor underground testing would be necessary.

    “But Dr. Jas Mercer-Smith, a former weapons designer who is deputy associate director for nuclear weapons at Los Alamos, said that was easier said than done, since many manufacturing techniques of the past were no longer available, and the copies could in reality be significantly different from the originals. Without the sophisticated scientific analysis of the stockpile stewardship program, he said, nuclear experts could not be sure what effects the changes might have.

  • The need for modernization of the stockpile. Dr. Bernardin of Los Alamos said possible new military needs, anything from building nuclear-tipped missile interceptors to replacing an existing weapon completely if it became too old to function, could someday require entirely remade designs as well.

    Supporters of re-manufacture insist that no new designs are needed because the nation’s nuclear deterrent is sufficient. If they are needed, however, the uncertainties and complexities involved in any new designs would inevitably require underground tests, and not just computer simulations, several weapons designers said. Those complexities, Dr. Wood of Los Alamos said, mean that even existing designs are now coming into question. “If this was somebody’s hair clip, I wouldn’t mind as much,” she said. “But it’s not.”

Changing Facts on the Ground

In one of the most brazen of its many affronts to the U.S. Constitution, the Clinton-Gore Administration has spent millions of dollars and untold man-years on the implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the year following its rejection by the Senate. Thanks to the work of the U.S. interagency, official representatives to various international forums and special interests, this country has provided critical technical expertise and other forms of support essential to the operations of the multilateral organization being set up to backstop the CTBT.

A President Bush will inevitably be confronted, as a result, with the argument that this entity has been established with U.S. assistance and requires its continued leadership in order to function. The temptation will be great to go along by avoiding a public repudiation of the Treaty and the domestic and international criticism sure to follow.

It would be a serious mistake to accede to this pressure, though. The more the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is institutionalized and the U.S. is implicated in its work, the more illegitimate will appear actions by this country needed to safeguard and modernize its deterrent forces but that contravene the letter and/or the spirit of the CTBT. This back-door Clinton-Gore ratification of the CTBT must not be allowed to go unchallenged.

The Bottom Line

As long as U.S. national security depends upon even a single nuclear weapon, the Nation, and its potential adversaries, are going to have confidence that it will work if it is needed to do so — and, no less importantly, that it will not work under all other circumstances. There is no getting around it: Periodic, safe underground testing is required to have and maintain that confidence.

Candidate Bush pledged to conduct a comprehensive review of America’s nuclear posture. In addition to weighing carefully the wisdom of further deep reductions in the U.S. arsenal and the idea of de- alerting such weapons as remain, President Bush must redirect the Nation’s policy towards nuclear testing.

Specifically, he should make clear — as President Reagan and Mr. Bush’s father did in the past, that nuclear testing is a necessary part of maintaining a credible American nuclear deterrent, not an evil to be curtailed. The United States will not test any more often than is absolutely necessary, but it will conduct such tests when they are deemed necessary.

Mr. Bush should, accordingly, renounce the CTBT and secure its formal removal from the Senate’s calendar of pending business — the only way to establish that this fatally flawed accord will not be allowed to undermine U.S. security in the future.




1It would have been a public service had the Times seen fit to blow the whistle before the election on the inherent inconsistency between a permanent, “zero-yield” ban on nuclear testing and the requirement to maintain a safe and effective American deterrent for the foreseeable future. Still, given the Times editorial board’s vociferous support for the CTBT, however, and its castigation of Republican Senators many of whose criticisms have now been vindicated by this article, it is little short of a miracle that the paper ran it at all.

Honor the Marines’ Sacrifice by Perfecting and Deploying the Osprey

(Washington, D.C.): In the wake of yet another tragic crash of the Marine Corps’ revolutionary V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft and the attendant loss of life of four servicemen, calls are once again being heard to cancel this program. The temptation to take such a step must appear particularly great to former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney who tried repeatedly during his tenure at the Pentagon to do just that.

