"Many Americans seem convinced, based on scanty evidence, that Barack Obama is the better choice for managing the economy. Maybe they also think he has the right stuff to manage the next arms race, and can handle a showdown with a snarling Russian bear, emerging from hibernation."
That's an excerpt from my blog post one week ago.
Here's an excerpt from a Washington Post story published Wednesday:
Russian President Sharply Criticizes U.S. on Missile Defense
Medvedev Threatens to Deploy Tactical Missiles Near Poland if U.S. Pursues Shield in Europe
By Philip P. Pan
MOSCOW, Nov. 5 -- Sharply criticizing the United States while offering to rebuild relations with its new leader, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned in a nationally televised address Wednesday that he would deploy short-range missiles near Poland if the Obama administration pressed ahead with plans to build a missile defense shield in Europe.
Kremlin officials have threatened before to target Poland by moving tactical missiles into the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, most recently after Poland agreed in August to host a U.S. interceptor base. But Medvedev's threat "to neutralize, when necessary" the American installation was the most explicit and public endorsement of the plan by a top Russian leader yet.
The warning appeared intended to signal the Kremlin's priorities to the new American president-elect and could serve as an early foreign policy test for Obama, who has said he supports missile defenses against Iran and North Korea but has also criticized the Bush administration for failing to consult with allies about the shield, exaggerating its capabilities and rushing deployment for political purposes.
Medvedev's remarks came in his first state of the nation address since taking office in May, a wide-ranging speech in which he held out little hope for democratic reforms and also proposed amending the Russian constitution to lengthen the presidential term to six years -- a move condemned by critics as part of a plan to allow his predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, to return to office.
Medvedev emphasized that Russia remained ready to work with the United States if it abandoned its "mistaken, egotistical and sometimes simply dangerous" policies.
"It is true that these relations are not going through the easiest period today," he said. "But I would like to stress that we have no problems with the American people. We have no inherent anti-Americanism."
Russia's finance minister suggested Obama's election would give a boost to the global economy, and the Russian ambassador to NATO said he expected Obama to improve the alliance's relationship with Moscow and lift the limits on cooperation imposed after Russia's war with Georgia.
"I think the emergence of the new U.S. president, the young, energetic black leader, can lead to those bans imposed by the previous U.S. administration between Russia and NATO being lifted," said the ambassador, Dmitry Rogozin.
Showing posts with label Cold War II. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cold War II. Show all posts
Friday, November 7, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Another Sign of American Decline
This report by The Associated Press (also pasted below) confirms something I've been predicting for years -- though I take no delight in being vindicated.
It's long been obvious that the United States was pursuing a policy of what I call "disarmament by default," through benign neglect of our nuclear forces, by adhering to a never-ratified test ban treaty, mothballing its nuclear programs, retiring or cashiering its top nuclear experts and allowing its nuclear labs and manufacturing facilities to fall into decline. (I pitched this story to the New York Times Magazine back in 2000 or 2001; an editor politely declined to go with it, apparently failing to see the relevance.)
It's partly the fault of recent presidents, who didn't have the political courage to return to real world testing, and who believed, rather naively, that we could maintain the safety and reliability of an aging nuclear arsenal through computer simulations. None of them wanted to remind Cold War-fatigued Americans that we still had a deterrent force to maintain, modernize and upgrade, and they feared that arsenal modernization would be seen as provocative by some in the "international community." Better to let sleeping dogs lie.
But Congress also shares much of the blame, for permitting a handful of members -- unreconstructed "No Nukes" types -- to defund or otherwise stymie most recent efforts to modernize the arsenal.
Both branches of government acted irresponsibly, on the assumption that the end of Cold War I also meant the end of the nuclear arms race. Technocrats in the nuclear labs went along, intrigued by the computing challenges presented by the "Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship" program and perhaps hoping to shed the taint of being known as Bomb builders.
And now we find ourselves in a potential crisis.
Neither presidential candidate has much of substance to say on the subject, the AP reports, because it's an issue still below the radar of most Americans. The story notes, however, that "of the two senators competing to succeed President Bush, Democrat Barack Obama is most unequivocally against building new nuclear weapons."
