James Carroll. Boston Globe, 15 March 2010. Hosted on the CommonDreams website.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/15-5

Excerpt:

… experts who warn of a coming “cascade of proliferation,” one nation following another into the deadly chasm of nuclear weapons unless present nuclear powers find a way to reverse the current. The main burden is on Russia and the United States, which together possess the vast majority of the world’s nuclear weapons, but President Obama deliberately made himself central to the challenge when he said in Prague, “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Although usually considered apart, the broader US defense posture has turned into a key motivator for other nations to go nuclear. The current Pentagon budget ($5 trillion for 2010-2017) is so far beyond any other country, and the conventional military capacity it buys is so dominant, as to reinforce the nuclear option abroad as the sole protection against potential US attack.

Roy Gutman. McClatchy Newspapers, 14 March 2010.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/14/90083/weve-met-the-enemy-in-afghanistan.html

Excerpt:

Today, although the United States and more than three dozen NATO allies and other countries are supporting Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Taliban dominate a growing swath of territory, and their power trumps the government’s in three-quarters of the country.

Although they’re often portrayed as mindless fanatics, the militant Islamists’ “life experience” from their years in the wilderness, their study of American military tactics and their analysis of the Karzai government’s shortcomings have helped reverse their fortunes, U.S. intelligence experts say.

Compiled by the Project on Defense Alternatives, 11 March 2010.
http://www.comw.org/pda/budgetreview.html

A compilation of critical analysis and opinion from 30 analysts and policy centers.

Travis Sharp. Nukes of Hazard, 05 March 2010.
http://www.nukesofhazardblog.com/story/2010/3/5/162522/3909

Excerpt:

It would help the Pentagon, the Congress, defense experts, and the American public if DOD published an analytically defensible record of its spending by strategic mission.

Editor’s Comment:
Yes, indeed.

Will Marshall. AOL News, 05 March 2010.
http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/debate-on-the-right-nuclear-weapons-track/19385662

Excerpt:

Obama reasons that, by holding up its end of the bargain, the United States can strengthen global nonproliferation norms and intensify pressure on Tehran and other regimes that may be thinking about acquiring nuclear weapons. And as White House officials have stressed, the nuclear “zero option” is a policy aspiration, not something anyone believes is achievable anytime soon.

Christopher A. Ford. AOL News, 05 March 2010.
http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/debate-waiting-for-obamas-policy-on-nukes/19385644

Excerpt:

… but remarkably, for all his nuclear posing, no one knows what Obama’s nuclear weapons policy actually is. So far, his administration has done little of real import. Obama seeks a modest new arms-reduction treaty with Russia but contemplates cuts that would not have been too shocking from the Bush administration — which, in fact, actually began these negotiations in 2006. The administration also wants to reattempt ratification of the nuclear test ban defeated in the Senate in 1999, although the treaty’s Senate prospects are dimming. As a result, at this point Obama’s “transformative” arms-control agenda looks like President Bill Clinton’s from the mid-1990s.

George C. Wilson. Government Executive, 05 March 2010.
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=44743&sid=61

Excerpt:

I spent months in 1997 going behind the scenes at the Pentagon and Congress to find out about all the wheeling and dealing that went into the writing of the QDR that year. “I had high hopes for the QDR,” Gen. Ronald Fogleman, former Air Force Chief of Staff, told me. “In my view, for the QDR to be a success there was going to have to be some fairly significant realignment among the [armed] services.”

But Fogleman said his hopes for meaningful reform were dashed when the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, sent a two-star general to Fogleman’s office to deliver this message: “The chairman would like to have the QDR turn out to be as close to the status quo as we can make this thing work. His message is: ‘We don’t need any Billy Mitchells,’” the general said, referring to Army Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell, who revolutionized the use of air power by demonstrating in 1923 how bombers could sink Navy warships.

Travis Sharp. Nukes of Hazard, 05 March 2010.
http://www.nukesofhazardblog.com/story/2010/3/5/102229/0388

a compilation, Defense Strategy Review Page, 03 March 2010 .
http://www.comw.org/wordpress/dsr/obama-nuclear-policy-a-debate

Excerpt:

This debate began when Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group wrote a February 10, 2010 commentary for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. I posted his commentary on this site and wrote a response. I then invited a variety of leaders of nuclear disarmament efforts and specialists in nuclear issues to respond to the Mello-Knight exchange.

In all there have been ten contributors to this debate which touches on many important points of agreement and disagreement. This is a discussion that needs to continue among experts, activists, and the wider citizenry.

Obama Nuclear Policy Debate Participants to date:

Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group
Charles Knight, Project on Defense Alternatives
Martin Senn, U. of Innsbruck
Bill Hartung, Arms and Security Initiative, New America Foundation
Paul Ingram, BASIC
Jonathan Granoff, Global Security Institute
Todd Fine, Global Zero
John Isaacs, Council for a Liveable World
Robert G. Gard, Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation
Matthew Hoey, Military Space Transparency Project

as delivered by Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas Wednesday, 03 March 2010.
http://www.jcs.mil/speech.aspx?ID=1336

Excerpt:

I’ve come to three conclusions – three principles – about the proper use of modern military forces:

1) … military power should not – maybe cannot – be the last resort of the state. Military forces are some of the most flexible and adaptable tools to policymakers. We can, merely by our presence, help alter certain behavior. Before a shot is even fired, we can bolster a diplomatic argument, support a friend or deter an enemy. We can assist rapidly in disaster-relief efforts, as we did in the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake. We can help gather intelligence, support reconnaissance and provide security.

And we can do so on little or no notice. That ease of use is critical for deterrence. An expeditionary force that provides immediate, tangible effects. It is also vital when innocent lives are at risk. So yes, the military may be the best and sometimes the first tool; it should never be the only tool.

2) Force should, to the maximum extent possible, be applied in a precise and principled way.

3) Policy and strategy should constantly struggle with one another. Some in the military no doubt would prefer political leadership that lays out a specific strategy and then gets out of the way, leaving the balance of the implementation to commanders in the field. But the experience of the last nine years tells us two things: A clear strategy for military operations is essential; and that strategy will have to change as those operations evolve. In other words, success in these types of wars is iterative; it is not decisive.

Editor’s Comment:

Mullen’s first principle is dangerous in the extreme. It is a sad reminder of the militarization of the American state. Mullen suffers from an inexplicable amnesia of the horrors of war in the 20th Century.

America will likely be paying a high price for decades to come in what comes around from the quick and easy resort to war in 2002-2003 by policy-makers enthralled with their military instrument. If war is not a last resort, then policy-makers are abject failures as leaders.

Carl Conetta. Foreign Policy in Focus, 03 March 2010.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_pentagons_runaway_budget

Excerpt:

Following the collapse of Soviet power, America’s leaders set more ambitious goals for the U.S. military, despite its smaller size. This entailed requiring the armed services to sustain and extend their continuous global presence, improving their readiness and speed, increasing peacetime engagement activities, and preparing to conduct more types of missions quickly and in more areas. Recent U.S. strategy has looked beyond the traditional goals of defense and deterrence, seeking to use military power to actually prevent the emergence of threats and to “shape” the international environment. U.S. defense planners also elevated the importance of lesser and hypothetical threats, thus requiring the military to prepare for many more lower-probability contingencies.

Gordon Adams. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 02 March 2010.
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/gordon-adams/assessing-the-qdr-and-2011-defense-budget

Excerpt:

…there is a core assumption in the QDR and defense budget that near-term missions are going to last forever, particularly counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and stability operations. The case for this projection seems to be based on the idea that Iraq and Afghanistan are the model for future U.S. military operations. Here the QDR and defense budget miss the point completely. Iraq and Afghanistan were wars of choice, designed to overthrow a regime and rebuild those countries. Which other countries will we need to invade and rebuild in the future? Neither the QDR nor the budget provides any answers, calling into question the logic behind this premise.

Matthew Hoey is the founder of the Military Space Transparency Project (MSTP) and a former senior research associate at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS) where he specialized in forecasting developments in missile defense and military space technologies. He responded on 02 March 2010 to the Mello-Knight exchange of views on nuclear disarmament and the Obama administration.
________________

President Obama’s hopes to begin the long march toward a nuclear free future are not limited to just words, though I understand how some may believe this to be the case. Upon closer examination, the President is taking the critical first steps in an effort to go beyond his address at Prague. The President is in the process of negotiating a new arms control treaty with the Russians, and it is highly likely that he will be pursuing even deeper cuts in the future. He has also made efforts to expand and strengthen the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Where are the results? Why have we not seen action? When will the nuclear threat begin to wane–even if it happens ever so slightly?

This is a very informative thread, and I have enjoyed reading all of the entries. What Charles [Knight] has initiated here serves as an example of how if we draw upon all of the myriad arguments before us, we are sure to paint a more nuanced picture of the road to consensus and cooperation. The same could not be truer in regard to our domestic political and international diplomatic climates as well. Parties in all corners have legitimate disputes and concerns, and until these are all fully addressed in a courageous and aggressive new fashion it is my belief that our drive towards zero will never get in gear. Here are my thoughts on how we can get moving.

One step would be for both American and Russian defense industries to gradually be converted into commercial industries – in the current global economy this would be slow to begin but would eventually reap tremendous benefits. Such a transition would even free university students from the confines of military contractors as a leading option for employment, ensuring that this generation of young people would not be bound to the archaic practices of the military industrial complex. The ripple effects on cooperative defense would be tremendous. As it is, our overall military capabilities are already unrivaled. Such reductions in military spending and subsequent reinvestment in new technology would not in fact lessen our strategic dominance, since cooperative defense would diminish the move-countermove dynamic that has long undermined disarmament efforts. Then taking into consideration cooperative defense and the promotion of one another’s security, our mutual economic potential would be enhanced further, thus strengthening our international relationship to an unprecedented level.

This would not be a cooperative security agreement limited to just sharing military and launch data; such a partnership would also extend into a shared strategic defense. In this era where the war on terror and the threat from extremism is the focal point of nations such as the US and Russia—ever posed with internally-based security threats and intrusions by radicals who would not hesitate to use a nuclear weapons in a major city—this simply makes sense.

The pursuit of missile defense to guard against incoming threats is the single greatest impediment to progress – this is the lynch pin, and under the banner of reducing national security threats it does nothing more than increase them. It is a fool’s pursuit. Should the United States pull back from its BMD aspirations in concert with the initiation of cooperative defense discussions, real progress toward reducing the threat of a missile attack against the US could begin. This would also help to motivate the US and Russia to find common ground in regard to Iran during this heady time. With the world’s two military superpowers acting as enhanced security and economic partners, it is more likely that this leadership by example would take hold and could spur the beginning of a global trend over the long run.

