First things . . .
→ read more]]> Earlier this week, Max Boot responded to my post from Sunday night on the differences between Israel’s Iron Dome and U.S. missile defense efforts. Unfortunately Mr. Boot obscures the issue even further in his response than he did in his initial post. The new post misrepresents the history of missile defense, fails to properly address the errors in his initial post, continues to ignore the conceptual differences between Iron Dome and national missile defense, and erects a strawman argument as to the motives of those opposed to his views. Needless to say, I am less than impressed.

First things first, the idea that missile defense was initially propagated by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s is a conservative trope that has long been in need of debunking. Ballistic missile defense has a long lineage. As Rob Farley points out in his own piece on this subject at The Daily Beast:

Ronald Reagan did not, of course, invent missile defense; the Soviet Union fielded a system while Reagan was still Governor of California, and the Army began studying missile defense 1950s. Attributing every missile defense system (as opposed to the useless, unworkable Star Wars system) to Reagan represents nothing more the conservative hagiography.

Indeed, interest in missile defense came in response to the Nazi V-2 campaign at the end of World War II, but Prof. Farley is correct when he traces actual U.S. efforts to design and build an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defense to the 1950s and deployment plans go back to the 1960s. Mr. Boot once again asserts that Iron Dome “does vindicate Reagan’s much-mocked vision of using one projectile to intercept another.” Leaving aside that this statement moves the goalposts somewhat from his original post; the idea of using one projectile to destroy another did not originate with Reagan either. In fact, today’s missile defense systems, such as ground-based midcourse defense and SM-3 interceptors can trace their lineage to pre-SDI anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems like the Nike-Zeus and Nike-X. These early ABM systems used nuclear warheads to destroy incoming ballistic missiles rather than hit-to-kill/kinetic energy intercept technology, which became more feasible as more accurate interceptors were developed, but the idea of firing one ballistic missile at another easily predates the 1980s. It is one thing to credit Reagan for rhetorically boosting missile defense in, what even Mr. Boot admits was, a “grandiose” fashion. It is quite another thing to credit him with the developing the concept.

Moving on to Mr. Boot’s specific errors from his original post, in his response he claims that I only challenged him on one factual statement. In fact, I challenged him on two, admittedly related, errors. First, his response that his error was one of omission regarding the reliance of current national missile defense efforts on ground-based interceptors (GBI) is more than just some minor point. Our entire homeland defense effort currently relies on thirty GBI stationed in Alaska and California. In his original post he says, “now the U.S. West Coast is actually protected by a limited ballistic-missile defense system based primarily around satellites, sea-based Aegis and X-band radars, and Standard Missile-3 interceptors.” This is not merely a West Coast defense and, while Aegis-equipped ships and X-Band radars are obviously important, the heart of the current system are the ground-based interceptors. To omit the GBI is not merely an error, it falsifies his entire contention about the current status of the U.S. national missile defense effort.

That brings me to his second error. In his rebuttal, Mr. Boot studiously ignores the discussion of testing, but in his original post he claim that current missile defense efforts have “been vindicated by testing.” However, without addressing the correct interceptors, he cannot then claim that U.S. missile defense efforts have been vindicated. The testing record on GBI is atrocious. SM-3 interceptors have shown far greater capability in testing, but as I noted in my initial post, that record has been called into question. Additionally, the SM-3 variant that would be used for homeland defense is still in development so it has not been tested, and the Defense Science Board (PDF) has challenged its capability against ICBMs. So again, Mr. Boot’s claim that the United States is currently protected by a missile defense system consisting of SM-3 interceptors, which has also been vindicated by testing, is not an error of omission, it is simply an error.

On the subject of SM-3 interceptors used for homeland defense, Mr. Boot claims that the United States will be deploying land-based SM-3 interceptors—the SM-3 Block IIA variant known as Aegis Ashore—on the west coast of the United States for homeland defense. In all the research I have done on this subject, I have never heard that anywhere. The fullest articulation of the Obama administration’s missile defense plans is the Ballistic Missile Defense Review (BMDR) report that was released in February 2010. The only mention of Aegis Ashore is in regard to phase three of U.S. plans for missile defense in Europe, known as the Phased Adaptive Approach. This phase calls for Aegis Ashore deployment in Romania in 2015 and Poland in 2018. The only discussion of homeland defense in the BMDR deals with the GBI deployments in Alaska and California, and the use of a different SM-3 variant, the Block IIB, in the fourth phase of the European Phased Adaptive Approach—the same variant whose capability has been called into question by the Defense Science Board—but those interceptors will be deployed on ships in the North and Mediterranean Seas. The Obama administration has announced it will begin plans for missile defense deployment along the lines of the Phased Adaptive Approach in both the Middle East and Asia, but as far as I know, no details have been released yet. Besides, the SM-3 Block IIB, the only variant that is supposed to have capability against ICBMs, is a sea-based interceptor—the Block IIA is the variant based ashore. Nowhere on the Missile Defense Agency’s website did I see anything regarding plans for a west coast Aegis Ashore deployment—the link Mr. Boot provides does not either, it is a conceptual diagram of a layered missile defense architecture, not a deployment plan. However, if Mr. Boot knows something more than I do, please do let me know—this is obviously a subject I am interested in so future deployments are certainly something I would like to learn more about.

