Tag Archives: Russia

Rep. Rogers (AL): Bipartisan Effort Must be Made to Stop Another “Idiotic Deal” With Iran

Excerpted transcript from 11/27/13 Secure Freedom Radio interview with Congressman Mike Rogers (AL-3). The full interview can be listened to here.

Frank Gaffney: What do you make of what the president has cooked up with Iran, and its implications for the strategic interests of this country?

Rep. Mike Rogers: I can’t imagine what the president was thinking as far as his motivation, other then he wants to see the world disarm and he thinks if we lead the way and make it easier for others to run over us it will happen. I can’t make anything else out of it, because this deal with Iran does nothing for us. It’s wonderful for them, but they didn’t stop doing anything that was going to in any way inhibit their ability to go ahead and get an ICBM that they can then cap with a warhead. I don’t know what he was thinking but he sure did give them a breath of fresh air by letting them have their money back and some investors for their new auto industry.

FG: What do you expect, if anything, the Congress might do about this? There’s lots of talk about adding sanctions even though the Iranians say that’s a deal killer, and the administration feels the same way. Is that in prospect as a realistic possibility?

MR: I think it’s very realistic. We were already working with our Senate counterparts to push toward some statutory sanctions, and there’s been a good bit of movement on it because in the Congress we saw the president move in this direction. We didn’t think it would be this bad of a deal, but we saw him trying to do something on his own before we blocked him. But I do think on a bipartisan fashion you’re going to see a sanctions package come in the not-too distant future. But it won’t un-rein the bill here. As you just mentioned, Iran’s already gotten their eight billion dollars, and you can bet that the Chinese and Europeans are rushing in to invest into their auto industry. So even if this deal falls apart in six to eight weeks, which is what I think will happen, I don’t think they’re going to actually let inspectors see anything. They got the reinforcements they needed financially, and it doesn’t matter then if it falls apart then or not. But I do think we will come with some statutory sanctions that will tie the president’s hands from making another idiotic deal like this again.

FG: You called attention in a letter that you sent over to the administration to deep concerns you have about an idea that the State Department apparently has cooked up to help the Russians build some electronic facilities across the United States. Tell us what that’s about and what kind of response you got to the concerns you’ve raised.

MR: The naivete of the administration never ceases to amaze me. You would think after they took Edward Snowden in and gave him sanctuary for his treasonous disclosure of information, and you’d think after Vladimir Putin tells the president “no, thanks” on any talks beyond New START–and frankly he’s not even adhering to New START yet–that the president would get it that they have no intention of disarming or being our friends. The State Department has proposed allowing the Soviets to put equipment in our country to help their version of GPS monitor better. And my question is “why in the world would we want to do that?” It would be a competitor to GPS. We know that the Russians have Edward Snowden and they’ve been spying on us, and for all we know this equipment will help them in that endeavor. I just want someone to explain to me why it’s in our interest to allow the Russians, who are our acknowledged enemies to anybody who’s paying attention, to come in here and set up basically spying equipment, because that’s what I’m afraid it would be. And even if it wasn’t, even if on its face it was correct and it was just to help their GPS systems, they’re still going to compete with ours. Why would we want to help our competitors? It just doesn’t make sense to me other then the president’s wanting to hug them and act like they’re our friends, and they’re not.

FG: We learned recently that the administration is evidently determined, despite explicit promises it made in the context of that new START treaty you spoke of a moment ago, to begin taking down what’s left of America’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Force, the ICBM land based leg of the Triad. What’s up with that, and do you think that is going to in fact eventuate?

MR: Well, if you hadn’t noticed lately, the president’s known to kill misrepresentations.

FG: (laughing) It has come to my attention, sir.

MR: If you like your insurance you can keep your health insurance, if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Well, this is another one of those examples. He wanted the New START Treaty through, come hell or high water, and he told people what they wanted to hear, whether he meant it or not. The good news is the overwhelming majority in the Congress is completely opposed to this, and I don’t see him getting anywhere…This is not going to happen, and I’m just amazed at the gall of them trying to do something that they explicitly said they would not do.

 

 

Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP

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Obama’s disarmed diplomacy

In the past month, Americans have been led to believe that President Obama has achieved diplomatic breakthroughs with Syria and Iran, thereby avoiding looming conflicts with those two rogue states.  If the result being promised is not exactly “peace in our time,” the White House certainly is encouraging the notion that its robust threats of military action against these allied enemies brought them to the negotiating table.