Semper Fidelis

It would, however, be a terrible mistake — for the Marines and for the Nation — to accede to such pressure on the basis of this and previous mishaps. It would also demean and squander the sacrifice of the Marines and other personnel who have given their lives to date. They did so in the conviction that this extraordinary technology can and must be brought to bear so that untold thousands of their countrymen can perform dangerous combat, search and rescue, special operations and other missions in the future in greater safety and with greater likelihood of success than with helicopter alternatives.

Despite several regrettable accidents, the proof of the promise of tiltrotor technology is in hand — thanks to thousands of developmental flight hours that have satisfied or exceeded every requirement. As with earlier efforts to bring to fruition revolutionary technology, like the helicopter and the Harrier “jump jet,” the military undertakes difficult challenges when the pay-off is clear and the risks acceptable. While a final judgment on the full magnitude of the risks will not be knowable for years to come, long after the crash investigation into today’s accident is complete, the enormity of the contribution the V-22 will make to the Marine Corps is clear.

The Bottom Line

For these reasons, the Marines should be given the political support necessary to bring the Osprey back on-line and readied for deployment as soon as possible. This will require politicians and civilian policy-makers to allow the military to have both the responsibility and the authority needed to ensure that their personnel are equipped with the most effective and reliable equipment possible.

It will take guts to do that in the face of withering criticism from some legislators, the press and others — but certainly no more than the guts the Marines have displayed to date in bringing the tiltrotor to the point where it can begin to payback the investment in resources and, most especially, in human life that has been made to get it there.

Russian Gambit on Buying Missile Defense at Cost of Nuclear Deterrence is a Non-STARTer

(Washington, D.C.): The Kremlin yesterday launched a new trial balloon with regard to missile defense. The next U.S. President — whomever he may be — would be well-advised to tell Moscow “Thanks, but no thanks.” And the lame duck incumbent should do nothing in the remaining weeks of his term to compromise his successor’s ability to do just that.

According to a report circulated by Reuters on 13 November, “General Vladimir Yakovlev, commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces, told Russian reporters it would be very difficult to persuade Washington not to violate the 1972 Anti- Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty that limits defenses against nuclear attack.”

On the same day, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported:

“As is known, the current lull in the ABM Treaty issue is caused by the change of the American administration and is likely to end soon,” Yakovlev said. “The main threat posed by altering the ABM accords is that it will radically change the state of affairs in the sphere of strategic offensive weapons.”

Yakovlev has proposed that U.S. plans for ABM Treaty modification be counterbalanced with “an invariable aggregate index of strategic armaments to be made up of nuclear attack and missile defense means.”

As a counterbalance to American plans to modify the [ABM] treaty’s references to anti-missile defenses, Yakovlev proposed to introduce an unchanging general indicator of strategic weapons which would include anti-missile defense means as well as means of nuclear attack. “A country that wishes to increase one of the components will have to cut the other,” Yakovlev said.

“In that case, a country that wishes to enlarge one of the components will have to cut the other. We can seek the equaling of our ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles with similar missiles of the United States based on submarines. In that case, they would be exempt from START II, which does not allow intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple warheads with individually targeted elements,” Yakovlev said. (Emphasis added.)

What is Wrong With This Picture?

There are several obvious problems with such an initiative. They include:

  • This proposal is clearly intended to breathe new life into a bilateral arms control process that has grown increasingly irrelevant in the post-Cold War world. As Gov. Bush made clear during the course of the campaign, the Cold War is over; equally pass should be the idea that the United States and Russia must maintain some sort of balance of terror within the construct of negotiated agreements.
  • Were the Yakovlev proposal to be embraced by the United States, it would afford the Kremlin a wholly undesirable mechanism for interfering with and otherwise influencing U.S. missile defense programs. For starters, the Russians will surely try to lock us into a “first phase NMD” along the lines of the single, ground-based site President Clinton ultimately chose not to start building in Alaska.