Back to the matter at hand, the main problem with Mr. Boot’s response is that he still fails to grapple with the larger conceptual difference between Iron Dome and other ballistic missile defense efforts. To this end, he denigrates the difficulty of intercepting longer-range ballistic missiles due to prep and flight times and states, “Qassam rockets can be set up with no notice and detonate 30 seconds after launch. The fact that the Iron Dome system has been 90 percent successful, if initial reports are to be believed, is actually quite impressive.” I know of no one who has said intercepting rockets is easy, and if initial reports are correct, Iron Dome’s performance has been impressive. However, it is a fundamentally different task to intercept conventional, subatmospheric rockets than it is to attempt exoatmospheric interception of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. To compare the two is essentially to look at Michael Jordan and say, “Well, he’s the greatest basketball player of all time, so it’s safe to assume he’ll be a fantastic baseball player…” Qassam rockets move slower and, even if they can be launched less conspicuously, they do not include decoys of the type that can fool interceptors into destroying the wrong target. Yousaf Butt, a physicist with the Monterey Institute of International Studies, explains it better at Foreign Policy:

In contrast to the short-range Hamas rockets, which fly through the atmosphere during their whole trajectory, the longer-range ballistic missiles… spend most of their flight in space. For decades it has been known that trying to intercept a warhead in space is exceedingly difficult because the adversary can use simple, lightweight countermeasures to fool the defensive system.

For instance, cheap inflatable balloon decoys—similar to the shiny ones at children’s birthday parties—can be released together with the warhead when the missile burns out. Because the NATO missile-defense interceptors try to strike the warhead in the vacuum of space, these balloons and the warhead travel together, making it impossible to distinguish the decoys from the real thing. If many such lightweight balloons were released near the warhead, the defense would quickly be overwhelmed with fake targets.

Besides just the practical matter of actually intercepting ballistic missiles, there are larger strategic issues that Mr. Boot studiously ignores. These deal largely with the difference in facing nuclear, rather than conventional delivery vehicles. There are three strategic issues that critics of missile defense most often raise. The first views missile defense as potentially triggering an arms race. Essentially, even if a missile defense is known to be ineffective, an adversary will expand their strategic arsenal to ensure they can overcome it should war break out. In turn, the country deploying defensive systems will then expand its offensive arsenal to overcome the expansion in its adversary’s arsenal—locking the two in an “action-reaction cycle” where the two continually attempt to gain an advantage over the other. The second issue is that even if a missile defense system is ninety percent effective—a claim not even the strongest proponents make—the ten percent of nuclear-armed ICBMs that would get through would still result in millions of deaths. The rejoinder to this claim is—as Mr. Boot himself argues—that even an ineffective missile defense system will complicate an adversary’s calculations resulting in a loss of confidence that will make them eschew an attack in the first place. Fair enough, but the other side of that equation gets at a third strategic issue. Those against whom it is deployed have historically viewed missile defense as an offensive weapon. This is why Kenneth Waltz referred to missile defense as the “shield that allows you to use your sword.” Keir Lieber and Daryl Press have described it even better:

If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left with a tiny surviving arsenal–if any at all.  At that point, even a relatively modest or inefficient missile-defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strike, because the devastated enemy would have so few warheads and decoys left.

This gets at the heart of Russian objections to current U.S. missile defense efforts in Europe. Essentially, missile defense creates a “use them or lose them” pressure in a crisis where one side might fear that the other’s defenses will allow them to strike first against their strategic arsenal, while the defensive system will prevent retaliation with any missiles that might survive. That same dynamic is simply not present with Qassam rockets that, as Mr. Boot rightfully point out, can be launched surreptitiously, but even should Hamas desire to fire their rockets anyway—something they seem all to keen to do—the results are far less damaging than what would happen if a nuclear armed adversary felt pressured to use or lose its forces and a defensive system failed to provide adequate protection against a first strike.

One is certainly free to argue against these objections—I personally am less than convinced about the arms race critique—but Mr. Boot does not seem to have even attempted to grapple with these issues at all. It is understandable why Mr. Boot might ask, “Isn’t a good defense the best way to keep the peace?” The answer, however, is not necessarily so cut and dry. Missile defense might complicate an adversary’s calculations in a first strike or it might incentivize that same first strike against which even a ninety percent effective missile defense system would be helpless to prevent the deaths of millions of people. It is in light of these issues, and with an eye toward the $150 billion-plus the United States has expended on missile defense efforts solely through the Missile Defense Agency—not even counting other efforts outside of it—that one must ask if Ronald Reagan’s vision has been vindicated, not in the light of what Iron Dome has achieved in a completely different context altogether.

Finally, to close out his post, Mr. Boot claims, “I remain puzzled by the emotional response generated by any advocacy of missile defense.” In this, he’s partly correct. Missile defense has often been an emotional issue. Debates over deployment have often led to impassioned pleas and denunciations from both sides. The Safeguard ABM system planned by the Nixon administration gained Senate approval only when Vice President Spiro Agnew cast a vote in favor of deployment after a heated Senate debate ended in a 50-50 vote. However, missile defense proponents are just as emotional in their advocacy and, especially in this case, their desire to see Ronald Reagan vindicated. As regards my initial response to Mr. Boot, if there was any emotional aspect to what I wrote it was disdain for a conceptually bankrupt and factually inaccurate argument. I find his response to that post even less convincing.

However, if Mr. Boot should like to continue, the floor is his…

The latest Gaza war is only a few days old, but already one conclusion can be drawn: missile defense works. This is only the latest vindication for the vision of Ronald Reagan… who made missile defense a major priority for the U.S. and our allies.