That may be one of several campaign trail policy positions that a President Obama will have to modify or abandon once the weight and responsibility of the office is sitting squarely on his shoulders. Or perhaps he and Democrats in Congress will be content to stand by as more and more elements of America's once mighty nuclear arsenal become too aged, too unsafe and too unreliable to remain on alert, consciously embracing the policy of disarmament by default.
US considering implications of nuclear decline
By ROBERT BURNS
WASHINGTON -- The mighty U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons, midwived by World War II and nurtured by the Cold War, is declining in power and purpose while the military's competence in handling the world's most dangerous arms has eroded. At the same time, international efforts to contain the spread of such weapons look ineffective.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for one, wants the next president to think about what nuclear middle-age and decline means for national security.
Gates joins a growing debate about the reliability and future credibility of the American arsenal with his first extensive speech on nuclear arms Tuesday. The debate is attracting increasing attention inside the Pentagon even as the military is preoccupied with fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The unconventional tools of war there include covert commandos, but not nuclear weapons.
Gates is expected to call for increased commitment to preserving the deterrent value of atomic weapons. Their chief function has evolved from first stopping the Nazis and Japanese, then the Soviets. Now the vast U.S. stockpile serves mainly to make any other nation think twice about developing or using even a crude nuclear device of its own.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, wrote in the current issue of an internal publication, Joint Force Quarterly, that the United States is overdue to retool its nuclear strategy. He referred to nuclear deterrence _ the idea that the credible threat of U.S. nuclear retaliation is enough by itself to stop a potential enemy from striking first with a weapon of mass destruction.
"Many, if not most, of the individuals who worked deterrence in the 1970s and 1980s _ the real experts at this discipline _ are not doing it anymore," Mullen wrote. "And we have not even tried to find their replacements."
Gen. Kevin Chilton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, which is responsible for maintaining the nation's nuclear war plans, told Congress last spring that technical nuclear expertise also is lagging. "The last nuclear design engineer to participate in the development and testing of a new nuclear weapon is scheduled to retire in the next five years," Chilton said.
Of the two senators competing to succeed President Bush, Democrat Barack Obama is most unequivocally against building new nuclear weapons. Both he and Republican John McCain say in their campaign materials that they support the long-standing U.S. commitment to eventually do away with nuclear arms. Neither says explicitly that the safety or credibility of the arsenal is in question; that's an argument made most frequently by congressional Republicans.
Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., for example, said in a speech Sept. 15 that the network of laboratories and industrial plants that produce and maintain U.S. nuclear weapons is, in some cases, "simply falling down from age," and that this amounts to an alarming national "emergency."
Some private experts dispute Kyl's assessment. "It's completely overblown," said Hans M. Kristensen, who tracks nuclear weapons developments for the Federation of American Scientists. The advocacy group opposes the Bush administration's proposal to develop a new nuclear weapon design.
The number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal is a state secret. But Kristensen and a fellow expert, Robert S. Norris, estimate that the total stood at nearly 5,400 warheads at the start of this year. That includes an estimated 4,075 ready for potential use and 1,260 in backup status.
In an interview, Kristensen argued that even though the number is declining, the capability of remaining weapons is increasing as older missiles, for example, get new engines, guidance sets and computer software.
Gates takes a different view. He has expressed concern about lack of official attention to the nuclear arsenal.
"Even though the days of hair-trigger superpower confrontation are over, as long as other nations possess the bomb and the means to deliver it, the United States must maintain a credible strategic deterrent," he said Sept. 29 in a speech at the National Defense University.
Gates tied the question of credibility to well-publicized slip-ups in Air Force nuclear operations. In June he fired the Air Force's top general, Michael Moseley, as well as the top civilian, Michael Wynne, after an outside investigation concluded that the Air Force had not adequately heeded warning signs that its nuclear expertise, performance and stewardship were eroding over a period of years.
In August 2007, a B-52 bomber flew from an Air Force base in North Dakota to a base in Louisiana with nuclear warheads that neither the bomber's pilots nor its crew knew were aboard. Then came the revelation that electrical fuses that trigger the detonation of strategic nuclear missiles had been shipped mistakenly to Taiwan _ and the mistake was not discovered for months.
