Tag Archives: Defense Procurement Policy

Friends Don’t Let Friends Underfund Defense

(Washington, D.C.): Today’s Washington Post features a column by Robert Kagan that constructively challenges the adequacy of the Bush Administration funding for the Department of Defense. That such harsh criticism is not only warranted but constructive is assured by Mr. Kagan’s citation of no less an authority than President Bush’s Deputy Secretary of Defense, Dr. Paul Wolfowitz, who has courageously — and correctly — declared repeatedly in congressional testimony that it is “reckless to press our luck or gamble with our children’s future’ by spending only 3 percent of America’s gross national product on defense.” As the Kagan column points out, 3 percent of GDP is all the President’s FY2002 budget proposes to spend on national defense.

Messrs. Wolfowitz and Kagan persuasively argue instead for a real and sustained increase in defense spending over and above the levels approved to date by the Bush Office of Management and Budget. If history is any guide, doing less invites future defense costs that will make the present shortfalls pale by comparison. An American military perceived to be hollow invites aggression by others, often leading to conflicts that entail U.S. expenditures on the armed forces many times the amounts that, had they been spent beforehand, may well have deterred the adversary from acting in the first place.

Particularly noteworthy is Mr. Kagan’s cautionary closing note for Republicans: They cannot take for granted the political support they have long enjoyed from those in and out of uniform who subscribe to the Reagan philosophy of “peace through strength.” While fu ture success at the polls is hardly the only — to say nothing of the most important — reason for ensuring America’s military has the equipment, trained personnel and power projection capability required to defend the Nation’s world-wide interests in the 21st Century, the GOP risks disaster in coming elections if it permits others to be perceived (however unjustifiably) as more committed to assuring the robustness of the United States’ armed forces.

Indefensible Defense Budget

By Robert Kagan

The Washington Post, 20 July 2001

President Bush’s defense budget is inadequate and reckless. Who says so? His own deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz. In little-noticed testimony before Congress last week, Wolfowitz said it was “reckless to press our luck or gamble with our children’s future” by spending only 3 percent of America’s gross national product on defense. Bush’s proposed defense budget of $329 billion puts defense spending at 3 percent. As Republicans liked to point out during the Clinton years, it hasn’t been that low since Pearl Harbor.

Wolfowitz’s gutsy whistle-blowing follows a losing battle with the White House. According to administration sources, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked the White House last month for a $35 billion increase over the Clinton defense budget. The Office of Management and Budget sliced his request in half. This week Rumsfeld said he would need at least another $18 billion next year, but OMB has said he won’t get more than $10 billion.

So much for Vice President Dick Cheney’s campaign promise to the military: “Help is on the way.” Tax rebate checks are on the way. Real help for the military is not. Last year Cheney warned that defense budget “shortfalls” in the Clinton era were forcing the military to cut back on training and exercises and creating dangerous “shortages of spare parts and equipment.” But this week Rumsfeld frankly told Congress that Bush’s budget “does not get us well.” Joint Chiefs Chairman Henry Shelton was even more blunt: “We’re not going to be able to make significant inroads into fixing the modernization and the transformation and the infrastructure at three cents on the dollar. . . . I don’t believe that we’ll be able to sustain our long-term readiness under these conditions.” All of which led Democratic Rep. Norman Dicks to ask why, if both Rumsfeld and Shelton “know that the country is underfunding the defense budget,” they couldn’t “convince the president and OMB . . . that we’ve got to have a significant increase, or we’re going to let America’s military capability deteriorate?”

Rumsfeld had no answer, but it’s a good question. Serious defense experts of all political hues agree that even Rumsfeld’s original $35 billion request was low. Jimmy Carter’s defense secretary, Harold Brown, and former defense secretary James Schlesinger have argued in these pages for an increase of at least $50 billion a year, and former Clinton Pentagon officials agree. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines say they need $32 billion this year just to keep planes flying, tanks rolling and troops training. Never mind buying new weapons systems to replace those that are now a quarter-century old. As one Pentagon official put it, President Bush’s $18 billion is barely enough “to keep us treading water.” With $9 billion set aside for military housing, health and pay increases, Bush’s budget gives Rumsfeld too little to repair the military’s readiness problems, much less to modernize and “transform” it to fight the wars of the future.

So now what? Rumsfeld says he’ll try to make up for the inadequacies of the president’s budget by increasing “efficiency” at the Pentagon. But even if he eliminates all the waste — improbable — and persuades Congress to close more military bases — highly improbable — he’ll be lucky to eke out a few billion dollars. Shelton is more candid: If your armed forces don’t have the capability to carry out their missions, he told Congress this week, you can either increase the capabilities or decrease the missions. Whether Bush realizes it or not, he has chosen the latter course.

In fact, Bush’s inadequate defense budget will soon start driving his foreign policy, if it hasn’t already. The first casualty may be the American role in Europe. Last month Bush promised to enlarge NATO and to keep U.S. troops in the Balkans as long as necessary. But Rumsfeld’s top adviser, Stephen Cambone, has bluntly warned the Army that it will lose two or more divisions under the new budget. Most of those cuts will come in Europe, which will make the U.S. presence in the Balkans increasingly difficult to sustain and raise doubts about Bush’s commitment to NATO, much less to an enlarged NATO.

That’s just the beginning. Bush officials say they intend to shift America’s strategic focus to Asia. Fine. With what? The Navy, which had almost 600 ships in the 1980s, now has 310, but Rumsfeld warns that lack of money is driving the number down to an “unacceptable” 230. The chief of naval operations says stocks of precision- guided munitions — the wonder-weapon of choice in Kosovo and Iraq — are “below the current war fighting requirement,” which poses a “major risk” to U.S. forces. The Air Force says the number of aircraft readily available for use in combat has been steadily declining due to shortages of spare parts and maintenance. Add it all up and Bush’s stated commitments to defend Taiwan and get tough with Saddam Hussein start to look pretty hollow. Maybe Bush’s soft approach to Iraq since February has been driven by the fear that he literally can’t afford another conflict. Or, to be more precise, he doesn’t want to afford it.

Remember when Republicans were more trustworthy on defense and national security than Democrats? This Bush presidency may change all that. After years of berating Clinton, Republicans are suddenly mute — what defense budget crisis? — while Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are hung out to dry.

The writer, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.

The End of The Beginning’ For The Deployment of Missile Defenses?

(Washington, D.C.): Saturday night’s impressive intercept of a simulated ballistic missile warhead high over the Pacific Ocean may not mark the beginning of the end of the opposition to American deployment of effective anti-missile defenses. But, as Winston Churchill might have put it, this latest evidence that the United States does indeed have the technical ability and the means to thwart missile blackmail — and worse — should mark “the end of the beginning” of the effort to defend America from this growing scourge.

Whether that will prove to be the case depends, of course, on more than a single flight test, albeit a make-or-break one. It will now fall to the Bush Administration to build on the momentum imparted by this test to firm up its substantive positions and rhetoric with respect to the only real, remaining impediment to defending this country: the Anti- Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty signed in 1972 with the Soviet Union.

Time to Move Beyond’ the ABM Treaty

Actually, President Bush and his subordinates have done a commendable job, by and large, in speaking the truth about the ABM Treaty. They have stated publicly that it is a “relic of the Cold War,” fashioned during an unrecognizably different period when the USSR was still a going concern and an intractable foe of, and virtually the sole threat to, the Free World.

