Tag Archives: Defense Procurement Policy

Now, confirm Secretary Reich

The latest of many laudable examples of President Bush’s commitment to principle and fortitude in the face of political adversity was his recess appointment last week of Ambassador Otto Reich to serve as the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

As one of Amb. Reich’s former colleagues, Amb. Frank Ruddy, noted in today’s Washington Times, such a step was made necessary by the ideologically motivated and vindictive refusal over many months of Senator Christopher Dodd — the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Western Hemisphere Subcommittee — to afford Mr. Reich the courtesy of a confirmation hearing, let alone a vote in committee or on the Senate floor. This obstructionism was made necessary for the simple reason that, had the Reich nomination ever come to such a vote, it would have easily passed with bipartisan support.

If Sen. Dodd is going to perform any better when it comes to oversight of the rapidly metastasizing situation in this hemisphere — a situation that fully justified Mr. Bush’s recess appointment of so experienced, competent and principled a public servant as Amb. Reich — his subcommittee will have to hold hearings. It would be absurd, if not unprecedented, for it to do so without allowing the relevant Assistant Secretary of State the chance to present the Administration’s views and policies.

While the subcommittee is at it, the members should finally go ahead and formally consider Otto Reich’s nomination — and act to confirm him without further ado.

 

Set Aside Marxist Dreams
Senate should confirm Otto Reich

By Frank Ruddy
The Washington Times, 15 January 2002

The "Blame America First" viewpoint surely has an even smaller constituency at home today than it had before September 11. Nevertheless, in some of the deeper mineshafts of foreign policy elitism, this odd outlook lives on.

So it is with the great woolly mammoth of the Democratic left’s foreign policy, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. Encased in ancient ideological ice, he remains clenched in the conflict of a Cold War that ended more than a decade ago.

Moscow has ended its affair with Fidel Castro, announcing last October it would shut down the last Russian intelligence outpost, in Cuba. But for Mr. Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Western Hemisphere panel, the romance with Latin American Leftism — and the passion of anti-anti- communism — appear to be unquenchable.

The current case in point is Mr. Dodd’s refusal to allow a hearing and vote on President Bush’s nominee for assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, Otto Reich. Acting in the national interest, Mr. Bush gave Mr. Reich a recess appointment on Jan. 11, allowing him to serve without Senate confirmation until the end of this year.

I worked closely with Mr. Reich during the Reagan administration, where he was one of the brightest and most effective strategists in our struggle against the Brezhnev Doctrine. Mr. Reich ably led the US. Agency for International Development’s Latin American bureau and then led communications efforts for our efforts to halt the advance of Soviet and Castroite influence over Central America and the Caribbean.

His distinguished service continued in the Reagan and first Bush administrations with his posting as US. ambassador to Venezuela and as a US. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

Had it not been for Mr. Reich’s efforts, the United States today might confront terrorist, anti- democratic, anti-American states in Nicaragua, E1 Salvador and elsewhere in our region. He was a key young player on the Reagan team’s campaign to roll back communist domination, to promote global free expression, free markets and democracy, and, as Ronald Reagan promised, to "make America great again!" Today, Mr. Reich is superbly qualified to serve as President Bush’s top diplomat for Latin America.

Mr. Reich is living proof of the United States’ mission as a last, best hope for mankind. His father was an Austrian Jew and his mother a Cuban Catholic. As the Nazi Holocaust began, Mr. Reich’s father fled Austria and Europe for the safer shores of Cuba. His father’s parents, meanwhile, were murdered by the Nazis. Mr. Reich was born and raised in Cuba, but when Fidel Castro established a Soviet satellite dictatorship there, he and his parents came to the United States as refugees.

The United States’ need for leadership and direction in Latin American relations is urgent. While attention today is on Afghanistan, over the long run our neighborhood in the hemisphere is of greater strategic importance than Central Asia. International terrorists including Irish Republican Army murderers, Islamic extremists from the Middle East, and homegrown Latin American guerrillas, all operate extensively in South America, with encouragement and support from Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba. The pace of terrorist killings in Colombia, appalling before September 11, now is even worse.

Political and economic stability are at risk throughout Latin America. The president of Venezuela, the largest oil exporter outside of the Middle East, is enamored of Mr. Castro, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and Saddam. Political corruption, international terrorists, Marxist guerrillas, and drug traffickers are a plague against civil society and personal safety in Ecuador and Peru as well as in Colombia. Argentina’s government and financial system have just experienced a meltdown.

A majority of senators — including a number of Democrats — understand the stakes in Latin America and are prepared to vote to confirm Mr. Reich’s confirmation. But not Mr. Dodd. Still living in the last days of disco, he carries a torch for the Sandinistas and the Salvadoran Marxists of yore. As the great Venezuelan journalist Carlos Rangel observed, the myth of the benevolent guerrilla, like the legend of the noble savage, dies hard. Mr. Bush made the right move by giving Mr. Reich a recess appointment. Now it’s time for Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle to override Mr. Dodd’s petty obstructionism and allow a hearing and floor vote on his confirmation.

Frank Ruddy,a Washington attorney, served as a US. ambassador and as assistant director of the US. Agency for International Development under President Reagan.

No Need to Know’

(Washington, D.C.): A “need to know” is one of the most time-tested principles of information security. According to this principle, if you don’t have such a need, you should not be given access to classified or other sensitive data.

Even if you think you have a “need to know,” moreover, unless appropriate background checks have been performed — establishing that you can be trusted to treat such information confidentially — and the requisite security clearances (known in the government as “tickets”) issued, you do not qualify. In sum, the basic rule has been: No tickets, no access.

Enter the Clintonistas

That, at least, was the general practice until the Clinton administration came to office, empowering a number of individuals who were critical of governmental secrecy in general and the so-called “abuse” of classification procedures in particular. Madeleine Albright, Tobi Goti, Hazel O’Leary, Anthony Lake, Morton Halperin and John Podesta were among the senior officials who, during the Clinton years in one way or another, pursued a radically different approach.

For example, former Secretary of State Albright, and her Department’s intelligence chief, Mrs. Goti, believed that “sharing” sensitive U.S. intelligence with other nations would demonstrate the validity of American charges about their involvement in proliferation. The predictable result was confirmed in a front-page article in Sunday’s Washington Post about Russian-Iranian missile cooperation over the past decade: The recipients of such information were generally more interested in ascertaining — and terminating — the ways in which it was obtained than in ending their proliferation activities. All too often, putting them “in the know” meant that, thereafter, we would be kept in the dark having lost irreplaceable intelligence collection “sources and methods.”

Then there was the security-wrecking operation engaged in by former Secretary of Energy O’Leary and the anti-nuclear activists she chose to staff key jobs in her department. For instance, she blithely ended the nuclear weapons laboratories’ traditional practice of giving different colored badges to lab personnel based on their “need to know” and levels of security clearance. Her rationale? It would be discriminatory to those (notably, Chinese, Russian, Iranian and other foreign nationals) who had neither. We may never fully know how much damage was done as a direct or indirect result of the climate of insecurity and dysfunctionality created in the nuclear weapons complex by O’Leary and Company.

