18 November 2010

Dear Co-chairman Bowles and Co-chairman Simpson:

We are writing to you as experts in national security and defense economics to convey our views on the national security implications of the Commission’s work and especially the need for achieving responsible reductions in military spending. In this regard, we appreciate the initiative you have taken in your 10 November 2010 draft proposal to the Commission. It begins a necessary process of serious reflection, debate, and action.

The vitality of our economy is the cornerstone of our nation’s strength. We share the Commission’s desire to bring our financial house into order. Doing so is not merely a question of economics. Reducing the national debt is also a national security imperative.

To date, the Obama administration has exempted the Defense Department from any budget reductions. This is short-sighted: It makes it more difficult to accomplish the task of restoring our economic strength, which is the underpinning of our military power.

As the rest of the nation labors to reduce its debt burden, the current plan is to boost the base DOD budget by 10 percent in real terms over the next decade. This would come on top of the nearly 52 percent real increase in base military spending since 1998. (When war costs are included the increase has been much greater: 95 percent.)

We appreciate Secretary Gates’ efforts to reform the Pentagon’s business and acquisition practices. However, even if his reforms fulfill their promise, the current plan does not translate them into budgetary savings that contribute to solving our deficit problem. Their explicit aim is to free funds for other uses inside the Pentagon. This is not good enough.

Granting defense a special dispensation puts at risk the entire deficit reduction effort. Defense spending today constitutes over 55 percent of discretionary spending and 23 percent of the federal budget. An exemption for defense not only undermines the broader call for fiscal responsibility, but also makes overall budget restraint much harder as a practical economic and political matter.

We need not put our economic power at risk in this way. Today the United States possesses a wide margin of global military superiority. The defense budget can bear significant reduction without compromising our essential security.

We recognize that larger military adversaries may rise to face us in the future. But the best hedge against this possibility is vigilance and a vibrant economy supporting a military able to adapt to new challenges as they emerge.

We can achieve greater defense economy today in several ways, all of which we urge you to consider seriously. We need to be more realistic in the goals we set for our armed forces and more selective in our choices regarding their use abroad. We should focus our military on core security goals and on those current and emerging threats that most directly affect us.

We also need to be more judicious in our choice of security instruments when dealing with international challenges. Our armed forces are a uniquely expensive asset and for some tasks no other instrument will do. For many challenges, however, the military is not the most cost-effective choice. We can achieve greater efficiency today without diminishing our security by better discriminating between vital, desirable, and unnecessary military missions and capabilities.

There is a variety of specific options that would produce savings, some of which we describe below. The important point, however, is a firm commitment to seek savings through a reassessment of our defense strategy, our global posture, and our means of producing and managing military power.

■ Since the end of the Cold War, we have required our military to prepare for and conduct more types of missions in more places around the world. The Pentagon’s task list now includes not only preventive war, regime change, and nation building, but also vague efforts to “shape the strategic environment” and stem the emergence of threats. It is time to prune some of these missions and restore an emphasis on defense and deterrence.

■ U.S. combat power dramatically exceeds that of any plausible combination of conventional adversaries. To cite just one example, Secretary Gates has observed that the U.S. Navy is today as capable as the next 13 navies combined, most of which are operated by our allies. We can safely save by trimming our current margin of superiority.

■ America’s permanent peacetime military presence abroad is largely a legacy of the Cold War. It can be reduced without undermining the essential security of the United States or its allies.

■ The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have revealed the limits of military power. Avoiding these types of operation globally would allow us to roll back the recent increase in the size of our Army and Marine Corps.

■ The Pentagon’s acquisition process has repeatedly failed, routinely delivering weapons and equipment late, over cost, and less capable than promised. Some of the most expensive systems correspond to threats that are least prominent today and unlikely to regain prominence soon. In these cases, savings can be safely realized by cancelling, delaying, or reducing procurement or by seeking less costly alternatives.

■ Recent efforts to reform Defense Department financial management and acquisition practices must be strengthened. And we must impose budget discipline to trim service redundancies and streamline command, support systems, and infrastructure.