The Bush team has also accurately described the ABM Treaty as an insuperable obstacle to the development and fielding of effective anti-missile systems for the territory of the United States. That was, after all, its express purpose and proven effect. (If any further evidence were needed, consider Russian charges that even Saturday’s test — an experiment specifically designed to be consistent with the ABM Treaty — contributes to a situation “which threatens all international treaties in the sphere of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.”)

To its credit, the Bush Administration has properly and repeatedly stated that, as a result, America has to “move beyond” the Treaty. It has even served notice that it would have to do so “within months, not years.”

A Veto for Moscow?

What is urgently needed now, however, is a far more coherent and disciplined position on the underlying issue: What role, if any, will Russia have in the Bush Administration’s movement “beyond the ABM Treaty”?

Unfortunately, Administration spokesmen last week seemed all over the lot on the issue. In an interview with the Washington Post, Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed the view that the U.S. “needs an understanding, an agreement, a treaty — something with the Russians that allows us to move forward with our missile defense programs.” Such a formulation at the very least implies that we would not be able to “move forward” without Moscow’s assent. Yet, in remarks last week at the National Press Club, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice firmly eschewed the idea that explicit Russian permission, let alone a formal accord codifying a new, post-ABM Treaty bilateral relationship, was required.

Meanwhile, at a Frontiers of Freedom Institute symposium on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated flatly that the United States would not “violate” the ABM Treaty and that he expected an understanding to be reached with Moscow. Unfortunately, the nuances of the Pentagon chief’s formulation may have been lost on many. Importantly, he also noted that the ABM Treaty expressly provides for either parties’ withdrawal on six-months’ notice. Consequently, at such time as we need relief from the Treaty, in the absence of any new understandings with Russia, the United States would not violate the ABM Treaty — because it would simply withdraw from it.

What Treaty?

It is worth noting that even this step would be unnecessary in the event the Administration adopted the legal analysis of its newly confirmed Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith. Several years ago, Mr. Feith (who formerly served as the Chairman of the Center for Security Policy’s Board of Directors) and former Justice Department attorney George Miron definitively established that, under international legal practice and precedent, the ABM Treaty could no longer be legally binding on the United States after the other signatory, the Soviet Union, was formally disestablished.

Another analysis by retired intelligence officer William Lee makes clear moreover, that — even if the Treaty were still in effect — the fact that first the USSR and subsequently Russia deployed and maintained a prohibited territorial defense against ballistic missile attack would offer grounds to declare the Treaty null and void.
Bite the Bullet

Understandably, Mr. Bush and his subordinates would prefer to avoid the domestic and international repercussions that might attend a formal, unilateral American announcement that the ABM Treaty regime is no longer operative. Yet, by being inexact on this point — and, worse yet, by suggesting (at least intermittently) that the U.S. will remain bound by that accord unless the Russians give us license to leave it — the Administration plays into the hands of those who insist this obsolete treaty is “the cornerstone of strategic stability” and that its termination will, as the Washington Post editorialized on July 16, “detract from global stability.” Foreign critics will be emboldened to intensify their opposition to American missile defenses; opponents at home will try to deny the Administration’s requests for funding associated with development and testing, to say nothing of deployment, they consider incompatible with the ABM Treaty.

Like it or not, the Russian question can be finessed no longer. President Bush will meet this weekend with his counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Italy; Dr. Rice will be visiting Moscow; and Secretaries Powell and Rumsfeld will shortly begin conversations with their opposite numbers. And in each of these settings, the Kremlin’s representatives can be expected to press sharply not only for clarity, but for advantage.

Specifically, Putin and Company will demand a veto over America’s missile defense program. For their own reasons, others — from Russia’s strategic partner, China, to their rogue state clients to left- wing allied governments to Senate Democrats — are anxious to see the Kremlin succeed. At a minimum, the Kremlin will insist on undertakings concerning ill-advised sharing of U.S. missile defense technology, potentially reckless cuts in American strategic forces and/or a commitment to negotiate the unachievable, namely, amendments to the ABM Treaty acceptable to Russia yet compatible with U.S. missile defense requirements.

The Bottom Line

Short of a deadly, missile-delivered attack on someplace we care about, Mr. Bush is unlikely ever to be in a stronger position to take the necessary step of terminating the ABM Treaty regime than he is now, in the wake of Saturday’s successful test. Unfortunately, if he fails to take that step under present circumstances, the President risks fostering conditions likely to ensure that he — or a successor — is obliged to do so after a devastating attack occurs, one that might otherwise have been deterred or prevented.

The Bush Missile Defense Plan: Good As Far As It Goes — But It Doesn’t Go Far Enough

(Washington, D.C.): Today, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and the Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization Director, Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, unveiled the Bush Administration’s long-awaited missile defense plan before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The plan is, in short, a comprehensive effort to develop and test the array of promising technologies capable of destroying ballistic missiles of varying ranges in the boost, mid-course and terminal phases.

Deja Vu All Over Again

As such, it is reminiscent of the wide-ranging R&D program launched by President Reagan shortly after he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983. If fully funded, and unimpeded by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty’s constraints, this businesslike approach would indubitably produce effective, layered defenses over the next decade or so.

There is, unfortunately, real reason to be concerned about whether the requested funds — over $8.3 billion in Fiscal Year 2002 alone — will be forthcoming. Senate Democrats, led by Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, have made clear their determination to impede the development and deployment of missile defenses incompatible with the ABM Treaty, which is to say all effective anti-missile systems. Regrettably, given serious funding shortfalls in other defense areas, they may well be able to cite support from military leaders for shifting funds earmarked for missile defense to other areas.

In addition, the Administration is walking a very fine line with respect to the ABM Treaty. At a Capitol Hill symposium on missile defense convened today by Frontiers of Freedom, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld forcefully declared that “the United States does not violate treaties” and will not do so with respect to the ban on U.S. and Soviet territorial missile defenses. He hastened to add, however, that while the Bush team hoped and expected to arrive at some understanding with the Russians that would dispense with the existing treaty, if that proves impossible, the United States would have to exercise its right to withdraw from that accord.

It remains to be seen whether domestic and foreign opponents of U.S. missile defenses will hear both parts of that statement, or just the promise not to violate the ABM Treaty. The Administration clearly should also expect congressional efforts to deny funding for development and testing activities that constitute possible violations.

The Bottom Line

President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld are to be commended for their efforts to address the threat of ballistic missile attack in the face of non-trivial technical, funding and diplomatic obstacles inherited from their predecessors. The program they have laid out is an important start but one that may well fall short of its goal of defending America, its forces overseas and allies unless augmented in several respects.

Consequently, President Bush should complement his plan with the following additional steps:

  • Immediately establish that the Navy’s 60-odd ships equipped with the Aegis fleet air defense system will, henceforth, be part of the Nation’s missile defense infrastructure. While their present capabilities to intercept ballistic missiles are, unfortunately, quite limited, the existing ships, launchers, missiles, sensors, communications systems and people who operate them constitute a huge leg-up on the task of fielding the sort of anti-missile systems we need.
  • Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld should make clear that every effort will be made to evolve the present Aegis cruisers and destroyers as rapidly as possible so as to maximize their effectiveness. For this purpose, a program office should be established at once comparable in scope, authority and priority to that the Navy has used for most of the past five decades to manage its Fleet Ballistic Missile program. This office should then be charged with achieving the most capable possible sea-based systems for performing on an integrated basis boost, mid-course and terminal defense.
  • The United States should give notice now that it is exercising its right to withdraw from the treaty. The fact that there will be a fixed end-point to the pre-deployment period for missile defenses (i.e., six-months) will encourage constructive conversations with the Russians. We will know shortly whether a new, mutually satisfactory “strategic framework” is, in fact, an option — or whether we will have to “move beyond” the ABM Treaty on a unilateral basis.