Richard Wagner, a physicist who worked in the government's nuclear weapons laboratories for many years, told a conference in Washington this past week that the August 2007 incident was "the worst breach of security of nuclear weapons that the United States has ever had."
It's long been obvious that the United States was pursuing a policy of what I call "disarmament by default," through benign neglect of our nuclear forces, by adhering to a never-ratified test ban treaty, mothballing its nuclear programs, retiring or cashiering its top nuclear experts and allowing its nuclear labs and manufacturing facilities to fall into decline. (I pitched this story to the New York Times Magazine back in 2000 or 2001; an editor politely declined to go with it, apparently failing to see the relevance.)
It's partly the fault of recent presidents, who didn't have the political courage to return to real world testing, and who believed, rather naively, that we could maintain the safety and reliability of an aging nuclear arsenal through computer simulations. None of them wanted to remind Cold War-fatigued Americans that we still had a deterrent force to maintain, modernize and upgrade, and they feared that arsenal modernization would be seen as provocative by some in the "international community." Better to let sleeping dogs lie.
But Congress also shares much of the blame, for permitting a handful of members -- unreconstructed "No Nukes" types -- to defund or otherwise stymie most recent efforts to modernize the arsenal.
Both branches of government acted irresponsibly, on the assumption that the end of Cold War I also meant the end of the nuclear arms race. Technocrats in the nuclear labs went along, intrigued by the computing challenges presented by the "Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship" program and perhaps hoping to shed the taint of being known as Bomb builders.
And now we find ourselves in a potential crisis.
Neither presidential candidate has much of substance to say on the subject, the AP reports, because it's an issue still below the radar of most Americans. The story notes, however, that "of the two senators competing to succeed President Bush, Democrat Barack Obama is most unequivocally against building new nuclear weapons."
That may be one of several campaign trail policy positions that a President Obama will have to modify or abandon once the weight and responsibility of the office is sitting squarely on his shoulders. Or perhaps he and Democrats in Congress will be content to stand by as more and more elements of America's once mighty nuclear arsenal become too aged, too unsafe and too unreliable to remain on alert, consciously embracing the policy of disarmament by default.
US considering implications of nuclear decline
By ROBERT BURNS
WASHINGTON -- The mighty U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons, midwived by World War II and nurtured by the Cold War, is declining in power and purpose while the military's competence in handling the world's most dangerous arms has eroded. At the same time, international efforts to contain the spread of such weapons look ineffective.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for one, wants the next president to think about what nuclear middle-age and decline means for national security.
Gates joins a growing debate about the reliability and future credibility of the American arsenal with his first extensive speech on nuclear arms Tuesday. The debate is attracting increasing attention inside the Pentagon even as the military is preoccupied with fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The unconventional tools of war there include covert commandos, but not nuclear weapons.
Gates is expected to call for increased commitment to preserving the deterrent value of atomic weapons. Their chief function has evolved from first stopping the Nazis and Japanese, then the Soviets. Now the vast U.S. stockpile serves mainly to make any other nation think twice about developing or using even a crude nuclear device of its own.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, wrote in the current issue of an internal publication, Joint Force Quarterly, that the United States is overdue to retool its nuclear strategy. He referred to nuclear deterrence _ the idea that the credible threat of U.S. nuclear retaliation is enough by itself to stop a potential enemy from striking first with a weapon of mass destruction.
"Many, if not most, of the individuals who worked deterrence in the 1970s and 1980s _ the real experts at this discipline _ are not doing it anymore," Mullen wrote. "And we have not even tried to find their replacements."
Gen. Kevin Chilton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, which is responsible for maintaining the nation's nuclear war plans, told Congress last spring that technical nuclear expertise also is lagging. "The last nuclear design engineer to participate in the development and testing of a new nuclear weapon is scheduled to retire in the next five years," Chilton said.
Of the two senators competing to succeed President Bush, Democrat Barack Obama is most unequivocally against building new nuclear weapons. Both he and Republican John McCain say in their campaign materials that they support the long-standing U.S. commitment to eventually do away with nuclear arms. Neither says explicitly that the safety or credibility of the arsenal is in question; that's an argument made most frequently by congressional Republicans.
Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., for example, said in a speech Sept. 15 that the network of laboratories and industrial plants that produce and maintain U.S. nuclear weapons is, in some cases, "simply falling down from age," and that this amounts to an alarming national "emergency."
Some private experts dispute Kyl's assessment. "It's completely overblown," said Hans M. Kristensen, who tracks nuclear weapons developments for the Federation of American Scientists. The advocacy group opposes the Bush administration's proposal to develop a new nuclear weapon design.
The number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal is a state secret. But Kristensen and a fellow expert, Robert S. Norris, estimate that the total stood at nearly 5,400 warheads at the start of this year. That includes an estimated 4,075 ready for potential use and 1,260 in backup status.
In an interview, Kristensen argued that even though the number is declining, the capability of remaining weapons is increasing as older missiles, for example, get new engines, guidance sets and computer software.
Gates takes a different view. He has expressed concern about lack of official attention to the nuclear arsenal.
"Even though the days of hair-trigger superpower confrontation are over, as long as other nations possess the bomb and the means to deliver it, the United States must maintain a credible strategic deterrent," he said Sept. 29 in a speech at the National Defense University.
Gates tied the question of credibility to well-publicized slip-ups in Air Force nuclear operations. In June he fired the Air Force's top general, Michael Moseley, as well as the top civilian, Michael Wynne, after an outside investigation concluded that the Air Force had not adequately heeded warning signs that its nuclear expertise, performance and stewardship were eroding over a period of years.
In August 2007, a B-52 bomber flew from an Air Force base in North Dakota to a base in Louisiana with nuclear warheads that neither the bomber's pilots nor its crew knew were aboard. Then came the revelation that electrical fuses that trigger the detonation of strategic nuclear missiles had been shipped mistakenly to Taiwan _ and the mistake was not discovered for months.
Richard Wagner, a physicist who worked in the government's nuclear weapons laboratories for many years, told a conference in Washington this past week that the August 2007 incident was "the worst breach of security of nuclear weapons that the United States has ever had."
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Cold war "icon" removed from Academy grounds -- just as Cold War II heats up
"An icon of the Cold War will disappear from the Air Force Academy this week when an intercontinental ballistic missile on display for nearly the past four decades is torn down," the Colorado Springs Gazette reports this morning. "A Minuteman III missile that has stood proudly near Clune Arena on the campus has rusted its way through too many Colorado winters and is in danger of collapsing."
The writer then adds, just in case we were wondering, that the "structure is just the shell of the weapon and lacks solid fuel rocket motors and city-leveling warheads." That's certainly a relief.
"We're going to miss it," academy spokesman Johnny Whitaker told the Gazette. "The old cold warrior has been a landmark here for 37 years."
Removing the missile isn't some sort of political statement, thank goodness; it's just rusting out. But still, one can't help but be struck by the ominous symbolism involved, as America enters what has all the appearances of Cold War II, with an aged, perhaps even decrepit nuclear arsenal to serve as a deterrent.
See my earlier posts on "nuclear neglect," and Congress's reckless refusal to modernize, for the bigger picture.
The writer then adds, just in case we were wondering, that the "structure is just the shell of the weapon and lacks solid fuel rocket motors and city-leveling warheads." That's certainly a relief.
"We're going to miss it," academy spokesman Johnny Whitaker told the Gazette. "The old cold warrior has been a landmark here for 37 years."
Removing the missile isn't some sort of political statement, thank goodness; it's just rusting out. But still, one can't help but be struck by the ominous symbolism involved, as America enters what has all the appearances of Cold War II, with an aged, perhaps even decrepit nuclear arsenal to serve as a deterrent.
See my earlier posts on "nuclear neglect," and Congress's reckless refusal to modernize, for the bigger picture.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Ban the Bomb -- any Bomb.
I've written on this blog before about the reckless reluctance of some members of Congress to modernize America's aging nuclear arsenal, and their desire to abide by a never-ratified nuclear test ban treaty, for fear of appearing "provocative." But as this and other stories indicate, doves in Congress also seem reluctant to develop non-nuclear alternatives -- including Trident missiles armed with conventional, high-explosive warheads -- that might be used in a crisis.