Change along these lines is bound to be controversial. Budget reductions are never easy – no less for defense than in any area of government. However, fiscal realities call on us to strike a new balance between investing in military power and attending to the fundamentals of national strength on which our true power rests. We can achieve safe savings in defense if we are willing to rethink how we produce military power and how, why, and where we put it to use.

Sincerely,

This letter reflects the opinions of the individual signatories. Institutions are listed for identification purposes only. The letter is the result of a joint effort by The Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and the Project on Defense Alternatives.

Editor’s Commentary

There are at least as many reasons to think that significant real reductions in defense spending will be hard to achieve as there are reasons to doubt that significant revenue increases will be found or that substantial reductions in entitlement spending will happen. “Political realities” are indeed daunting for any of the options the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform will consider. If there were quick, easy and obvious decisions to be had there would be no need for the Commission.

Political realities change over time in part because underlying realities eventually change political calculation. Such is the case with defense spending. After more than a decade of rapid growth there is likely to be some retrenchment in the middle of this decade, notably by 2015.

The likely path of defense spending this decade was recently forecast by the high-tech industry association Tech America Foundation in their DoD Topline Forecast 2011-2020.

Tech America’s forecast is for a real reduction in the base Pentagon budget (not including Overseas Contingency Operation war supplemental funding) of 9% or $45 billion (USD 2011) in 2015 relative to the 2011 base budget.

When taking into account the Pentagon’s preferred budget path this decade of at least 1% real annual growth, Tech America forecasts a reduction in defense spending by 2015 of 16%.

Tech America’s forecast of Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) war supplemental spending during the decade is also important to consider. Since FY10 (President Obama’s first budget) there has been an OCO war supplemental DoD budget line for FY12-FY15 of $50 billion per year. The OCO war supplemental in the FY11 budget is $159 billion.

Although the actual OCO war supplemental might come down in FY12, with the military operational demands in Afghanistan remaining elevated it is unlikely the OCO war supplemental will come down even $50 billion, let alone $109 billion in FY12. Tech America forecasts OCO war expenditures of $122 billion in FY12.

These likely under-budgeted OCO war supplemental costs should be counted as probable additions to the national debt beyond those already projected by the government.

Tech America’s forecast is for the OCO supplemental to be $122 billion in FY12, $102 billion in FY13, $69 billion in FY14 and $57 billion in FY15. That adds up to $150 billion more than is budgeted in the Five Year Defense Plan… an un-budgeted addition to the national debt.

For the target year of the federal budget reaching “primary balance” in FY15, the forecast OCO war supplemental will add $7 billion to the problem that the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform faces in attempting to balance the budget in that year.

Adam J. Hebert. Air Force Magazine, November, 2010.
http://defensealt.org/HqU73L

Excerpt:

…ill-advised calls to cut the Pentagon budget follow as predictably as the tides. Without credible analysis of strategy or requirements, critics are once again declaring defense spending to be out of control.

Editor’s Comment:

In his editorial Security Isn’t Cheap Adam J. Herbert cites the work of the Sustainable Defense Task Force as a case in point of critics of Pentagon spending recommending cuts “without credible analysis of strategy or requirements.” As a member of the task force I differ over the credibility of our analysis. But let me speak to where I agree with Mr. Herbert:

• “Security is not cheap.” In fact it is extremely expensive. When the country is hit with a financial disaster we owe it to the country and our military to reexamine our national security strategy and make sure priorities are clear and that our military investments are cost-effective. In the last twelve years of Pentagon budgets the planning has proceeded as though there is no resource constraint. Unfortunately, that is true of the last QDR as well. Those days are clearly over – Secretary Gates has said as much.

• “A well-trained, well-equipped, professional military is not cheap. If the nation wants it to cost less, the nation will probably have to ask it to do less.” Exactly. Since the end of the Cold War the U.S. military has steadily advanced its global reach and engagement. Missions have proliferated, including many that should be done by civilians in the State Department and other agencies. Significant numbers of U.S. troops still remain in Europe, even though there is no military threat to Europe that allies can’t handle. The most important take-away lesson from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that long low-intensity land wars are not cost-effective uses of U.S. military power and should be avoided whenever possible. Hopefully we can all agree there should never again be such a “war of choice.”

