Obama Betrays The UK

The alternative title to this post - Obama's WTF Foreign Policy

Obama promised to reset our foreign relations in the run up to the 2008 election. He is making good on his promise with a vengeance. He is certainly resetting our relations with our closest and most stalwart ally - one who has stood with us shoulder to shoulder in Iraq and Afghanistan - Britain.

From the latest Wikileaks dump, we learn that, as part of the START negotiations, the Russians pressed the Obama administration for information on Britain's nuclear arsenal. The Obama administration asked the Brits if they could release the information. The Brits refused. Obama promptly betrayed the Brits, secretly releasing the information to the Russians anyway.

This from the Telegraph:

A series of classified messages sent to Washington by US negotiators show how information on Britain’s nuclear capability was crucial to securing Russia’s support for the “New START” deal.

Although the treaty was not supposed to have any impact on Britain, the leaked cables show that Russia used the talks to demand more information about the UK’s Trident missiles, which are manufactured and maintained in the US.

Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused, but the US agreed to hand over the serial numbers of Trident missiles it transfers to Britain.

Professor Malcolm Chalmers said: “This appears to be significant because while the UK has announced how many missiles it possesses, there has been no way for the Russians to verify this. Over time, the unique identifiers will provide them with another data point to gauge the size of the British arsenal.” . . .

Note that this betrayal of our closest ally comes on top of Obama's duplicity in forcing through the START Treaty even though it contained a provision in the preamble tying our missile defense program to our strategic offensive nuclear weapons. As I wrote at the time:

. . . It had to be utterly obvious to anyone with a brain cell that the only reason to include mention of the "interrelationship" of "strategic defensive arms" in the START Treaty was because Russia was bound and determined that it be an operative part of the treaty. It would seem that there are only two possible explanations as to why Obama would have agreed to allow that provision into the START Treaty:

1. Obama had his negotiators agree under the table to limit further development of our missile defense. Couple that with lying to Congress and the American people and what you have is an act that makes Nixon's actions in Watergate seem like a case of jaywalking; or

2. Obama is really so grossly incompetent and so out of his depth that he actually could not see that Russia was demanding this language in the treaty because they wanted to limit our missile defense.

Inquiring minds want to know which it is.

It is important to note that Obama refused to release to Congress the START negotiating documents that would have clarified this central issue. There was no reason not to release those documents. It is time to ready the subpoenas. . . .

The cupidity of Obama to pass this treaty at all costs and irrespective of its fatal flaws seems near akin to the destructive obsession exhibited by Captain Ahab. In the end, Obama has gained nothing towards the goal of legitimizing his quest for a nuclear free world (a dangerous fantasy in and of itself) and, at the very least, sets in stone the perception that he is grossly incompetent in foreign affairs.

Obama's betrayal of our closest ally in his pursuit of START, on top of all the above, is the first true government scandal we have had since the Iran-Contra affair - though this one is potentially of far more import and far more damaging. Obama has committed an utterly unconscionable betrayal of the trust of our ally, Britain, in addition to damaging our own interests while misleading Congress and the American people. This needs to be investigated by Congress - today - and Obama needs to personally issue a public apology to the Queen. One can only imagine the damage this latest revelation will do to the cooperation we receive from all of our allies in the future.

Update: Nice Deb has a great post up on this topic, raising two critical issues. The first is whether this act by the Obama administration violates Article III of our NATO Treaty? Arguably yes, and if that is so, it is very serious indeed. Second is whether, as the administration is now indicating, this is just a carryover of the notification provisions of START 1. But Britain was not a signatory to START 1 and their nuclear weapons, regardless of where they are being held, are not subject to "limits" of START. At any rate, do see her post on this issue.

Read More...

Summary only...