Dangerous Declassification Agenda

An even more ominous legacy, however, may be that resulting from the compulsory declassification requirements promulgated by President Clinton at the urging of his then- National Security Advisor Tony Lake, Mort Halperin (at the time one of his chief lieutenants on the NSC staff) and John Podesta, who ultimately served as White House Chief of Staff. According to the champions of this approach, everybody had a “need to know” about most government secrets; Clinton directed that — in the interest of good government — after a certain number of years, basically all of them were to be put into the public domain.

In some cases (prominent among them the Department of Energy), the arbitrary deadline and the quantity of secrets to be revealed meant that those responsible for declassifying old, but potentially still highly sensitive, information were obliged to give documents containing such data only the most cursory of security reviews. As a result, whole boxes full of classified information were sometimes summarily deemed declassified and made accessible to anyone who wanted to review their contents. Presumably, among that number were scientists from nuclear wannabe states like North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Findings in the caves of Afghanistan suggest that they may have included operatives of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, as well.

BW Cookbooks’

Fortunately, to build even primitive atomic weapons, let thermonuclear arms, one must have not only know-how but access to fairly complex and expensive manufacturing capabilities. The bad news is that that is not the case with biological weapons (BW). Knowledgeable people can use commercially available fertilizer and pharmaceutical equipment can be utilized to create batches of viruses that can be employed with devastating effect.

On January 13th, the New York Times reported that the Clinton declassification requirements have caused U.S. government agencies to make publicly available what amount to BW “cook books” — hundreds of formerly secret documents that tell how to turn dangerous germs into deadly weapons.” According to the Times, “For $15, anyone can buy Selection of Process for Freeze-Drying, Particle Size Reduction and Filling of Selected BW Agents,’ or germs for biological warfare. The 57-page report, dated 1952, includes plans for a pilot factory that could produce dried germs in powder form, designed to lodge in human lungs.” In the wrong hands, this recipe could enable a future terrorist attack that would make the recent anthrax letters, and even the destruction of the World Trade Center, pale by comparison.

The Bottom Line

In a number of areas, the Bush Administration has, since coming to office a year ago, taken steps to undo lunatic policies inherited from its predecessor. These include, notably: the unworkably expensive and inequitable Kyoto Protocol; business-crippling ergonomics rules; open-ended adherence to the vulnerability-dictating Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; inaction on the Yucca Mountain repository for nuclear waste and other impediments to national energy self-sufficiency; and an invitation to industrial and governmental espionage masquerading as a protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention.

A no less worrisome legacy is the Clinton declassification agenda. Particularly in the midst of the war on terrorism, it is imperative that President Bush reestablish proven and prudential information security practices. Given the very serious stakes, should Mr. Bush fail to take corrective action on this score, the American people will certainly have a legitimate need to know the reason why.

Time for the Bush military build-up

In recent days, Clinton partisans have sought to take credit for the U.S. military’s awesome performance to date in the war on terrorism. While there is no question that the armed forces have been using the equipment they had before President George W. Bush came to office, the truth is that very little of it was acquired during the eight years of the Clinton presidency.

In fact, as Loren Thompson discusses in a powerful op.ed. article that appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal, under Bill Clinton, the Pentagon was largely forced to take a procurement holiday — deferring or canceling outright long-overdue acquisitions of ships, planes, armored vehicles and other modernization programs. It is a tribute to the men and women in uniform, not their former Commander-in-Chief, that they have managed to make what is, in many cases, obsolescing equipment perform as well as it has in Operation Enduring Freedom.

It is also a testament to the character of the operations being performed thus far (i.e., largely by small numbers of special operations forces, backed by long-range ground-based and naval aviation using, and largely depleting, stocks of precision-guided munitions). The United States would be hard pressed with the post-Clinton military to conduct larger-scale combat in Afghanistan, to say nothing of doing so simultaneously there and in, say Iraq. That is the true and dangerous legacy of the Clinton stewardship over the defense portfolio.

As Mr. Thompson correctly points out, it will take additional funding — and lots of it — to rectify the years of often malign neglect the Pentagon has experienced over the past decade or so. Fortunately, one of the few positive repercussions of September 11 has been the sea-change in the political environment with respect to providing adequately for the armed forces and for homeland security. Now Congress will support what the Pentagon needs.

According to today’s New York Times, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has decided to take advantage of this changed circumstance and to forego ill-advised force- structure cuts and programmatic cancellations that would otherwise been required to pay for the "transformation" of the U.S. military and its operations worldwide. Secretary Rumsfeld is to be commended for his leadership. He should, however, set his sights higher.

While the $20 billion increase the Secretary is reportedly seeking will certainly help if applied to procurement of power projection priorities like the V-22 Osprey, long-range bombers, sea-based anti-missile systems and space control technologies, Mr. Rumsfeld should request — and President Bush should endorse — a sustained commitment of not less than four percent of Gross Domestic Product for the Defense Department starting in Fiscal Year 2003 (roughly a $49 billion increase over last year’s levels.) Such direction should end any further obstructionism on the part of OMB’s staff and ensure that Mitch Daniel’s recent guidance — to the effect that national security, homeland defense and the war on terrorism will command such resources as they require — will be faithfully implemented.

 

The Lessons of ‘Enduring Freedom’
By Loren B. Thompson
The Wall Street Journal, 7 January 2002

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has asked a Pentagon civilian panel to begin identifying the lessons learned from Operation Enduring Freedom. Although no one thinks the campaign against terrorism is over, the rout of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan provides a point at which to pause and ask hard questions.

Naturally, there are problems with such studies. First, their findings tend to be kept secret, so outsiders seldom get a precise idea of what warfighting challenges were encountered. Second, they tend to focus on technical questions such as force coordination and bandwidth allocation. These are important for soldiers, but they aren’t the sort of strategic insights useful to most legislators and policymakers.

Strategic Vision

Real-world lessons are particularly important today, because the Bush administration is about to send Congress the first military budget that fully reflects its strategic vision. A key part of that vision involves changing investment priorities and organizational arrangements to cope with new challenges. The best way to judge the budget priorities is to see how they compare with actual warfighting experience.

The first lesson of Enduring Freedom is that it is impossible to know with certainty when and where new challenges will arise. Who could have predicted on Labor Day that in September the U.S. would suffer a devastating air attack on its homeland, followed by bioterrorism, and then wage war in one of the world’s most remote countries? During the early months of his tenure, Mr. Rumsfeld repeatedly reminded Congress of how frequently the nation has been surprised by events such as the attack on Pearl Harbor and North Korea’s invasion of the South. That is why he proposes a shift from a "threat-based" to a "capabilities-based" investment plan that stresses versatile, flexible forces.