Spending has long been unrestrained within the nuclear complex and the national labs. This is a perennial phenomenon—the effect of unwavering pork barrel spending and lobbying by elected officials in cahoots with the defense industry to bring home jobs to their home districts. This cannot be undone without disastrous results. The US economy is addicted to the defense dollar and must be weaned from it gradually. This would come in the form of a transition away from the development of destructive technology and towards the development of beneficial technologies, for example, alternative energy solutions or emerging technologies that would enhance space exploration. Far too many working American families rely upon the defense budget and the nuclear dollar. If consensus for disarmament efforts is to extend across the aisles of Congress and the Senate, this must be understood and honored. If not, we face divisions and a squandered opportunity that may not present itself again.

Once such a transition takes place, a type of economic vacuum effect could commence where free markets, capitalism and innovation driven by new technology could lift the US and Russian economies out of the mud that is the threat of nuclear annihilation. This vacuum effect was not possible in years past, and is actually enabled by the current economic crises and the need for new industries that would contribute to economic recovery and job creation. It does not require any more courage, concessions or clarity to pursue a world without nuclear weapons through such avenues than what is needed to cling onto weapons that can and will someday kill millions.

When placed side-by-side, exchanges and the resulting debates regarding the increase in the nuclear complex budget versus the White House’s current policy positions beg for such a solution. In fact, if such a solution is initiated cautiously through careful consideration of the needs of all parties, it could ripple across the economy help to address our greatest global challenges. This could be accomplished while progressively extracting more and more American and Russian scientists from the nuclear gadgetry industry and channeling their enormous individual and collective talents into a more prosperous direction.

Barack Obama and Dimitri Medvedev have the courage and clarity to understand and express their willingness to discuss a world without nuclear weapons. Progress will require a steadfast commitment to courage in the face of the defense industry and the clarity to see that thousands of Russian and Americans rely on these industries and will need jobs that provide the means to support their families. Cooperative defense will lead to the beginning of a transition from massive defense spending to productive civilian investment that stands to benefit all.

Offering concessions and placing cooperative defense on the table while viewing the road ahead in a broader context should get the discussion moving in a direction that turns words into additional actions. As long as the United States refuses to give up missile defense in Eastern Europe we will remain at a standstill.

It was Dr. Randall Forsberg who opened my mind to this way of thinking. She taught me about how cooperative security could be used as a vehicle for peace. Her words that follow, written in 1992, ring today with a renewed poignancy:

The end of the Cold war represents a turning point for the role of military force in international affairs. At this unique juncture in history, the world’s main military spenders and arms producers have an unprecedented opportunity to move from confrontation to cooperation. The United States, the European nations, Japan and the republics of the former USSR can now replace their traditional security policies, based on deterrence and unilateral intervention, with cooperative policies based on minimum deterrence, non-offensive defense, nonproliferation, and multilateral peacekeeping.

There are four important reasons to make this change, and make it quickly:

First, massive resources are at stake. With a cooperative security policy, the United States could cut the annual military budget… A peace dividend on this order is exactly what we need to revitalize the economy and meet the backlog of needs in housing, health, education, environment and economic infrastructure.

Second, the cooperative approach to security is prerequisite to stopping the global proliferation of armaments and arms industries. The prospect of proliferation has become the single greatest military threat to this country and to the world…

Third, the choice by the major industrial nations either to perpetuate a US-dominated international security system or to develop a more cooperative system will have far-reaching political ramifications at home and abroad… here in America, the change would help reverse the nasty mixture of cynicism, violence, and racism that has increasingly pervaded our society since the first Reagan Administration made increases in military spending at the price of national debt and deep cuts in domestic programs.

Last but not least, a cooperative approach to security is likely to be far more effective than the traditional approach in reducing the incidence and scale of war. Despite these enormous stakes, Congress and the Administration have, until recently, refused even to consider substantial cuts in post-Cold war defense spending, much less seize the unprecedented opportunity to develop a cooperative security system. [Randall Forsberg, "Defense Cuts and Cooperative Security in the Post-Cold War World", Boston Review, May 1992]

Should President Obama choose to accept this torch I believe that we can achieve the goals outlined in Prague within our lifetime.

Matt Eckel. Foreign Policy Watch, 01 March 2010.
http://fpwatch.blogspot.com/2010/03/nuclear-weapons-in-twenty-first-century.html

Excerpt:

Though American leaders try not to say it out loud too often, one of the reasons Iran’s nuclear program is unsettling to Washington is that it constrains the ability of the United States to topple the Iranian regime by force, should push come to shove. As a global hegemon, having the ability to wave our conventional military around and implicitly threaten recalcitrant middle powers with conquest is something America likes to be able to do. It’s much harder if the recalcitrant middle power in question can credibly threaten to take out a couple of allied capital cities. Israel’s nuclear program was originally founded on this logic, as was that of France.

Marc Ambinder. The Atlantic Online, 26 February 2010.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/02/why-the-nuclear-review-is-delayed/36660/

Excerpt:

… the release of the long-awaited Nuclear Posture Review will be delayed well into March because the basic issue — when, and why, the U.S. would use nuclear weapons, remains a contentious subject of debate.

Mark Thompson. Time Magazine, 24 February 2010.
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1967353,00.html

Excerpt:

Let’s repeat that: even without a superpower rival like the Soviet Union — with its arsenals of nuclear weapons, fleets of tanks and armadas of warships, all manned by 10-foot-tall Red Army troops — the U.S. is now spending more preparing for war against, well, who knows, than we spent readying to fight Moscow. And the Obama Administration has made it clear that defense spending is going to continue to increase, even as fiscal pressures — for bailouts, health care, infrastructure — inexorably mount.

As far as the eye can see, U.S. taxpayers will be spending one-third more to maintain the U.S. military than their parents and grandparents paid for the nation’s Cold War force.

John Isaacs and Robert G. Gard, Jr. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 24 February 2010.
http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/the-obama-disarmament-paradox-rebuttal

John Isaacs: The executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Isaacs represents the center’s sister organization, Council for a Livable World, on Capitol Hill. His expertise is in how Congress works, especially when it pertains to national security issues such as nuclear weapons and missile defense. Previously, he served as a legislative assistant on foreign affairs to former New York Democratic Rep. Stephen Solarz.

Robert G. Gard Jr.: A consultant on international security and education, Gard is the chair of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation’s Board of Directors. He also is a member of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board. Previously, he served as president of the Monterey Institute of International Studies and as director of the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center. During a military career that spanned three decades, he was an assistant to the secretary of defense and president of the National Defense University.

______________

Greg Mello’s recent Bulletin article “The Obama Disarmament Paradox” distorts the Obama administration’s nuclear agenda by making unjustified assumptions that discredit President Barack Obama’s historic commitment to seek a nuclear-weapon-free world. Obama has committed to such a goal several times–both before and after his election in November 2008. But Mello calls that a “vague aspiration” rather than a commitment. Yet the evidence he provides to support his assertion isn’t persuasive.

In fact, the president has advocated for numerous initiatives in a comprehensive nonproliferation program. These include winning U.N. Security Council endorsement for a nuclear-weapon-free world; negotiating a new arms reduction treaty with Russia, which Obama considers an interim agreement toward further reductions; preparing a Nuclear Posture Review consistent with reducing the role of nuclear weapons in national security strategy; pledging to secure all loose nuclear materials over a four-year period; and taking an active role at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.

As President Obama stated during his seminal Prague speech on nuclear disarmament, achieving a nuclear-weapon-free world is a long-term goal that might not be achievable in his lifetime, but that doesn’t minimize the necessity of taking interim steps to reduce the likelihood of nuclear proliferation.

Mello sees Obama’s requested increase in the fiscal year 2011 budget for stockpile stewardship and the construction of new facilities at the nuclear laboratories as a commitment to the production of new nuclear weapons. Yet the administration has made clear that there are no such plans underfoot; the 2011 budget request states unequivocally that “new weapons systems will not be built.” As such, the president’s requested increase in nuclear expenditures should be viewed in the context of seeking ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and further nuclear weapon reductions.

More largely, there is nothing inconsistent between a vision of a nuclear-weapon-free world and ensuring a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear deterrent in the interim, including refurbishment of aging systems, providing the labs with facilities to replace their deteriorating physical plants, and maintaining the essential expertise that the scientists at the labs provide. Nor does such a deterrent require “unending innovation,” as Mello claims. Our current nuclear weapons inventory, validated by extensive testing, is more than adequate to deter the use of nuclear weapons against the United States, our troops abroad, and our allies, provided sufficient resources are dedicated to the Stockpile Stewardship Program.

Mello also seems to forget that the pursuit of a nuclear-weapon-free world is both national and international law; the NPT, which the United States has ratified, includes a commitment to seek nuclear disarmament. Not to mention that the treaty has an important practical component: Its non-nuclear weapon states have conditioned treaty cooperation on the NPT’s nuclear weapon states fulfilling their obligations under Article VI to move toward full nuclear disarmament.

Thus, the “vision” of a nuclear-weapon-free world is essential as context for “the various nonproliferation initiatives” in Obama’s plan to reduce dangerous threats to our national security–e.g., nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

President John F. Kennedy’s June 1963 nuclear test ban speech at American University is famous not only for its rhetoric but also for its follow-through: Kennedy’s words led to the end of aboveground nuclear testing. While it is legitimate to be skeptical about how successful Obama will be in implementing his disarmament agenda, let’s hope Mello and others will wait to see how the follow-through progresses before they judge him too harshly. Anything else would be unfair.
____________

Greg Mello responds to John Isaacs and Robert Gard:

A “commitment” to a goal that a speaker says he may not achieve in his lifetime (let alone in his administration, the only germane period) is by definition an aspiration at best. If that “commitment” isn’t concrete and specific it is vague. Such were Obama’s very few words in Prague (and since) pertaining to disarmament. There have been no significant actions.
I am interested in action — ours and the government’s — not “hope.”

In your reply, you simply reiterate the Administration’s themes on these points.

If you look over what you wrote, you will see that you freely conflate disarmament with nonproliferation issues and initiatives. You’re not alone; many people do. I suppose that’s the idea. These are quite different things, obviously. Preventing others from acquiring a nuclear deterrent has precious little to do with getting rid of my own. I nowhere argue against sound, just, and legal measures to prevent nuclear proliferation.