The START Debacle - Stupidity, Cupidity & Duplicity

Could there be a more jaw dropping display of the stupidity of our Congresscritters or the cupidity and, possibly, duplicity of Obama then what we see occurring with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Obama demanded this treaty be passed during the lame duck session of Congress ostensibly because it was urgently needed to keep tabs on Russian nuclear arms. He only succeeded in getting this through Congress by explicitly stating, in an 18 Dec. letter to Congress:

The New START treaty places no limitations on the development or deployment of our missile defense programs.

The Senate then ratified the treated. Now, two weeks later, Russia is telling us that they consider our missile defense limited by the Treaty:

The preamble sets a link between strategic offensive arms and defensive arms. . . .

The Russian lawmakers insist that all the chapters of the treaty including the preamble are legally binding, which is a common norm of international law.

Un-believable.

Here is the background. The START Treaty is solely concerned with offensive nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. Nonetheless, in the treaty negotiated by Obama, the preamble mentions Missile Defense - something of critical strategic importance to the U.S. and an object of significant opposition from Russia. The U.S. withdrew from an ABM Treaty with Russia in 2001 so that we could fully develop a missile defense shield. With ever growing threats from nuclear proliferation, it would be an act of strategic insanity for the U.S. to now agree to forgo its work on the missile defense shield. And indeed, it is absolutely clear that even the Democrat dominated 111th Congress would never agree to such an act - which is why Obama had to stipulate that the treaty would not in any way hinder our missle defense programs. In respect of all of that, there was no possible justification to include mention of missile defense in the START Treaty.

Nonetheless, Obama's negotiating team agreed to include the following in the preamble of the START Treaty:

Recognizing the existence of the interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms, that this interrelationship will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced, and that current strategic defensive arms do not undermine the viability and effectiveness of the strategic offensive arms of the Parties . . .

It had to be utterly obvious to anyone with a brain cell that the only reason to include mention of the "interrelationship" of "strategic defensive arms" in the START Treaty was because Russia was bound and determined that it be an operative part of the treaty. It would seem that there are only two possibile explanations as to why Obama would have agreed to allow that provision into the START Treaty:

1. Obama had his negotiators agree under the table to limit further development of our missile defense. Couple that with lying to Congress and the American people and what you have is an act that makes Nixon's actions in Watergate seem like a case of jaywalking; or

2. Obama is really so grossly incompetent and so out of his depth that he actually could not see that Russia was demanding this language in the treaty because they wanted to limit our missile defense.

Inquiring minds want to know which it is.

It is important to note that Obama refused to release to Congress the START negotiating documents that would have clarified this central issue. There was no reason not to release those documents. It is time to ready the subpoenas.

However this falls out, this is just an incredible debacle for all parties concerned. The stupidity of Congress for passing the START Treaty despite the language in the preamble was a jaw droppingly stupid act, irrespective of the assurance of Obama.

The cupidity of Obama to pass this treaty at all costs and irrespective of its fatal flaws seems near akin to the destructive obsession exhibited by Captain Ahab. In the end, Obama has gained nothing towards the goal of legitimizing his quest for a nuclear free world (a dangerous fantasy in and of itself) and, at the very least, sets in stone the perception that he is grossly incompetent in foreign affairs.

Lastly, the duplicity here, if it exists, which at least seems plausible at the moment, could fatally endanger Obama's administration. If his negotiators agreed to under the table deals to limit our ballistic missile defense and Obama then knowingly lied about that to Congress and the American people, then this is serious indeed.

Welcome Larwyn's Linx readers.

Read More...

Summary only...