Military leaders say they support flexibility but their investment plans favor some contingencies over others. For example, the Air Force’s plan to buy 2,000 fighters and no bombers during the next 25 years is well-suited to a world of many overseas bases and allies, but could be a serious error if the U.S. is forced to act alone in Southeast Asia or the Persian Gulf. The Army’s continued investment in heavy armor, while neglecting its helicopter fleet, also seems ill-suited to potential contingencies.

A second lesson is that despite recent innovations in military doctrine, organization and hardware, geography still matters. A century after Halford Mackinder identified central Asia as the key to control of Eurasia (and thus the world), the U.S. finds itself still trying to assure access to the vast oil reserves located near Mackinder’s "geographical pivot of history." Operation Enduring Freedom is essentially an extension of the effort to assure access, but one that has revealed deep-seated antipathy to a U.S. presence among many people in the region.

The current policy of depending on weak, nondemocratic regimes to provide base access is doomed to failure, in part because it aligns the U.S. with leaders who lack legitimacy. A transformational military posture must be able to enforce access despite the absence of regional allies or bases by combining long-range aircraft, sea-based forces and space assets in a decisive force-projection capability. That is not what America has today.

A third lesson is that the revolution in military affairs is real. Military leaders have been predicting for years that information technology will produce huge gains in warfighting capability. Enduring Freedom proves they are right. Missions that took days to plan in Desert Storm and hours in Kosovo now take minutes. Moreover, the precision with which the missions are executed is unprecedented. It took 835 B-29 flights to achieve a 4% damage of a Japanese aircraft-engine plant in 1944; today, a single sortie by a carrier-based plane could shut the plant down.

A critical feature in this military revolution is "network-centric" warfare. It requires continuous, high-speed communication among all elements of a fighting force so that information can be shared instantaneously. Eventually, the networking of forces will enable all units to possess a common picture of the battle area reflecting inputs from dozens of sources, including unmanned aerial vehicles like Global Hawk, spy satellites, and Special Forces on the ground. Enduring Freedom has shown that the promise of digital technology is rapidly being realized.

A fourth and related lesson is how important "jointness" is to military success. This is Pentagon jargon for unity of purpose, the ability of individual services to mesh closely in pursuit of common goals. It was reflected in many ways during Operation Enduring Freedom. Army Special Forces provided target coordinates to Air Force bombers because they had the capacity to communicate quickly and precisely. Air Force tankers provided aerial refueling to Navy fighters because they had compatible fuel systems. Marines exploited tactical information generated by all the other services because they had interoperable data links.

Mr. Rumsfeld has identified jointness and interoperability as key features of military transformation, because they produce real synergies among the services in wartime. It was not so long ago that each of the armed forces was striving for self-sufficiency in warfighting, an expensive and duplicative process. The Rumsfeld paradigm demands a more rational division of labor in which each service focuses on core competencies, providing those capabilities as needed to the joint force.

A fifth, more troubling, lesson concerns the consequences of past spending priorities. In the 1990s, the Pentagon stopped buying new military systems, and as a result the revolution in military affairs is being implemented with weapons that often seem more suited to museums. The B-52 bombers that dropped much of the Air Force’s ordnance on Afghanistan are 40 years old. So are the KC-135 tankers that refueled them. The carrier-based Prowler aircraft that jammed Taliban ground communications have their origins in the Korean War. So do the C-130 cargo planes and CH-47 helicopters that delivered Marines to Kandahar. The Marines’ main attack helicopter is Vietnam-vintage.

These systems may acquit themselves well in warfare in Serbia and Afghanistan, but one day the U.S. will again face a well-equipped and resourceful adversary. When that day comes, something more than the insertion of digital technology into decrepit airframes will be required. The best contribution Mr. Rumsfeld can make to U.S. military capability is to keep production of next-generation systems like the F-22 fighter and Comanche attack helicopter on track, rather than indulging in yet another "procurement holiday."

Power and Money

A final lesson from Enduring Freedom concerns the inescapable link between military power and money. It is a lesson that Mr. Rumsfeld and the military have already learned, but which the White House has not. Sept. 11 shows that peace is a fleeting condition, and that war is never far away. It is irresponsible to plan a military posture based on the presumption of amity, or early warning, or a predictability of threats. An administration that entered office convinced of the need to scale back overseas military commitments now seems more likely to expand them.

That means much more money for the military than the Office of Management and Budget seems inclined to give. The president’s Pentagon team spent most of the spring and summer in an impasse with the military because OMB wasn’t willing to provide enough money for both readiness and transformation. Why should warfighters have to make such a choice? The military needs sufficient resources to address today’s threats while simultaneously preparing for tomorrow’s challenges.

President Bush’s predecessors paid lip service to both goals while consistently underfunding investment in new weapons. That’s why the Air Force has only 21 stealthy long-range bombers, why the Navy’s fleet is steadily shrinking to less than half its Reagan-era peak, and why the Army can’t find money to replace Vietnam-era helicopters. "Asymmetric threats" aren’t just about terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, they’re about attacking America wherever it is weak. Unless the military receives more money, future enemies will have a diverse menu of targets from which to choose.

Mr. Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, teaches in Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program and consults for the Pentagon.

Will Bush N.P.R. Be a Sentence’ for U.S. Denuclea

(Washington, D.C.): During her travels in Wonderland, Alice found herself embroiled in a kangaroo-style trial in which the judge famously announced, “Sentence first, verdict afterwards,” followed by the pronouncement “Off with her head!”

Regrettably, a similar approach appears to have guided the Bush Administration in preparing the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) it is releasing this week. This review is intended to guide the future size and composition of the U.S. nuclear arsenal for the early years of the 21st Century. Yet its most prominent feature — a reduction by roughly two-thirds in the number of deployed nuclear weapons — was effectively pre-determined by a pledge Candidate Bush made on May 23, 2000:

As President, I will ask the Secretary of Defense to conduct an assessment of our nuclear force posture and determine how best to meet our security needs. While the exact number of weapons can come only from such an assessment, I will pursue the lowest possible number consistent with our national security. It should be possible to reduce the number of American nuclear weapons significantly further than what has been already agreed to under START II without compromising our security in any way.

During his summit meeting last November in Crawford, Texas with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Bush announced the sentence: By ten years from now, the United States will have cut its nuclear arsenal from the present roughly 6500 weapons, past the 3500 allowed under START II, to no more than 1700-2200 deployed nuclear arms. Now comes the verdict — a Nuclear Posture Review that tries to explain how such unprecedented and draconian reductions in the U.S. deterrent force can be made “without compromising our security in any way.”

How Do We Get There From Here?

With the NPR not yet released, one can only guess at how this feat of prestidigitation is accomplished. Whether it turns out, in fact, to be a blueprint for a strategic deterrent force with which we can safely live — or a prescription for the wholesale denuclearization of the United States — will depend on several questions that cannot be answered at this writing:


  • Will the levels of forces envisioned by the NPR be compatible with the maintenance of our strategic “Triad”? — weapons deployed on land-based ballistic missiles, on submarines and aboard airborne platforms (bombs and cruise missiles)? Historically, the complementary strengths of these various systems have been seen as essential to maintaining a credible deterrent by offsetting their respective shortcomings. Unless costly new programs are undertaken to replace aging missiles and bombers, the small numbers of weapons allowed will greatly exacerbate the temptation simply to dispense with one or another “leg” of the Triad.