Regrettably, this proposition does not stand up to scrutiny.  Far from a Reaganesque policy of “peace through strength” and the practice of what historian Henry Nau calls “armed diplomacy” that it has made successful in the past, Team Obama is engaged in disarmed diplomacy.  The results will, predictably, be disappointing and probably quite dangerous.

For example, with help from his Russian protectors, Syrian dictator Bashir Assad has now bought himself protection against any strike the United States might still be capable of mounting by promising to eliminate his chemical stockpiles. No amount of officially professed U.S. “skepticism” or watered-down UN resolutions can obscure an unhappy fact: Assad’s regime is not owning up to all of its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction – which includes not only more chemical weapons than it has declared, but untold quantities of deadly biological weapons, as well.

Meanwhile, as international inspectors – not a few of whom will be Russians who can be expected to run interference for their client – prepare for the hazardous, if not impossible, job of finding and eliminating all of what the Syrians have squirreled away, Assad will have a free hand to fight his Islamist and other enemies at home with conventional means. Obama’s arming of Assad’s foes, and ours, inside Syria will probably simply ensure that civil war goes murderously on for quite some time.

The prospects for a happy outcome for Obama’s disarmed diplomacy are no better with respect to Iran.  Smooth-talking Iranian leaders brought their selective charm offensive to New York last week.  In short order, they demonstrated contempt for the President by stiffing his offer of some sort of publicized encounter.

Worse, they established his desperation for a new pretext for staving off pressure from Israel and Congress for action on Iran’s incipient nuclear weapons capability.  Mr. Obama paid dearly for it: offering to begin to unravel American and multilateral sanctions in exchange for nothing more than new negotiations – albeit ones that will, we’re assured, be less protracted and more productive than each of the previous ones with this and other Iranian interlocutors.

The truth is that our adversaries, whether they be in Damascus, Tehran, Moscow, Beijing or elsewhere have not simply taken the measure this wholly inadequate American president.  They are responding to all he is doing to emasculate what has been the principal obstacle to their ambitions: our military, long the world’s finest.

It takes nothing away from the men and women who are faithfully serving their country in uniform to point out that they are not being given the wherewithal – notably the funding for training, maintenance and modernization – needed to keep the peace.

To get a proper perspective on what is being done to “fundamentally transform” our armed forces, however, one must also look beyond the condition of the military itself. A leading indicator of future incapacity to perform its mission by, among other things, making the alternative to diplomacy unappealing to our foes, can be found in the simultaneous evisceration of the nation’s defense industrial base.

To cite but one illustrative example:  Boeing announced recently that it would have to shut down the production line for the C-17, the Free World’s only modern, wide-bodied airlifter.  A sequestration-induced lack of orders from the U.S. military and uncertainty about the prospects for foreign sales would effectively foreclose future purchases of the aircraft that will be, for the foreseeable future, the backbone of our prompt power-projection capabilities.

Take no comfort from suggestions that we can always reopen the line when (not if) more C-17s are needed.  The harsh reality is that, even if the machine tools and other specialized equipment associated with manufacturing such a sophisticated airplane are not sold off, say, to China (as was done with the B-1 bomber’s production line), the workforce and highly perishable second- and third-tier suppliers are unlikely to be reassembled and certified – certainly not anytime soon.  Therefore, we must not let the C-17 line be closed.

Similar problems are to be expected with the contraction of the industrial base needed to supply tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, fighter aircraft and combatant ships.  Perhaps not right away but in due course, bad guys all over the planet will know that we lack the means to mount an effective, or at least a sustained, impediment to their aggressive designs.  That is a formula for more conflict, not peace.

The Lexington Institute’s splendid Dan Goure has warned, the U.S. military is already “unready.”  So have the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who have told Congress that if sequestration persists, they will not be able to fight even one war to assured victory.

What we have seen in the last month, and will surely witness more of in the days and years to come, is how ready our adversaries are to take advantage – diplomatically and otherwise – of our self-inflicted and unilateral disarmament.

Wanted it bad, got it bad

Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, announced a deal last weekend that is supposed to make the Syrian problem go away.  Er, that is, make Bashir Assad’s chemical weapons go away.  Or at least disappear President Obama’s immediate political problem with breached red-lines and an America with no appetite for war with Syria in response.

The bottom line: Ain’t gonna happen.  The only question is:  Will this deal actually make things worse in any, or all, of those respects?