Obama's Foreign Policy Take 5 - Dismantling Our Military Capability

Obama is now in Moscow, ostensibly to renegotiate the START agreement set to expire near the end of this year. But he has gone beyond merely negotiating an agreement to reduce our nuclear arsenal by a third (we can still make the rubble bounce, so not that big of a deal) and into an agreement that would effect the core of our conventional military capability by limiting the number of nuclear capable delivery systems to 500. To give you an idea of what this means, our Air Force alone operates over 1,600 aircraft - 66 B-1B Lancers, 85 B-52 Bombers, 21 B-2 'Stealth Bombers', 217 F-15 Strike Eagles, and 1,280 F-16's - that are capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear munitions. That doesn't begin to count submarines and other systems in our inventory. To enter into an agreement of this magnitude would gut our military capability. This is an exponentialy more destructive act than those destructive acts that Obama has already taken vis-a-vis defense, to starve our future defense budget during war, to cut military research and development, and to severly cut back on missle defense at a time of ever-increasing nuclear proliferation.

Why are our nuclear capable delivery systems, many of which are intregral parts of our conventional capability, even on the table? This is utterly insane.

This from Ralph Peters:

. . . The main course in Moscow was arms control.

President Obama's ideological bias against nuclear weapons dates back to his undergraduate years. Yet those weapons kept the peace between the world's great powers for 64 years. A few remarks about deterrence notwithstanding, Obama just doesn't get it.

He agreed to trim our nuclear-warhead arsenal by one-third and -- even more dangerously -- to cut the systems that deliver the nuclear payloads. In fact, the Russians don't care much about our warhead numbers (which will be chopped to a figure "between 1,500 and 1,675"). What they really wanted -- and got -- was a US cave-in regarding limits on our nuclear-capable bombers, submarines and missiles that could leave us with as few as 500 such systems, if the Russians continue to get their way as the final details are negotiated.

Moscow knows we aren't going to start a nuclear war with Russia. Putin (forget poor "President" Dmitry Medvedev) wants to gut our conventional capabilities to stage globe-spanning military operations. He wants to cut us down to Russia's size.

Our problem is that many nuclear-delivery systems -- such as bombers or subs -- are "dual-use": A B-2 bomber can launch nukes, but it's employed more frequently to deliver conventional ordnance.

Putin sought to cripple our ability to respond to international crises. Obama, meanwhile, was out for "deliverables" -- deals that could be signed in front of the cameras. Each man got what he wanted.

President Obama even expressed an interest in further nuclear-weapons cuts. Peace in our time, ladies and gentlemen, peace in our time . . .

We just agreed to the disarmament position of the American Communist Party of the 1950s. . . .

It cannot be overemphasized what limiting the U.S. to 500 nuclear capable delivery systems could do to our conventional defense capability, as the two are largely intergrated. To get a feel for how integrated, see this from "Nuclear Matters: A Practical Guide," published on-line by the Office of the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters (ODATSD(NM)):

3.6 U.S. Nuclear Weapons Delivery Systems

A nuclear weapon delivery system is the military vehicle (ballistic or cruise missile, airplane, or submarine) by which a nuclear weapon would be delivered to its intended target in the event of authorized use. Most nuclear warheads have been designed for specific delivery systems.



Weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal include: gravity bombs deliverable by Dual Capable Aircraft (DCA) and long-range bombers; the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile/Nuclear (TLAM/N) capable, deliverable by submarines; cruise missiles deliverable by long-range bombers; Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBM); and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM). These systems provide a wide range of options that can be tailored to meet desired military and political objectives. Each system has advantages and disadvantages and effectively provides one part of the New Triad deterrent against the threat of nuclear and other WMD attacks on the U.S. and its allies. Figure 3.4 is a list of the current U.S. nuclear warheads and their associated delivery systems.



3.6.1 Bombers

The U.S. bomber force serves as a visible, flexible, and recallable national strategic asset. The active U.S. inventory of B-52s (Figure 3.5), which are located at Barksdale Air Force Base (AFB) in Louisiana and Minot AFB in North Dakota, have been the backbone of the strategic bomber force for more than 40 years. The B-52 “Stratofortress” is a heavy, long-range bomber that can perform a variety of missions. It is capable of flying at sub-sonic speeds at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet, and it can carry precision-guided conventional ordnance in addition to nuclear weapons.