Here's an excerpt from the story at GovExec.com:
"An independent panel on Friday advised that the U.S. Navy develop and field a conventional version of its nuclear-armed Trident D-5 missile, a Defense Department initiative that has received scant support thus far from a skeptical Congress.
In a 192-page report, commissioned by lawmakers in 2006, the National Academy of Sciences experts take issue with a Capitol Hill decision to eliminate this year's funding for the Conventional Trident Modification.
"The committee disagrees with the congressional decision not to fund testing of [the] CTM [missile] in 2008, and recommends instead that Congress fund" Conventional Trident Modification research and development "at a level sufficient to achieve early deployment if tests confirm system effectiveness," writes the group, composed of 18 national defense and nuclear weapons experts.
The Navy missile was to be the first weapon developed and deployed for a new mission called "prompt global strike," in which terrorist targets or rogue nations could be attacked within just one hour of a launch command. Currently, nuclear weapons are the only tools in the U.S. military arsenal available to hit urgent targets halfway around the world in such short order.
Lawmakers last year decided that the Navy project would be limited to basic research and development and must share a $100 million budget in fiscal 2008 with an array of other "promising conventional prompt global strike technologies." Critics on Capitol Hill cited concerns that, if launched from the same Ohio-class submarines that carry an identical nuclear weapon, a conventional D-5 ballistic missile might be mistaken for a nuclear salvo and elicit a violent response from other atomic powers like Russia or China."
The "critics on Capitol Hill" ought to worry less about the reaction of ruthless leaders in Russia and China -- nations that won't flinch from doing what's in their national security interest -- and more about the risks this country runs if doesn't take the necessary steps -- and take them soon -- to modernize and strengthen its sagging deterrent capability, nuclear and conventional.
The best way to avoid having to resort to the "nuclear option" is to have an array of equally-effective conventional options available. "Prompt Global Strike" is meant to do that. Yet the neo-disarmament crowd in Congress is making a nuclear strike even more likely, during some future crisis, by scuttling a viable conventional arms alternative.
Here's an excerpt from the story at GovExec.com:
"An independent panel on Friday advised that the U.S. Navy develop and field a conventional version of its nuclear-armed Trident D-5 missile, a Defense Department initiative that has received scant support thus far from a skeptical Congress.
In a 192-page report, commissioned by lawmakers in 2006, the National Academy of Sciences experts take issue with a Capitol Hill decision to eliminate this year's funding for the Conventional Trident Modification.
"The committee disagrees with the congressional decision not to fund testing of [the] CTM [missile] in 2008, and recommends instead that Congress fund" Conventional Trident Modification research and development "at a level sufficient to achieve early deployment if tests confirm system effectiveness," writes the group, composed of 18 national defense and nuclear weapons experts.
The Navy missile was to be the first weapon developed and deployed for a new mission called "prompt global strike," in which terrorist targets or rogue nations could be attacked within just one hour of a launch command. Currently, nuclear weapons are the only tools in the U.S. military arsenal available to hit urgent targets halfway around the world in such short order.
Lawmakers last year decided that the Navy project would be limited to basic research and development and must share a $100 million budget in fiscal 2008 with an array of other "promising conventional prompt global strike technologies." Critics on Capitol Hill cited concerns that, if launched from the same Ohio-class submarines that carry an identical nuclear weapon, a conventional D-5 ballistic missile might be mistaken for a nuclear salvo and elicit a violent response from other atomic powers like Russia or China."
The "critics on Capitol Hill" ought to worry less about the reaction of ruthless leaders in Russia and China -- nations that won't flinch from doing what's in their national security interest -- and more about the risks this country runs if doesn't take the necessary steps -- and take them soon -- to modernize and strengthen its sagging deterrent capability, nuclear and conventional.
The best way to avoid having to resort to the "nuclear option" is to have an array of equally-effective conventional options available. "Prompt Global Strike" is meant to do that. Yet the neo-disarmament crowd in Congress is making a nuclear strike even more likely, during some future crisis, by scuttling a viable conventional arms alternative.
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