Got 25 SFRC staffers running up on y'all

National Journal snagged an interview with Sen. Richard Lugar on New START. Kiss the rings, peasant wonks.

Lugar’s comments on missile defense and verification are most quotable:

NJ: Some critics object to language in the nonbinding preamble of the treaty suggesting that Russia might withdraw from the New START pact in the future if it thinks that a U.S. missile defense system has tipped the strategic balance. How do you answer their concerns that such language might ultimately constrain development of a U.S. missile defense system?

Lugar: Well, it's simply not true, which has been asserted in about every way possible. The Russians might withdraw from New START, but they didn't withdraw from START I even after we withdrew from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty in 2001. In other words, the United States exercised our option to withdraw from an arms control treaty on that one conspicuous occasion, and the Russians remained committed to START I until it expired on Dec. 5, 2009. Regardless, the Obama administration asserted in all our hearings and testimony that it is not only reserving the right to proceed on building a missile defense system, it is actually building it. The Russians aren't happy about that, and they've been assertive in stating their objections.

NJ: As someone who has dealt with verification issues for decades, are you confident that the verification protocols in the new START are sufficient?

Lugar: Yes I am. I believe it will provide more transparency than START I, rather than less. The numbering system for warheads and delivery systems is much more transparent than before. START I verification was really about making sure that neither side was cheating, and avoiding a breakthrough that could have changed the strategic balance. The new START reflects the fact that the Russians are now really looking for stability, and they want to avoid a race to greater numbers of nuclear weapons. Before one of President Obama’s early meetings with [Russian President Dmitry] Medvedev, he invited [Senator John] Kerry and me over to the White House situation room, where we met with [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates, [National Security Adviser Jim] Jones and others. The president asked us what essential elements the treaty had to include to win bipartisan support. We told him it had to get verification and missile defense right. And I think the administration team did a good job in achieving that goal. President Obama knew he would have to counter the objections of some lawmakers who would launch a frontal assault on the treaty.

[Title and caption: It was tough to decide which amazing lyrics to use, but beware: bad words and misogyny abound]

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Nukes on a Blog, New START, Senate, Missile Defense, Verification (all tags)

Fresh up on DOD Buzz, KReif and I throw dem bows and rebut conservative critics of New START. Grabber grafs:

The gist of Needham’s complaint is that the “many noted and respected foreign policy observers [who] have serious concerns with the treaty” are being ignored. He then cites the fears of a Heritage analyst, three former George W. Bush administration appointees, and a former Republican senator who just happens to be a Heritage distinguished fellow. These are all great Americans, to be sure. But citing their criticisms of New START is a bit like citing professor Noam Chomsky’s criticisms of the Bush administration – there is a slight selection bias problem.

In reality, the remarkable thing about New START is the wide-ranging bipartisan consensus in support of the agreement. For starters, Secretary of Defense (and former Cold Warrior) Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, all the Service Chiefs, STRATCOM Commander Gen. Kevin Chilton, and Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly strongly support the treaty on the grounds that it limits and allows the monitoring of Russia’s still enormous nuclear arsenal.  Keep in mind that these military leaders, who have access to all the pertinent intelligence information and analysis, assumed their current positions under the Presidency of George W. Bush.

[snip]

Needham is right that New START should be judged on whether it makes the United States safer.  Our entire military leadership and countless former Republican and Democratic statesmen say that it will. They back it because the treaty’s legally-binding limits and monitoring and verification provisions will cap the growth of Russia’s deployed forces and give us an essential window into their composition and location that we haven’t had since START I expired last December.  And the more stable and predictable the U.S.-Russian nuclear relationship, the better off our allies are – which explains why so many of them support New START.

If New START is not ratified there will continue to be no verifiable limits on Russia’s nuclear forces and U.S. inspectors will remain in the United States and not be on the ground in Russia inspecting Russia’s nuclear arsenal.  As STRATCOM Commander Gen. Kevin Chilton put it, this would be “the worst of both possible worlds.”

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Nukes on a Blog, New START, Missile Defense (all tags)

Time and time again, politicians, pundits, and security experts have painted the terrifying picture of a mushroom cloud looming over the vaporized remains of an American city.  If you look at the budget for missile defense (DoD has requested approximately $10 billion for FY 2011) you’d think that the most likely attack on the United States would come via a ballistic missile, given that what the U.S. spends on missile defense greatly exceeds combined spending on domestic and international maritime and port of entry interdiction efforts and nuclear detection activities.