  • Will the residual force be deployed in a manner that renders it unduly susceptible to preemptive attack? This could, for example, be the effect of concentrating a large percentage of the deployed stockpile at a small number of vulnerable bomber bases. Bad idea.


  • Perhaps most importantly, will the President authorize the steps needed to ensure that whatever nuclear deterrent is retained remains safe, reliable and credible? If so, he must swiftly authorize the resumption of periodic underground nuclear testing.

    • Deterrent’s Long-term Credibility Requires Nuclear Testing

    To date, Mr. Bush has tried to straddle this issue. On the one hand, he courageously and correctly rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), with its permanent ban on all nuclear testing. On the other hand, he has perpetuated a moratorium on this activity — an initiative first imposed upon his father in 1992 by congressional Democrats who favored U.S. denuclearization, something subsequently and explicitly embraced by Bill Clinton and his first Energy Secretary, Hazel O’Leary. The CTBT’s proponents understood that without actual nuclear testing, it would ineluctably become impossible to maintain, let alone to modernize, our arsenal.

    As it happens, the moment of truth has arrived, just as the NPR is being released. The Washington Post reported on January 3rd that the Department of Energy’s Inspector General recently unveiled a dirty little secret: There are “growing problems associated with the safety and reliability of the Nation’s nuclear weapons, [which] without nuclear testing, have become a most serious challenge area.'”

    Of particular concern are mounting backlogs in the non-nuclear testing program upon which the U.S. has relied exclusively to monitor the safety and reliability of the stockpile since 1992. Energy’s I.G., Gregory Friedman, concluded: “If these delays continue, the department may not be in a position to unconditionally certify the aging nuclear weapons stockpile.” In fact, even if they don’t, the absence of realistic underground tests will likely make such certification little more than educated guesswork.

    The Bottom Line

    To his credit, President Bush has created conditions that may provide a safety net for the sorts of nuclear disarmament he wants to undertake. By withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, he has cleared the way for the deployment of effective, global missile defenses that can reduce somewhat the requirement for nuclear weapons-based deterrence.

    To realize his goals for a secure and properly defended 21st Century America, however, Mr. Bush must take several concrete actions: 1) Ensure that missile defenses are actually deployed as soon as possible (within days of his ABM Treaty decision the Pentagon and/or Congress had killed or dramatically slowed no fewer than three important anti-missile programs); 2) resist State Department efforts to mutate his unilateral (and, thereby, revisable) decision on nuclear cuts into an ill-advised, binding treaty with Russia; and 3) direct the resumption of nuclear testing needed to ensure the continued viability of the nuclear forces the United States must retain for the uncertain, and probably quite dangerous, decades ahead.

    Uh-Oh: On Eve of Release of Nuclear Posture Review, Energy’s I.G. Confirms Serious Problems with U.S. Stockpile

    (Washington, D.C.): Within the next few days, the Bush Administration will unveil its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) — the long-awaited blue-print for America’s 21st Century nuclear arsenal. Some aspects of the NPR are already known; notably, President Bush has previously announced his decision to reduce the existing stockpile dramatically (from roughly 6,500 weapons to 1700-2200).

    As yet undisclosed, however, is what will be the future disposition of the remaining weapons. Inquiring minds want to know: Will it be possible to maintain the strategic “Triad” — with sufficient numbers of weapons deployed on land, at sea and aboard airborne platforms so as to preserve the synergy of the three “legs” and to offset each ones’ inherent shortcomings? Of particular concern is the possibility that the nuclear arsenal will be deployed in a manner that renders it unduly susceptible to preemptive attack (for example, by concentrating a large percentage of the deployed stockpile at a small number of vulnerable bomber bases).

    Arguably, the single greatest determinant of the compatibility of the Nuclear Posture Review-directed force with the Nation’s national security requirements will be whether the NPR requires the residual stockpile to be rigorously maintained and regularly modernized. This would seem to be a no-brainer. And yet, for either to happen, the United States will have to resume periodic underground nuclear testing — something President Bush has thus far declined to order.

    Until recently, Mr. Bush could say that he had no reason to believe such testing was necessary. No more. As the Washington Post reported today, the Department of Energy’s Inspector General recently unveiled a dirty little secret: There are “growing problems associated with the safety and reliability of the Nation’s nuclear weapons, [which] without nuclear testing, have become a most serious challenge area.'” Of particular concern are mounting backlogs in the non-nuclear testing program upon which the U.S. has relied exclusively to monitor the safety and reliability of the stockpile since 1992, when the first President Bush was euchred by congressional Democrats into imposing a moratorium on underground detonations. Energy’s I.G., Gregory Friedman, concluded: “If these delays continue, the department may not be in a position to unconditionally certify the aging nuclear weapons stockpile.”

    A continued inability to conduct underground nuclear tests would, moreover, preclude altogether the design of new nuclear weapons (e.g., to assure the capability to destroy an enemy’s deeply buried leadership, command and control, weapons of mass destruction caches and other strategic assets). It should also impinge upon our ability to make even relatively minor upgrades to existing designs (assuming, that is, that the sort of zero-risk-of- failure approach traditionally used in the U.S. nuclear weapon program is pursued in the future.)

    Incredibly, the prospect that the United States may be left unable to maintain the safety, reliability and credibility of its nuclear deterrent comes at the same moment as President Bush has been induced to take an action that will likely greatly increase the threat posed to this country from foreign nuclear programs. That would be the probable effect of his decision announced yesterday to increase dramatically the capabilities of supercomputers exported by the United States to countries like those of the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and China.

    While the White House has claimed that “The president’s decision [on supercomputer exports] will promote national security,” this seems improbable in the extreme. We can only hope that the Nuclear Posture Review will actually do so.

    Report Finds Shortcomings In Energy Dept. Arms Testing
    Ability to Ensure Weapons’ Reliability at Issue, IG Says

    By Walter Pincus

    The Washington Post, 3 January 2002

    The Energy Department’s inspector general has determined that the growing problems associated with the safety and reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons, without nuclear testing, have become a “most serious challenge area” for the newly established National Nuclear Security Agency that runs the weapons complex.

    In a report sent to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Dec. 21 and made public yesterday, Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman said one review his office conducted last year turned up backlogs in flight and laboratory test schedules for five of nine nuclear missile warheads and bombs in the operational stockpile.

    Another review, completed last month, showed backlogs of more than 18 months in correcting defects or malfunctions that were discovered in testing of older weapons systems.

    “Without a robust and complete surveillance testing program, the department’s ability to assess the reliability of some nuclear weapons is at risk,” Friedman wrote.

    Each year, the Pentagon and the Energy Department must certify to the president that the nuclear weapons stockpile is safe and reliable and that there is no need to resume tests involving the detonation of nuclear warheads and bombs in underground caverns, as was done until 1992.