I think you err significantly when you say “the pursuit of a nuclear-weapons-free world is both national and international law.” It is the achievement, not the pursuit, of this goal that is a binding legal requirement, unanimously confirmed by the International Court of Justice. Attempting to substitute an alleged aspiration (and that ominously vague), for achievement is a big step down from logic and law, a grave political disservice. This is all the more true when this alleged aspiration comes from the very temporary leader of the world’s largest and most aggressive military power, and is then followed by a very large increase in nuclear weapons spending.

I never said that a nuclear deterrent required “unending innovation.” I suspect we agree that the reverse is true. What I said was quite different: that the “deterrence of any adversary” to which Obama referred was unachievable, and therefore its pursuit implied unending innovation. I think investment itself, together with an ideology of technical “progress” – often expressed through fads like the quest for greater device “surety” – creates the hope that a “credible” nuclear deterrent, a deterrent that is relevant to “any” adversary as well as one that is “safe” and “secure,” can someday finally be achieved. Nuclear weapons will never be safe, secure, and they will never deter “any” adversary.

There’s many reasons why our leaders engage in this kind of crazy talk, and none of them are pretty.

Disarmament aside, the warhead complex, especially at the physics labs, is riddled with waste and unnecessary programs and missions, which help drive down morale and scientific quality. I and many others believe the complex is grossly over-funded (by at least 40%) for the mission of maintaining the present arsenal indefinitely. Much smaller arsenals, right on down to zero, would be quite desirable from every perspective, and cheaper. The U.S. arsenal can be unilaterally reduced to much lower levels without any loss of U.S. “security.”

If Obama wants to decrease the role of nuclear weapons in national security, and expects anybody to believe him, he must actually do so. Instead, building thousands of significantly upgraded bombs (a process already underway) with new requests to develop and produce more kinds of upgraded bombs, and the factories to make them, isn’t disarmament at all. It’s the modernization of everything for the long run – warheads, delivery systems, factories, everything.

______________

Robert Gard and John Isaacs continue the exchange:

It’s gratifying to learn that Greg Mello agrees with us on the desirability of both sound measures to prevent nuclear proliferation and a “much smaller” U.S. nuclear arsenal. For our part, we agree with him that the increase in funds programmed for the nuclear laboratories is excessive, although we don’t see any inconsistency between ensuring a safe, secure, reliable, and effective nuclear stockpile and reducing its size.

We may have a basic disagreement regarding deterrence. It’s not clear whether Mello’s quote of deterring “any adversary” includes non-state actors or only nation states. If he is referring to nation states only, we believe even extended deterrence can be accomplished without “unending innovation” and with a smaller stockpile. If his definition includes non-state actors bent on terrorism, no amount of innovation or real investment can deter them from using a nuclear weapon should they acquire one.

We certainly concede the point that most measures designed to reduce the likelihood of nuclear proliferation wouldn’t qualify as disarmament, but they may facilitate reductions in nuclear stockpiles, which would qualify as disarmament.

Finally, let’s return to the basic issue of President Obama’s commitment to seeking, as a goal, a nuclear-weapon-free world. Even if it is an “aspiration,” that doesn’t reduce its importance. Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligates the nuclear weapons states, including the United States, “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to nuclear disarmament.” And although Mello might not consider the action “significant,” Obama did chair a U.N. Security Council meeting with other heads of state that resulted in a resolution affirming the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world. Additionally, to meet our obligation under Article VI, Obama has stated his intent to follow up the new START treaty with negotiations involving all of the nuclear powers to reduce stockpiles of weapons.

Coming full circle, these actions taken are essential to obtain the cooperation of the non-nuclear weapons states in measures to reduce the likelihood of nuclear weapons proliferation, which both we and Mello favor.

Winslow Wheeler. Straus Military Reform Project, 24 February 2010.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Straus Military Reform Project has obtained almost two years of monthly reports from the Defense Contract Management Agency on Lockheed-Martin’s production of the F-35 “Joint Strike Fighter.” The most recent of those reports show deterioration from previous reports in several respects.

The Defense Contract Management Agency’s (DCMA) most recent reports cover the months July through November, 2009. These will soon be available at the Straus Military Reform Project website.

Major elements of the July through November reports can be summarized as follows:

The F-35 assembly line at Forth worth is being cannibalized for parts to support flight testing. This may be the first time an assembly line has been cannibalized for parts for such a tiny number of flight test aircraft as Lockheed-Martin has been able to get into the air. See summary of August report below.

Continuing and sometimes deteriorating nature of the delays at Lockheed-Martin’s (L-M) Fort Worth plant refutes the L-M contention that things are getting better and that the F-35 program learned from the past and with new design techniques is avoiding the kinds of problems experienced by “legacy” aircraft programs.

The cause, nature and implications of the “stand down” mentioned in the November report could well be important, but details are redacted in the DCMA reports and the press is yet to uncover the nature of the “stand down.” It is a matter looking for an explanation.

Some details from the reports follow:

July Report: Page 4 talks about a new DCMA estimate to complete System Design and Development, but the numbers are redacted. DCMA calls the L-M estimate “inadequate.” This DCMA estimate is before the Pentagon’s second independent Joint Estimating Team (JET II) estimate was finished and available, and is presumably independent. Most importantly, it clearly was available for SecDef Gates Forth Worth visit in August. Was it briefed to him? If so, why was Gates so positive about the program at that visit; if it was not, is that an example of why the F-35 program manager, General Heinz, was fired: i.e. that troubling information was not getting to Gates on this high visibility program.

Page 4 also mentions without further discussion a “BF-4 STOVL Upper Lift Fan Door incident.” The context is the rising costs of the overall system, but there are no details. Given that the Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) F-35B is on a short schedule to deployment, is this a problem that will further complicate the schedule for the F-35B?

Page 4 identifies a “Corrective Action Plan” to address “EVMS,” “Earned Value Management system” or the system that LM uses to measure and report execution of the program and its budget. I understand it to be the core method DOD uses to monitor and manage the program. Results of the plan are due to DCMA in August. (The October Report states that the plan was submitted, but no specifics are reported. It is only stated that “a more focused Review will occur in three to five months by the DCMA….” [Page 4 of October Report.]). There has been some reporting on the failure to meet EVMS criteria in the press. The threat to L-M is that it will have to maintain its “certification” to perform EVMS calculations—if it is lost, L-M could end up not legally eligible to be a contractor to the federal government.

August Report: L-M is cannibalizing the production line to provide spare parts for the flight test program (pp. 3 & 4). These cannibalizations are “causing significant workload to supply chain personnel and are disrupting the production line.” There is no further discussion or explanation. This may be the first time a development aircraft’s production line was cannibalized for spares.

September Report: “Execution of the Flight Test Schedule continues to be a significant Program concern.” (Page 3.)

“The volume of major CR’s [Change Requests] is projected to continue.” “…the number of major changes has exceeded projections. Additionally, the impact of timing these changes and the disruption to the floor were not anticipated.” (Page 3.) This would seem to be exactly the kind of thing that L-M promised would not happen: i.e. that they had learned from previous programs and with the benefits of advanced computer design, the F-35 would not have the kinds of design disruptions so common with “legacy” aircraft.

Page 4 addresses another delay issue: ”Wing-at-Mate” problems. These, I understand, have to do with the decision to mate the wing to the fuselage before the wing is “stuffed”. The plan was to mate the completed wing to the fuselage. But, because of delays, L-M decided to add wing components after mating, which – being inefficient — slows things down more.

“Composite production is not meeting the demands of the production operations – composites for the AFT and Empennage assemblies are paced by the availability and quality of composites.” (Page 4.) Again, the modern design feature of composites, said to not just reduce weight (of the over weight aircraft) but to facilitate design and fabrication is proving to be a source of delay and complication.

October Report: Flight test schedule still “a significant Program concern.” “AF-1 continues to be in a maintenance period as of this report, progressing towards taxi tests and first flight.” (Page 3.) This is an example of a problem addressed in earlier DCMA reports: aircraft coming off the production line incomplete and incapable of flight. They are sent to adjacent hangars for post-production production. This pre-first flight “maintenance” would seem to be a misleading misnomer.

Mentions that the program is about to get its “sixth schedule revision.” (Page 3.)

More on the “Wing-at-Mate overlap” which appears to be improving. (Page 3.)

November Report: Due to the need for the sixth schedule revision — coming in early 2010 — “Recent Program summary charts, scorecards, and management briefings do not consistently depict performance to the master schedule baseline.” (Page 3.)

The graph on page 6 shows Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) aircraft delivery rate is on average 80 days late. The rate significantly deteriorated in April and stayed at that deteriorated rate. Individual aircraft deliveries are significantly above that: AF-6 will be 92 days late; AF-7 will be 142 days late. A sentence presumably explaining the increased delay was redacted. (Page 6.) This category is rated “red” by DCMA. On the other hand, DCMA confirms public reports that while LRIP 1 & 2 aircraft are months late, the “risk” that LRIP 3 aircraft will be late is rated as “low.”

Suppliers’ Delivery Rate (Page 8.) is also getting worse, now down to about 75% on-time. This category is also rated “red” by DCMA.

The Management Reserve of money is gone, “further straining the financial management of the Program.” Amounts are redacted. Given USATL Carter’s decision to used LRIP production money for SDD, how much of that will go to L-M’s management reserve slush fund, rather than directly to SDD activities?

A section is titled “Maintenance and Quality Verification Stand-Down” immediately followed by several redacted lines. Later the section states “This incident triggered a maintenance and quality verification stand-down to determine systemic root causes for increasing aircraft impoundment and suspension of operations incidents to date.” And later, “The focus areas are Software, Rework/Repairs, System Check Out Procedures (SCOPs) and Aerospace Equipment Instructions (AEIs).” (page 4.) The discussion in the section titled “Improve Software Productivity” refers to “F-35 stand-down events” and explains that a “Joint Process Review” effort to address software issues was “postponed until further notice as it was overcome by F-35 stand down events that took precedence.” (Page 18.)

This “stand down” would appear to have some significance, but has not been reported to the public by L-M or DOD.

Note: for links to the DCMA reports cited here see Winslow Wheeler, Pentagon Reports Document Continuing Lockheed-Martin Failures, Center for Defense Information, 24 February 2010.

Cindy Williams. statement before the Committee on the Budget, U.S. Senate, 23 February 2010. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/100223williams.pdf

Excerpt:

O&M spending does seem to rise and fall in loose concert with total defense budgets-an indication that some of the seemingly avoidable rise in O&M spending is a consequence of budget largesse as much as a cause of it.

One thing is certain: assuming that O&M costs face an unavoidable rise simply because they rose in the past is the surest way to make it so. Several past efforts to bring O&M costs under control have been successful. Assuming based on past trends that it cannot be done is an invitation to waste. The better strategy is to put O&M on a diet and challenge the services to bring the costs of operation and upkeep under control.