The old axiom, “you want it bad, you’ll get it bad,” applied to the three-days of fevered bilateral negotiations in Geneva that produced the so-called “plan” for international control and dismantling of the entire Syrian chemical arsenal.  President Obama and his top diplomat understood this Russian-supplied lifeline to be the only hope for extricating them from the disastrous debacle their feckless Syria policy had become.The best that can be hoped for from this deal is that it will reduce somewhat, Assad’s stockpile of chemical arms.  But it is national security fraud – something Team Obama has perpetrated serially since it came to office – to tell the American people the Kerry-Lavrov plan will actually eliminate it.  And the costs for even trying are likely to be far higher than we are being told.

Consider the following facts of life:

  • Dealing with toxic nerve agents, mustard gas and other lethal chemical weapons and the munitions they go in – even storing them, let alone moving and disposing of them – is a very hazardous business under the best of circumstances.  Needless to say, a civil war in which both sides are interested in having access to such weapons of mass destruction is not such an environment.  Already, there is talk about having to put somebody’s “boots on the ground” to secure whatever stocks are declared.  That is a formula for getting such foreign troops (ours?) killed when hostiles target the weapons they are protecting and/or embroiled as combatants in Syria’s civil war.
  • Not surprisingly, there are host of practical issues that likely will further undermine, if not absolutely doom, this deal.   They will help determine how expensive, complex and perhaps ultimately futile the Kerry-Lavrov disarmament scheme will be.  For example, are all the weapons supposed to be destroyed in place by next June – an undertaking involving the construction of specialized incinerators whose operation in this country has proven to be exceedingly time-consuming, costly and hazardous?  Who is going to pay for constructing such facilities and keep them from being targeted in the ongoing civil war?
  • Alternatively, are Assad’s weapons to be shipped out of Syria by then and if so, to where?  Russia?  Great idea.  Ditto places like Saudi Arabia or Turkey.  How about here? Any takers?
  • At its core, even the face value of any such ambitious disarmament plan rests on the accuracy of the inventory of Assad’s chemical arsenal.  What are the chances that we will get full disclosure – let alone by the end of the week?  As recent revelations about how the supposedly cooperative Muammar Qaddafi lied about his chemical stockpile remind us, totalitarian thugs are not trustworthy.  That is especially true of one in the Kremlin.

How this almost certainly will work is that Assad’s inventory will basically track with whatever intelligence assessment we shared with the Russians during last week’s version of “Let’s Make a Deal.”  That’s right:  Kerry’s delegation told Lavrov’s what we thought was there – approximately 1,000 metric tons of chemical weapons and agent.  The Russians, we’re told, affirmed that estimate.  And surely they shared our data with their Syrian client, on whose behalf, lest we forget, they are explicitly working.So if our data understates Assad’s actual stockpile, which is almost surely the case, you have what is known in the intelligence business as the “garbage in, garbage out” phenomenon: inputting erroneous assumptions leads inevitably to faulty conclusions.  In this case, that will likely mean that – even if all the other logistic, security and disposal problems are somehow overcome – at the end of the day, the Syrian regime will still have chemical weapons, and probably biological ones, too.

How could it be otherwise?  The U.S. government has never formally confirmed that Syria received chemical and/or biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from Saddam Hussein in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom.  While there are reports that Assad is sending some of them back to Iraq now (among other shell-game style movements of his chemical arsenal among roughly 50 sites in Syria itself), our estimates are sure to be off.  Then, there’s the undeclared help Assad has received from North Korea and Iran in producing and concealing his WMD.

  • The larger problem is that all this sharing of information and other revelations about how we detect and monitor chemical weapons movements and dispositions is a field day for our adversaries’ counter-intelligence operations.  Count on them to learn from us and to make it vastly harder for us to know what they are up to in the future.

In short, the present crisis in Syria is not going away.  And the problems arising from previous, fraudulent deals to “rid the world of chemical weapons” are likely to be compounded by this one, not eliminated by Messrs. Kerry and Lavrov – any more than will be the case with all of Bashir Assad’s chemical arms.

How Russia undercuts itself with the S-300

In making the case for the supply of S-300 missiles to Syria, Russia’s highly experienced foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, tried to make the point that his government was only selling Damascus “a purely defensive system.” The S-300, he said, as was clear from its name, was for purposes of “air defense.”