    At a time when the Bush administration is contemplating sharp reductions in offensive strategic nuclear missiles and bombs, some lawmakers and senior officials inside the nuclear weapons complex and the Pentagon have been talking about the need to resume underground testing, said Sen. John W. Warner (Va.), ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

    “If the surveillance program can’t do the job, we will have to resume testing to make sure our [nuclear] weapons work,” Warner said recently.

    The government’s process of certifying “high confidence” in the nuclear stockpile involves randomly selecting for testing about 11 units from each of the nine deployed nuclear warheads on land- and submarine-based intercontinental missiles and bombs on aircraft. Nuclear warheads, missiles and bombs are flight-tested by being launched or dropped to see if the propellants and guidance systems work.

    The IG’s report showed that, over the past four years, there were delays in five of 16 tests scheduled for the W-80 warhead used on cruise missiles and in three of 12 tests scheduled for the W-88, which is carried by the sub-launched Trident II missiles.

    Laboratory tests to see whether handling, aging or manufacturing problems have developed in components such as radars showed delays in eight of 30 tests related to the B-61 nuclear bombs and in eight of 31 tests planned for the W-76 warhead used on sub-launched Trident I missiles. Component tests — which include looking at “pits,” or nuclear triggers and detonators — are also running behind, with four pit tests delayed out of 13 that were scheduled for the four-year period.

    When successful testing over four years falls below 75 percent of planned tests, “there is significant concern that anomalies or defects in the stockpile might have been missed,” the IG’s report said.

    Part of the problem, according to the IG, is that the facilities of the nuclear weapons complex have been aging and need increased spending for maintenance and replacement. Congress recently approved an extra $200 million for such work, but more is needed, Energy Department officials say.

    When testing shows a defect or malfunction, department procedures require immediate notification of the nuclear weapons lab that developed the weapon. Five days after notification, the lab is supposed to determine whether the problem is significant. If so, the lab has 45 days to determine through tests whether a major investigation should be initiated since the reliability and performance of the weapon could be involved.

    About 10 percent of significant findings have resulted in “retrofits or major design changes to the nuclear weapons stockpile,” the IG reported. Nevertheless, the IG recently found that the 45-day period for determining the significance of problems had grown, in some instances, to 300 days.

    After the determination had been made, “over two-thirds of the 64 active investigations remained unresolved beyond the department’s one-year benchmark for completion,” according to the IG’s report.

    Only a small cadre of engineers and experts carry out these investigations and they often are involved in other projects, a former top Pentagon official said. The IG noted that, as of March 2001, 18 of 24 such investigations remained unresolved after 18 or more months at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which spent the past two years adapting to tighter security rules in the wake of allegations of Chinese espionage.

    “If these delays continue, the department may not be in a position to unconditionally certify the aging nuclear weapons stockpile,” Friedman wrote.

    China: The Not-So-Hidden Dragon in the War on Terror

    (Washington, D.C.): If Pakistan and India go to nuclear war in the coming days, each country will be blamed for precipitating that calamity. The real responsibility, however, will lie elsewhere — with Communist China.

    China’s Contribution to Terror

    After all, it was the People’s Republic that put Pakistan in the atomic weapons business. Had it not been for Chinese know-how, personnel and technology, Islamabad would almost certainly not have "the Bomb" today.

    Beijing and its North Korean proxy have also been instrumental in Pakistan’s ballistic missile delivery systems for such weapons. According to the Washington Times’ Bill Gertz, Chinese-supplied M-11 missiles — which the Pakistanis have renamed the Shaheen and armed with atomic if not crude thermonuclear weapons — have been readied for use against India.

    To be sure, even if China had not decided years ago to play the Pakistani "card" against the PRC’s democratic enemy, India, by arming the Paks to the teeth, the present circumstances in Kashmir may still have produced yet another war between the two countries. But it would almost certainly have remained conventional in character, and the casualties on both sides relatively small.

    Unfortunately, China’s rampant proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has not only brought democratic India to the brink of nuclear war with her neighbor. According to the Associated Press, the Pakistani government recently detained two individuals, Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood and Abdul Majid, "on suspicion of sharing technical information with [Osama] bin Laden. They worked for Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission until retiring in 1999."

    Evidence accumulating from liberated enemy compounds, bunkers and hard drives attests to the keen interest bin Laden and Company have had in acquiring weapons of mass destruction [WMD]. It is hard to believe that Chinese-trained and -empowered Pakistanis, who were clearly sympathetic to his cause, were not forthcoming. If so, Americans may have even more direct reason to fear the effects of the PRC’s nuclear trade than deadly Indo- Pakistani missile duels.

    Matters are made even worse by the prospect that Pakistan has acted upon its longstanding desire to be the source of the "the Islamic Bomb." Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Algeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are among the countries of the Muslim world who would love to get their hands on the technology and materials needed to put themselves into the atomic or nuclear weapons business. Islamabad may well have served as a willing cut-out for Chinese help to some or all of these nations, and perhaps others as well.

    Iraq’s Friend, Not Ours

    Of these, Iraq is probably the most dangerous in the near-term. Baghdad’s ever-increasing WMD inventory — and Saddam Hussein’s willingness to use them — is the subject of a compelling new study by Dr. Kathleen Bailey entitled "Iraq’s Asymmetric Threat to the United States and U.S. Allies," (published by the National Institute for Public Policy.)

    The threat posed by Iraq is compelling the Bush Administration, finally, to bring about the end to Saddam’s reign of terror against his own people and others around the world. The increasingly compelling, if circumstantial, evidence of Iraqi involvement in recent terrorist acts against the United States — the subject of a newly released book, The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks, by Dr. Laurie Mylroie — makes clear that we defer such action any longer at our extreme peril.

    When the Administration does move against Iraq, it — and the American people — will be confronted once again with an unhappy reality temporarily obscured by the war on terrorism and the strange (and often unsavory) bedfellows coalition cobbled together by Secretary of State Colin Powell to prosecute it: Communist China is no friend of the United States.

    To the contrary, the PRC is a growing problem. Its burgeoning demand for energy has translated into troubling partnerships with unsavory regimes not only in Iraq but in Iran, Sudan and even Venezuela in our own hemisphere and into imperialistic aggression in the Spratly Islands. Beijing is buying an array of advanced weapons designed by the Soviets/Russians to destroy American military hardware and personnel. And, to add insult to injury, it is seeking to underwrite such activities either directly or (given the fungibility of money) indirectly on our own capital markets, unbeknownst to most American investors.

    Add into the mix China’s systematic dissemination of WMD technologies and delivery systems to countries we call "rogue states" and they call "clients" and you have a disaster waiting to happen. It would be reckless for America to ignore these developments — or their longer-term implications.

    Still worse would be for our leaders to succumb to the siren’s song emanating from "Friends of China" like former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke who recently urged President Bush (a man whose leadership Holbrooke has assiduously worked to undermine around the world) to negotiate a fourth "communique" with Beijing, based on a putative "common strategic concern [with] terrorism."