Nir Rosen. The Best Defense, 23 February 2010.
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/23/nir_rosen_stop_the_iraq_madness

Excerpt:

Iraqis on the street are no longer scared of rival militias so much, or of being exterminated and they no longer have as much support for the religious parties. Maliki is still perceived by many to be not very sectarian and not very religious, and more of a “nationalist.” Another thing people would notice if they focused on “the street” is that the militias are finished, the Awakening Groups/SOIs are finished, so violence is limited to assassinations with silencers and sticky bombs and the occasional spectacular terrorist attack — all manageable and not strategically important, even if tragic. Politicians might be talking the sectarian talk but Iraqis have grown very cynical.

Hans Kristensen. Federation of American Scientists blog, 22 February 2010.
http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2010/02/nukemission.php

by Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Report 20, 18 January 2010.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1001PDABR20.pdf

This chart illustrates the new high plateau of defense spending, well above the averages of the last fifty years.

by Carl Conetta and Charles Knight. Defense News, 21 February 2010.

During the past decade, the U.S. Defense Department has enjoyed a rise in its budget unprecedented since the Korean War. With President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget request, it is up nearly 100 percent in real terms from its post-Cold War low. But few observers believe that this level of spending can continue in light of the mounting national debt. So it is wise to think now about options for savings.

A way to begin is to ask, what has driven budgets so high? Obviously, the wars are part of the answer. But they account for only 20 percent of today’s expenditures. And they are the least likely targets for economizing.

It is more fruitful to reflect on the shortcomings in past efforts at defense reform. Can we do it better? It is also worth thinking about the practice of force modernization during the post-Cold War period, which has been distinctly undisciplined.

The end of the Cold War presented a unique opportunity – as well as a manifest need – for the structural reform of our defense posture. The force reductions of the 1990s necessarily risked decreased efficiency, due to the loss of economies of scale affecting support activities and equipment acquisition. The standard solution to such problems is to restructure as one gets smaller, matching reductions in size with a reduction in complexity – a practice the DoD did not, for the most part, follow.

Although smaller, DoD and the services have largely retained or even increased their complexity. For instance, there are today 50 major commands either one step above or below the service level – not much different from during the Cold War.

In our recent study of budget trends, we identify a dozen areas where significant changes had been proposed in the 1990s. These involved service roles and missions, consolidation of various support and training functions, and recentering budget and acquisition planning at the joint level.

In addition, the need to reform DoD’s acquisition, logistics and financial management systems has been evident for a long, long time. However, only two reform initiatives – competitive sourcing and military base closures – were pursued far enough to yield significant annual savings, and these have not amounted to more than 4 percent of the defense budget.

There also was hope in the mid-1990s that a “revolution in military affairs” might lead to new efficiencies. We would reap more bang for the buck by means of increased battlefield awareness, improved logistics, increased capacities for standoff precision attack, and the networking of units within and across services.

In some areas, such as precision attack, capability has dramatically increased. Theater logistics also have improved. But nowhere has the revolution in information technology led to manifest and substantial savings. Rather than supplant-ing legacy capabilities and platforms, the new technology has mostly just supplemented them.

In prospect, the evolution of net-centric warfare might reduce the need for redundant capabilities. But progress toward the services sharing a common nervous system has been slow and mostly involved special operations units and precision ground attack. Generally, net-centric capabilities exist as an anemic overlay to traditional service-centric structures and assets.

DoD and the services have faced little pressure to economize or transform during the past decade. This is also evident in equipment acquisition.

We can discern three distinct acquisition trends at work in recent decades. First, there are legacy programs that came forward from the Cold War period with considerable institutional momentum. Second, there are programs reflecting the revolutionary potential of new information technologies. Finally, there are adaptive programs, such as the recent mass purchase of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, that correspond to new mission requirements.

In an ideal world, the imperative to adapt to new missions and circumstances would draw on the revolutionary potential of new technologies to rewrite or supplant legacy programs. But this has not happened.

Too much of the $2.5 trillion in modernization funding since 1990 perpetuated the status quo circa 1990. Transformational acquisition was mostly restricted to producing supplements, such as Predator drones, to the legacy arsenal. And adaptive acquisition was largely delayed until field experiences forced a flurry of ad hoc efforts beginning six years ago.

The Pentagon’s central authorities have done too little, too late to compel the integration of modernization efforts along adaptive lines. Legacy, transformational and adaptive modernization have lurched forward together, but poorly integrated and competing for resources. And yet, even though modernization spending now surpasses that of the Reagan era, no one is happy with the result.

For 10 years, Congress and the White House have been permissive when it comes to defense spending; this has undercut any impetus for reform and prioritization. Obama’s decision to further boost the defense budget suggests that this dysfunction will persist for a while, but this, too, is a bubble that will burst. Preparing for that eventuality means revisiting options for structural reform and getting clearer on our strategic priorities.

Todd Fine organized and developed the Global Zero campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons as a program officer at the World Security Institute. He is currently working to establish the Iran Data Portal at Princeton University. He responded on 18 February 2010 to the Knight-Mello exchange of views on nuclear disarmament and the Obama administration.

___________________

Fine:

President Obama’s exceedingly generous budget request for the nuclear weapons labs has boiled long-simmering anxieties about the concrete policy impact of his frequently expressed “vision” for “a world without nuclear weapons.” Aligning with the prominent series of op-eds in The Wall Street Journal, Obama repeated this earnest aspiration consistently throughout the campaign for the presidency, and in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and April 2009 policy speech in Prague.

Given the ambition of this vision in practical terms, and, of course, the now apparent serious interest in its achievement by predecessor Ronald Reagan, it is not surprising that long-time advocates have expected policy proposals that would explicitly move in this direction. Yet, these budgeting numbers signal an overall regression. They will further institutionalize the development of new weapons and will make restructuring the labs toward other functions more difficult.

The failure to assure advocates began at the rhetoric’s root. Despite the welcome credibility they have given the anti-nuclear cause, the op-ed authors – George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and William Perry – had a burden to consider how other countries perceive the size and activities of our weapons laboratories. At the same time in 2007 that American anti-nuclear lobbyists and activists were feverishly working to block funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) in Congress, Kissinger forwarded an analysis by Shultz and Hoover fellow Sidney Drell to Sen. Pete Domenici supporting investments in the program. And although Nunn declared that he was opposed to the RRW, he signaled his acceptance for large-scale increases in lab funding in the foursome’s third op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on January 19, 2010. Unlike the previous op-eds, which were enthusiastically endorsed by others and received with much fanfare by the press, this one seemed clinically designed to give their reputational blessing to the upcoming budget numbers.

Chief nuclear negotiator under President Reagan, Max Kampelman, who has claimed that he originally prompted George Shultz to return to the question of elimination, has advocated a bold path to zero using multilateral processes in the United Nations. Indeed, outlining the divisions among the foreign policy elite, the Global Zero campaign was initiated by a number of attendees of the Shultz-led Hoover Institution meetings who were dissatisfied with the extreme focus on short-term “steps” instead of the explicit practicalities of achieving the ultimate goal. And following that, the policy program of Global Zero itself has revealed a split between the advocates of immediate multilateralization of the strategic arms control process and others who propose that a decades-long series of U.S.-Russia agreements expand into a multilateral process.

These assorted divisions among the elite may come to the fore at the May NPT Review Conference as other nations test the United States’ new-found commitment to the treaty’s stated objective of disarmament. Given the current crises involving Iran and North Korea and the shortening window of Obama’s dynamism on the world stage, if the President fails to inspire others to adopt his “vision” and work toward elimination concretely, he may miss a singular opportunity. If CTBT, which is symbolic despite its limitations, is not ratified by the conference date, these budget requests alone may devastate U.S. credibility. And as Greg Mello’s logic indicates, other nations are unlikely to be impressed with the scale of the START follow-on treaty, and there are not yet any indications that the posture review language on “the role” of nuclear weapons will be that momentous in terms of practical implications.

In order to blunt these concerns and sincerely recommit to the vision, there are a number of policy proposals the Obama administration could potentially advocate going into the review conference:

1. A funded international program that would initiate cooperative research into verification technologies and enforcement strategies that would be required in a world of “global zero.”

2. The initiation of an international audit of all existing nuclear weapons and material.

3. Sponsorship of initial discussions on a timeline for negotiations and targets involved in the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

However, as Charles Knight mentioned with respect to international concerns about the United States’ superiority in conventional weapons, these actions would only be a start. Given the terrifying overall budget projections and the abject failure of our military contracting and procurement processes, the United States needs to reformulate its entire defense posture and budget. In order to convince states like Russia and China to approach low numbers of nuclear weapons, it might even be necessary to consider multilateral treaty restrictions on general conventional forces and on specific advanced weapons systems like Prompt Global Strike. If the elimination aspiration is sincere, then these concerns are unavoidable and should be seriously studied and contemplated.

Max Kampelman, the symbolic initiator of the present return to abolitionism, has spoken powerfully of what real leadership by an American president, especially when morally confident and unabashed, can accomplish. President Obama’s rhetoric on the elimination of nuclear weapons apparently inspired some enough to award him the Nobel Peace Prize; if he is sincere, he owes it to the younger generation to present a clear path to elimination, if not in his lifetime, then in ours.

Remarks of Vice President Biden at National Defense University – As Prepared for Delivery, 18 February 2010.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-vice-president-biden-national-defense-university

Excerpt:

Now, as our technology improves, we are developing non-nuclear ways to accomplish that same objective. The Quadrennial Defense Review and Ballistic Missile Defense Review, which Secretary Gates released two weeks ago, present a plan to further strengthen our preeminent conventional forces to defend our nation and our allies.

Capabilities like an adaptive missile defense shield, conventional warheads with worldwide reach, and others that we are developing enable us to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, as other nuclear powers join us in drawing down. With these modern capabilities, even with deep nuclear reductions, we will remain undeniably strong.

Editor’s Comment:

When Vice President Biden speaks of plans to “further strengthen … preeminent conventional forces” with “capabilities like an adaptive missile defense shield” and “conventional warheads with worldwide reach” he seeks to reassure his domestic audience that nuclear disarmament will not make America less secure. His words, however, do not reassure other nuclear powers or potential future nuclear powers such as Iran who will perceive these enhanced American conventional capabilities as strategic threats to their national security.

Biden surely understands that he is not really offering us a pathway to nuclear abolition. We will not get there if other nations are expected to relinquish their nuclear arsenals to face “undeniable” conventional power from the U.S.