The dirty little secret of domestic nuclear defense, however, is that should the US ever come under nuclear attack, odds are that it will not come from a missile launch.  Instead, a nuclear device or dirty bomb is likely to be delivered from a non-missile source, such as a container entering a U.S. port..  On June 30, witnesses at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs revealed that the US remains woefully vulnerable to this kind of threat…

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Nukes on a Blog, Security Matters, nuclear weapons, border security, missile defense, nuclear terrorism (all tags)

Missile Defense by Volha Charnysh

Guest Post by Volha Charnysh

Yesterday, U.S. ambassador to Russia John Beyrle urged Moscow to join Washington in building a worldwide missile defense system. Last week, prior to his meeting with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, Barack Obama was quoted as saying that “cooperative missile defense with Russia has enormous potential” and that the United States “want[s] to work with Russia to be a key player and beneficiary in this global [missile defense] architecture.”

The idea of U.S.-Russian missile defense cooperation is not new, and the initiatives considered today have been pondered for decades. The two countries agreed to “explore opportunities for intensified practical cooperation on missile defense for Europe” in a joint declaration at the May 2002 U.S.-Russia Summit, but their dialogue reached an impasse when George W. Bush unveiled the plan to build 10 interceptor missile systems in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic.

A window of opportunity for Russia’s participation reopened with Obama's September 2009 decision to deploy a phased adaptive missile defense in Europe. As per the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, U.S. proposals for missile defense cooperation with Russia include integration of U.S. and Russian sensors; joint research and development; joint missile defense testing; joint modeling and simulations; missile defense exercises; and joint analyses of alternative U.S.-Russian missile defense architectures for defending against common, regional threats. After the U.S. change of plans, NATO has also expressed readiness to explore the potential for linking U.S., NATO and Russian missile defense systems and declared missile defense cooperation with Russia its target for the next NATO Summit in Lisbon in November 2010...

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Nukes on a Blog, missile defense (all tags)

On June 24, former George W. Bush administration officials Robert Joseph and Eric Edelman will testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the New START treaty.  Joseph and Edelman are considered to be strong skeptics of the agreement.

While they have yet to oppose the treaty, Joseph and Edelman published a piece in the National Review last month that recycles most of the well-worn objections to the treaty.  These criticisms have been forcefully addressed in previous hearings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee on New START.  Below is a point-by-point rebuttal (in italics) to their article.

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Nukes on a Blog, New START, Congress, missile defense, modernization (all tags)

On June 17, the Senate Armed Services Committee held its first hearing on the New START Treaty, with witnesses Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen. They all testified in favor of ratification. As in earlier hearings on New START held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticism of the treaty focused primarily on the treaty’s provisions with regard to missile defense, verification, and nuclear weapons complex modernization. Ranking members Carl Levin and John McCain framed the debate for the hearing in their contradictory opening remarks:

LEVIN: There have been statements made suggesting that the treaty imposes constraints on our missile defense plans and programs. That is simply incorrect…This treaty limits strategic offensive nuclear arms, not missile defenses.

…

MCCAIN: Secretary Gates, you have been quite clear, and I quote, "that the treaty will not constrain the United States from deploying the most effective missile defenses possible, nor impose additional costs or barriers on those defenses. While such assurances are welcome, they don't change the fact that the treaty text, not just the preamble, but Article 5 of the treaty itself, includes a clear, legally binding limitation on our missile defense options.”

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Nukes on a Blog, New START, Congress, Missile Defense (all tags)

VIEWS FROM THE PENTAGON

On June 16, three high-ranking DoD officials – James N. Miller, Jr., Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Department of Defense, General Kevin P. Chilton, USAF, Commander, US Strategic Command, and Lieutenant General Patrick J. O’Reilly, Director, Missile Defense Agency – testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the New START treaty.  The hearing marked the eighth hearing on the treaty.