Testing President Bush

(Washington, D.C.): Saturday’s New York Times reported that “President Bush has resolved to let the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) languish in the Senate, where its supporters concede they do not have the votes to revive it.” If correct, this disclosure represents good news and bad news.

A Defective, Unacceptable Treaty

The good news is that, as President, George W. Bush is hewing to the same line he took with respect to the CTBT as a candidate for the White House: The treaty’s permanent, “zero- yield” ban on all underground nuclear testing is unverifiable and incompatible with American security. A majority of the United States Senate reached the same conclusion in 1999 when it voted to reject ratification of President Clinton’s test ban treaty — the most stunning repudiation of an arms control accord in history.

The bad news is that, according to the Times, Mr. Bush has been persuaded by State Department lawyers that “a President cannot withdraw a treaty from the Senate once it has been presented for approval.” They evidently assert that “Senate rules require a two-thirds vote to ratify the treaty…or to send the CTBT back to Mr. Bush for disposal.”

What is at Stake

This is ridiculous. The Senate has spoken on this treaty, with seventeen more votes than the 34 needed to block ratification being cast against it. That should be a sufficient basis for Mr. Bush to serve notice that he considers the CTBT to be ineligible for further consideration and effectively if not, strictly speaking, mechanically — withdrawn from the Senate’s docket.

Unfortunately, this is not an academic point. Every Senate Democrat voted for the CTBT, a troubling testament to their caucus’ discipline — even at the expense of national security. All other things being equal, Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden may well be tempted to score political points with their base at Mr. Bush’s expense by resuscitating the CTBT. Their calculation could be that, even if the votes are still not there for this defective accord, the Democratic Party can make inroads with moderates and independents if it can tag President Bush as recklessly enamored of nuclear weapons and a serial eviscerator of treaties (along with the Kyoto Protocol and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty).

Deep Reductions’

The danger is that Mr. Bush will be further encouraged by such political maneuvering to translate one of his campaign pledges into worrisome presidential direction. During a major foreign policy address at the Citadel and subsequently, the then-Texas Governor declared his willingness to make deep and unilateral reductions in U.S. nuclear forces.

During its first six-months in office, the Bush Administration has been actively considering how responsibly to implement that and related proposals. There seems little doubt that the President will indeed shortly unveil a plan that goes well beyond the elimination of the MX intercontinental ballistic missile and the reduction by one-third of the B-1 bomber force unveiled two weeks ago.

The trouble is that, the smaller the size of our nuclear arsenal, the more important it becomes that the remaining weapons are safe, reliable and effective as a deterrent. Those currently in the inventory are either at or approaching the end of their design life.

Unfortunately, we have no scientifically rigorous and certain way of ensuring the safety and viability of nuclear weapons without at least realistic, low-yield underground explosive tests. What is more, making long-overdue efforts to replace those weapons with nuclear devices appropriate to the 21st Century (for example, capable of holding at risk deep-underground bunkers favored by the Third World dictators who we most worry about deterring in the present era) will, moreover, require some developmental testing.

Thus, while the exact size, and strategic implications, of the Bush strategic stockpile can only be guessed at just now, one thing is already clear: If the President fails to make clear that the down-sizing and restructuring of the American strategic deterrent must be accompanied by the maintenance and modernization of those forces that will be retained — and, of necessity, a resumption of limited underground nuclear testing — he will be missing the best opportunity we are likely ever to have to explain the need for and to secure popular support of those initiatives.

This will, of course, require abandonment of the moratorium on nuclear testing forced upon President Bush the Elder in 1992 and affirmed by his son even as the latter denounced the CTBT. Accordingly, Mr. Bush and his representatives must stop pledging to perpetuate that arrangement as was done, for example, most recently by NATO foreign ministers at their meeting in May in Budapest. Their final communique read, in part, “As long as the CTBT has not entered into force, we urge all states to maintain existing moratoria on nuclear testing.”

To be sure, this language represents a significant improvement over the previous formulation favored by the Clinton Administration — namely, “We remain committed to an early entry into force of the CTBT and, in the meanwhile, urge all states to refrain from any acts which would defeat its object and purpose.” Still, it is not enough for Mr. Bush to replace his predecessor’s efforts to pretend that the Senate had not rejected the CTBT with an open-ended commitment to continue to deny this country a diagnostic and developmental tool essential to the maintenance of the sort of deterrent we need today — and of which we will likely have even greater in the years ahead.

The Bottom Line

By coupling his decision to reduce the number of nuclear weapons the United States will retain with an announcement that the Nation will resume the testing needed to ensure that its deterrent remains safe, reliable and competent, George W. Bush can secure a two-fer: First, he can take, under the most favorable circumstances imaginable, a step that his adversaries at home and abroad would dearly like to make politically costly for him. And two, he can thereby act constructively to “defeat the object and purpose of the CTBT” — and thus establish beyond a doubt that America will not be precluded from doing what it must for its national security, and that of others around the world who rely upon our nuclear umbrella.

Bear over the Barrel’: Putin’s Threats re: U.S. Missile Defenses are Strategically Hollow, Economically Unaffordable

(Washington, D.C.): Opponents at home and abroad of President Bush’s plan to deploy U.S. missile defenses are betting heavily on Russian President Vladimir Putin to help them carry the day. Thus, Putin’s every utterance about his determination to build new missiles or add warheads to old ones are given prominent treatment in Democratic congressional circles, allied capitals and talkfests featuring pundits and others in the domestic and international media elite.

The only problem is — as complementary essays published in recent days by Columbia University professor Padma Desai and former Clinton CIA Director R. James Woolsey make clear — there is no there. Putin’s Russia simply cannot afford to undertake the “arms race” he threatens. Even if the Russians could, it would make absolutely no difference strategically.

The latter point, lucidly made by Mr. Woolsey, is further underscored by Putin’s latest, bizarre gambit aimed, apparently, at not giving too much offense to his new friend, George W. Bush. On Friday, according to an Associated Press item featured today by globalsecuritynews.com, the Russian President announced, “I want to say that if such a response [i.e., a Russian missile and/or warhead build-up] does take place, it will not be aimed against the creators of the NMD system.” He added that Russia’s plans “should not worry anyone” given this fact.

In short, there is no better time than the present for the United States to be deploying missile defenses. Get on with it.

Putin’s bluff: Russia’s economic problems leave it with no alternative but to accept US plans for a missile defence system

By Padma Desai

The Financial Times, 21 June 2001

Many US security specialists thought Vladimir Putin would use Saturday’s summit with George W. Bush to air his outright rejection of US plans to develop a national missile defence. They were surprised when it did not happen. But they have only themselves to blame: if they had not lost sight of Russia’s plight, they would have predicted the mildness of Mr Putin’s disapproval long ago.

The Russian bear is trapped between a failing economy and pressing defence needs on the non-nuclear front. Russia’s president has little choice other than to accept NMD, even if he tries to secure some concessions along the way.

Mr Putin’s post-summit threat to push ahead with deployment of multiple nuclear warheads in response to a unilateral US decision on NMD is therefore little more than noise and cheap bargaining. Mr Bush has the bear over a barrel.