Boot is referring to the Iron Dome system co-developed . . .
→ read more]]> Sure, Max Boot makes terrible historical analogies, but I’ve always just assumed that the disagreements I have with him are based on honest differences and not utter ignorance. After today, I’m no longer sure that’s the case. Writing at Commentary Magazine’s Contentions blog, Boot argues,

The latest Gaza war is only a few days old, but already one conclusion can be drawn: missile defense works. This is only the latest vindication for the vision of Ronald Reagan… who made missile defense a major priority for the U.S. and our allies.

Boot is referring to the Iron Dome system co-developed by Israel and the United States. Iron Dome is designed to defend against unsophisticated sub-Scud rockets—specifically with a range less than forty-five miles—used by terrorist groups like Hamas. The system is showing some impressive results according to most reports. Boot himself cites statistics released by the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC showing a ninety percent interception rate against rockets aimed at inhabited areas in Israel. However successful Iron Dome may be, linking it to Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative—an idea envisioned to defend against nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—is absurd in the extreme. This afternoon, University of Kentucky political scientist and Lawyers, Guns, and Money blogger Robert Farley went on an epic Twitter rant in response to this nonsense. It’s a good rebuttal even in one hundred and forty character spurts, but I want to look at two specific assertions and then the larger comparison of Iron Dome to SDI.

In his post, Boot claims:

But now the U.S. West Coast is actually protected by a limited ballistic-missile defense system based primarily around satellites, sea-based Aegis and X-band radars, and Standard Missile-3 interceptors.

This is just completely and utterly factually incorrect. The continental United States is protected by a national missile defense system deployed on the West Coast—specifically in Alaska and California—but it does not use either Aegis or Standard Missile (SM-3) interceptors. The system consists of thirty ground-based interceptors (GBI) stationed at Fort Greely, AK and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California as part of a Ground-based Midcourse Defense. Aegis-equipped ships do provide tracking data for homeland defense, but SM-3 missiles are part of a European missile defense system that will deploy an SM-3 variant at some point later in the decade believed to provide some capability for homeland defense.

This initial factually challenged assertion leads to an even more dubious statement:

We don’t know how the system would work in combat but it has been vindicated in testing.

This one takes a little more explanation as to why it’s wrong. First, we don’t know whether Boot is asserting testing has vindicated GBI or SM-3 interceptors. In either case the record is far too uncertain to pretend anything close to vindication has occurred. GBIs have failed fifty percent of their tests since 1999. SM-3s have a much better record but even that presents problems. Theodore Postol of MIT and George Lewis of Cornell University have pushed back against Missile Defense Agency (MDA) claims about successful SM-3 tests, stating that in most tests the interceptor either missed the missile completely, or struck the missile body rather than the warhead—which would either allow the warhead to continue on to its target or cause it shortfall, possibly onto other inhabited areas. Not to mention, the SM-3 variant meant to protect the continental United States is still in development and has yet to be tested. The SM-3 Block IIB won’t be deployed until 2020, has not been tested, and its effectiveness at intercepting ICBMs has been called into question (pdf). There are also problems with the testing program in general. Interceptor tests are generally scheduled on days with favorable weather and with foreknowledge of when the attacking missile will be launched. Response time is a key aspect to intercepting ballistic missiles. In realistic conditions the time of an attack will be unknown and how sea-based interceptors respond in bad weather and rough seas is still in question. Also, any aggressive attack is likely to involve multi-missile salvos. GBI and SM-3 tests have only involved single missile attacks. In other words, it is impossible to say current missile defense capabilities have been “vindicated” by testing.

As far as the larger comparison of Iron Dome to SDI, the two could not be more different. SDI was envisioned to defend against intercontinental-range ballistic missiles, of which the Soviets had thousands. Even today’s high tech interceptors would not meet the futuristic vision Reagan laid out of lasers in space that could destroy enemy ICBMs in their boost phase—a vision commonly derided as Star Wars. The type of rockets fired by Hamas are nowhere near as sophisticated as the type of missiles GBI and the SM-3 interceptors are meant to defend against today. Iron Dome is designed to defend against sub-Scud rockets that do not leave the atmosphere. GBIs and SM-3s have the much harder task of achieving exoatmospheric interception—hitting a missile in the vacuum of space where it more difficult to discern warheads from decoys or chaff

Besides, as Farley pointed out on Twitter, even if a national missile defense system achieved the type of ninety percent interception record Boot claims Iron Dome has, it is irrelevant if that remaining ten percent consisted of ICBMs with nuclear warheads. There are generally two counterarguments posed when this is pointed out. The first rejoinder consistently revolves around the idea that missile defense need not be one hundred percent effective; it only needs to complicate an adversary’s strategic calculations—that it will reduce their confidence that they could successfully execute an attack. While this is one possibility, it might also provide them an incentive to expand their arsenal to ensure they could overcome U.S. defenses or not leave themselves vulnerable to an American first strike. There is some evidence that this dynamic is partly driving current growth in China’s strategic arsenal.