The B-2 “Stealth Bomber” (Figure 3.6) entered the bomber force in April 1997 and significantly enhanced U.S. deterrent forces with its deep penetration capability. The B-2 is a multi-role bomber capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear munitions. The B-2 force is located at Whiteman AFB in Missouri.

The B-52 is the only aircraft that can carry both gravity bombs and cruise missiles. Nuclear planners must consider multiple tradeoffs when deciding which weapon and delivery system to use. The advantages and disadvantages of gravity bombs are outlined below:

Gravity Bomb advantages:

Aircraft provide flexibility and can be recalled prior to weapon release/launch;

Aircraft range can be increased with air to air refueling;

Weapons may be employed against mobile targets;

Various weapon yields available from megaton to subkiloton; and

Aircraft can be launched from the Continental United States (CONUS).

Gravity Bomb disadvantages:

Aircraft crew is at risk in high-threat environment;

Lead-time is required for planning and transit; and

Significant combat and ground support infrastructure may be required depending on scenario.

Cruise missiles have different advantages and disadvantages:

Cruise Missile advantages:

Weapons can penetrate heavily defended areas without risk to the aircraft and crew;

\Weapons can be launched from international airspace; and Bomber aircraft range is significant.

Cruise Missile disadvantages:

System may be vulnerable to modern air defense systems; and

Terrain factors may limit employment flexibility.

3.6.2 Submarines

There are two types of nuclear capable submarines, ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) and attack submarines.

SSBNs

Nuclear-powered SSBNs are designed to deliver ballistic missile attacks against assigned targets. These submarines carry Submarine Launched Ballistic Missles (SLBMs) which are the most survivable leg of the Nuclear Triad because of the ability of their SSBN delivery platforms to hide in the ocean depths, coupled with the long range of the missiles. Constantly on patrol, SSBN Trident missiles provide a worldwide launch capability, with each patrol covering an area of more than one million square miles.

Each U.S. SSBN (Figure 3.7) is capable of carrying 24 Trident missiles. SSBNs are deployed from the West Coast in Bangor, Washington and from the East Coast in Kings Bay, Georgia. These SSBNs carry the Trident II D5 missile. As outlined in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the U.S. has reduced its SSBN force from 18 to 14 submarines.

SLBM advantages:

Weapons can penetrate heavily defended areas without risk to the crew;

Weapons can be launched in international waters;

Weapons can be on target in minimal time;

Maximum stealth and surprise can be maintained prior to launch;

System provides flexible targeting capability; and

The missile can carry multiple warheads.

SLBM disadvantages:

Missiles are not recallable after launch; and

Multiple warheads present additional planning challenges

Attack Submarines

All of the early-model U.S. attack submarines are capable of launching Tomahawk Land-Attack Cruise Missiles/Nuclear (TLAM/N). However, as a result of the President’s 1991 Nuclear Initiatives, all TLAM/N nuclear weapons have been removed from U.S. Navy vessels. The United States retains the option to re-deploy TLAM/N on attack submarines, if necessary.

TLAM/N advantages:

Heavily defended areas may be penetrated without risk to the crew;

Highly mobile platforms in international waters may serve as launch sites;

Weapons are very accurate;

Launch platform is recallable;

Overflight of third-party nations alleviated depending on launch location; and

Maximum stealth and surprise can be maintained prior to launch.

TLAM/N disadvantages:

Weapons not recallable after launch;

Lead-time required to generate and transit to desired launch point;

System may be vulnerable to modern air defense systems;

Terrain factors may limit employment flexibility; and

Launch platform must receive updated data transfer device in order to update a mission plan.

3.6.3 ICBMs

U.S. nuclear forces include Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), which are launched from stationary silos. ICBMs are on continuous alert, cost-effective, can provide immediate reaction and can strike their intended targets within 30 minutes of launch.