    American anti-missile systems have suffered for far too long from such meddling on the part of the Kremlin and its agents of influence in the United States. It is time to build the best, most flexible and, if possible, the least costly missile defense the Nation can devise. This will almost certainly involve the use of sea-based assets utilizing the Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense infrastructure — an option the Russians are determined to foreclose.

  • By making the United States pay for its right to deploy missile defenses with cuts in strategic nuclear forces — if Moscow has its way, at levels below 1500 warheads — this country would be driven into an imprudent, if not reckless, minimum deterrence posture. Given that the United States will likely require in the future sufficient forces (both in terms of quantity and modern, flexible weapons types) to deter myriad potential adversaries, such a posture would be most ill- advised.
  • Considerable care is in order in with regard to reductions to levels of nuclear warheads so low that China and possibly other nations may aspire to secure “superpower status” by approximating them. This is hardly a formula for strategic stability.

    By the same token, Russia’s evident interest in maintaining multiple-warhead land-based missiles threatens to make a mockery of the START II agreement — whose principal selling point was that it would de-MIRV the former Soviet ICBM force — while creating new, and strategically significant, cheating opportunities for future agreements ostensibly promising still lower levels of nuclear weaponry.

  • Since the Russians have not acknowledged — and the U.S. government has not confirmed — that the former Soviet Union has long deployed a territorial defense against ballistic missile attack, the Yakovlev gambit would allow Moscow to penalize the United States for any decision to field defensive systems without having to pay any premium for its own, massive anti- missile programs. Even if it were desirable to maintain some kind of symmetry between the two countries’ strategic capabilities, this inherent inequity would preclude such an outcome.

The Bottom Line

There is an understandable temptation on the part of proponents of U.S. missile defenses to embrace General Yakovlev’s largely undefined suggestion since it implicitly, if not explicitly, confirms what we have long maintained: Russia’s adamant insistence on the inviolability and immutability of the ABM Treaty was a negotiating ploy, subject to change whenever it suited the Kremlin’s purposes.

The General’s proposal seems especially geared toward seducing Gov. Bush’s camp, given the emphasis it placed during the campaign on its determination to deploy effective missile defenses as soon as possible while reducing to the maximum extent practicable the number of offensive weapons in the U.S. arsenal — including possibly to levels below those being contemplated for START III (i.e., 2,000- 2,500 weapons).

Extreme caution should be exercised, however, in light not only of the foregoing considerations but one other fact: Russian President Vladimir Putin chose — on the same day Yakovlev launched his trial balloon — to declare, according to the Washington Post, that “Russia is ready to consider an even lower limit than the 1,500 nuclear warheads on each side that Moscow now proposes could be reached by 2008. At the same time, he reiterated Russia’s opposition to a U.S. proposal to build a national missile defense system–a decision that President Clinton has left to his successor.”

The truth is the Russians remain adamantly opposed to any American missile defense and will use, if allowed to do so, whatever techniques are available — diplomatic or political, carrots or sticks — to try to confuse, delude or otherwise preclude the next U.S. President from deploying any effective anti- missile shield. They must not be allowed to succeed in this gambit.

Hallelujah: Joint Chiefs, Strategic Command Oppose Reckless Clinton Disarmament Initiatives

(Washington, D.C.): According to a front-page, above-the-fold report published in today’s Washington Times by the paper’s National Security correspondent Bill Gertz, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have sided with the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Strategic Command, Gen. Richard Meis, in objecting to radical reductions in American offensive nuclear forces sought by the Russian government. Specifically, the Chiefs and CINCSTRAT do not believe that cuts to 1500 strategic weapons as part of a START III Treaty are compatible with what “Strategic Command needs to execute its nuclear deterrence and warfighting missions” in the post-Cold War world (i.e., no fewer than 2500 warheads).

Who’s in Favor of this Bad Idea?