The failure of US security analysts to recognise the importance of economic factors in undermining Mr Putin’s opposition to NMD is particularly puzzling when one considers that the Bush administration is front-loaded with many veterans of Ronald Reagan’s “bust-their-budget” war against the “evil empire”. They believe, not implausibly, that Mikhail Gorbachev was pushed – even if willingly – into the dissolution of the Soviet Union and into glasnost and perestroika because the failing Soviet economy was incapable of sustaining an enhanced arms race.

Drawing a parallel between the economic circumstances of Mr Gorbachev’s Soviet Union and Mr Putin’s Russia is hard to resist. As it did a decade and a half ago, Russia suffers from severe economic stress. It is true that the growth rate was 8 per cent last year – but it is expected to fall to half that in 2001. Few of the reforms needed to attract foreign investment are in place and infrastructure is crumbling. The country’s economic transition is deeply troubled.

As if that were not enough, Russia’s dependence on foreign assistance continues to be acute, a fact that is not helped by the US’s Republican administration, which is reluctant to give Moscow a “free ride.” The 1998 Cox Commission of the Congress, dominated by Republicans, viscerally denounced the Clinton-Gore approach of ready financial support as naive and wrong. Realpolitik, rather than active engagement and quid pro quo generosity, is likely to be the new order of the day.

A close look at the Russian budget is also revealing. The budget is at last expected to be in balance this year. But this good news reflects the massive increase in oil revenues because of high oil prices and that is unlikely to last. Government expenditure in 2001 is planned at $ 42 billion; one out of every four roubles – rising to one out of three by 2003 – is earmarked for debt repayment. By contrast, only a paltry $5 billion is allocated for defence. If defence expenditures are re-evaluated at purchasing power parity -a dubious procedure in itself – they rise but are still tiny compared with US defence spending at Dollars $330 billion.

Worse for Russia, priorities within this small defence budget have shifted to reflect the country’s growing concerns about neighbours such as Tajikistan and Georgia to the south – partly a consequence of the costly mistakes in Chechnya. After a prolonged internal debate in which Igor Sergeev, the former defence minister, argued for renovation of Russia’s nuclear capabilities while Anatoly Kvashnin, the current joint chief of staff, fought for building conventional forces, Mr Kvashnin gained the upper hand.

There is no doubt that Mr Putin must dread the prospect of NMD eventually destroying the utility of Russia’s nuclear stockpiles and turning the US into a hyperpower with first-strike capability without fear of retaliation. But the Russian leader has no alternative. After all, he needs US financial support; his budget cannot possibly find the necessary resources to begin a nuclear arms race; and his immediate defence needs are focused on the country’s difficult neighbours.

Mr Putin cannot even threaten nuclear proliferation because such a tactic could backfire through the actions of some Islamic states on Russia’s periphery. To assuage Russia, the Bush administration has suggested buying surface-to-air missiles for possible deployment in Europe. It may even buy transport planes and submarines, which Russians produce well – as we know from the use of the Russian transport plane to bring the disassembled US spy plane back from China. An economically crippled Russia, with her conventional defence needs, cannot but look favourably on these sweeteners.

If NMD is to be stopped, the onus will not be carried by Russia. Instead, it will fall on the Europeans, as well as by the Democrats and others within the US itself. The war over NMD will be fought not in Moscow but within the west.

The writer is professor of comparative economic systems and director of the Center for Transition Economies at Columbia University

Putin’s Futile Warhead-Rattling

By R. James Woolsey

The Washington Post, 26 June 2001

In his recent marathon press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to show both a velvet glove — nobody here but us free enterprise democrats, folks — and a barely concealed mailed fist: In essence, if you Americans deploy ballistic missile defenses we will put multiple warheads on our new ICBMs.

Some European and American observers have already declared that Putin has now trumped every card in the American hand. What could be worse, they ask, than more Russian strategic warheads? Destabilizing! Arms race! Stop Bush from provoking this horror!

Whoa.

The proper riposte to Putin’s threat is the one given earlier this year by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when Russia’s current defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, similarly told him that Russia would deploy more strategic warheads if the United States pursued defenses. Essentially, Rumsfeld shrugged.

Exactly right. If Putin wants to waste his rubles convincing the world that his nostalgia for the Cold War knows no bounds, it’s his problem, not ours. The number of Russian strategic warheads was a central concern for us only in the historical context of the Cold War and the threat the Soviets then posed to Europe. Fixation on such numbers today is a demonstration of short-term memory loss — about everything that’s happened since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today we have two serious problems with Russia’s nuclear forces, but neither has anything to do with the number of their strategic warheads.

First, Russian warning systems are thoroughly decrepit and riddled with gaps. Some of their radars are not even in Russia, due to the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the satellites in their warning network are starting to fail. In 1995 President Boris Yeltsin was falsely alerted because the wheezing Russian warning system mistakenly took the launch of a Norwegian scientific rocket (of which they had been notified) for a possible missile launch from a U.S. submarine. The Russians need help filling these gaps in their warning systems, and two years ago we agreed to do so — by forming a joint U.S.-Russian warning center in Moscow that would use data from both countries — but the Russians continue to delay its implementation.

Second, although Russian strategic warheads are well-guarded, large numbers of small tactical nuclear warheads and huge amounts of fissionable material usable for bombs are not, and these create a serious stockpile security problem. Nunn-Lugar funds from the United States have helped secure about two-thirds of this mess from theft and smuggling and could help secure the rest, but again Russian stalling (much of it from President Putin’s old outfit, the domestic successor to the KGB) is holding up progress.

The numbers of Russian strategic warheads don’t cause, or even exacerbate, either the warning or the stockpile problems. The warning gaps have to be fixed whether the Russians have 1,000 strategic warheads or 5,000 — the accidental launch of even one would be an incredible disaster — and this risk is basically unaffected by warhead numbers. The stockpile security problem is also independent of strategic warhead numbers. It is fissionable material and small tactical warheads that are in danger of being stolen or sold, not the well-guarded strategic systems.

So why the excitement about Putin’s strategic warhead brandishing? It’s been said that the most common form of mistake is forgetting what it is you’re trying to accomplish. This is what has happened to those who have started fluttering about Putin’s threat.

During the Cold War there was indeed a reason we cared about the number of warheads on Soviet strategic ballistic missiles. More than 20 armored and mechanized Soviet divisions were poised only a few days’ march from the Low Countries and the English Channel. We needed to be sure that, in a crisis, our allies would hold firm. and thus we could brook no doubts about our steadfastness. We wanted them, and the Soviets, to have no doubt that if necessary we would use our strategic forces to defend Europe.

The bulk of our deterrent was in our silo-based ICBMs, and they were crucial to us because of their unique accuracy and reliable communications, and because, unlike the bomber force, the Soviets had no defenses against them. We were deeply concerned that if the Soviets could credibly threaten to strike first and destroy our ICBMs with a small number of their own ICBMs carrying multiple warheads — while retaining the bulk of their strategic forces in reserve — our allies would doubt our resolve.

Our ballistic missile submarine force was steadily modernized over the years, but most of us were unwilling to rely on it alone. Consequently in the arms control negotiations of the ’70s and ’80s, we bargained hard to limit Soviet warhead numbers, to protect our ICBMs from attack.

Today’s world bears not the faintest resemblance to that of the Cold War. Brussels indeed stands naked to invaders, but it is to a golden horde of antitrust lobbyists. Some of our allies doubt our resolve, but their concern is our fetish for CO2-emitting SUVs. Missiles are still the heart of our nuclear deterrent, but the bulk of them are on Trident submarines; added numbers of strategic warheads, by anyone, do not make them vulnerable.