Currently, the U.S. ICBM force consists of Minuteman III. Minuteman III missile bases are located at: F.E. Warren AFB in Wyoming; Malmstrom AFB in Montana; and Minot AFB in North Dakota. Figure 3.8 shows a Minuteman III missile in a silo.


ICBM advantages:

Weapons can penetrate heavily defended areas without risk to the crew;

Weapons can be on target in minimal time;

Planning time is short; and

The missile can carry multiple warheads.

ICBM disadvantages:

Missiles are not recallable;

Booster may fall on U.S. or Canadian territory; and

Multiple warheads present additional planning challenges.

3.6.4 Dual Capable Aircraft (DCA)

In addition to its strategic nuclear forces, the United States has CONUS-based and forward-deployed DCA consisting of the F-15 (Figure 3.9) and the F-16 (Figure 3.10). DCA are able to deliver conventional munitions or non-strategic nuclear bombs from the B61 family.

The United States also maintains forward-based DCA assigned to the U.S. European Command. Some of these DCA are available to support our North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies in combined-theater nuclear operations. . . .

If the agreement Obama is now negotiating is ratified as a treaty and indeed, actually limits the U.S. to 500 nuclear delivery systems, we will have just officially stepped down as a superpower. We will no longer have the capability of projecting force world-wide. This truly would be an act of national suicide. Robert Averich posted in his blog today: "As one fine officer in our armed services wrote privately to Seraphic Secret: 'For the first time in my career I am convinced that our Commander in Chief is not fit to be the town dog catcher.'" I'll second that.

Update: Crusader Rabbit points out the flip side of this agreement, that Russia has an aging and dwindling nuclear arsenal and they cannot hope to keep up with U.S. superiority - unless we volunteer to forego it.

Read More...

Summary only...

Obama's Options

According to the NYT, North Korea's nuclear test leaves Obama with "few options." How about these for a start - restore funding for the missle defense program and restart the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. As we enter a world with nuclear proliferation among the world's most unstable regimes, they kind of make sense.

Read More...

Summary only...

Defenseless - The Obama Budget

Obama sent a record budget to Congress, proposing billions in funding for every left wing cause imaginable, then claimed yesterday that he is fiscally responsible for asking for cuts amounting to 1/2 of 1% of his total budget. It is shameless to the point of parody. But scratch the surface of the budget and the savings and you quickly go from parody to ominous.

The bulk of Obama's proposed savings are coming from our Defense budget, the one place where significant increases in funding are necessary. And to make matters worse, among those handful of billions Obama intends to save, a goodly part of it comes from deep cuts in our missile defense program. This in a world that is getting more, not less, dangerous, and with our military desperately in need of expansion and refit. Obama is ignoring the exponential growth of the nuclear threat and he is reordering our defense spending priorities in the same manner that France did prior to 1939.

You can read at Hot Air the story of the Obama budget and Obama's mind-numbingly ridiculous assertion of fiscal responsibility for his proposing of $17 billion in budget cuts. And Bizzyblog points out that even the $17 billion in cuts is all smoke and mirrors. I will not add to that. My concern is with the defense side of the coin - and a small coin it has become.

Our military is in dire straights in terms of size and equipment. The following is from an article by MG Robert Scales discussing our military readiness posture in April, 2007. It was, at the time, critical, and there is nothing that I have seen since to suggest a significant change to that posture.

We have learned from painful experience in Iraq and Afghanistan that tomorrow's ground forces must be re-equipped with many more fighting vehicles that are light, mobile, easily transported and capable of keeping more soldiers protected for longer periods. Properly equipping the Army to win the long war will be very expensive. But we have fought 12 wars in the last 30 years and all but one has been decided on the ground. We will fight another one sooner than any of us would like. If we are to break the cycle of underfunding followed by rapid re-funding that has caused so much human tragedy, we must start now and must build a new Army for tomorrow rather than put yesterday's Army back on the shelf.