    The Bottom Line

    Unfortunately, our strategic concern should be with a China that has been abetting terrorism in Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere for years. Beijing may want us, in the name of the war on terror, to legitimate its repression of long-suffering minorities like Muslim Uighurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong or Christians. But we must not ignore the not-so-hidden dragon role China is playing in greatly exacerbating the costs and dangers associated with that war.

    Decision to Cancel Navy Missile Defense Program Should be Reversed and New Management, Willing to Deploy Sea-Based Systems, Hired

    (Washington, D.C.): Two amazing things happened in the aftermath of President Bush’s visionary and courageous decision to withdraw from 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

    First, contrary to the confident predictions of many so-called "experts," the sky remained in its place. Russian President Putin called the Bush action a mistake, but did not launch nuclear Armageddon or otherwise respond aggressively. In fact, he observed that it would not threaten Russia’s security and that U.S.-Russian relations should continue "at the same level."

    For its part, China mildly groused, but there was no talk of breaking off diplomatic — let alone commercial — relations with the United States. As for our allies, the worst of their reaction was confined to mild tut-tutting.

    So Much for the Chicken-Littles

    In other words, the concerted and sustained campaign to intimidate the United States into remaining within a treaty that prohibited the development and deployment of effective anti-missile defenses is now seen for what it always was: a flim-flam operation whose fraudulent character should have been exposed and rejected years ago. The upshot of our having failed to do that before now is that this country has been left vulnerable to the real and growing danger of ballistic missile-backed blackmail and/or attack.

    The Kremlin’s exceedingly muted reaction has left the few congressional Democrats who have publicly assailed Mr. Bush (notably, Senators Tom Daschle, Joe Biden and Carl Levin) in the unhappy position of being holier than the Pope — professing more concern about how badly the Russians would take this than the Russians themselves were actually taking it. The foolishness of this stance may be why so few of the Senators’ colleagues are publicly following their lead. In fact, after the withdrawal notification was announced, Congress authorized full-funding for the President’s missile defense budget.

    In short, President Bush has now succeeded in creating legal, diplomatic and political conditions that give him essentially complete latitude in pursuing and putting into place the missile defenses he has so clearly recognized are needed now.

    Seize the Day, Cancel Missile Defenses

    This makes all the more amazing the second thing that happened after Mr. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty on Thursday. On Friday, a small coterie of civilian Pentagon officials decided to cancel the Navy’s short-range Area Missile Defense program. As a result, the Navy will be sent back to the drawing board, postponing — perhaps by years — the day when forward-deployed U.S. amphibious forces and naval battle groups will have any protection against the danger currently posed to them by widely proliferated ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

    Predictably, missile defense critics — reeling from the body blow delivered by the President’s disposing of their cherished "cornerstone of strategic stability" — were euphoric. They chided the Defense Department, saying if it could not do something as relatively easy as building short-range anti- missile systems, it certainly couldn’t build more complex defenses against longer-range ballistic missiles. And they claimed vindication in asserting that the President had not needed to abandon the ABM Treaty at this juncture since no developing missile defenses were ready to bump up against the Treaty’s limitations.

    Needed Now: Navy Area

    Regrettably, giving comfort to the President’s political opponents is the least of the reasons why it was a mistake to terminate the Navy Area Missile Defense at this juncture. While this short-range anti- missile system has experienced both considerable cost growth and schedule slippage, it was described just last August by the now-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, as "essential to national security." He declared that "a robust, sea-based, lower-tier theater ballistic missile defense capability, found in the Navy Area Missile Defense Program, is critical to reducing operational risk to the warfighter." Of particular relevance to the Friday decision, Gen. Myers’ letter stated that, "There are no alternatives to this program that would provide equal or greater military capability at less cost."

    This assessment was foreshadowed in a letter sent to the Joint Chiefs Chairman in January by the Chief of Naval Operations and Marine Corps Commandant. They emphasized "the critical importance of early deployment of Navy Area Missile Defense capability. Navy Area is the number one priority of the Navy and Marine Corps among the different Theater Missile Defense systems." The Chairman was urged to "ensure that Navy Area capability is available to the Joint Force Commander at the earliest possible moment" and pledged that "we will do all in our power to ensure its effective deployment."

    Unfortunately, these strong arguments for proceeding with the Navy Area system were not persuasive to the small group of civilian officials led by Under Secretary of Defense E.C. "Pete" Aldridge. Perhaps that is because these senior military officers were not given an opportunity to make their case when the decision was being made. Indeed, they seemed to have been as surprised — and appalled — by the decision as was the President’s National Security Council staff.

    Instead, the cancellation seems to have been largely driven by the recommendations of Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, who heads the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Gen. Kadish has gone out of his way under both the Clinton and Bush administrations to delay, dumb-down and otherwise impede the most promising options for near-term missile defense: short- and long-range anti-missile systems based on the Navy’s existing $60 billion Aegis fleet air defense infrastructure.

    The Bottom Line

    To his great credit, President Bush has now created the opportunity for the U.S. military to finish the development and begin the deployment of effective missile defenses. If that opportunity is to be fully exploited, however, he will need to direct the Pentagon to test the Navy Area system as planned in February, press vigorously ahead with other, more capable sea-based anti-missile systems and entrust the management of such programs to those who will deploy — not cancel — the defenses we need.

    Hail to the Chief: George W. Bush Demonstrates Couragerous, Visionary Leadership — again — by Jettisoning A.B.M. Treaty

    (Washington, D.C.): In his first 11 months in office, President Bush has — to his lasting credit — reestablished "peace through strength" as the guiding principle of American security policy. This has been most evident in his extraordinary leadership in the war on terrorism.

    Arguably, an even more important manifestation of Mr. Bush’s determination to be realistic about the threats we face and to respond to them vigorously has been his breathtakingly clear-headed view of arms control. In contrast to virtually every one of his predecessors since John F. Kennedy — and countless others in academia, diplomatic circles, scientific conclaves, think tanks, Congress and the media who have made careers out of producing and/or promoting various arms limitation treaties, President Bush has seen such treaties for what they generally are: Accords that are all too often unverifiable, generally inequitable to the United States and frequently violated by the other parties. As a result, these usually well-intentioned pacts often have very deleterious effects on U.S. national security and interests.

    There is no better example of an arms control agreement having such a deleterious effect than the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. As the following op.ed. article by Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., which appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal, makes clear, the fact that this treaty compelled the American people to remain permanently vulnerable to the real and growing danger of ballistic missile attack made it not only a moral abomination; for a nation at war in the 21st Century, it had become an invitation to disaster.

    The Center for Security Policy commends President Bush for his principled, courageous and entirely correct view of the need for effective missile defense of the United States and its forces and allies overseas. It applauds him for rejecting the appalling idea of leaving the ABM Treaty in place while somehow pursuing missile defense-related development and testing it prohibited. And the Center joins the vast majority of our countrymen in thanking him for clearing the way at last, by withdrawing from that accord altogether, for the quintessential application of the principle of "peace through strength" — the deployment of such defenses at the earliest possible moment.