The other counterargument concedes that missile defense would not work against larger, sophisticated missile arsenals like those of Russia or China but would be useful against smaller, rogue states like Iran or North Korea—which provide justification for current missile defense efforts. This may be true to a certain extent, but it eschews anything resembling a cost-benefit analysis. The United States has spent (pdf) $150 billion just on those missile defense systems developed and procured by the Missile Defense Agency since 1985. On the other hand, Iran still has neither nuclear weapons nor delivery systems capable of reaching the United States and North Korea’s most recent missile test once again failed miserably. It is understandable to seek a defense against even limited threats from regimes such as those in Tehran and Pyongyang, but it should come with some cognizance of the costs involved. Under any circumstances, comparing efforts at defending against Iran and North Korea to Reagan’s vision of making the Soviet strategic arsenal “impotent and obsolete” is ridiculous. An even more ridiculous assertion is the one that conflates Iron Dome with SDI.

Taubman attempts to piggyback off the . . .
→ read more]]> Blogging has been slightly slower than my usual prolific pace lately due mostly to the soul crushing experience that is the first year of grad school the large amount of reading one encounters in their first year of graduate study. While I try to get caught up I thought I would indulge in some shameless self-promotion. In the latest edition of Cato Journal, a public policy journal published by the Cato Institute, I have a review* of Philip Taubman’s book The Partnership: Five Former Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb.

Taubman attempts to piggyback off the recent advocacy of George Schultz, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and Henry Kissinger, and to a lesser extent Sidney Drell, to tell the story of how they came to support nuclear abolition and to make his own argument for disarmament in the process. Needless to say, I was not impressed:

Commonsense solutions though are missing from The Partnership. Doing “something big” seems to be more important than doing something feasible, or simply something necessary—a fact openly acknowledged among the group. Nunn asserts that global threat reduction efforts are beginning to atrophy and “something big” is necessary to drag them back into the public consciousness. Kissinger is skeptical of the effort to abolish nuclear weapons, but he is willing to sign on to “something big” to highlight the dangers of further nuclear proliferation. Taubman never seems to consider asking whether doing “something big” might actually be counterproductive or if smaller, focused efforts might be more valuable at securing loose nuclear materials, preventing proliferation, and reducing the nuclear arsenals of the United States, Russia, China, and others.

But the point of The Partnership is not to ask those questions. Such concerns pale in comparison to the inspiration and political cover the former cold warriors gave to President Obama’s April 2009 announcement that he would seek “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” Practical matters such as overcoming Israel’s policy of nuclear “opacity” or Pakistan’s desire to counter India’s conventional superiority take a back seat when the president of the United States declares his intention to do “something big.”

The whole thing can be read here (pdf).

I was probably a little harsher in my conclusion than I should have been, but there were several aspects the book that irked me. In particular, Taubman fails to engage any scholarship that does not fit with his predetermined conclusion that nuclear weapons are bad and must be abolished lest the world fall victim to disaster, and his virtual hagiography vis-à-vis Nunn, Perry, Kissinger, Drell, and in particular, Schultz, is off-putting coming from a respected journalist. Nuclear disarmament has been put on the table, however unlikely it may be, so it is important that the merits of the argument be debated seriously—something I did not feel this book accomplished.

*I should note a point in need of clarification that I just caught while rereading the review. In discussing the potential for terrorists obtaining nuclear materials I wrote, “Such stories deal with civilian nuclear facilities, not nuclear arsenals maintained for military purposes.” I was referring specifically to the examples Taubman cites, not all cases where the possibility for nuclear theft is concerned. Looking back, I can easily see how this would cause confusion, and it’s something I should have caught from the beginning.

As far as the show’s premise, Marcus Chaplin, played by Andre Braugher, is the captain of the USS Colorado—a fictional ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) that is supposedly the most powerful of its kind. According to the show’s synopsis at IMDB.com, Colorado is ordered to launch nuclear weapons against targets . . .
→ read more]]> There’s an intriguing new show premiering on ABC tomorrow night called Last Resort. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I will still eagerly watch the premiere tomorrow night because, if for no other reason, Last Resort seems to make an interesting case study in the logic of existential deterrence.

As far as the show’s premise, Marcus Chaplin, played by Andre Braugher, is the captain of the USS Colorado—a fictional ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) that is supposedly the most powerful of its kind. According to the show’s synopsis at IMDB.com, Colorado is ordered to launch nuclear weapons against targets in Pakistan over a channel reserved for communication following an attack on the U.S. homeland. Requests for confirmation by Chaplin are refused and he is removed from command, whereupon the sub’s executive officer, played by Scott Speedman, takes command. When Speedman’s character, Sam Kendal, also refuses to fire the Colorado is targeted and hit by, what appears in the trailer to be, an air-launched torpedo. Surviving the attack, Chaplin and his crew are subsequently declared enemies of the United States and must seek refuge on a fictional island, Sainte Marina, that houses a NATO communication facility, while preparing to defend themselves from further attacks by whatever element of the U.S. government ordered their attack on Pakistan.

The plot certainly sounds exciting and the show’s trailer indicates as much:

As it stands now, Last Resort brings three questions to mind immediately: could the crew of the Colorado deter further attack with the limited nuclear arsenal they possess? How much will the U.S. government be willing to risk in another attack against the Colorado? And why, and by whom, was the Colorado ordered to attack Pakistan with nuclear weapons?