If Biden’s speech truly represents the elaboration of the “President’s Prague Agenda” it leaves us with a very big gap (conceptually and practically) between the near term goal Biden articulates (“We will work to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”) and the longer term goal (“We are working both to stop [nuclear weapons] proliferation and eventually to eliminate them.”) which President Obama confirmed in Prague.

Barry Blechman. New York Times, 18 February 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/opinion/19blechman.html

Excerpt:

Here’s how a global nuclear disarmament treaty could work. First, it would spell out a decades-long schedule for the verified destruction of all weapons, materials and facilities. Those possessing the largest arsenals — the United States and Russia — would make deep cuts first. Those with smaller arsenals would join at specified dates and levels. To ensure that no state gained an advantage, the treaty would incorporate “rest stops”: if a state refused to comply with a scheduled measure, other nations’ reductions would be suspended until the violation was corrected. This dynamic would generate momentum, but also ensure that if the effort collapsed, the signatories would be no less secure than before.

Editor’s Comment:
There is something missing in this measured disarmament scheme which invalidates it as a path to full nuclear disarmament. Blechman makes an erroneous assumption shared by too many nuclear disarmament advocates. He assumes that nuclear weapons are a class of weapons that can be dealt with in isolation from the problems of international security and insecurity. Nuclear weapons cannot be separated strategically from the context of the conventional military power they supplement.

Note the following phrase in the above excerpt from Blechman: “To ensure that no state gained an advantage…” His prescription applies only to nuclear weapons and presumes no adjustments to conventional military power. In those conditions some states stand to gain considerable advantage from nuclear disarmament.

Imagine the case of Russia in Blechman’s staged draw down of nuclear forces with the U.S. As Russia approaches zero nuclear weapons they become more and more vulnerable to superior U.S. conventional military power.

Without parallel and compensatory reductions and adjustments in conventional forces and strong political assurances weaker nations such as Russia will never agree to give up all their nuclear weapons.

Careful schemes of balanced nuclear weapons disarmament of the type that Blechman argues for cannot by themselves get us to zero nuclear weapons. Compensating for the national insecurities arising from imbalances in conventional military power must be part of any formula for full nuclear disarmament. We need to work toward an international security regime that delivers the reassurance of fifty years without international aggression and military intervention. After that period of peace nuclear nations might be ready to go to zero.

Joe Cirincione. Huffington Post, 17 February 2010.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-cirincione/obamas-nuclear-decision-d_b_465223.html

Excerpt:

… democracy does not apply to nuclear weapons policy. It never has. No nation has ever had a vote on whether to go nuclear. These decisions are made in secret. They don’t have to be.

Steve Coll. The New Yorker, 15 February 2010.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2010/02/strategic-withdrawal.html

Excerpt:

I have also heard it suggested, however, that the big and visible Helmand operation is being conceived as a sort of “demonstration project” of joint U.S. and Afghan security and governance capabilities – that “clear, hold, and build” there will be constructed as a sort of theme park of revived counterinsurgency practice.

Whatever the durability of the current operation, the Helmand River Valley is not likely to be this war’s decisive locus.

Jonathan Granoff is president of the Global Security Institute. He responded on 15 February 2010 to the Mello-Knight exchange of views on nuclear disarmament and the Obama administration.
Jonathan Granoff is the author of Memo to Obama: Nuclear Weapons, which appeared in Tikkun Magazine, January-February 2009.

__________________

Jonathan Granoff:

Was President Obama outplayed by DOD and DOE? They have posed a very clever analysis. If progress is to be had on nonproliferation, such as support for a test ban, then modernization and the ability to strengthen the capacity to improve the arsenal seems to be the cost. Does this still allows them to say that the modernization “might require testing someday?” This will be an enormous benefit for those who want to stop the test ban. Will it not be like the Clinton administration’s deal with Stockpile Stewardship where he thought funding it would generate their support for the test ban but did not gain the full out support of DOE?

I am consistently surprised by how naive politicians appear when challenged by strategic military planners. So, I state this as an example where it appears that President Obama really wants to make progress (not necessarily on disarmament, but certainly on nonproliferation) and even here he is getting cul de sacked.

Or, is he fully aware of the strategy being played out. Does Mr. Mello think he was being deceptive in the Prague speech, or just a bit cute?

Regardless, the current programs being funded that Mr. Mello highlights will certainly make achieving any strengthening of the nonproliferation aspirations of the Administration at the upcoming NPT very difficult. They certainly do not seem to be consistent with a commitment to disarmament.

I sincerely hope I am wrong and look forward to hearing from some of the people in the current Administration whom I respect very much, such as Ambassador Rice and Assistant Secretary of State Gottemoeller.

Greg Mello responds to Jonathan Granoff:

Among your other interesting points, you raise this question: “Does Mr. Mello think he [Obama] was being deceptive in the Prague speech, or just a bit cute?” I would say neither. The substitution of an aspiration for a commitment or promise is a rhetorical device so normal these questions don’t arise. Both the speaker and the audience expect some sort of ritual acknowledgment of our common aspirations. The gap between those aspirations and our actual practice is fairly embarrassing; many members of the audience are looking for some sort of fantasy bridge between the two. They don’t want bad news, they want “hope.”

Somehow we have gone from “I will put a chicken in every pot” to “I will seek to put a chicken in every pot.” There is less accountability in the second formulation, which may be especially helpful in a time of contracting national prospects — in which contraction, the increased nuclear military spending I am criticizing plays a central symbolic role. Our hopes are greater than the realities available to service them. We, and our donors and supporters, want Santa Claus.

Paul Ingram is the executive director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC). He responded on 15 February 2010 to the Mello-Knight exchange of views on nuclear disarmament and the Obama administration.

Ingram:

Everyone knows that in this tough world of realist nuclear politics it does not pay to be naïve. What is less frequently recognised is that in a world of global threat it can be equally dangerous to play an extreme game of zero trust.

So we have to go through this strange and difficult world navigating a constant and complex series of considered calculations, making judgments based upon evidence and previous experience, what we can trust and what we cannot. That goes as much for those of us trying to influence decision-makers as much as for officials making decisions over foreign policy.

So when a President gets up and makes a speech that contains within it commitments to a world free of nuclear weapons, proposing a number of initiatives, and looking forward to concrete commitments in the near term, it pays to be hopeful, but not gullible. And we have the first test of this hope in the very near future when the President comes to publish a version of his long awaited Nuclear Posture Review.

Let me say at the outset that I am not intimately familiar with the inner workings of the Obama Adminsitration’s game plan, with the NPR, the START follow-on negotiations, these investments. I don’t like these investments in the infrastructure [weapons complex] any more than Greg. I think they are a waste of US taxpayer’s resources, and America and the world would be better off without them, with existing budgets devoted to further winding down the infrastructure, clean-up and the like.

But there remain several reasons for treating Obama’s nuclear diplomacy, and these investments, seriously:

1) It is a new departure. Now, bask in that fact, but I agree with Greg, this is hardly a cause for great celebration.

2) There are no obvious electoral benefits in this for Obama beyond the concrete international results that pertain. Few Americans will vote differently on this, unless President Obama actually delivers upon this agenda and appears come the next election as a President that delivers on the international scene. In actual fact, if the agenda were a cynical one, he will more likely end up seen as a President big on promises and weak on delivery – whether he is genuine or not, this is a likely and very depressing outcome.

3) The view that is being taken by the Administration over the need for this level of extra investment may be misguided, but it does hold a certain level of internal consistency. Let’s be honest, few things in politics are pure and simple, black and white. Even the JASON report, when pointing out that the warheads were in good shape, said that the infrastructure itself was under severe strain through lack of investment and the challenge of attracting talent into the profession. The belief that we need to reduce slowly and multilaterally whilst maintaining a nuclear force well into the future may be frustrating to many of us, and highlight the fact that we still live in a world where governments have not yet understood the need for more radical shifts in their postures, but it does not contradict the vision. And let’s be clear here, commitment to the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, whilst only the first step, is an important one nevertheless. And if you were based in France, you’d know what a big step it was.

4) Perhaps most important, the Obama Administration, and we ourselves, need to consider strategically how we can realistically bring the majority of Americans, Russians, and God knows, the Indians, Pakistanis and Israelis along with us (everyone these days focuses on the Iranians but trust me, they are easy in comparison). It is not effective simply to state positions and push through initiatives against majority opposition, even when you are the most powerful man in the world. You still have to convince Congress, the Americans people, and then colleagues abroad, in a huge complex web of inter-relationships that are not conducive to rational debate, let alone instruction. It takes gentle engagement, openness to others’ perspectives, appreciation of diversity, team work and many other cooperative skills beyond policy work to build the process necessary for disarmament. And that takes building confidence. And that probably requires the sort of investment we are witnessing today.

William D. Hartung is Director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. He responded on 15 February 2010 to the Mello-Knight exchange of views on nuclear disarmament and the Obama administration.

______________

Hartung:

Obama’s aspirations go beyond just his statement at Prague. He is in the midst of negotiating a new nuclear arms
reduction treaty with Russia, with a possible follow-on seeking deeper cuts; he has committed himself publicly to pursuing ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and a treaty banning the production of bomb-making materials
(the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty); he is hosting a nuclear security summit of scores of nations to work on plans to secure or destroy “loose nukes” and bomb-making materials; and he hosted a meeting of the UN Security Council (the first U.S. president to do so) to reinforce disarmament pledges of numerous key players.

Some of these changes can occur without major restructuring of U.S. conventional forces (new reductions with Russia and new nuclear security measures, for example).

Everything beyond that will require substantial changes first, as Charles suggests, not only in U.S conventional forces and posture but in regional politics in security dynamics in South Asia (India and Pakistan) and the Middle East (Israel, Iran, and host of related questions, including an Israeli-Palestinian setttlement). And current actions such as boosting spending on the nuclear weapons complex need to be reversed.

Many of these factors are rarely or not fully discussed by many — but not all — of the advocates of “getting to zero.”

So, I guess I agree with many of the points made by Charles and Greg, but I’m not ready to give up on the prospect of some significant changes in nuclear policies and postures. My sense is that we should applaud Obama’s commitments and then hold him to his word, not presume that progress is impossible.

Steve Clemons. TPM Cafe, 13 February 2010.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/13/several_years_ago_i_met/

Martin Senn. www.armscontrol.at, 10 February 2010.
http://www.armscontrol.at/?p=758

Excerpt:

On balance, it is hard to imagine that Russia or China would be willing to considerably reduce their offensive arsenals, if the US retains the ability to boost the homeland defense by relocating and/or connecting TMD systems with remote sensors.