In other words, he was suggesting that there were weapons systems, like air defense missiles, that were inherently defensive by their nature.

Ironically, by making this argument, Lavrov was undermining one of the main pillars of Moscow’s case against other defensive systems which it has opposed vociferously in the past. If defensive weapons systems should not be opposed because, by definition, they have no offensive applications, then why not accept US missile defense deployments in Eastern Europe or in other countries ringing Asia? For while Russia has been stressing that its air defense systems are not offensive in character, it has been strenuously opposing missile defenses for many years, refusing to see them as defensive weapons alone.

Since President Ronald Reagan first proposed the US anti-missile system known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) – also called the “Star Wars” program – in 1983, Russian strategists argued to their American counterparts that missile defenses are inherently destabilizing. During the Cold War, stability was based on the maintenance of deterrence and the credibility of each superpower’s retaliatory strike capability. The argument against missile defenses back then was that a robust SDI-type system could neutralize the weakened retaliatory capacity of the side that was hit first.

This strong opposition to missile defenses was maintained by Moscow after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. To some extent it was intensified as the Soviet missiles forces were degraded and even cut by arms control agreements like START. In 2007, for example, when the Bush administration proposed installing missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, the chief of the Russian General Staff declared that Moscow would withdraw from arms control agreements with the West in retaliation.

In that same year, President Vladimir Putin even compared the deployment of Western anti-missile systems to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Russian generals in 2007 spoke about targeting these missile defense systems if they were ordered to do so by the Russian leadership. More recently, the US defense correspondent Bill Gertz reported on Russian military exercises simulating an attack on US sea-based missile defenses deployed on an Aegis cruiser near Japan.

In a speech in late December 2009, Putin laid out the logic behind the Russian opposition to missile defenses: “By building such an umbrella over themselves our [US} partners could feel themselves fully secure and will do whatever they want which upsets the balance.”

In short, according to the Russians’ strategic doctrine, missile defenses were completely destabilizing.

It would take extraordinary political acrobatics to explain why missile defenses in Eastern Europe endanger stability, yet robust air defenses based on the S-300 in Syria somehow contribute to stability.

What ultimately gives a weapons system an offensive or defensive character is the strategic context in which it is placed. In 1970, for example, Moscow deployed SA-2 air defense systems in Egypt and then decided to move them up to the Suez Canal, in violation of the US-Soviet Standstill Agreement at the time. By providing the Egyptian Army with an air defense umbrella over the Suez Canal, and in so doing protecting it from the Israel Air Force, Moscow made it possible for the Egyptians to cross the canal three years later and launch the Yom Kippur War. Air defenses were not just for defensive purposes but rather made possible offensive ground operations.

In the Syrian case today, Israel is not likely concerned with a surprise attack by the Syrian army like in 1973, given the state of Syria’s ground forces after two years of fighting against rebel troops. What is changing in Israel’s north is the buildup of Hezbollah, backed by a growing Iranian military presence on the ground that has become engaged in combat operations against President Bashar Assad’s opponents.

The most immediate problem is Syria’s willingness to deliver advanced weaponry to Hezbollah that can upset key aspects of the strategic balance.

Besides the transfer of chemical weapons, Israel has been concerned with Syria providing Hezbollah with long-range anti-ship cruise missiles, like the supersonic Russian Yakhont that can strike targets 300 kilometers into the Mediterranean. Last year, the director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency described the proliferation of such missiles as a concern to the US Navy as well.

Israel has also focused on the supply to Hezbollah of surface- to-surface missiles armed with particularly heavy warheads for striking Israeli cities.

The payload of the Fateh 110 is 30 that of the Grad rockets used by Hezbollah in 2006.

Finally, Israel is monitoring whether Syria is equipping Hezbollah with long-range airdefense missiles like the SA-17.

Using Putin’s own logic, supply of the S-300 by Moscow will create an air defense umbrella over Syria which will provide Assad and his generals in Damascus with the security to make these kinds of weapons transfers to Hezbollah and to “do whatever they want which upsets the balance.”

This is a development which Israeli officials have clearly stated they must prevent.

The next time US officials sit across from Russian negotiators over the deployment of Western missile defense systems, and the Russians charge that missile defenses are destabilizing, Washington should be prepared with all the statements that came out of Moscow insisting that the S- 300 air defense system in Syria is purely defensive and hence threatens no one. President Putin will not accept the application of Lavrov’s statements about the S-300 to the US missile defense deployments, but in taking that position he will be going into important negotiations for Russia with a much weaker hand than he had before.