The witnesses’ introductory remarks were informative and reassuring from a military standpoint. Most notably, they took sufficient time to address Article V, Section 3 of the Treaty (which prohibits conversion of silos for ICBMs and for SLBMs for the placement of missile defense interceptors), testifying that it does not constitute a current or future limit on missile current U.S. missile defense plans. They specifically stated that the conversion of silos is an antiquated practice, costly and inefficient, and were it to be performed it would degrade U.S. national security, as it would require trading a Trident D5 SLBM for a single missile defense interceptor. Finally, General O’Reilly noted that New START is comparatively less constraining on missile defense than the original START I treaty.

Citing the dueling unilateral statements issued by the U.S. and Russia on missile defense, Senator Risch (R-ID) challenged the witnesses as to whether the U.S. and Russia have deep differences on how to interpret the treaty when it comes to missile defense.  Gen. O’Reilly responded by noting that the treaty does not in any way limit current and planned U.S. missile defense activities and that he has briefed the Russians in detail about our plans.  Undersecretary Miller stated that while some on the Russian side would like to use the treaty ratification process to constrain U.S. missile defense programs, the two sides don’t have a different interpretation of the treaty text and the U.S. has made it absolutely clear that it will continue to expand and improve its existing missile defense programs.

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Nukes on a Blog, Security Matters, New START, Missile Defense, Congress (all tags)

I’m proud to be a part of a new report that identifies options for nearly $1 trillion in savings over the next 10 years within the Department of Defense.  Debt, Deficits, & Defense: A Way Forward was produced by the Sustainable Defense Task Force, a group of defense policy wonks put together by Representative Barney Frank to propose possible cuts to the military budget.

“I do not believe after this [proposed plan] is circulated that people will be able to dismiss the argument that you can responsibly, and at no cost to America’s genuine security, make reductions of over a trillion dollars for what has been proposed for the military budget,” Frank said at the release on Friday.

Cuts include further reductions to the U.S. nuclear arsenal and limits on the planned modernization of the nuclear weapons complex, which could save approximately $140 billion over 10 years.  When missile defense and space spending are also selectively curtailed, that number is increased to $194.5 billion.

Over 100 congressional staffers, NGOs, and members of the press were at the briefing on Friday.  When asked what his top three priorities might be for realistic savings within the defense budget, Frank included both nuclear weapons and missile defense.

See the briefing on C-SPAN here.

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Security Matters, Defense Spending, Barney Frank, Sustainable Defense Task Force, Nukes on a Blog, Missile Defense, Space (all tags)

Predicting when Iran will get the bomb has been a popular activity for politicians, strategists, analysts, and the public for some time now.  Unfortunately, these predictions are frequently politicized and exploited to justify increased investments in long-range missile defenses, unilateral sanctions, and even military strikes.

Last month, a report released by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) on Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities concluded that a deployable Iranian ICBM is more than a decade away. The study, authored by former UN weapons inspector Mike Elleman, states that “Iran is not likely to field a liquid-fueled missile capable of targeting Western Europe before 2014 or 2015… Iran is many years away from developing a ‘second-generation’ 4,000-5,000 km intermediate-range solid-propellant missile, if it should decide to do so.” It goes on to say that “many years” has historically been around ten, and thus concludes that since Iran would develop and field an intermediate range missile before developing an ICBM, “a notional Iranian ICBM, based on No-Dong and Scud technologies, is more than a decade away from development.”  The report also separates the development of ballistic missile technologies from the development of nuclear capabilities, saying it can only “appear” that these two programs are linked, but that this cannot be confirmed by the IAEA, and is in fact denied by Iran.

This analysis helps to clarify statements put forward by public officials, which are often stripped of crucial context and twisted by the media in an effort to make an Iranian nuclear weapon seem right around the corner.

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Iran Watch, Sanctions, IAEA, NPT, Missile Defense (all tags)

Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Hearing: The Role of Strategic Arms Control in a Post-Cold War World (The New START Treaty)
May 25, 2010

On Tuesday May 25, Former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the New START Treaty, unequivocally recommending the treaty’s ratification.

Secretary Kissinger is experienced in the field of arms control and nuclear security—he is author of Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, he negotiated the first agreement to limit U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons through the SALT I accord, and in 2007 he became one of the most well known figures to endorse the goal of creating a world free of nuclear weapons...

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Nuclear weapons, START, Senate, Missile Defense (all tags)