The first question would test the limits of existential deterrence given the relatively small size of the nuclear arsenal at the Colorado’s disposal. Existential deterrence was originally based on the idea that the mere existence of a nuclear arsenal of any size would provide the possessor the ability to deter attack. This theory was revised somewhat so that it was based around the existence of a retaliatory capability. Former Johnson administration National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy fleshed out the logic in a 1983 article for the New York Review of Books, “[E]xistential deterrence is strong and it rests on uncertainty about what could happen.”. If existential deterrence is correct, if the force is survivable, the uncertainty of whether a retaliatory strike with even a single nuclear-armed missile can be prevented means that even a single SSBN could deter the entire U.S. military apparatus.

Of course, a single U.S. SSBN can deliver a tremendous amount of nuclear firepower against an adversary—approximately twenty, multi-warhead Trident D-5 SLBMs—but its capabilities are small relative to those the U.S. military has to preemptively attack it. The question then becomes whether the U.S. government is willing to risk even a single SLBM launch to destroy Colorado and its crew. SSBNs are the most survivable nuclear delivery platforms, but that survivability is contingent on an enemy’s inability to locate them. In the vastness of the oceans, this is difficult even for an adversary equipped with advanced antisubmarine warfare (ASW) capabilities. However, according to the show’s Wikipedia page, Capt. Chaplin declares a 200-mile “exclusion zone” around Sainte Marina. If Colorado restricts its deterrence patrols to this area, it makes the task of locating it far easier than U.S. SSBNs on normal deterrent patrols in the Atlantic and Pacific. U.S. ASW capabilities are sophisticated enough that it could locate and destroy the Colorado in that limited patrol area. Would Washington be willing to undertake such an attack?

Perhaps the fictional U.S. government—with the uncertain chain of command revealed by the orders to attack Pakistan—is unwilling to believe an American SSBN crew would launch nuclear weapons against their own people—no matter what their government has done to them already. But judging by the trailer, Capt. Chaplin is willing to go to great lengths to prove the credibility of his deterrent and his willingness to use it should his crew suffer further attacks. “Test us,” he says while looking directly into the camera “and we will all burn together.” We will have to wait until Thursday night to find out for sure, but either Chaplin thought a demonstration of his resolve was needed or Washington decided to test him because the trailer shows an SLBM being launched by Colorado and even follows its flight into the atmosphere. Where it lands is a question that will have to wait for tomorrow night, but even this measure may still display the logic of existential deterrence—with a limited force size and no ability to produce no weapons, Chaplin is still willing to deplete his force if believes the combination of resolve demonstrated and his remaining weapons will deter further attacks. That, of course, is yet to be seen.

There’s little that can be said as regards the last question about who gave the order to attack Pakistan—that will require actually watching the show. I do not know what the future holds for Last Resort or if it will be able to find and secure an audience. I do know I will be watching Thursday night, and I hope to find both an entertaining show and an interesting exposition on the logic of nuclear deterrence.

The offending sentence came toward the end of the . . .
→ read more]]> Mitt Romney delivered his long-awaited speech to the Republican National Convention last night accepting the party’s nomination for president. The foreign policy section of the speech ran through the usual litany of complaints about Obama—his non-existent “apology tour,” he doesn’t reference American exceptionalism a minimum of 75 times in every speech, etc.—and was notable for not mentioning the decade-plus war in Afghanistan at all. But one thing he did mention, Obama’s supposed betrayal of Poland by removing ten planned missile defense interceptors, reflects an odd, but infuriating habit among conservatives.

The offending sentence came toward the end of the speech when the Republican nominee came around to discuss his opponent’s foreign policy. Of Obama, Romney states, “He abandoned our friends in Poland by walking away from missile defense commitments.” This accusation always brings to mind a simple question:  who gives a f@$& about Poland?!

Okay, maybe that’s not the best way to approach this problem—there are obviously many people who, for good reason, care deeply about Poland. But such attachments are irrelevant to strategic planning and whether to deploy costly missile defense systems that may or may not be effective and could have a detrimental effect on U.S.-Russian relations with little benefit in return. The strangest thing about this line of attack though is that Republicans—those supposed defenders of a strong, confident America that bows to no nation—repeatedly demand that the U.S. supplicate to weaker allies whose security is dependent on U.S. largesse. In such a situation, who exactly should be worried about staying in the good graces of whom?

First things first though, some facts need to be established about the interceptors in question. The Bush administration had a plan in place to deploy ten ground-based interceptors as part of a ground-based midcourse defense (GMD). This plan also would have included an X-Band radar deployed in the Czech Republic. If the systems components functioned as advertised—and based on previous test results that is a big “if”—the system would have provided protection over a large swath of the globe against potential ballistic missile attacks by Iran. And that’s a key point: the interceptors were not part of a system designed to specifically defend Poland—how exactly does it “abandon” Poland specifically to scrap a system never meant to specifically defend Poland? If anything, in a crisis, missile defense components would likely be an attractive target in a first strike and could actually make life more dangerous for America’s precious Polish allies.

Republicans are correct that the Obama administration cancelled the planned GMD deployment in September 2009, but they willfully ignore the fact that the United States is deploying 24 SM-3 Block IIA interceptors in Poland as part of the administration’s Phased Adaptive Approach. The SM-3 is of questionable effectiveness as well, but it is not true to say that European missile defense plans have vanished since Obama took office—they’ve simply been modified.