It is reported that President Bush may soon show he is not obsessed by strategic warhead numbers by unilaterally reducing ours. We should also keep trying to get the Russians to let us help them solve their real strategic problems — decrepit warning and unsecured stockpiles. And if part of the administration’s defense plan against rogue states includes boost phase intercept — being able to shoot down offensive missiles very early in their flight — the system would incidentally also defend Russia.

If, in spite of all this, Putin keeps threatening to add to Russia’s strategic warhead numbers, we have two things to communicate to him. First, as an act of kindness we could point out that he’d get substantially more military utility out of battleships, the political currency of 1920s arms control. But if he ignores that friendly suggestion, then it’s time for the shrug.

The writer, an attorney and a former CIA director, was ambassador, delegate or adviser in five U.S.-Soviet arms control negotiations.

Honesty is the Best Policy: Bush Must Do With The A.B.M. Treaty as He Has Done to the Kyoto Protocol

(Washington, D.C.): In an extraordinary op.ed. article published last week in the Washington Post, syndicated columnist Robert Samuelson breaks ranks with virtually every other journalist on the planet. In contrast with the conventional wisdom that global warming is an imminent catastrophe that can and must be remedied by U.S. adherence to the Kyoto Protocol, Samuelson declares forthrightly that “we don’t know” whether climate change portends, literally, a planetary melt-down. He actually commends President George W. Bush for renouncing the Protocol on the grounds that its required reductions were arbitrary, not based on science and, if implemented, would likely be gravely injurious to the U.S. economy.

Even more extraordinary, Samuelson assails those in power at home and abroad (and, by implication, his colleagues in the media) whom he says have engaged in a systematic distortion of the facts regarding global warming and Kyoto. In his view, this explains their vehement antipathy towards, and condemnation of, Mr. Bush:

Bush has discarded all the convenient deceits. He has brought more honesty to the global warming debate in four months than Bill Clinton did in eight years — and this, paradoxically, is why he is so harshly condemned. He must be discredited because if he’s correct, then almost everyone else has been playing fast and loose with the facts.

The Samuelson essay is noteworthy in its own right. It is even more valuable, however, insofar as the paradigm it describes (i.e., that of an American president whose straightforward view of the facts is seen as an affront to elites in Europe and his own country) also applies to another delusional international accord — the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty — that should be dealt with in the same way as Mr. Bush has treated Kyoto.

Like the Global Climate Change protocol, the ABM Treaty is a fraud. The other party was liquidated a decade ago; first the Soviet Union and then Russia massively violated its terms; and it clearly disserves American interests in the post-Cold War world. Mr. Bush, who has talked about “setting aside” and “going beyond” the ABM Treaty must now act in the same forthright and legally efficacious way he did with respect to the Kyoto Protocol: Announce that the United States will no longer be bound by it, and begin deploying the kind of effective missile defenses it prohibits within at most six-months’ time.

The Kyoto Delusion

By Robert J. Samuelson

The Washington Post, 21 June 2001

The education of George W. Bush on global warming is simply summarized: Honesty may not be the best policy. Greenhouse politics have long blended exaggeration and deception. Although global warming may or may not be an inevitable calamity (we don’t know), politicians everywhere treat it as one. Doing otherwise would offend environmental lobbies and the public, which has been conditioned to see it as a certain disaster. But the same politicians won’t do anything that would dramatically reduce global warming, because the obvious remedy — steep increases in energy prices — would be immensely unpopular.

By rejecting the Kyoto protocol, which would commit 38 industrial countries to control greenhouse emissions, Bush has discarded the convenient deceits. He has brought more honesty to the global warming debate in four months than Bill Clinton did in eight years — and this, paradoxically, is why he is so harshly condemned. He must be discredited because if he’s correct, then almost everyone else has been playing fast and loose with the facts.

Bush says that the Kyoto commitments were “arbitrary and not based on science.” True. Under Kyoto, the United States would cut its greenhouse gas emissions 7 percent below their 1990 levels by the years 2008 to 2012. Japan’s target is 6 percent, the European Union’s 8 percent. Russia gets to maintain its 1990 level, and Australia is allowed an 8 percent increase. Developing countries (Brazil, China, India) aren’t covered. These targets reflect pragmatic diplomacy and little else.

Because so many countries are excluded, it’s also true — as Bush indicates — that even if Kyoto worked as planned, the effect on greenhouse gases would be almost trivial. In 1990, says the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, totaled 5.8 billion tons of “carbon equivalent.” The EIA predicts that if nothing is done, emissions will rise 34 percent to 7.8 billion tons by 2010. With Kyoto, the increase would be only 26 percent to 7.3 billion tons. The reductions of industrialized countries would be more than offset by increases from developing countries.

Finally, Bush is correct when he says that reaching the Kyoto target would involve substantial economic costs for Americans. Strong U.S. economic growth has raised emissions well above their 1990 level. To hit the Kyoto target would require a cut of 30 percent or more of projected emissions. Under the Clinton administration, the EIA estimated that complying could raise electricity prices 86 percent and gasoline prices 53 percent. Higher prices are needed to induce consumers and businesses to use less energy (the source of most greenhouse gases) and switch to fuels (from coal to natural gas) that have lower emissions.

Europeans boast they’ve done better, implying that America’s poor showing reflects a lack of will. By 1998, the 15 countries of the European Union had reduced greenhouse emissions 2.5 percent below the 1990 level. But the comparison is bogus, because Europe’s performance reflects different circumstances — and luck. Through 1998, only three countries (Germany, Britain and Luxembourg) had reduced their emissions, and these improvements were mostly fortunate accidents. The shutdown of inefficient and heavy-polluting factories in eastern Germany cut emissions. And in Britain, plentiful North Sea gas propelled a shift from coal. Generally speaking, slow population and economic growth — meaning fewer cars, homes and offices — helps Europe comply with Kyoto. From 1990 to 2010, the European Union’s population is projected to rise 6 percent compared with a 20 percent U.S. increase.

The Clinton administration expressed alarm about global warming even while delaying effective action. Under Kyoto, countries can buy “rights” to emit greenhouse gases from other countries where — in theory — reductions could be more cheaply achieved. Called “emissions trading,” this approach was championed by Clinton. But as David Victor of the Council on Foreign Relations argues in his book “The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol,” the scheme is an unworkable sham. Some countries — notably Russia and Ukraine — got emissions targets well above their needs. So they could sell excess emission “rights” to Americans. The result: The United States wouldn’t cut its emissions and neither would Russia or Ukraine. Because Europeans distrusted this and other U.S. proposals, the final negotiations over Kyoto deadlocked last year.

As Bush says, we know that global temperatures are rising — but we don’t know the speed or the ultimate consequences. On all counts, his candor seems more commendable than the simplifications and evasions of his critics. And yet, his policy has stigmatized him as an environmental outlaw and earned him ill will in Europe and Japan. These are high costs. What went wrong? Just this: People say they like honesty in politicians, but on global warming, the evidence is the opposite. People prefer delusion. Kyoto responded to this urge. People want to hear that “something” is being done when little is being done and, in all likelihood, little can be done.

Barring technological breakthroughs — ways of producing cheap energy with few emissions or capturing today’s emissions — it’s hard to see how the world can deal with global warming. Developing countries sensibly insist on the right to reduce poverty through economic growth, which means more energy use and emissions. (Much is made of China’s recent drop in emissions; this is probably a one-time decline, reflecting the shutdown of inefficient factories. In 1999 China had eight cars per 1,000 people compared with 767 per 1,000 for the United States. Does anyone really believe that more cars, computers and consumer goods will cut China’s emissions?) Meanwhile, industrialized countries won’t reduce emissions if it means reducing living standards. There is a natural stalemate.