Greg Mello. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 10 February 2010.
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/the-obama-disarmament-paradox
Greg Mello is the executive director and co-founder of the Los Alamos Study Group.

______________

Last April in Prague, President Barack Obama gave a speech that many have interpreted as a commitment to significant nuclear disarmament.

Now, however, the White House is requesting one of the larger increases in warhead spending history. If its request is fully funded, warhead spending would rise 10 percent in a single year, with further increases promised for the future. Los Alamos National Laboratory, the biggest target of the Obama largesse, would see a 22 percent budget increase, its largest since 1944. In particular, funding for a new plutonium “pit” factory complex there would more than double, signaling a commitment to produce new nuclear weapons a decade hence.

So how is the president’s budget compatible with his disarmament vision?

The answer is simple: There is no evidence that Obama has, or ever had, any such vision. He said nothing to that effect in Prague. There, he merely spoke of his commitment “to seek . . . a world without nuclear weapons,” a vague aspiration and hardly a novel one at that level of abstraction. He said that in the meantime the United States “will maintain a safe, secure, and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies.”

Since nuclear weapons don’t, and won’t ever, “deter any adversary,” this too was highly aspirational, if not futile. The vain search for an “effective” arsenal that can deter “any” adversary requires unending innovation and continuous real investment, including investment in the extended deterrent to which Obama referred. The promise of such investments, and not disarmament, was the operative message in Prague as far as the U.S. stockpile was concerned. In fact, proposed new investments in extended deterrence were already being packaged for Congress when Obama spoke.

To fulfill his supposed “disarmament vision,” Obama offered just two approaches in Prague, both indefinite. First, he spoke vaguely of reducing “the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.” It’s far from clear what that might actually mean, or even what it could mean. Most likely it refers to official discourse–what officials say about nuclear doctrine–as opposed to actual facts on the ground. Second, Obama promised to negotiate “a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty [START] with the Russians.” As far as nuclear disarmament went in the speech, that was it.

Of course, Obama also said his administration would promptly pursue ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, an action not yet taken and one entirely unrelated to U.S. disarmament. The rest of the speech was devoted to various nonproliferation initiatives that his administration planned to seek.

On July 8, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced their Joint Understanding, committing their respective countries to somewhere between 500 to 1,100 strategic delivery vehicles and 1,500 to 1,675 deployed strategic warheads, very modest goals to be achieved a full seven years after the treaty entered into force. Total arsenal numbers wouldn’t change, so strategic warheads could be taken from deployment and placed in a reserve–de-alerted, in effect. The treaty wouldn’t affect nonstrategic warheads. It wouldn’t require dismantlement. As Hans Kristensen at the Federation of American Scientists has explained, the delivery vehicle limits require little, if any, change from U.S. and Russian expected deployments.

Ironically, it’s possible that the retirement PDF of 4,000 or more U.S. warheads under the Moscow Treaty and other retirements ordered by George W. Bush may exceed anything Obama does in terms of disarmament. As for the stockpile and weapons complex, Bush’s aspirations were far more hawkish than Congress ultimately allowed. Real budgets for warheads fell during his last three years in office. Now, with the Democrats controlling the executive branch and both houses of Congress, congressional restraint is notable by its absence. What Obama mainly seems to be “disarming” is congressional resistance to variations of some of the same proposals Bush found it difficult to authorize and fund.

Last May Obama sent his first budget to Congress, calling for flat warhead spending. At that time, the administration was still displaying a measured approach toward replacement and expansion of warhead capabilities.

That said, in last year’s budget the White House did acquiesce to a Pentagon demand to request funding for a major upgrade to four B61 nuclear bomb variants–one of which had just completed a 20-year-plus life-extension program. Just one day before that budget was released a grand nuclear strategy review previously requested by the armed services committees was unveiled. It was chaired by William Perry, a member of the governing board of the corporation that manages Los Alamos, and recurrent Cold War fixture James Schlesinger. [Full disclosure: Perry is also a member of the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors.]

The report’s recommendations for increased spending and weapons development quickly began to serve as a rallying point for defense hawks–surely the point of the exercise. Overall, it was largely a conclusory pastiche of recycled Cold War notions, entirely lacking in analysis and often factually wrong. But neither the White House nor leading congressional Democrats offered any public resistance or rebuttal to its conclusions.

More largely, opposition to nuclear restraint within the administration quickly emerged from its usual redoubts at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Pentagon, STRATCOM, and interested players in both parties in Congress. Plus, Obama left key Bush appointees in place at NNSA while the Pentagon added some familiar faces from the Clinton administration, leaving serious questions about the ability of the White House to develop an independent understanding of the issues, let alone present one to Congress.

Either way, potential treaty ratification is surely a major factor in White House thinking. Senate Republicans, as expected, are demanding significant nuclear investments prior to considering ratification of any START follow-on treaty. Democratic hawks, especially powerful ones with pork-barrel interests at stake such as New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, also must be satisfied in the ratification process. All in all this makes the latest Obama budget request a kind of “preemptive surrender” to nuclear hawks. So whether or not the president has a disarmament “vision” is irrelevant. What is important are the policy commitments embodied in the budget request and whether Congress will endorse them.

Investments on the scale requested should be flatly unacceptable to all of us. The country and the world face truly apocalyptic security challenges from climate change and looming shortages of transportation fuels. Our economy is very weak and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The proposed increases in nuclear weapons spending, embedded as they are in an overall military budget bigger than any since the 1940s, should be a clarion call for renewed political commitment in service of the fundamental values that uphold this, or any, society.

Those values are now gravely threatened–not least by a White House uncertain about, or unwilling or unable to fight for, what is right.

Editor’s Comment:

Mello does a good job of explaining why there will be little progress toward nuclear abolition during the Obama administration. Further he makes a good case that the current administration seems to be headed towards feeding the nuclear weapons complex to a greater degree than Bush was able. Who’d of thought!

But Mello misses on a couple points. One is that he dismisses too quickly the nuclear abolition aspiration Obama stated in Prague. Those few words may have little affect on policy, but they do mark a return to the rhetoric of all atomic age administrations up until George W. Bush markedly abandoned such aspirations. What is the value of that rhetoric? Mostly it gives credence to those who organize around abolition — something of value, but not much.

Secondly, Mello states that when Obama spoke of…

…reducing “the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy” it’s far from clear what that might actually mean, or even what it could mean.

Actually, this statement of Obama’s refers to something quite specific and important. The U.S. has been advancing for several decades to an unprecedented level of conventional force dominance over all other nations (see Bernard I. Finel on strategic meaning of U.S. conventional military power). At this point the U.S. can anticipate gaining even more strategic advantage if it can convince other nations to join in disposing of nuclear weaponry (for an official statement of this strategic formula see Vice President Biden’s speech at the National Defense University on 18 February 2010.) This is indeed quite an aspiration!

This connection of conventional dominance to nuclear dominance brings me to the other shortcoming of Mello’s article. Nuclear abolition will be impossible without a significant restructuring of the international (in-)security system. Why would Russia or China eschew nuclear weapons or N. Korea and Iran abandon efforts to obtain them while these nations remain utterly vulnerable to U.S. conventional strike?

Leaders of popular efforts for nuclear disarmament almost never acknowledge this strategic problem. That’s a disservice to their cause, because it leaves a major obstacle to disarmament in place with no plan (or even awareness of the need for a plan) to remove it.

The eventuality of an agreement to abolish nuclear weapons will require the U.S. to first draw down its conventional military power. And concurrent to a deep draw down of US conventional military power there must be a build up of international structures which can take up more and more of the responsibility for global security.

Such a transfer of power and responsibility will probably happen someday, but we are certainly not presently on that path. That is one more “change” that Obama is not pursuing, not even aspirationally.

Greg Mello responds to the editor’s comments:

I think your comments are excellent. Let me begin with the second one, with which I wholly agree. Our work here at the [Los Alamos] Study Group has emphasized nuclear weapons issues in part because of our geographic, and hence political, locus adjacent to the two largest nuclear weapons laboratories.

The barrier to nuclear disarmament posed by military policies and investments that express an aspiration for “full spectrum dominance” on a global scale is almost certainly insuperable. Nuclear disarmament is only consistent with a quite different conception of national security than we now have and with a quite different economic structure internally as well. The good news — and I think we have to make it good where it may not appear so at first glance, since we have no other choice — is that our empire is failing.

Your first point, which relates to the symbolic value of Obama’s disarmament statements, is also sound, but here I think that symbolic value is greatly outweighed by the passivity and compliance which his statements have engendered in civil society. The actors and forces which could and should be forcefully working for disarmament have been themselves disarmed by what amounts to propaganda.

Hypocrisy may be the homage paid to the ideal by the real, but it is not leadership, it is not honest, and it will not produce anything of value in this case. At the moment, it is allowing the nuclear weapons establishment to do what it could not accomplish previously: increase production capacity and provide greater, not lesser, endorsement of nuclear weapons in all their aspects, both materially and symbolically.

Obama’s disarmament aspiration, so called, is a faint echo compared to the full-throated endorsement of nuclear weapons it is enabling.

Sandra Erwin. National Defense Magazine, 08 February 2010.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=67

Excerpt:

In his recent book, “Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy,” Stiglitz lays out the criteria for what he considers are spending programs that stimulate the economy. The nation’s soaring debt makes it imperative that government earn the most bang for the buck, Stiglitz said in a speech last month at the Council on Foreign Relations. The multiplier effect of defense outlays on the economy is weak compared to spending in other areas. “Some kinds of spending have bigger multipliers than others,” Stiglitz said. “The lowest multiplier is war spending.”

Carl Conetta. Project on Defense Alternatives, 05 February 2010.
http://www.comw.org/pda/1002BudgetSurge.html

Federal Debt as Percent of Gross Domestic Product

Excerpt:

The most ready comparison to America’s current circumstance are the years of the Second World War. Back then, the level of debt rose higher than it has today, but the period during which the burden exceeded 100% of GDP lasted only 4 years. Today, by contrast, it looks as though the period during which debt will equal or exceed 100% of GDP will last for more than twice as long. If we think of the mid-1940s as representing “the Mount Everest” of US debt accumulation, then the period after 2008 should represent “the Tibetan plateau” (which is not as high as Everest, but far wider.)

Lawrence J. Korb, Sean Duggan, and Laura Conley. Center for American Progress, 04 February 2010.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/02/qdr_fail_resource.html

Excerpt:

The QDR … does not prioritize the missions that the military must be prepared for. The document states that “successfully balancing [DOD’s priorities] requires that the Department make hard choices on the level of resources required as well as accepting and managing risk in a way that favors success in today’s wars,” yet it also notes that “U.S. forces must be prepared to conduct a wide variety of missions under a range of different circumstances.” In other words, the QDR promises to make tradeoffs but asserts that DOD must be capable of confronting every contingency.