Back to the larger point though: why, exactly, should it matter to the United States if Poland feels abandoned? The United States still provides security guarantees to Poland through its membership in NATO and will come to its defense if attacked—something far beyond the power of the government in Warsaw to do in return. In fact, most U.S. allies today are not allies at all—they are security dependents. Like any dependents, how much say should they really have in U.S. strategic planning? Obviously, some consideration should be given to the wants and needs of these dependents, but it is ultimately up to the United States to determine how it uses its resources in defense of states that offer little to no reciprocal benefit. The best analogy seems to be that of parents to children: sure, it’s nice to take into consideration what the kids want to eat, but at the end of the day the grown-ups decide what’s for dinner. It is a bit of an exaggeration to say that Poland should, in essence, “put up or shut up,” but the idea that Washington needs to cater its strategic planning—particularly as regards expensive, technically dubious, and potentially destabilizing missile defense systems—around Polish needs or wants is ludicrous.

What’s most perplexing about this line of attack from Republicans is that they are so often the party that asserts America should always do as it thinks is right without fear of censure from the international community—it should ignore the United Nations and world public opinion whenever they interfere with U.S. interests. Depending on the situation, this is not necessarily terrible advice—though not universally applicable—but for some reason it goes out the window when U.S. allies are not satisfied with the manner in which the most powerful nation on earth guarantees their security. Such a state of affairs appears perfectly congruent with the Republican nominee’s admission that in a potential Middle Eastern crisis he would defer to the needs of the Israeli prime minister and not necessarily act on the basis of America’s regional or global interests. Apparently it’s too much to ask the author of a book called No Apology: The Case for American Greatness to consider his country great enough not to pander to weaker U.S. allies at the expense of U.S. taxpayers for questionable strategic benefits.

This question is commonly answered in the affirmative, as the general assumption seems to be that . . .
→ read more]]> A former classmate of mine, Mira Rapp-Hooper, recently had an excellent post at The Diplomat laying out the case for why Japan is unlikely to pursue its own nuclear deterrent. Mira is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and her thoughts on matters of nuclear proliferation are always worth reading. That being said, a discussion of whether this country or that will go nuclear at some point always raises a simple question in my mind:  should the United States really care?

This question is commonly answered in the affirmative, as the general assumption seems to be that any and all nuclear proliferation will have detrimental effects on U.S. security. Former National Security Advisors Brent Scowcroft and Henry Kissinger take it on faith that new nuclear states pose a risk to America’s deterrent posture—particularly if further cuts to the arsenal occur—and that the United States must somehow be prepared to deter all nuclear powers simultaneously. In a recent op-ed the two elder statesmen proposed some questions about nuclear reductions and new nuclear states:

[T]he global nonproliferation regime has been weakened to a point where some of the proliferating countries are reported to have arsenals of more than 100 weapons. And these arsenals are growing. At what lower U.S. levels could these arsenals constitute a strategic threat? What will be their strategic impact if deterrence breaks down in the overall strategic relationship? Does this prospect open up the risk of hostile alliances between countries whose forces individually are not adequate to challenge strategic stability but that combined might overthrow the nuclear equation?

But is this really the case? Must the U.S. really be prepared to deter any new or developing nuclear state? If two hostile nuclear states ally, might the United States not be better positioned if a friendly nation with a common nuclear adversary possessed nuclear weapons of their own?

Let me state first and foremost:  this is not an argument along the lines of Kenneth Waltz’s famous declaration about nuclear proliferation that “more may be better”. With all due deference to Prof. Waltz’s well-deserved status as a legend of international relations theory, in practice his prescriptions are far less realistic than his theoretical school of thought would suggest. Nor is this an argument that all proliferation in all places is good. The argument is more akin to the idea that more nuclear proliferation simply might not be that bad.

Using the current example of Japan, what would be the likely results if Tokyo decided to pursue an independent nuclear capability? Would Japan become more aggressive in its foreign and military policies? Would an arms race accelerate in Northeast Asia, with China and Japan rapidly expanding their nuclear capabilities in a futile attempt to achieve superiority over one another? Would a proliferation chain emerge in the region as other states follow Tokyo’s example and pursue nuclear weapon’s programs of their own?

Japan is unlikely to become more aggressive even with nuclear weapons of its own for two key reasons. First, Japan has developed a decades long tradition of anti-militarism since the end of World War II. The pacific nature of the Japanese constitution and the nearly seven decades under which that norm has had time to become firmly established would present a significant obstacle to a militarily aggressive Japanese foreign policy under any circumstances. It is unlikely that Tokyo will one day decide that an offensive military doctrine is in the country’s best interest—especially if such a doctrine would raise the prospect of nuclear retaliation.

Second, and more importantly than the normative constraint of anti-militarism, Japan is constrained by other regional military powers—namely, China. Today is not the 1930s, and even if Japan were desperate for rubber and tin or oil from the Dutch East Indies, its ability to procure these resources by force, besides being unnecessary, would likely risk conflict with other regional competitors. The China of the 1930s was not the rising economic and military power of today, but instead a country in the midst of civil war, still recovering from over a century’s worth of exploitation by various European great powers. The Soviet Union at the time, while active in Asia, was more focused on European affairs and Stalin was still in the process of consolidating his rule domestically. Additionally, Moscow still had ample memories available of Russia’s last conflict with Japan that saw an Asian power defeat a European one of the battlefield for the first time in centuries. India was a British colony struggling for independence, and numerous other regional states remained colonies of powers struggling to deal with Hitler’s aggression in Europe and unable to cope with containing Japanese expansionism. Today any number of states could balance against the unlikely resurgence of Japanese militarism were it to once again rear its ugly head.