This opposition takes on all the more importance insofar as Mr. Gertz confirms what has long been rumored: The Clinton White House and State Department have decided to embrace the Russian proposal, even though it would — under present circumstances and START counting rules not only dictate the certain evisceration of the U.S. “Triad” of forces. It would also precipitate the dismantling of scores of long-range bomber aircraft armed with conventional weaponry.

It is simply absurd to believe it desirable (not to say essential) for U.S. strategic nuclear force decisions to be influenced (not to say determined by) the number of land- and/or sea-based nuclear missiles and intercontinental-range bombers the Russians can afford. Obviously, that is even more true of decisions governing the size, capability and effectiveness of America’s non-nuclear weaponry.

Still more preposterous is the underlying reality: The most determined adherents to such outdated Cold War mirror-imaging in the U.S. government are those who were, by and large, not in favor of waging that conflict when it was underway and who now proclaim it to be irreversibly over at practically every turn.

You Want it Bad…

Evidently concerned that the military and/or the Congress may not accept the draconian and unwise strategic force cuts the Russians and Clinton-Gore civilian officials desire, the Administration is reportedly considering ordering them to be undertaken on a unilateral basis. According to Mr. Gertz, such a step might be taken as part of a “presidential nuclear initiative” — loosely modeled after one taken by President Bush in 1991 leading to massive reductions in and deactivation of U.S. tactical and theater nuclear forces. At the time, then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced that his nation would make its own, unilateral but reciprocal reductions in such forces. (It is worth noting that, notwithstanding this pledge and the demise of the USSR, Russia is believed to retain huge numbers of such weapons in its active inventory, although the exact whereabouts and operational status of cannot be determined with precision by U.S. — and even by some official Russian — sources.)

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), the influential chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s Research and Development Committee, has properly denounced any such ill-considered unilateral “presidential initiative” in the absence of full consultation with and the approval of the Congress. In particular, he notes that “an assessment required under law to gauge strategic nuclear stability under a future START III agreement” has not been completed — a step that obviously should precede any decision (either of a unilateral or bilateral nature) to go to or beyond the 2500 weapons contemplated by the framework agreement for that treaty agreed between Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin in 1997.

An indication of the sort of congressional repudiation President Clinton is inviting if he persists in making further, massive cuts in U.S. strategic forces can be seen in the rejection yesterday by Rep. Weldon’s committee of what Mr. Gertz described as “an amendment to [the FY2001] Defense authorization bill that would have given Mr. Clinton greater authority to cut nuclear forces.”

The Bottom Line

President Clinton is courting disaster — possibly politically and certainly strategically — if he pursues, in the face of rising opposition from not only the Congress but the uniformed military, unilateral or negotiated arms control agreements that would make more difficult the preservation of an effective nuclear deterrent. Insult would only be added to injury were he to compound this error by seeking an agreement with the Russians that would severely limit U.S. options promptly to deploy an effective, layered missile defense.

Words to the Wise on Missile Defense: Woolsey Confirms the A.B.M. Treaty Has Lapsed; Kim Jong-Il Confirms the Threat

(Washington, D.C.): Against the backdrop of a presidential campaign in which differences between the Republican and Democratic contenders1 on the question of deploying missile defenses are becoming a major focus (as even the New York Times acknowledged in its editions yesterday), two signal developments have occurred within the past forty-eight hours.

Jim Woolsey: What ABM Treaty?’

First, in the attached op.ed. article which appeared in the Washington Post on 15 August, President Clinton’s former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey pronounced that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty no longer can, under international legal practice and precedent, be considered legally binding on the United States. In so doing, Mr. Woolsey — an eminent Washington attorney and experienced arms control negotiator — lent his considerable authority to the definitive legal analysis of this question produced last year for the Center for Security Policy by Douglas J. Feith and George Miron. 2

This study (which agrees in virtually all particulars with two others — the first of which was performed for the Heritage Foundation by David Rivkin and Lee Casey; the second (to which Mr. Woolsey alludes) by Professor Robert Turner of the University of Virginia law school — concluded that, as Mr. Feith stated in a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May 1999: “When the USSR became extinct, its bilateral, non-dispositive treaties lapsed. Hence, the ABM Treaty lapsed by operation of law — that is, automatically — when the USSR dissolved in 1991. It did not become a treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation.