Because this message is unwanted, politicians don’t deliver it. Someone who defies conventional wisdom needs to explain his views well enough to bring public opinion to his side. Bush has, so far, failed at this critical task. Ironically, he might have fared better if he had stuck with Clinton’s clever deceptions.

Which Bush on Missile Defense?

(Washington, D.C.): The emerging conventional wisdom about George W. Bush is that he can be determinedly principled with respect to certain “big” issues and ruthlessly pragmatic when it comes to compromising about smaller ones. This explains, we are told, why he stood his ground on tax cuts but, for example, decided to bail out on military training at Vieques.

What About Defending America?

The question now urgently arising is: Will Mr. Bush’s oft-stated pledge to deploy missile defenses prove to be one of the big issues, to which he will remain steadfastly committed? Or does he see it as one of those policy areas where he can safely agree to compromises that would effectively eviscerate his commitment to defend the American people, their forces overseas and allies “at the earliest possible time”?

This is hardly an academic question. If Mr. Bush sees missile defense as the moral equivalent of tax relief, he needs to start making at once no less concerted an effort for the former than he did for the latter.

The Challenge

After all, the battlelines are now being clearly drawn. This was particularly evident when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was confronted during a hearing on June 21 before the Senate Armed Services Committee with the sort of disciplined Democratic opposition to missile defense last seen in 1998. In the run-up to that year’s congressional elections, the then-minority caucus succeeded on three different occasions in sustaining exactly the forty votes needed to filibuster legislation making it U.S. policy to deploy an effective, limited national missile defense as soon as technologically possible. (The next year, essentially the same bill passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming majorities and was signed into law by Bill Clinton.)

The committee’s new chairman, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, closed last Thursday’s proceedings by pointedly warning Mr. Rumsfeld that “you may find some of your priorities…for little things like missile defense, changed” in favor of greater spending in areas like quality of life, morale, pay and benefits and retention.

For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the man Mr. Bush concluded he could “trust” after their ninety-minute meeting in Slovenia, is doing what he can to inflame opposition here and abroad to U.S. missile defense deployments. After their summit, he has repeated earlier warnings that Moscow would respond to such an initiative by retaining nuclear missiles that would otherwise be retired and/or by putting multiple warheads aboard new missiles that were supposed to carry just one. Such threats of an arms race, no matter how implausible (due to Russia’s economic situation) or incredible (given the lack of any compelling strategic rationale for such behavior in the post-Cold War world), are having the predictable effect of emboldening the critics.

So, too, are indications that President Bush is really seeking a deal with Putin. The latest indicator to that effect is a report published by Peggy Noonan in Monday’s Wall Street Journal based on an interview with President Bush last week. This generally very astute observer of the mondo politico observes that, “One might infer — and perhaps should infer — from the President’s comments that he will not attempt to tear the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty up, but instead will move for an amendment that would allow further missile testing.” Could Ms. Noonan have completely misread Mr. Bush? Or is she correctly discerning the migration of missile defense from a big issue to a compromisable small one?

You Can’t Get There From Here

The only problem with that idea is that, if President Bush compromises on missile defense — whether by acquiescing to Senate Democrats’ budget games, by quailing in the face of threats from Russia (or, for that matter, from China or North Korea) or by trying to negotiate amendments to the ABM Treaty with the likes of Vladimir Putin — he can forget about actually deploying protection against ballistic missile attack. It won’t happen on his watch, unless someplace we care about is destroyed by one.

Here’s the rub: The ABM Treaty expressly required each of the two parties — the United States and the Soviet Union (a country that, by the way, ceased to exist a decade ago) — “not to deploy ABM systems for a defense of the territory of its country and not to provide a base for such a defense.” To ensure that such a “base” was not established, the Treaty also obliged each party “not to develop, test, or deploy ABM systems or components which are sea-based, air-based, space-based, or mobile land-based.”

Senators, Russians and allied leaders who insist that the U.S. must not depart from the ABM Treaty understand full well the practical effect of this arrangement. As long as the United States foreswears sea-, air- and space-based missile defenses in particular, it will be unable to develop, to say nothing of deploy, effective anti-missile systems. And it is impossible to “amend” a treaty whose sole purpose is to preclude national missile defenses so as to allow such defenses to be tested efficiently and deployed quickly particularly if our Russian negotiating partners remain adamantly opposed to our doing so.

The Bottom Line

In short, President Bush must establish at once where he stands on defending America, its forward deployed forces and allies. If Mr. Bush has not just been paying lipservice to the need for missile defenses, and remains determined to deploy them, he has no choice but to get started. Only by displaying the kind of resolve he showed on tax cuts refusing to take “No” for an answer, mobilizing his base and the country at large and not allowing himself to be stymied or slow-rolled will he be able to begin to provide the needed protection, first from the sea.

If Mr. Bush does not take that course of action, however, all other things being equal — big issue or no — he is going soon to find himself utterly hamstrung by those who oppose him politically and strategically. What will be compromised as a result, however, will not be merely his credibility, but the security of his nation and its people.

Memo to P.M. Koizumi: Time to Reign in Foreign Minister Tanaka, Reorder and Upgrade U.S.-Japan Security Ties

(Washington, D.C.): On Monday, 18 June, Japan’s new and controversial Foreign Minister, Makiko Tanaka, met with Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington D.C. Afterwards, Ms. Tanaka grudgingly conceded that she appreciates “that the U.S. position [on missile defense] is to consult with interested states such as Russia and China” and expressed her understanding for the need for further research. Tokyo’s emissary failed, however, to allay widespread U.S. concerns about her previously stated skepticism toward — if not her outright opposition to — the Bush Administration’s position on ballistic missile defense and, as Tuesday’s Washington Times gently put it, her “undue sympathy for China.”

Foreign Minister Tanaka also met separately on Monday with President Bush’s National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and Mr. Powell’s deputy, Richard Armitage. (The latter’s participation was notable since Mr. Armitage was reportedly snubbed by Ms. Tanaka during his visit to Tokyo last month for the purpose of consulting with Japan’s leaders on U.S. missile defense plans.)

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Particularly distressing were the Foreign Minister’s widely reported 25 May remarks to her Italian counterpart. She is said to have told him that the U.S. “says there’s a missile threat, but is missile defense necessary? Japan and Europe must tell the U.S., don’t do too much.” She reportedly added that, “Perhaps the U.S. is pushing this idea of missile defense plan to confront the Chinese economic and military threat. However, one has to counter with wisdom, not with military power.”

Those concerns could only have been intensified during her visit to Washington as Ms. Tanaka signaled ominously her desire to see changes in U.S.-Japanese security ties. Following her meeting with Secretary Powell, she observed, “The [bilateral] security arrangements have already lasted 50 years and we would like to look at its benefits and burdens carefully as we may be at a milestone in the Japan-U.S. security arrangement.” The umistakably unfriendly import of this remark prompted Gen. Powell to declare: “You should always remember that the best friend of Japan is the United States.”