The Betrayal of America: Lies, Conspiracies and Deceit from FDR to Now

With Diana West

DIANA WEST, syndicated columnist at DianaWest.net, joins Frank for a special one-hour show to celebrate the release of her newest book “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character.” During the hour, Diana discusses many of the topics covered in her latest publication, including the Soviet penetration into the United States, the losing battle to communism by the American government and how this history ties into the current ideological battle being waged between democracy and radical Islam.

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Pentagon Successfully Takes Down Test Missile Over Pacific

PACIFIC MISSILE RANGE FACILITY, HAWAII — The Missile Defense Agency and U.S. Navy sailors completed a successful test of a missile defense system by destroying a target launched Wednesday night over the Pacific Ocean.

A separating short-range ballistic missile target was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai.

The USS Lake Erie detected and tracked the missile with onboard radar. The ship, equipped with an Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense weapon system, launched a block missile that released a kinetic warhead, which destroyed the target, the Department of Defense said.

“The kinetic warhead acquired the target re-entry vehicle, diverted into its path, and, using only the force of a direct impact, engaged and destroyed the target,” the department said in a news release.

Initial reports show the Aegis system worked as designed. Officials will evaluate data taken during the test.

The test involved the latest version of the second-generation Aegis system, which can handle engagement of longer-range and more sophisticated missiles. It was the third consecutive, successful intercept test of the Aegis BMD 4.0 Weapon System and the SM-3 Block IB guided missile. Previous successful intercepts took place on May 9, 2012, and June 26, 2012.

The defense system has successfully intercepted 25 of 31 missiles since tests began in 2002.

Rep. Brooks: Obama to Appease Russians By Sharing Secret Technology

In March of 2012, President Obama was caught on tape telling Russian President Medvedev that Russia’s fears about the United States’ missile defense system would be addressed after the November election “when I have more flexibility.”

Congressman Mo Brooks joined Frank Gaffney on Secure Freedom Radio on Monday to discuss how Obama is staying true to his word—but not as expected. According to Brooks, rather than simply pushing for a weakening of the American missile defense system, Obama is hinting at a willingness to hand over the technology that American taxpayers have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on directly to Russia.

It is the advanced nature of the United States’ missile defense capabilities that keeps it ahead of  potential international threats, and “the more our foes know about our hit-to-kill technology, the greater the likelihood that they can develop countermeasures.”

“No other nation on Earth has the ability to hit a high-speed, incoming warhead like the United States of America does,” Congressman Brooks said. “What do I mean by high-speed? Well, it’s more challenging than hitting a bullet with a bullet. In this sense you’re probably talking about approach speeds no less than five miles per second, and maybe as high as ten miles or so per second.”

Congressman Brooks believes that “the past conduct of the Obama administration does raise the risk that they are serious about sharing highly classified, one of a kind, hit-to-kill technology with the Russian Federation.”

Worried about the consequences if this disclosure occurred, Brooks has tried to limit through legislation Obama’s power to give away the technology secrets. He inserted an amendment into the Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which became law, to that effect.

“It was signed by the president. However, when the president signed it, he issued what is called a signing statement in which he said he would ignore this provision if he so desired.”

“This is basically what Congress can do. We can prevent funding from being used. We can pass laws that prevent the president from doing something. Unfortunately, this administration has shown a penchant for not following the law.”

Listen to the interview here.

A Growing Closeness Between the Emir of Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood

With Charles Jacobs, Thor Halvorssen, Elliott Abrams, Gordon Chang.

CHARLES JACOBS, co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group, examines the connections between the Boston bombers and a mosque they lived near that has links to the controversial Muslim American Society.

THOR HALVORSSEN, founder of the Human Rights Foundation, explains the three conflicting groups operating in Chechnya: dangerous radical Islamic terrorists; a puppet government set up by Russia’s Putin; and a legitimate government in exile whose members genuinely believe in a separation of Mosque and State.

ELLIOTT ABRAMS, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, discusses the close relationship between the Emir of Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood—a relationship that stands in odds to the hostility with which other Gulf states regard the group.

GORDON CHANG of Forbes.com explains the brinkmanship of military forces along the Indian Chinese border in the Himalayas and what bearing it has on understanding Chinese strategy for the U.S. and cyber warfare.

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