Accordingly, in Mr. Woolsey’s words:

“The next President should [confer with our allies and Russia about his plans for missile defense]…but [he] need not, indeed he should not, do so from the disadvantaged position that he will have to abrogate a treaty before he proceeds to deployment….Unless some president submits the 1972 ABM Treaty, with its new parties, to the Senate and obtains its consent to the substantive changes, there is nothing to abrogate.”

This finding is especially relevant insofar as the Clinton-Gore Administration — which has yet to provide an authoritative response to any of these legal analyses, despite having been formally asked to do so last year by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jesse Helms in connection with the Feith-Miron study — has made every effort to encourage both the Russians and America’s allies to believe that the ABM Treaty remains in force. Worse yet, it has implied (if not explicitly communicated a commitment) that the United States will not deviate from the ABM Treaty without the Kremlin’s permission. This premise should be debunked officially; if neither Mr. Clinton nor Mr. Gore will do so, Governor Bush should.

Kim Jong-Il: Just Kidding’

The second development was the revelation by the dictator of North Korea that he was only joking last month when he and Russian President Vladimir Putin cooked up a scheme whereby Pyongyang might be induced to give up its ballistic missile program — and the overseas sales it involves to other, dangerous nations like Iran and Syria — if only the West gave it enough inducements (e.g., satellite launches, help with space technology, etc.)

This gambit gave impetus to a formal Russian diplomatic proposal for a “Global Monitoring System.” As the Center for Security Policy noted earlier this week3, this is an initiative “whose ostensible purpose is to enhance efforts to curb the proliferation of ballistic missiles. In fact, it is a transparent Soviet-style ploy, aimed at creating further impediments to U.S. ballistic missile programs (including cooperation with allies like Britain and Israel) and undercutting the rationale behind efforts to deploy national missile defenses for the American people.”

The Bottom Line

Fortunately, as the attached editorial in today’s Washington Post makes clear, Kim’s latest statements serve to underscore the folly of ignoring decades of North Korean behavior — to say nothing of abandoning needed U.S. efforts promptly to deploy national missile defenses — on the basis of romantic illusions spawned by his much-ballyhooed summit with South Korea’s president.

The North Korean’s ridicule also makes a mockery of the new “Code of Conduct” on missile proliferation Under Secretary of State John Hollum is currently trying to cobble together with the Russians in Geneva. That potentially profoundly insidious exercise should be brought to an immediate halt, as should companion efforts to prepare arms control agreements (e.g., START III, new codicils to the ABM Treaty, space arms negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament4, etc.) in the whose effects will be to make it still more difficult to deploy needed American missile defenses.




1As the attached article published by the Center for Security Policy’s President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., in National Review On-Line makes clear, a more accurate way to describe these differences would be between Governor Bush, Secretary Cheney and Senator Lieberman — all of whom favor the prompt deployment of effective, layered missile defenses (including, as needed, in space) — and Vice President Gore, who appears still to be more committed to protecting the ABM Treaty than the American people.

2See Definitive Study Shows Russians Have No Veto Over Defending U.S. (No. 99-P 11, 22 January 1999).

3See Clinton’s October Surprise(s) ( No. 00-D 74, 14 August 2000).

4See the Center’s National Security Alerts for the Weeks of 7 August 2000 (No. 00-A 30, 4 August 2000); 22 May 2000 (No. 00-A 19, 22 May 2000); and 10 January 2000 (No. 00-A 01, 10 January 2000).