Needed: A Reprioritizing and Upgrading of Bilateral Security Ties

The good news is that Ms. Tanaka’s boss, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, is scheduled to make his own state visit to Washington shortly. It behooves the Japanese leader not only to make clear where he personally stands with respect to his country’s security ties to the United States. He also needs to clarify his government’s stance with respect to several initiatives of growing importance to the bilateral relationship and the common defense interests of both Japan and America. By taking the following steps to accord selected, concrete actions the high priority they deserve, Mr. Koizumi can demonstrate that his Foreign Minister does not speak either for him, for his government or for the Japanese people on matters bearing on the enhancement of Japan’s military capabilities and its security cooperation with the United States:

Ballistic Missile Defense

In the face of the growing threat of ballistic missile attack emanating from East Asia against Japan and/or the United States, missile defense should be at the very top of the bilateral security agenda. While a cooperative U.S.-Japan research program in this area has been launched, the government of Japan has yet to announce that the political decision has been taken to deploy anti-missile systems. In the absence of such a decision, bilateral cooperation has been unhelpfully circumscribed. Now that the United States government has taken that decision first, in the form of legislation enacted in 1999 and more recently with the election of a President committed to defending America and her forces and allies overseas against this threat Japan should follow suit at once.

To its credit, Japan has committed to the purchase of two more Aegis destroyers in the current Mid-Term Defense Plan with one each to be procured in 2002 and 2003. This would bring to six the number of Aegis platforms in Japan’s inventory, giving it a considerable infrastructure to provide for an early and potentially highly effective anti-missile defense of the Home Islands by equipping these ships with both the lower-tier Standard Missile (SM) 2 Block IVA missile and upper-tier SM3 Block II missile as they become available. Unlike the first four ships, though, the next two AEGIS destroyers will reportedly have the software in place to deploy (without retrofitting) these Standard Missiles required for anti-missile purposes.

Prime Minister Koizumi should use the occasion of his first meeting with President Bush to announce a “go” decision by Japan to join the United States in acquiring a missile defense system. In order to ensure that this program receives the political priority and resources it will need, he and Mr. Bush should direct that henceforth bilateral cooperation on this joint program will be overseen at the ministerial levels in both governments.

Diet Resolution on Collective Defense

In the event of an Asian conflict today, Japanese self-defense forces would not be permitted to come to the aid of, for example, a U.S. ship under attack. The reverse would be permitted, however — and expected. This absurd and potentially costly (both in terms of lost lives and needless strains between allies) asymmetrical arrangement must be redressed. Fortunately, Prime Minister Koizumi reportedly plans to catalyze a reinterpretation of “collective defense” so as to enable Japanese defense forces to assist the United States in the defending Japan. He has also stated that Article 9 of the Japanese constitution should be changed to reflect the fact that Japan actually has an army and a navy.

Aerial Refueling Tanker/Transports

Japan’s acquisition of critically-needed aerial refueling tanker/transport aircraft was delayed by a full year due to political compromises attendant to the formation of former Prime Minister Mori’s coalition government. There should be no further slippage. These aircraft represent a potentially enormous “force multiplier” for American forces in East Asia if they interoperable with U.S. assets and can be employed to keep our AWACS and fighter aircraft on-station considerably longer.

The Future of U.S. Military Bases on Okinawa

The Bush Administration’s ill-advised decision to end military training on the island of Vieques has had the predictable effect of intensifying pressure on the United States to end — or at least to relocate — American forces stationed on the Japanese island of Okinawa. There is, in addition, a pernicious effort afoot to afford the U.S. only a ten-year lease for any new facilities it might secure. The Japanese and American governments must work together to avoid creating conditions that would in a decade, if not sooner, eliminate bases and training areas critical to America’s forward deployment in the Western Pacific — and the defense commitments made possible by such deployment.

Maritime Patrol Aircraft

An indigenously manufactured Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA) is reportedly the Japanese navy’s number one funding priority. The MPA is intended to replace existing and aging P-3C surveillance aircraft. It is critical, however, that the MPA be fully interoperable with existing U.S. maritime patrol aircraft, as well as the new U.S. Navy multi-mission maritime aircraft under development, but not yet funded. In addition, Prime Minister Koizumi should ensure the maximum possible degree of cooperation between Japanese contractors responsible for avionics- and systems integration-related activities and their American counterparts.

The Bottom Line

Even before the Japanese Prime Minister arrives in Washington and, hopefully, makes progress on the foregoing agenda, another senior representative of his government will be holding meetings here that can go some way toward reversing the damage apparently being done to the bilateral relationship by Foreign Minister Tanaka.

Tomorrow, Japan Defense Agency Minister Gen Nakatani is scheduled to hold meetings at the Department of Defense with the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). Ideally, these sessions will set the stage for Prime Minister Koizumi and President Bush to unveil on 30 June their shared commitment to begin deploying in the near future sea-based missile defenses based upon their two navies’ Aegis infrastructures.

On Trusting Putin

(Washington, D.C.): One blemish on a presidential visit of Europe that can otherwise only be described as a tour de force was George W. Bush’s declaration that he was able to “get a sense” of Vladimir Putin’s “soul.” While no fault could be found with Mr. Bush’s insight that Putin is “a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country,” his statement that he deemed his Russian counterpart to be “an honest, straightforward man” is simply over-the-top.

Still, this might have been nothing more than a bit of bonhomie, attributable to Mr. Bush’s famous friendliness and courtesy to a foreign dignitary. Or perhaps he was merely waxing enthusiastic, having gotten through a two-hour meeting with Putin without the career KGB man going ballistic over America’s determination to deploy a missile defense.

It is harder to dismiss, however, the President’s description of Putin as “trustworthy.” Mr. Bush went so far as to say “I wouldn’t have invited him to my ranch if I didn’t trust him.” This statement conjures up memories of too many American leaders who have indulged in the popular, but generally fatuous, notion that warm personal relationships with the top man in the Kremlin creates a realistic basis for constructive and close ties between the two nations. As syndicated columnist William Safire notes in today’s New York Times, this hubristic practice on the part of U.S. presidents goes back at least to Franklin Roosevelt’s day. In recent years, it has induced Ronald Reagan and George Bush the elder to prop up Mikhail Gorbachev and his dying Soviet Union. It contributed to Bill Clinton and Al Gore’s determination to ignore the corrupt and anti-reform behavior of Boris Yeltsin and Viktor Chernomyrdin.

The regrettable fact is that Vladimir Putin can be trusted only to pursue his vision of a Russia that is once again a great power — at the expense of the freedoms enjoyed by his own people, the security of their neighbors and the interests of the United States more generally. If that is what Mr. Bush meant when he said he trusts Putin, he has it about right. If not, some further clarification is in order lest he repeat errors made by his predecessors on the basis of reposing unwarranted confidence in their Kremlin counterparts’ honesty and straightforwardness and our ability to do business with them.

Putin’s China Card

By William Safire

The New York Times, 18 June 2001

“I like Old Joe,” said F.D.R. about Joseph Stalin. Carrying on that self-deluding tradition of snap judgments, George W. Bush looked into the eyes of Vladimir Putin, announced, “I was able to get a sense of his soul,” and after two heady hours concluded he was “straightforward” and “trustworthy.”

Ever since the K.G.B. man emerged as the Russian oligarchs’ choice, President Putin has shown himself to be duplicitous (ask the Chechens), anti-democratic (ask the remains of Russia’s free press) and untrustworthy (ask the exiled oligarchs). We can hope that the Bush gush was flattery intended to show the U.S. president to be nonthreatening as his administration presses ahead with a missile defense.

The American gave the Russian what he most needs: public deference that salves Russia’s wounded pride, and respect to its leader abroad as Putin methodically chokes off opposition at home. Bush topped this off with a pre-emptive concession: agreement to exchange warm ranch- and-home visits, for which Putin was eager, even before any progress was shown in agreement to scrap the old ABM treaty.