• “There are certainly ways to reduce defense spending…” Yes, and one that will save around $45 billion in Air Force modernization accounts is available in a choice about how to modernize the fighter fleet. The Air Force has decided to replace its aging F-16s with just about the most expensive new fighter one can dream up, the F-35. In today’s fiscal environment either the Air Force will end up with a lot fewer of these planes than planned, or they will choose to get ahead of the budget crunch and modernize with new block versions of the still best of class F-16s and limit the buy of F-35s this decade to a few squadrons for high-intensity air-superiority missions. If serious air competition emerges a decade from now we can then roll out production of F-35s (or perhaps a less costly follow-on to the F-16), planes presumably much improved with ten years or more of further fighter technology development.

Thomas P.M Barnett. China Security, October 2010.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/1010Barnett.pdf

Excerpt:

In sum, ending China’s free-riding is arguably more important for long-term system-wide stability than continuing to deter China’s military invasion of Taiwan. As globalization’s networks continue to expand at a rapid pace, America’s ability to play sole Leviathan to the system naturally degrades dramatically. That means, while the likelihood of China’s military invasion of Taiwan dissipates with each passing year, the likelihood of America’s “imperial exhaustion” most certainly surpasses it in strategic importance in the near term.

History will judge US strategists most severely if our choice to maintain “access” to East Asia by triggering a regional arms race precludes our ability to draw China into strategic co-management of this era of pervasively extending globalization—without a doubt America’s greatest strategic achievement. I cannot fault the AirSea Battle Concept as an operational capability designed to keep us in the East Asian balancing “game.” But my fear is that it will—primarily by default and somewhat by “blue” ambition—serve America badly in a strategic sense, absent a proactive political and military engagement effort to balance its negative impact on the most important bilateral relationship of the modern globalization era.

Editor’s Comment:

Barnett alerts us to a prospective instance when leading with military capability is likely to be a disservice to strategic interests.

Daniel Goure. Early Warning Blog, Lexington Institute, 03 September 2010.
http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/future-defense-budget-choices-require-clear-strategic-priorities

Excerpt:

The United States cannot afford and the people will not pay for a military that can do battle with uncertainty.

As a consequence of the need to do battle with uncertainty, emphasis was placed on a military that can cover all bases and do all things. This would not be a wise strategy even if resources were unconstrained. Not all threats are equal. Nor are all interests equally important. Finally, it is possible to make reasoned and reasonable judgments regarding how the future security environment will unfold and define a set of demand signals that would require shifting strategic priorities.

In the past, when U.S. leaders refused to make choices they allowed the military to shrink symmetrically, by cutting every program or service a little. That approach is self-defeating. It makes no sense to keep a so-called full spectrum military but continually reduce it in size.

Editor’s Comment:

Relevant passages from the archives ($3 trillion later):

Carl Conetta and Charles Knight. “Dueling with Uncertainty”, February 1998.
http://www.comw.org/pda/bullyweb.html

There is no escape from uncertainty, but there is relief from uncertainty hysteria. It begins with recognizing that instability has boundaries — just as turbulence in physical systems has discernible onset points and parameters. The turbulence of a river, for instance, corresponds to flow and to the contours of the river’s bed and banks. It occurs in patches and not randomly. The weather also is a chaotic system that resists precise long-range forecasting, but allows useful prediction of broader trends and limits.

Despite uncertainty, statements of probability matter. They indicate the weight of evidence — or whether there is any evidence at all. The uncertainty hawks would flood our concern with a horde of dangers that pass their permissive test of “non-zero probability.” However, by lowering the threshold of alarm, they establish an impossible standard of defense sufficiency: absolute and certain military security. Given finite resources and competing ends, something less will have to do. Strategic wisdom begins with the setting of priorities — and priorities demand strict attention to what appears likely and what does not.

The world may be less certain and less stable today than during the Cold War, but it also involves less risk for America. Risk is equal parts probability and utility — chances and stakes. With the end of global superpower contention, America’s stakes in most of the world’s varied conflicts has diminished. So has the magnitude of the military threats to American interests. This permits a sharper distinction between interests and compelling interests, turbulence and relevant turbulence, uncertainties and critical uncertainties. And this distinction will pay dividends whenever the country turns to consider large-scale military endeavors, commitments, and investments.