     

    A Milestone for Missile Defense
    By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
    The Wall Street Journal, 13 December 2001

    A year ago, shortly after George W. Bush officially won the presidency, political guru Karl Rove held an informal meeting with Washington policy wonks to discuss the incoming administration’s agenda. I asked him whether we could expect the new president to fulfill his campaign promise to defend the American people against ballistic-missile attack as soon as possible — even if doing so required the United States to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty?

    Mr. Rove’s response: "People in this town are going to be surprised to discover that George W. Bush means what he says, and does what he says he’ll do."

    Today, Mr. Bush will live up to that advance billing. He will exercise the U.S. right, pursuant to the ABM Treaty’s Article XV, to declare that the accord jeopardizes America’s "supreme interests." Six months from now, America will be free — for the first time in nearly 30 years — to develop and deploy whatever technologies it deems necessary to protect itself against missile attack.

    Significant Contribution

    It’s hard to overstate the significance of this contribution to the national security. Ronald Reagan launched his Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983 out of a conviction that it would be better to "protect American lives than to avenge them" after a nuclear missile attack. President Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, pursued a Global Protection Against Limited Strikes system and, at one point, even had Boris Yeltsin’s public support for jointly fielding such a capability. Yet neither of those presidents chose to withdraw from the ABM Treaty.

    Bill Clinton adamantly opposed missile defenses and, not surprisingly, his administration expended most of its related energies trying to make the ABM Treaty — which it called "the cornerstone of strategic stability" — even more restrictive of American anti-missile technology. Although Mr. Clinton was compelled in 1999 by veto-proof bipartisan majorities in Congress to sign legislation making it the policy of the U.S. to deploy a limited, effective national missile defense "as soon as technologically possible," he resisted calls to exercise our Article XV right to withdraw so as to implement that policy.

    George W. Bush has now gone where his predecessors declined to go, for one simple reason: Today’s world bears no resemblance to that of 1972, when the ABM Treaty was signed. The global superpower and nuclear peer that was the other party, the Soviet Union, has been out of business for over a decade. In its place is a world awash with weapons of mass destruction and rogue states seeking ever-more-capable means of delivering them via ballistic and cruise missiles.

    In 2001, we see even more clearly the validity of warnings sounded in 1998 by a blue-ribbon, bipartisan commission chaired by Donald Rumsfeld: While the Cold War was characterized by relatively predictable, deterrence-based strategic stability, the danger of devastating attacks via long-range missiles could now emerge at any time and with little warning.

    President Bush has also recognized another ineluctable reality. The U.S. simply could not acquire, let alone field, an effective anti-missile system for its people and territory within the limits of the ABM Treaty. This was no accident. That’s precisely what the treaty was designed to prevent the parties from legally doing.

    For starters, the Treaty’s Article I flatly prohibited the deployment of any territorial defense against "strategic" ballistic missiles. Article V barred the development of the most efficient approaches to defending against long-range missiles (sea-, air- and space-based systems). Various other provisions prohibited techniques that could be used to circumvent the treaty, including cooperation with allies.

    Of course, these limitations did not keep the Soviet Union and, after its demise, Russia from putting into place a territorial anti-missile system. As this page has reported in the past, former CIA analyst William T. Lee has accumulated irrefutable, unclassified evidence of a dirty little secret: Those responsible for designing and deploying the Kremlin’s ABM system around Moscow (which was allowed under the 1972 ABM Treaty) were under orders to use its radars and 8,000-10,000 surface-to-air interceptors to assemble an illegal nation-wide missile defense. The existence of this system renders absurd Kremlin complaints about America’s perfectly legitimate withdrawal from the treaty.

    Now some, like Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D., Del.), cavil that Mr. Bush "has not offered any convincing rationale for why any missile-defense test it may need to conduct would require walking away from a treaty that has helped keep the peace for the last 30 years." This is especially rich. Sen. Biden is one of those who has in the past strenuously insisted that the U.S. observe the most restrictive interpretation of what the treaty allows and does not.

    Hard as it may be to fathom, many of the ABM Treaty’s champions believe it more important to protect that accord than our country. Their theological attachment to what President Bush has properly called an "obsolete" and "dangerous" agreement appears to have little to do with logic or common sense. Rather, it seems to stem from the fact that entire careers in academe and defense circles have been based on this house of cards. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D., S.D.) gave voice to this sentiment in denouncing the Bush decision to withdraw as a "slap in the face for many people who have committed years if not decades" to arms control.

    Mr. Bush is under no illusions about the ABM Treaty. He has been formally advised by the Pentagon that continued adherence to it has required developmental tests to be curtailed, dumbed-down or otherwise made less useful than they could, and should, be. These warnings confirm what U.S. missile-defense program managers and engineers have known for three decades: You simply can’t acquire militarily valuable and cost-effective missile defenses of the U.S. and its allies overseas within the confines of the ABM Treaty. So it should come as no surprise that we are still without a fully deployable missile-defense system, despite many years and billions of dollars spent on related work — all done within the ABM Treaty straightjacket.

    The challenge now is to capitalize on the opportunities created by ending the ABM regime. Specifically, President Bush should direct not only a far more aggressive and unfettered development program but the deployment of anti-missile systems (even if their initial capability may be quite limited) in keeping with the mandates of the 1999 Missile Defense Act — that is, as soon as technologically possible.

    Start With Aegis

    The really good news is that, thanks to roughly $60 billion invested over the past 30 years, the U.S. Navy today has a fleet of 60 cruisers and destroyers equipped with the Aegis air-defense system. If the president directs that these ships and their existing sensors, missiles and communications systems be immediately upgraded as a matter of the utmost priority, a dozen or so of these vessels could be given limited capability to intercept ballistic missiles roughly six months after the ABM Treaty expires. The prior investment in infrastructure makes this far and away the most cost-effective, flexible and rapid means of fielding limited anti-missile systems, leaving ample funds available to bring other, complementary missile-defense technologies on line in due course.

    By withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, Mr. Bush has proven himself a man of his word. If he now directs the Defense Department to get started on the deployment of the defense he promised the American people, we may just have one in place before we need it.

    Mr. Gaffney was responsible for missile-defense policy in the Reagan Defense Department. He is currently the president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington.

    Is the Cold War Over’?

    (Washington, D.C.): In his syndicated column in Monday’s New York Times, William Safire offers an ominous assessment of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the signal successes he has achieved since President Bush started looking “into his soul” and declared that he “trusts” his Kremlin counterpart.

    Unfortunately for Mr. Bush, as alarming as the Safire critique is today — concerning, for example, Russia’s machinations, at U.S. and Western expense, on NATO, Chechnya, oil prices, weapons sales to Iraq and other state-sponsors of terrorism, etc. — the record could become even more damning if Secretary of State Powell has his way.