- MG Robert Scales, discussing the degraded state of Army readiness as of April, 2007. Indeed, as he points out, but for the Reagan era, our military had suffered significant underfunding for decades - under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

You will recall that a central argument of Obama and the left for bringing the Iraq War to an immediate surrender was because our military was undersized and the Iraq war was taking a tremendous toll on our equipment. The fact of a degraded military was certainly true, though the answer to that was not to surrender in Iraq, it was to make a big increase in defense spending. Bush and the Republican administration through 2006 attempted to fight two wars without increasing the defense budget to realistically account for equipment degradation and shortfalls. This remained true when the left took over Congress in 2006.

Now that the left has the reins of power, the one thing that Obama is not doing is making any increases in defense spending. Indeed, instead of rearming the military so it is prepared for the most difficult of confrontations - a conventional war - Obama is making huge cuts in expensive weapons systems that we will need for such confrontations in the future. He is instead, through Sec. of Def. Gates, reordering priorities in order to fight the much less costly "last war." You can read the itemization of cuts here. Secretary of Defense Gates seems fully complicit in this - and if his performance at Senate Hearings the other day are any indication, then he is both acting as the front man for specific Obama policy he is willing to be less then honest in furtherance of that policy. I am very surprised by that.

But that is an aside. The long and short of it all is that, instead of keeping us on a track so that we maintain superiority on the conventional battlefield, Obama is ordering our military to focus on unconventional warfare - i.e., the "last war." While it gives Obama the luxury of not having to sink billions into defense, the "last war" theory of military preparedness has ever been a trap for nations. For example, one need only to look to France in the late 1930's. They prepared for the next war expecting a replay of the last one - and thus, they based their defense around fixed fortifications of the Maginot Line. The line was breached by a new form of warfare - blitzkrieg - using superior weapons. France fell in days.

And it is not as if we face a paucity of conventional war threats. China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran are the four most obvious of those threats at the moment, but who knows where the next threat will come from. Indeed, Iraq was a conventional threat in 2002. But our conventional warfare capabilities then were so superior that they quickly folded - as indeed, they had near a decade earlier. Moreover, we now know that the Soviet Union considered attacking the West in the 1980's. Kim Il Sung put North Korea on a war footing about a year or so prior to that. Both pulled back. Why they did so is simple to assess - they had a very realistic respect for our capabilities to fight a conventional war. To paraphrase - it was "peace through superior firepower." But take away the perception of that superiority and, as surely as night follows day, the enemies of the West will not feel so constrained.

If we remain fully prepared for a conventional war, we can still also be prepared for unconventional conflicts. The reverse is not true. And thus, if we give away our conventional warfare superiority, we do so at great cost. Nor will it be something that can be at all easily resurrected. Combat systems today take years to develop and then years to ramp up production. The decisions made today will be with us for decades to come.

Compounding this situation by orders of magnitude is Obama's unfathomable decision to cut spending for missile defense. One of the cuts about which Obama so spuriously crowed yesterday was almost a 15% cut - 1.2 billion dollars - in the budget for the Missile Defense Agency. Can there be any possible justification for this? This is a system that grows more critical by the day. Pakistan is on the edge of takeover by the Taliban. North Korea wants to sell its technology to the highest bidders. Iran is continuing with their nuclear program and it has kick started proliferation throughout the Middle East. With that in mind, nothing could be more important to the defense of our nation and the free (for the moment) world than a robust missile defense.

Obama's cuts in defense are not rationale. ACORN is set to receive vast amounts of funding, while our military capabilities are to degraded. It leads one to wonder whether Obama is simply cynical and opportunistic, or is he really as naive and unrealistic as his budget priorities make him appear? Or is it a toxic mix of all four?

Read More...

Summary only...

How Do You Say "Up Yours" In Ukrainian?

Pictured above is Ukrainian President Viktor Yushenko. His face is pock marked from dioxin poisoning in 2004, likely a gift that originated in Russia. He is a pro-Western president who, like the other heads of state of the former Soviet satellites, are reacting strongly to Russia's invasion of Georgia.