Editor’s Comment:

Follow the money. The priorities are reflected in where the money goes. A few changes, per usual, at the margins. Mostly the same ol’ same ol’ division of spoils.

Sandra I. Erwin. National Defense, March 2010.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2010/March/Pages/DefenseWatch.aspx

Excerpt:

The government’s own defense gurus are warning that it is not a question of if, but when the United States will lose its military superpower status.

These ominous predictions, by all accounts, are hard to fathom. The Pentagon’s budget this year is the highest since World War II — and accounts for almost half of what the world’s militaries spend.

But with the nation drowning in debt, it isn’t difficult to see how the financial burdens of superpowerdom may be too much to bear. The United States, some experts warn, would be wise to restrain military spending in order to regain its financial strength.

Michèle Flournoy. remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations, 02 February 2010.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/21363/rebalancing_and_reforming_defense.html

DoD summary prepared for press briefing, 01 February 2010. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/FY11budgetsummary-dod.pdf

Winslow T. Wheeler. Straus Military Reform Project, Center for Defense Information, 01 February 2010.

Office of the Secretary of Defense, 01 February 2010. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/1002QDR2010.pdf

Greg Mello. Los Alamos Study Group, 01 February 2010.
http://www.lasg.org/press/2010/press_release_1Feb2010.html

Bernard I. Finel. Armed Froces Journal International, February 2010.
http://www.afji.com/2010/02/4387134

Excerpt:

A fundamental challenge in devising a strategy for the use of American military power is that the world has literally never seen anything like it. The U.S. today has military capabilities at least equal to the rest of the world combined. There is virtually no spot on the globe that could not be targeted by American forces, and at most a small handful of countries that could thwart a determined U.S. effort at regime change — and some of those only by virtue of their possession of nuclear weapons.

American military capabilities are not a potential form of power, subject to use only following a lengthy mobilizing and requiring a long campaign to achieve significant goals. Instead, the U.S. can destroy fixed locations in a matter of hours or at most days, and implement regime change in a matter of weeks or a few months.

Because this capability is so novel — dating only to the end of the Cold War — American strategists lack a clear framework to guide the utilization of this force. They have sought to match capabilities to conceptions of the use of force from a different era, one in which the Cold War made regime change unpalatable due to the risk of escalation and that tended to make localized setbacks appear as loses in a perceived zero-sum competition with the Soviets.

The reason, in other words, that the U.S. didn’t simply remove Fidel Castro from power was that after 1962, the international consequences seemed too high and the goal too risky. The reason American leaders felt compelled to engage in a lengthy counterinsurgency in Vietnam was the concern that a communist victory would have been a setback in the broader struggle. But imagine a world in which there were few or no international consequences to removing Castro from power, and imagine a world in which the commitment to Vietnam was strictly commensurate to the threat that the Vietnamese communists could pose to the U.S. That is the change in context that has occurred over the past 20 years, and the U.S. has not yet adapted.

Editor’s Comment:

And so many in the U.S. choose to ignore how this dominant military power motivates other nations to seek nuclear weaponry or hold tightly to those they have acquired already!

Office of the Secretary of Defense, 01 February 2010. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/1002BMDR.pdf

final version as published by InsideDefense.com on 30 January 2010. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/100130qdr2010.pdf

Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo 46, 26 January 2010.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/Assessing_the_2010_QDR.pdf

Excerpt:

Today’s military is stressed by having nearly 25% of the full time military overseas, including 16% in overseas operations.

How does the QDR seek to reduce the stress of overseas stationing and deployment?

In recent years large counter-insurgency campaigns have demanded much of the military’s attention and energy.

Is the QDR preparing for more of the same in the future? At what scale and frequency?

Chris Hellman, National Priorities Project, 29 January 2010.

Sources and Methodology: Much of the information contained here comes from various media accounts or discussions with analysts and congressional staff.

Introduction: The Obama Administration will release its budget request for Fiscal Year 2011 on Monday, February 1. At the same time, the Defense Department is expected to release an additional emergency supplemental funding request to cover the FY 2010 costs of the Afghanistan “surge” not covered by the “Overseas Contingency Operations” funding included in the Fiscal Year 2010 Defense Appropriations Act (H.R. 3326). [See “Funding for Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” below.]

Total “Top Line” Spending: $580 Billion [Function 050] – [NOTE: These totals do not include the cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.] Unlike most years, the Pentagon’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget request did not project Defense Department [Function 051] future year funding. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) projected $541.8 billion for Fiscal Year 2011. Previously the Administration had pledged to hold Pentagon spending at $534 billion plus inflation. More recently, however, it has been reported that defense spending will grow by a total of $100 billion, plus inflation, over the next five years. Estimating 2 percent inflation (roughly $11 billion), and adding an additional $10 billion (assuming that the $100 billion in new spending over five years will be weighted toward the “out” years) means a nominal increase of roughly $21 billion, or $555 billion for defense [Function 051]. In addition, OMB projected a further $16.6 billion for nuclear weapons-related activities of the Department of Energy [Function 053] and $7.1 billion for miscellaneous defense activities [Function 054], for a total defense spending level of $579 billion [Function 050].

Funding the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – Prior to Fiscal Year 2010, funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were funded outside the annual defense budget through special supplemental appropriations. After taking office the Obama Administration pledged that it would end this practice and, beginning with its FY 2010 budget request, would include funding for ongoing military operations in the annual request. As a result, the FY 2010 request included $130 billion for “Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO).” Subsequent to that, however, the Administration decided to send “surge” of an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. As a result, the Pentagon’s funding request will consist of two parts – a small $30-$35 billion supplemental request for additional FY 2010 funds to cover the cost of the “surge,” and a larger $165 billion request for OCO in FY 2011.

Including the additional funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, total defense spending in FY 2011 could exceed $745 billion.

Program Terminations – The Pentagon will again seek to terminate weapons programs that are either under-performing, those for which there is no requirement, or those which don’t fit with the Department’s strategic vision. The Pentagon will not seek additional funding for the C-17 transport aircraft or the second engine source for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), both of which it sought to terminate in FY 2010, but for which Congress appropriated unrequested funds. In addition the Pentagon will reportedly not seek funding for the Navy’s CG(x) cruiser replacement program, or its EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft replacement program.

“Winners” – The Army will invest heavily in helicopters, including the CH-47 “Chinook,” the family of UH-60 “Blackhawks,” and the development of a heavy-lift helicopter. The request will contain funding for the Air Force’s oft-delayed airborne tanker program. Funding will continue to grow for a broad range of unmanned systems, both aerial and ground-based.

Missile Defense: Steady-State at $9 Billion – The FY 2011 request is likely to be at or slightly below current funding levels. In addition, the Pentagon will likely continue efforts to reorient missile defense away from long-range development of a national system, and increase focus on systems at or near operational capability such as the Navy’s program based on the AEGIS system and the Standard-3 missile.

Shipbuilding: Steady State – The Navy will continue to spend roughly $14 billion on shipbuilding. This will include funding for two DDG-51 destroyers, two Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), two “Virginia” class submarines, one “San Antonio” amphibious assault ship and two other ships – possibly an LHA replacement vessel and/or T-AKE supply ships. Development funding will also be included for the “Ohio” ballistic missile submarine replacement program.

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: Slight Increase – Despite recent Pentagon reports detailing problems with the F-35 aircraft, the Pentagon is continuing its efforts to accelerate the program, although not quite as rapidly as anticipated. While Congress funded 30 aircraft in FY 2010, the Pentagon is requesting 42 aircraft for FY 2011 in its base budget, plus one additional aircraft in the “OCO” accounts. Previous plans had called for funding 48 F-35s in FY 2011.

Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo 45, 18 January 2010.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1001PDABM45.pdf

Excerpt:

What can be said reliably is that:

First, the level and duration of debt forecast by the administration, when taken together, constitute a historically unprecedented situation for the United States. Similarly, our global context is new and changing rapidly. We are entering terra incognita.

Second, some of the assumptions and inputs on which the administration bases its plans and forecast are either bound to change or are contested. As noted earlier, a key component of its defense plan – the cost of foreign operations – is merely a “place marker” today. Perceived requirements due to the wars could easily add $250 billion in spending for 2011-2017. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the plan forecasts that it will yield larger deficits and more debt due to lower revenues and increased expenditures. It forecasts higher interest rates and, therefore, higher interest payments.

Finally, regardless of the actual determinable effects of the government’s debt burden in the longer-run, the sudden growth of that burden and its persistence at a higher-level is bound to intensify political contention around budget and fiscal issues. The Obama administration will face intense pressure to economize in some areas.

Gordon Adams. Budget Insight, 29 January 2010.
http://budgetinsight.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/eyes-on-the-budget-anticipating-the-february-1-documents/

Excerpt:

In the security assistance arena, look for a major assertion of direct DOD responsibility for training and equipping foreign security forces (called the “security sector”) on a global basis, consistent with the budget request forecast above. This might include the creation of new DOD “Security Force Assistance” teams and missions. It might also include an expanded DOD program to advise ministries of defense in other countries. The December 3 QDR draft also proposed that DOD have joint authority with State over State’s own security assistance accounts, though that language may have disappeared in the final version.

“pre-decisional” draft dated 03 December 2010 and published by InsideDefense.com on 27 January 2010. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/draftQDR2010.pdf

Carl Conetta. Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Report 20, 18 January 2010.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1001PDABR20.pdf
Executive Summary: http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1001PDABR20exsum.pdf

Excerpt:

… DoD’s total workforce is probably as large today as it was in 1989 (or even larger), but less of the total is in uniform. This accords with the rise in O&M spending and also with studies… which suggest that the contractor workforce may have grown by as much as 40% since 1989. By comparison, the full-time military and DoD civilian workforces are both about 32% smaller today than in 1989.

When strategic discipline is lax, legacy modernization tends to predominate, due to its institutional momentum. Eventually, external circumstances may compel a rush of ad hoc adaptive measures – as is the case today with regard to procurement to meet counter- insurgency needs. These may then come to predominate, prematurely. The only remedy is to strongly discipline force modernization in accord with a sustainable, adaptive, and cost-effective national security strategy. The various scenarios and missions that define military requirements must be strongly prioritized, and these priorities must be enforced from the center.