The Russian partly reciprocated, as Bush hoped, by accepting the American formulation of “a new architecture of security in the world” and by hinting that “we might have a very constructive development here in this area.” That public optimism from Russia takes a little of the steam out of alarmist Franco-German protests that America, in defending its cities from rogue missiles, was starting “a new arms race.”

At home, Putin has cracked down on the new freedoms without curbing the old corruption. Example of the rule of lawlessness: his Duma passed a bill last week to make Russia the world’s nuclear waste dump, generating $20 billion over the next decade.

That would be the most dangerous boondoggle in history, with little control over 2,000 tons of radioactive garbage yearly. “One hundred million Russian citizens are against it,” says Grigory Yavlinsky, one of the few reformers left standing in the Duma, “and only 500 people are for it 300 members sitting here and 200 bureaucrats who will be getting the money.” (Fortunately for the world, the U.S. won’t bury our nuclear waste in Russia, where it could be reprocessed and sold to Iran for weapons production.)

Well aware of the weakness of his hand, Putin is emulating Nixon strategy by playing the China card. Pointedly, just before meeting with Bush, Putin traveled to Shanghai to set up a regional cooperation semi-alliance with Jiang Zemin and some of his Asian fellow travelers.

That deft maneuver puts European leaders on notice that Russia despite all the talk of becoming a “partner” in Europe knows that the center of America’s strategic concern in the coming generation will be Asia.

Putin is signaling Bush: European leaders may resent your economic competition and appeal to their voters by complaining about pollution, but that’s merely bickering within the Western alliance. A future recombination of China and Russia, however, would challenge America’s status as the world’s sole superpower. Therefore, you’d better prop up our Russian economy with none of your human- rights lectures and expansion of NATO to our borders lest we undermine your hegemony with a Beijing- Moscow axis.

I wonder if Bush and his advisers are catching that signal. If so, they don’t seem to have let Putin’s China card affect U.S. policy. In a strong and thoughtful speech in Warsaw, Bush sent a signal of his own: “No more Munichs, no more Yaltas.”

That means no more appeasement of threats of aggression (as at Munich just before World War II, or about Taiwan today) and no more carving up of the world into spheres of influence (as at Yalta at that war’s end, or blocking the entry of the Baltic nations into NATO today). I read that to mean we will support the entry of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania vigorously, despite Putin’s phony worry about NATO being “a military organization . . . moving toward our border.”

With the strongest hand any American ever held, Bush comported himself well. But he should remember Reagan’s “trust but verify.” When the manipulative Russian comes to visit at the Texas ranch this fall, I would hate to hear “I like ol’ Vlad.”

Don’t Politicize Military Matters

(Washington, D.C.): In the wake of two recent, controversial Bush Administration decisions with far-reaching national security implications, Democratic legislators have called for congressional hearings. Unfortunately, the focus of these initiatives could become an attack on the integrity and ethical conduct of the President’s senior political advisor, Karl Rove. This would appear to be a mistake for two reasons. First, Mr. Rove appears to be an honorable man and a dedicated public servant.

Second, there is a real problem with both the Administration’s recent approval of the sale of the Silicon Valley Group (SVG) to a foreign buyer and its announcement that the Navy would not be permitted to use Vieques Island for critical combined arms training after 2003. But that problem is the evident subordination of national security interests to political considerations, not unethical behavior. If the latter is what partisan congressional investigators choose to pursue, they may miss altogether what should trouble all of us — and fail to take whatever corrective actions might yet be possible.

Selling Our Seedcorn

Rep. Henry Waxman, Democrat of California and ranking minority member on the House Government Reform Committee, has asked that panel’s chairman, Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton, to launch an inquiry into Mr. Rove in connection with the SVG sale. Congressman Waxman did so in response to published reports that Mr. Rove may have had a conflict of interest since he was lobbied a few months back by Intel Corporation representatives anxious to have an interagency group known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) approve SVG’s purchase by a Dutch competitor called ASML. At the time, the President’s advisor held at least $100,000 worth of Intel shares.

My sense is that, to the extent Karl Rove played a role in the Administration’s ultimate approval of the SVG decision over objections from the Pentagon, it was not because he was swayed by personal pecuniary considerations. Rather, many senior members of the Bush team — and, for that matter, Members of Congress — are anxious to do what Intel wants simply because they recognize that this huge company and its friends in Silicon Valley have become one of the most important new sources of campaign contributions and political influence.

The trouble lies with what Intel wanted. Intel is a principal consumer of electronic chip-manufacturing machines utilizing a technology known as lithography. Thanks to many millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer investments in the Silicon Valley Group, its lithography machinery was among the best in the world. Moreover, it had pioneered breakthroughs in the field that promised to allow SVG to dominate the industry in the years ahead. Importantly, SVG was also the last manufacturer of lithography machines in the United States.

SVG’s European rival, ASML, saw an opportunity to take out its competitor and proposed to purchase it and a subsidiary called Tinsley Laboratories that manufactures precision optics used in spy satellites and for other defense-related purposes. Although the Defense Department belatedly recognized that it would be contrary to U.S. national security interests to have no American supplier of such equipment, Intel — which views itself as a multi-national, not a U.S., company — pushed very hard, and ultimately successfully, to have the Pentagon’s recommendations disregarded by the White House.

Dispensing With Realistic Training

A similar political override took place last week with respect to Vieques. Both Republicans and Democrats alike have appreciated that Hispanic Americans represent an increasingly influential and potentially decisive electoral group. (Surprisingly, even savvy Anglo politicians frequently fail to appreciate, however, that this community is far from monolithic in their views. For example, Cuban- and Mexican- Americans and others from Latin America share a common language but frequently have little else in common with Puerto Ricans.) Hence, Bill Clinton pardoned convicted Puerto Rican terrorists and pandered to the opponents of Navy and Marine training on Vieques.

Faced with the Clinton legacy on Vieques — specifically, the prospect of a possible repudiation in a referendum of the island’s residents to be held in November — and anxious to curry favor with Hispanics, the Bush team decided that the Navy would have to find someplace else to exercise by 2003. There is, however, no reason to believe that the military will in fact get two years to find someplace else. Neither is there anyplace else in prospect that will enable the sort of realistic training done at Vieques over the past sixty years, without which American personnel sent into harm’s way may suffer needless casualties and/or fail to accomplish their missions. The new Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin, has announced his intention to hold hearings on this decision and will presumably zero in on its political aspects.

What Congress Should Do

Just as Congress could usefully examine the folly of allowing industries vital to U.S. security to be sold off to entities that may prove to be unreliable suppliers — and/or willing providers of such technology to potential adversaries — so it could helpfully conduct a rigorous evaluation of the assumptions underpinning the Vieques decision. In particular, legislators ought to assess whether Navy Secretary Gordon England’s claim that his service will find an “acceptable alternative” (as opposed to a place, or places, capable of providing the same training benefits as Vieques) is supportable and, if so, whether such lesser training is adequate.

In addition, Capitol Hill should address whether the precedent being set by the transparently politicized decision to get out of Vieques will have a highly detrimental ripple effect around the world and perhaps even in the United States itself. After all, what is to stop others seeking an end to military exercises in their backyards from demanding equal treatment with the Puerto Ricans?

The Bottom Line

In short, Congress could do a valuable service to the national interest and security if it helps the Bush Administration to keep politics out of military-related public policy decisions. The way to do this is not to pursue witchhunts against the likes of Karl Rove, but to establish unmistakably that such decisions should not be made in his office but in the Defense Department in consultation with the President’s National Security Advisor.