There are also important reasons to believe an arms race between China and Japan would not happen. This answer is contingent on the type of force Japan would pursue were it to obtain nuclear weapons of its own. Given Japan’s geography and lack of strategic depth leaving it exposed to devastating damage from a counterforce strike, it is logical to assume Tokyo would base its force structure around a sea-based deterrent similar to the United Kingdom’s use of the Trident II ballistic missile submarine. If this were the case, Japan would likely to be satisfied with a small, survivable deterrent force and would see little need for vertical proliferation to match the Chinese arsenal warhead-for-warhead and missile-for-missile. Even if Japan were to pursue a larger arsenal than needed, China has eschewed arms races with the United States and Soviet Union despite significant threats from both, so it stands to follow that they could maintain their assured retaliation posture (PDF) vis-à-vis a nuclear Japan should such a scenario arise.

The primary reason to believe a proliferation chain is unlikely in response to a hypothetical Japanese nuclear arsenal is that there is little to no historical evidence to back up this claim. Fear of proliferation chains and cascades and claims that the world had reached a nuclear tipping point have been around for decades but they simply have not played out in reality the way various alarmist have claimed they would.

While often providing a good guide, history cannot tell us exactly how the future will unfold. Therefore, it is important to look at which potential proliferators might follow in the footsteps of a nuclear Japan. A brief list of potential candidates might include South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. These are the states most likely capable of supporting an indigenous nuclear weapons program, but it is difficult to understand what incentive a nuclear Japan might provide for them to pursue their own nuclear capabilities. The most likely candidate to go nuclear under these circumstances is South Korea. Historical animosities stemming from the Japanese occupation of the peninsula still exist, but are fears that events may repeat themselves realistic enough to cause Seoul to reverse course and restart a long dormant nuclear weapons program? If anything, a nuclear Japan—while certainly causing a degree of anxiety—might be somewhat reassuring to South Koreans due to common concerns over North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.

There are certainly normative concerns about the overall nonproliferation architecture that are not answered in this post, but an initial look suggests that were Japan to pursue nuclear weapons, the consequences might be, at least, less-than-apocalyptic. And, of course, this is all hypothetical for now and for the foreseeable future. As Mira ably demonstrates, Japan is unlikely to pursue nuclear weapons of its own any time soon. But it is important to ask whether or not the consequences of such an occurrence are really as bad as some seem to assume.

Congressman Adam Smith of Washington is generally pretty sharp on a wide-range of defense and foreign policy issues. As the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, he has displayed an admirable for addressing policy, strategy, and legislation in a thoughtful manner. Many of the positions he holds are of debatable quality, but that’s largely the case for the overwhelming majority of congress. Still, he seems to approach policy with a wonkish dedication to understanding the issues his committee deals with each day.  That’s why a recent statement of his about the foreign policy of a . . .
→ read more]]> Updated below

Congressman Adam Smith of Washington is generally pretty sharp on a wide-range of defense and foreign policy issues. As the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, he has displayed an admirable for addressing policy, strategy, and legislation in a thoughtful manner. Many of the positions he holds are of debatable quality, but that’s largely the case for the overwhelming majority of congress. Still, he seems to approach policy with a wonkish dedication to understanding the issues his committee deals with each day.  That’s why a recent statement of his about the foreign policy of a hypothetical Romney administration is so mind-boggling.

In an interview with CSPAN, Smith asserted that,

What you get too much out of the Romney campaign—and certainly from Dick Cheney—is whenever there is a problem, we have to step in militarily. Step after step after step, you have to wonder that if you have another Republican administration, how many more wars are we going to have to go through?

More wars? Really, Congressman Smith, you’re worried that the presumptive Republican nominee will involve America in more wars? I guess MORE wars are something to be worried about considering how many the current Democratic president has expanded or begun of his own accord.

Now, do not confuse this for an endorsement of either Romney or his foreign policy stances—which have ranged from vacuous to downright insane depending on the issue. Additionally, Governor Romney would, by some estimates, add $2 trillion dollars to debt with his defense spending plans.

But if “more wars” is the standard for foreign policy failure, then President Obama has done a fine job of that himself. President Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, started a new war over Libya (while denying it actually was a war), and exponentially increased the number of drones being used in places like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Perhaps this is overlooked because Obama approaches war with a more subtle style than his predecessor—noticeably absent are the carrier landings, exhortations to Iraqi insurgents to “bring it on,” or assessments that the U.S. is “kicking ass”—but the substance remains remarkably similar.

Foreign policy has played little role in the 2012 election so far, and that is likely for two reasons. First, voters tend not to care about foreign policy under most circumstances, and that is particularly true this year what with the ongoing economic doldrums garnering most of the attention. Second, there is very little difference between the candidates on foreign policy. Sure, Mitt Romney has tried to pretend there is, but his lack specificity on even issues like Iran and Afghanistan demonstrates that he has few ideas for doing things differently than Obama has.

For President Obama’s part, he ran in 2008 as representing a sharp break from his predecessor—in particular on foreign policy, where his early opposition to the Iraq War contributed greatly to his appeal. Rep. Smith is obviously trying to appeal to similar sentiments by invoking echoes of those policies, but compared to Obama’s record as president, such an assertion has no basis in reality.

No matter how hard either side may try, a sharp break between these candidates on foreign policy is hard to imagine at this point. Given that sad state of affairs, invoking the prospect of a Romney administration as the harbinger of future wars just makes Democrats like Rep. Smith look as if they live in a fantasy world.