    Reading Putin’s Mind’

    Bill Safire rightly worries that the “new relationship” being forged at President Bush’s behest between Russia and the Atlantic Alliance will translate into Moscow having access to NATO’s military secrets and an effective veto over its conduct of operations. He notes that Putin’s ruthless repression of the Chechens has now been legitimated as just another front in the global war on Islamist terrorism.

    Safire wonders about Russian double-dealing on oil prices, too. He notes that Moscow at first declined to go along with production cut-backs sought by OPEC, but has recently signaled a willingness to make more-than-token reductions in supply so as to jack up the price-per-barrel. And he observes that, while the Kremlin was only too happy to have us attack its enemies in Afghanistan, Moscow will want no part of our doing the same in Iraq or other Russian client-states.

    The Powell Gambit

    These concerns are hardly unjustified. If press reports are correct, however, the gravity of their implications may be greatly compounded by Secretary of State Powell during his personal diplomatic mission to Moscow this week.

    According to the Washington Post, Mr. Powell told reporters enroute to Russia that “a deal between the United States and Russia to sharply reduce nuclear weapons is just about done,’ and the two countries are now looking for ways to verify that they abide by the proposed limits.” Specifically, they are “focusing on how to apply verification measures included in the earlier START I and START II arms control treaties to the new limits proposed for offensive weapons.”

    In other words, President Bush risks having a unilateral decision to reduce American strategic nuclear forces by two-thirds over the next decade morphed by his Secretary of State into a binding bilateral agreement, replete with verification mechanisms carried forward from earlier arms control treaties.

    This would be a very bad idea on several grounds. First of all, the number of strategic arms President Bush has decided to retain a decade from now — 1700-2200 weapons — may prove inadequate to future targeting requirements. One of the distinct advantages of making that decision as a matter of unilateral U.S. discretion is that it could relatively easily be revised down the road. That is not the case with understandings formalized by accords (treaties, executive agreements, etc.) between countries.

    Second, the START I and II verification measures are predicated on elaborate and artificial counting rules. For instance, a given long-range missile may have fewer warheads aboard it than the number it can carry but, in the interest of arms control monitoring, a larger number is automatically assigned to each missile of that type. Should such rules now be applied to the President’s projected force levels — something explicitly rejected in their formulation and adoption — the practical effect would be that the United States could field still fewer weapons than even he thought necessary.

    Finally, and most troubling, Secretary Powell’s efforts to get a “deal” on strategic arms violates a fundamental principle of the President’s approach to Russia: The Cold War is over. The State Department’s preference for arms control agreements with the Kremlin — replete with arrangements for verifying each others’ compliance with such accords — amounts to a direct repudiation of Mr. Bush’s concept of a new post-Cold War era. The affront would only be compounded were Mr. Powell to sign onto another “deal” that would perpetuate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty but somehow allow the U.S. greater latitude to conduct missile defense tests it prohibits.

    The Bottom Line

    In the world President Bush has envisioned, massive American nuclear reductions are possible. U.S.-Russian cooperation on intelligence, counter-terrorism, drug enforcement and maybe even missile defense are imaginable (if debatable). Who knows, in such an environment, it might actually be possible to “trust” Russia with access to NATO’s innermost councils, to maintain stable energy prices, to end its dangerous ties with rogue states, etc.

    If, on the other hand, what is really going on here is a State Department-abetted, Russian gambit to make the most of changed circumstances so as to pursue the Kremlin’s abiding agenda — weakening the United States and improving Russia’s relative power, then the indictment served up by Bill Safire will be but a foretaste of what is to come.

    President Bush can’t have it both ways. Either his Administration will put the Cold War — and its relics, like negotiated offensive arms control accords and the ABM Treaty — behind it and insist on a genuinely different relationship with Russia and, for that matter, a different Russia. Or he will find himself getting the worst of both worlds: in effect rewarding his “friend,” Vladimir Putin, for persisting in behavior antithetical to vital U.S. security and other interests.

    It’s Time to Move Beyond’ the A.B.M. Treaty

    (Washington, D.C.): With the third successful “hit-to-kill” intercept of a simulated ballistic missile warhead high over the Pacific Ocean last night, the question is no longer “Can U.S. technology provide protection for the American people against missile-delivered attacks?” To its credit, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) has once again demonstrated that it can produce and put into space exo-atmospheric kill vehicles (EKVs) capable of discriminating between realistic targets and a decoy — and completely destroying the former.

    Moving Right Along

    Rather, the relevant question now is: “What is the most efficient, cost-effective and expeditious way in which to bring this and related technology to bear in an operational missile defense system?”

    There is nothing academic about this new characterization of the challenge we face. In fact, the law of the land requires that it be answered. The Missile Defense Act of 1999 established that it is the “the policy of the United States to deploy, as soon as is technologically possible, an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack.” (Emphasis added.)

    Faithful implementation of that policy will require the Bush Administration to seize upon the opportunity afforded by last night’s success to adopt a much more aggressive approach to the development, testing and deployment of missile defenses. Absent such a change, it will be at least three more years before even a rudimentary anti-missile system will be brought on-line.

    To realize the maximum effect from a redoubled effort, however, President Bush will have to end U.S. adherence to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty signed in 1972 with the Soviet Union — a nation that ceased to exist a decade ago. The ABM Treaty’s first article prohibited altogether the fielding of a territorial defense of the United States against long- range ballistic missiles. Other articles either barred outright or grievously impeded activities required to bring the most flexible and cost-effective anti-missile technologies to bear (e.g., sea-, air- and space-based sensors and kill-vehicles). For these reasons, among others, Mr. Bush has rightly called the Treaty “outdated,” “obsolete” and “dangerous” and promised to “move beyond it.”

    The Bottom Line

    Importantly, one other article — Article XV — grants either party the right to withdraw from the ABM Treaty on six-months’ notice. As a result, even if President Bush were to act immediately and provide such notice, missile defense tests and developmental activities would continue to be made less valuable than they otherwise could — and should — be until at the earliest June 2002. For example, the $100 million test conducted last night was unable to make use of sea- and land-based sensors that could have enabled BMDO to acquire additional, valuable data, data that might enhance the effectiveness of any systems deployed in the future. If Mr. Bush is serious about defending the country, and acting in conformity with the law, he must minimize to the greatest degree possible any further penalties associated with the ABM Treaty.

    In addition to withdrawing from the ABM Treaty forthwith, President Bush should advise Congress that he will veto the Fiscal Year 2002 defense spending bill if it is sent to his desk without restoring the funding he requested for the missile defense program’s “top-line,” and in particular for the Space-Based Infrared Sensor (Low) program, sea-based boost-phase experiments and the space-based laser development effort. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has already indicated that he would recommend “that [the President] veto” the 2002 defense authorization bill if it did not include a go- ahead for the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) program. Ensuring that the United States is defended against ballistic missile attack “at the earliest possible time” is at least as worthy of a presidential veto as efforts to dismantle military infrastructure deemed excess to present and foreseeable needs.