Several days ago, the Presidents of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Latvia all visited Georgia to register their solidarity with Georgia and their level of concern with Russian actions. Poland decided to ink a deal with the U.S. for a mutual defence pact and the installation of a missle defense system on its terrirtory. The response from Russia - they would now target nuclear weapons at Poland. Such threats are, at very best, counterproductive.

And today, in a move sure to rattle Putin's cage, President Viktor Yushchenko has offered up a Soviet built satellite facility on Ukrainian soil for integration into the U.S. missle defense system. This from the Telegraph:

. . . Ukraine said it was ready to give both Europe and America access to its missile warning systems after Russia earlier annulled a 1992 cooperation agreement involving two satellite tracking stations. Previously, the stations were part of Russia's early-warning system for missiles coming from Europe.

"The fact that Ukraine is no longer a party to the 1992 agreement allows it to launch active cooperation with European countries to integrate its information," a statement from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.

It follows a declaration earlier this week from Ukraine's pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko, that the Russian naval lease of the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sebastopol would be scrapped if any vessels joined the conflict in Georgia.

The crisis over Russia's display of military might in Georgia has alarmed ex-Soviet satellites states in a broad arc from the Baltics to Central Asia. Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, all of which harbour bitter memories of Soviet occupation, have expressed solidarity with the Georgian position.

Read the entire article. I do believe that is the diplomatic equivalent of the one fingered salute that President Yushenko just made in the direction of Moscow.

And I have to agree with M. Simon over at Power and Control. This has been a high stakes debacle for Russia. The decision to invade Russia was not one taken with a whole lot of forethought given to all of the consequences.

Read More...

Summary only...

The Utility of Missle Defense & The Futility If Obama Is Elected

Richard Fernandez at The Belmont Club has a good post on the utility of the Missle Defense being pushed by the U.S. and why Russia, among others, is so dead set against it. In essence, it is because it severely degrades Russian capabilities to conduct limited warfare against the West without triggering a massive response from the U.S. The same is true of Iran.

As an aside, we will have nothing to worry about in this regards if Obama is elected. That of course is if he meant it when he promised to strip defense spending, including a halt on deployment of the missle defense shield in Europe:



____________________________________________________

This from Mr. Fernandez:

In 1995, during the middle of President Clinton’s first term, the US Strategic Command declassified a document titled the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence which laid out the principles for dealing with threats from strategic inferiors — both Russia and other nations — after the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Although the paper was written from the American point of view, it was informed throughout by the implicit assumptions of what hostile nations might attempt to achieve from a position of strategic inferiority.

In other words, the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence provides a framework within which to understand why the Russian leadership has vowed to consider a military response, or even a renewal of the Cold War in response to the US-Czech accord marking the start of the deployment of missile defenses in Eastern Europe. The NYT reports:

President Dmitri A. Medvedev and his predecessor, Vladimir V. Putin, who is now the Russian prime minister, have told the United States that the Kremlin sees a missile shield in this part of Europe as a threat to Russian security. Mr. Putin has said it could even lead to a new cold war.

But American and Czech officials said the system’s radar component, to be stationed south of Prague, would defend the NATO members in Europe and the United States against long-range weapons from the Middle East, particularly Iran.

“Ballistic missile proliferation is not an imaginary threat,” Ms. Rice said Tuesday after meeting with the Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek. She said Iran continued to work toward a nuclear bomb, along with long-range missiles that could carry a warhead.