A permissive spending environment is the precondition for the types of problems identified in this report. It is easy enough to point to the 11 September 2001 attacks as the progenitor of this condition. However, as we note, the surge in spending began before 2001. Moreover, Gallup polls show that public support for increased spending was higher in the two years prior to the attacks than in the two years after. And it has receded significantly since then. This points to a more fundamental enabling condition: presently there seems to be little political gain (and much risk) in pressing for the type of tight DoD budget constraints that might prompt through-going reform and transformation. Nonetheless, emerging fiscal realities may soon compel increased attention to how the nation allocates scarce resources among competing national goals — foreign and domestic, military and non-military. And this might put the nation on the road to a disciplined defense.

John T. Bennett. Defense News, 27 January 2010.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4473825&c=AME&s=TOP

Excerpt:

The new force-shaping model was derived from what the draft report calls the Pentagon’s four defense strategy priorities: “prevail in today’s wars; prevent and deter conflict; prepare to succeed in a wide range of contingencies; and preserve and enhance the force.” Sources say the priorities are known within the QDR process as “the Four Ps.”

The planning framework is designed to prepare U.S. forces to, according to the review, carry out “a broad, plausible range of several overlapping operations to prevent and deter conflict and, if necessary, to defend the United States, its allies and partners, selected critical infrastructure, and other national interests.”

Megan Scully. Government Executive, 26 January 2010.
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0110/012610cdpm1.htm

Excerpt:

“There is no way — no way — that the defense budget will be immune to deficit reduction,” Stan Collender, a former House and Senate Budget committee aide…

Congressional Budget Office, 26 January 2010.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/01-26-Outlook.pdf

Reuters, 21 January 2010.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60K6QK20100121

Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), pp. 21-25, January 2010.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/DOTE F-35 JSF 2009 Annual Report.pdf

Reuters, 20 January 2010.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60K07I20100121

Excerpt:

The documents, labeled as “draft” and “pre-decisional,” showed continued strong funding for shipbuilding, fighter and electronic warfare aircraft and other weapons programs. They also pointed to continued effort to beef up intelligence programs, unmanned systems, cyber security, and enhanced efforts to counter biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

Josh Rogin. The Cable, 20 January 2010.
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/20/pentagon_defeats_state_in_turf_war_round_one

Excerpt:

One big chunk of funding at issue is in foreign security assistance, known as the “1206″ account, which could total about $500 million next year. This is money used to do things like military training and joint operations with countries outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, such as Indonesia and Somalia.

Since the military doesn’t have the lead in those countries, the funding should flow through State, right? Well, not in 2011. The president’s budget will keep those funds in the Pentagon’s purse in its Feb. 1 budget release, following a pitched internal battle in which the State Department eventually conceded.

Tony Capaccio. bloomberg.com, 19 January 2009.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a0UQXRzi1Fhc

Excerpt:

Sixteen of 168 planned flights were completed in fiscal 2009, the second year of flight testing, according to Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s director of weapons testing. The program calls for 5,000 sorties to prove the aircraft’s flying capabilities, electronics and software.

The development phase must now be extended by at least one year, to October 2015, according to Gilmore, the former head of the Congressional Budget Office’s defense unit.

George C. Wilson. Government Executive, 19 January 2010.
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0110/011910cdam1.htm

Excerpt:

“There ain’t no education in a second kick of a mule.”

for more on the F-35 see: http://www.comw.org/wordpress/dsr/gates-calls-for-delay-in-pentagon-purchases-of-lockheed-f-35s-capaccio

Anne Flaherty and Anne Gearan. Los Angeles Times, 13 January 2010.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-us-obama-war-funding,0,3486465.story

Excerpt:

The administration’s Quadrennial Defense Review, the main articulation of U.S. military doctrine, is due to Congress on Feb. 1. Top military commanders were briefed on the document at the Pentagon on Monday and Tuesday. They also received a preview of the administration’s budget plans through 2015.

The four-year review outlines six key mission areas and spells out capabilities and goals the Pentagon wants to develop. The pilotless drones used for surveillance and attack missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a priority, with the goals of speeding up the purchase of new Reaper drones and expanding Predator and Reaper drone flights through 2013.

Winslow T. Wheeler, Director, Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information has written a commentary on this report entitled “Just What We Need: More Pentagon Spending” for the Huffington Post, 13 January 2010.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/winslow-t-wheeler/just-what-we-need-more-pe_b_422297.html

Colin Clark. DoD Buzz, 12 January 2010.
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2010/01/12/navair-offers-f-18-ammo-amid-jsf-woes/

Excerpt:

That would put operating costs of the F-35 B and C versions some 40 percent higher than the cost to operate the existing (larger) fleet of F-18A-Ds and AV-8s.

Tony Capaccio. Business Week, 07 January 2010.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-07/gates-calls-for-delay-in-pentagon-purchases-of-lockheed-f-35s.html

Excerpt:

One recent study agreed with a similar one from a year earlier that predicted a 2 1/2 year delay in development beyond the current target of October 2014 and an added cost of $16.5 billion. The new estimate recommended the Pentagon add $314 million to the five-year plan to beef up testing. Gates did so.

Editor’s Comment:

With Afghan war costs rising and political pressure to reign in the federal deficit mounting Gates needs to reduce the year to year Pentagon procurement budget for big ticket items. Postponing and stringing out the acquisition of major platform buys (such as a new fighter aircraft like the F-35) is one way to get some of those savings without having to take on the much harder political task of canceling programs or cutting structure. Unfortunately such an approach usually makes an acquisition program more costly when production efficiencies of scale are lost as fewer units are manufactured each year over a longer period.

This article says, “More than $2.8 billion that was budgeted earlier to buy the military’s next-generation fighter would instead be used to continue its development.” So it may seem that this decision simply shifts spending from production to development accounts with neutral effect on the Pentagon topline. However the article doesn’t adequately address whether Gates may have been facing increased development costs overlapping ambitious production schedules which would have cost much more in the next five years than had been previously planned. This decision delays the onset of large production costs to the years after 2014.

The Navy has indicated it will need to buy more F/A-18s if the F-35 doesn’t appear when it had previously been promised. But the Navy’s requirement assumes there are no carrier cuts (and associated Naval combat wing cuts) in this period. If there are, it will make those F/A-18s redundant.

And what if five years from now drones are proving themselves to be the combat craft of the future at the very time the F-35 is meant to start appearing in operational units in significant numbers? Maybe then the buy of the next generation manned fighter plane can be in the range of 1200 units instead of the 2400 units in the current plan. Then we could realize real savings in this acquisition program. (for some options on future fighter buys and program savings see: David Axe, “Congressional Budget Office’s Plans to Save the Air Force”, War is Boring, 18 May 2009.)

If five years from now drones play a more central role in air combat power and there are fewer carriers in the fleet the decision to slow the F-35 acquisition program down will prove to be a very practical one.

Joseph Cirincione. Foreign Policy, 06 January 2010.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/06/a_false_nuclear_alarm?page=0,0

Excerpt:

Policy experts, however, expect the new budget to be released in February to fully fund the nuclear weapons complex and support both the United States’ science-and-engineering base and its nuclear stockpile. Vice President Joe Biden — pilloried in the Journal’s editorial — is personally leading this effort, meeting with the leaders of U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, military chiefs, and top experts to forge a budget and strategic consensus.

There is, in fact, a broad, bipartisan consensus on a new nuclear security strategy that would prevent nuclear terrorism, prevent new nuclear-armed nations, and steadily reduce Cold War nuclear weapons stockpiles. Many conservatives support an approach that would maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal for as long as nuclear weapons are needed.

editorial, Wall Street Journal, 05 January 2010.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704039704574616263692875836.html

Excerpt:

The Obama Administration continues to negotiate with the Russians over a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), but one big question is whether it can get the result through the U.S. Senate. A group of Senators is telling the White House that it will have little or no chance of success unless it also moves ahead with nuclear-warhead modernization.

Paul Richter. Los Angeles Times, 04 January 2010.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/04/nation/la-na-obama-nuclear4-2010jan04

Excerpt:

A core issue under debate, officials said, is whether the United States should shed its long-standing ambiguity about whether it would use nuclear weapons in certain circumstances, in hopes that greater specificity would give foreign governments more confidence to make their own decisions on nuclear arms.

Todd Harrison. Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, January 2010.
http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/B.20100126.Looking_Ahead_to_t/B.20100126.Looking_Ahead_to_t.pdf

Barry Blechman. book chapter from Elements of a Nuclear Disarmament Treaty, edited by Barry Blechman and Alex Bollfrass, The Stimson Center, 2010.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/10Blechman.pdf

Chart of Probabilities of an Un-dectected Clandestine Break-out from a Nuclear Disarmament Treaty from “Breaking Out of Zero: Would Cheating Be Worth the Risk?” by Alex Bollfrass.

J. Sigger. Arm Chair Generalist, 31 December 2009.
http://armchairgeneralist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/12/why-coin-will-fail-in-afghanistan.html

Meteor Blades. Daily Kos, 30 December 2009.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/30/820467/-A-Leak-About-the-Phantom-Army

Excerpt:

…the Afghan National Army is a farce; there’s little chance of turning it into a cohesive fighting force; and there’s zero chance of doing so on a speedy timetable…

Majority Staff, Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, 16 December 2009. Hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/2009-12-16StaffMemo.pdf

Excerpt:

[The] number of Defense Department Contractors in Afghanistan May reach 160,000. There are currently 104,000 Defense Department contractors working in Afghanistan. The increase in troops may require an additional 56,000 Defense Department contractors, bringing the total number of Defense contractors in Afghanistan to 160,000.

Gordon Adams. American University and the Stimson Center, 16 December 2009. PowerPoint presentation hosted on the Commonwealth Institute website.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/0912adams.ppt

H.D.S. Greenway. Boston Globe, 16 December 2009.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/16/afghanistans_never_ending_challenge/

Excerpt:

The enemy, then as now, always rallied to the reliable call of “jihad’’ against the infidel invaders no matter who they were. Of all the tribes, those of the Pashtuns were the most feared.

The motives for fighting in Afghanistan were fear, prestige, and retribution. The British feared Russian expansion, and always sought to put their man on the throne to do Britain’s bidding. Retribution always followed military setbacks, and national prestige was used as the reason to fight on. British control over Afghanistan was thought necessary for the defense of India.

Russia followed the same scenario, fearing that if Afghanistan’s pro-Communist government should fail, it would endanger Russia’s Muslim regions.

The United States invaded Afghanistan out of fear of Al Qaeda, and retribution for 9/11. And today you often hear the national prestige argument that we cannot let the Holy Warriors believe they can defeat a second superpower. More and more, America’s Afghan policy is tied into protecting the stability of Pakistan, once part of British India.