Among the visions that guide present policy, one is absent conspicuously: a world in which economic issues have displaced military ones as the central focus of global competitions and concerns. Failing to engage this prospect, the recent defense policy reviews are oblivious to the opportunity cost of military spending. And it is this lapse that gives license to their speculative methods and overweening goals.

The United States continues to invest more of its national product in defense than does its allies, more than the world average, and much more than its chief economic competitors. By disregarding the requirements and consequences of increased global economic competition, present policy makes an unacknowledged bet about the future: The Soviet Union is gone and no comparable military challenge to the West exists, except as distant possibility. Nonetheless, the American prospect depends as much as ever, if not more, on the specifically military aspects of strength. Of this much, the uncertainty hawks seem certain.

Lance M. Bacon. Navy Times, 28 June 2010.
http://defensealt.org/H3nzkD

Excerpt:

With an eye on diminishing budgets and rising tensions with Iran and North Korea, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead on June 24 called for continued international partnerships to hone a “just and sustainable international order.” He also continued his call for fiscal restraint, emphasizing that the Navy “cannot afford a tailor-made solution to every need that we have.” But the CNO still is adamant that a 313-ship Navy is needed to maintain maritime security.

Editor’s Comment:

Lance M Bacon quotes from a speech by Chief of Naval Operations Roughead at the Maritime Systems and Technology seminar on June 22nd. These quotes are misleading because Roughead is speaking not about reducing the national deficit, but rather about the Navy’s need to watch its spending in the context of growing fiscal pressures on service budgets.

Roughead remains committed to the goal of a 313 ship battle fleet. He also supports Secretary Gate’s initiative to save $105 billion within DoD accounts over the next five years. Gates’ savings will not contribute a penny to deficit reduction. He plans to plow all savings back into Pentagon programs and it is the Navy’s share of this money that Roughead wants to use to help grow the battle fleet to 313 ships.

Not only is Gates not offering to contribute to deficit reduction, but he is sticking to his goal of real growth of 1 to 2% a year for in Pentagon budgets. This will increase annual national deficits somewhere in the range of $6 to 12 billion.

Gates’ position is untenable and will not hold. If the nation is going to meet its deficit reduction commitments the Pentagon will have to contribute its share — which is at least 40% of the $230 billion a year increase in its base (non-war) budget during the last decade. This is the level of cuts the task force has suggested — it is not “extreme”, but rather responsible and realistic.

In the context of the coming national fiscal restraint, the worst thing the CNO can do is continue pushing to grow the Navy battle fleet to 313 ships. The more success he has in buying now what will prove to be unaffordable new ships, the further the fleet will have to shrink when austere budgeting arrives.

Far wiser is to start reconfiguring and trimming the fleet now and save procurement dollars for a more realistic set of priorities and a more restrained strategic posture. The task force has put forward one set of priorities for lean times. Let others suggest theirs.

Capitol Visitors Center, 11 June 2010.

Report of the Sustainable Defense Task Force. 11 June 2010.
full report: http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1006SDTFreport.pdf
executive summary: http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/SDTFreportexsum.pdf

Excerpt:

Putting America’s defense establishment on a more sustainable path may require curbing some of our commitments abroad, adopting more realistic military goals, or putting greater emphasis on more cost-effective instruments of power.

C-SPAN video of the report release briefing hosted by Rep. Barney Frank, U.S. Capitol Visitors Center, 11 June 2010.

Photos of the report release briefing, U.S. Capitol Visitors Center, 11 June 2010.

Michael Krepon. Arms Control Wonk, 08 April 2010.
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2690/treaty-signings

Excerpt:

Despite claims to the contrary, New START does not inhibit the growth of U.S. conventional power projection capabilities that, unlike nuclear weapons, are militarily useful on battlefields. Nor will New START impede ballistic missile defense programs…

Editor’s Comment:
… and that is why, despite the rhetoric of the moment, this treaty doesn’t do much to advance us toward the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons. Unbounded conventional military power and missile defenses for Western rich nations are not compatible with the establishment of a global international security regime sufficiently reliable to support the abolition of nuclear weapons.

For more on this problem see my comments on Vice President Biden’s speech at the National Defense University, 18 February 2010.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.