The key concept embodied in the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence is the idea that it rests on an American commitment to inflict an unspecified but devastating response upon any nation or group that attacks it. In order to prevent any adversary from legalistically parsing a pre-announced set of conditions under which the United States would retaliate, all the terms were left intentionally vague so that only American national command authority could say with certainty what would happen next. In the words of the document:

While it is crucial to explicitly define and communicate the acts or damages that we would find unacceptable and, hence, what it is that we are specifically seeking to deter, we should not be very specific about our response. It is however, crucial that the level of our commitment to the things we value be unfaltering, and that the adversary have little doubt of this. Without saying exactly what the consequences will be if the US has to respond, whether the reaction would either be responsive or preemptive, we must communicate in the strongest ways possible the unreakable link between our vital interests and the potential harm that will be directly attributable to anyone who damages (or even credibly threatens to damage) that which we hold of value.

This has the effect of threatening a vastly disproportionate response towards any attempts at aggression by strategic inferiors. While a proportionate response is not ruled out, neither — and this is the essential point — is a wholly disproportionate one. Under such a doctrine a missile defense capability would play a very important role: it would greatly increase the potential lopsidedness of the exchange. Time and again the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence emphasizes the idea that one of key goals of modern defense is to instill uncertainty in the minds of an adversary — whether that opponent is rational or not.

. . . What a working missile defense shield will do is make any Russian limited WMD attack on the West a very uncertain proposition. While Russia’s arsenal is easily big enough to overwhelm, through sheer numbers, the defensive system based in Poland and the Czech Republic any such attack would also be big enough to guarantee Russia’s destruction in the resulting retaliation. It may be an exaggeration to claim that a missile defense will have the effect of disarming the Kremlin of any viable military response between issuing a diplomatic protest and starting Armaggedon but it is quite clear it threatens to invalidate a large range of the “full spectrum” responses now available to the Russians. How much the Russians value the ability to make limited, but brutal threats is illustrated in a story the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence relates with a mixture of horror and admiration.

The story of the tactic applied by the Soviets during the earliest days of the Lebanon chaos is a case in point. When three of its citizens and their driver were kidnapped and killed, two days later the Soviets had delivered to the leader of the revolutionary activity a package containing a single testicle- that of his eldest son-with a message that said in no uncertain terms, never bother our people again.” It was successful throughout the period of the conflicts there. Such an insightful tailoring of what is valued within a culture, and its weaving into a deterrence message, along with a projection of the capability that can be mustered, is the type of creative thinking that must go into deciding what to hold at risk in framing deterrent targeting for multilateral situations in the future. At the same time this story illustrates just how much more difficult it is for a society such as ours to frame its deterrent messages-that our society would never condone the taking of such actions makes it more difficult for us to deter acts of terrorism.

Moscow finds limited but savage threats very useful indeed. It recently admitted to killing dissident Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko to send a pointed message, proving that the days of testicles in boxes is not over. But with Russian conventional forces vastly inferior to those of the US, the Kremlin’s nuclear leftovers formed the only means of sending Eastern Europe the proverbial severed finger. That power will become radically devalued with the emergence of a missile shield or at least useful only in the case of Armaggedon. Thus the Kremlin has threatened a military response — likely some new missile or penetrator system essentially invulnerable to the new defenses — in order to regain its strategic flexibility.

The effect of a missile shield on Iran and its proxies would be even more pronounced. Recently Iran threatened to strike at Israel and America should any attempts be made to interfere with the progress of its nuclear program. Once Teheran acquires a limited nuclear weapons capability it could theoretically deter an American doctrine of a vastly disproportionate response. No longer could Americans credibly threaten utter destruction in retaliation for a chemical, biological, dirty bomb or mega-conventional attack if Teheran possessed the credible means to fire even a handful of missiles at Western targets. With a half dozen missiles at the ready the Ayatollahs could be reasonably sure that, short of an actual nuclear attack on an American city, Washington might not dare take disproportionate action. In other words, the uncertainty which forms the kernel of American deterrence would be effectively undermined.

What a missile defense system in Europe would do is restore the ambiguity inherent in the American deterrent posture even in the event Iran has nuclear weapons. . .

Read the entire post.

Read More...

Summary only...