Update:

Peter Baker wrote on the lack of differences between the candidate foreign policy preferences in Saturday’s New York Times. He writes,

The disparity between language and policy is reminiscent of past elections when candidates accentuated differences but found the range of options available to them not all that different once the election was over. When it comes to foreign policy, what is said on the campaign trail sometimes bears only a faint resemblance to what happens in the Situation Room.

[...]

This year, listening to the candidates and their surrogates, it often seems as if the debate is about who can offer the most vigorous affirmation of American greatness. To the extent that it gets any deeper, the debate centers on who has more credibility wielding American power.

Discussing policy Iran, there is little daylight between the Romney and Obama, despite the former’s exhortations to the contrary:

When campaign surrogates debated at the Brookings Institution last week, Richard S. Williamson, a former Bush special envoy, said Mr. Romney would be tougher in stopping Iran’s nuclear program, but outlined the same tools used by Mr. Obama: sanctions to force negotiations, with the option of military action on the table.

The entire thing can be read here.

When the Democrats and Republicans in Congress were negotiating the debt ceiling in 2011 most assumed there would be some kind of deal in place. And there was—though short-term and with an agreement to make another, bigger agreement later. That last part is key, because Congress in its . . .
→ read more]]> We usually don’t comment on domestic politics here on the blog, but yours truly has been out of the blogging business for so long the best way back was to write up a short rant on Congress. I know, not exactly a challenging task, but today’s topic is actually important:  sequestration.

When the Democrats and Republicans in Congress were negotiating the debt ceiling in 2011 most assumed there would be some kind of deal in place. And there was—though short-term and with an agreement to make another, bigger agreement later. That last part is key, because Congress in its infinite wisdom decided that they had to incentivize each other to make that larger deficit reduction deal by 2012. They called the incentive “sequestration,” which basically meant that if the two parties couldn’t reach a deal on at least $1.2 trillion in cuts, this would trigger across-the-board cuts of that same amount, equally divided between defense and non-defense programs (with some items exempt from cuts, mostly benefits). Now, that is a pretty big incentive to make a deal. There’s no way they’d mess this up, right? Except they did.

Slowly reality has started to set in on Congress. Sequestration was a terrible idea and something has to be done (actually, sequestration was a very good idea, except it was fundamentally flawed in one respect: making a rational actor assumption about Congress is like expecting altruism from a sociopath). Obviously, the first instinct when realizing the hatchet is about to drop has been to repeal the entire thing. A budgetary Mulligan, if you like. This might still happen, though Democrats are actually putting up a fight here asking for a broader deal on taxes. But let’s not try not to untangle that clusterf—- right now.

When I say sequestration was a good idea, I mean it was a good idea because it was such a horribly bad idea. In other words, it was a strong incentive to get stuff done. Because who would be stupid or incompetent enough to let such harsh, irresponsible and indiscriminate cuts happen? Oh, wait… The US Congress is. But again, I digress. The reason why sequestration is bad as an actual policy, at least on the defense side, is that it does not take into account policy or strategy. It is a mindless hatchet job to the budget that does not consider what military forces the United States needs, and what those forces should do. Granted, I think the U.S. defense budget can take a pretty hefty reduction while maintaining adequate security (see this new report from the Project on Defense Alternatives on US and allies outspending rivals four-to-one), but not all parts of the armed forces are equally bloated or unnecessary and any reconfiguration of the military needs to be based on a thoughtful reevaluation of U.S. security needs and obligations. This is basic governance, especially when you can afford to have a big military: you figure out what you need, and then set the budget to achieve that policy.

There is a counterargument to this. It goes somewhere along the lines that the best way to gain efficiency in military spending is to set a hard number on cuts for the Chiefs and then tell them to figure out how best to make those savings while fulfilling their security obligations. Ben Friedman and Harvey Sapolsky have argued that defense cuts don’t require a new strategy: “Coherent national strategy is elusive, especially, now, when threats are limited. Waiting for a new strategic consensus before cutting means waiting forever, which is what hawks want. And sensible defense spending cuts are already identifiable, new strategy or not.” With minor cuts this might work, but the U.S. military is already asked to do too much already, accepting no risk whatsoever while defending against any conceivable threat (U.S. strategy documents are usually so full of hedging it makes a germophobe seem daring). In short, making large cuts in the Pentagon budget without seriously addressing the missions is irresponsible.

Sequestration is even more baffling because there are so many good ideas and proposals for cutting U.S. defense spending. While some of them are a bit old, the reports from the Sustainable Defense Task Force, the Rivlin-Domenici Debt Reduction Task Force and the Center for American Progress all have reasonable proposals for significantly reducing U.S. defense spending with an acceptable increase in risk to security (I’d also recommend Gordon Adams and Matthew Leatherman’s 2011 article in Foreign Affairs which explains the underlying analysis in the work done for Rivlin-Domenici).*

As a full-fledged cynic my gut instinct when the military-industrial-congressional complex complains about something is that I must hold the exact opposite opinion. Here though, they have a point. The warnings are borderline alarmism, with plenty of self-interest defining their arguments, but sequestration as a policy is simply dumb. And lazy. U.S. defense spending should be cut (I doubt they’d agree), but as part of a general review of U.S. defense policy. To think it would take a cognitively challenged Congress to make me feel sorry for the Pentagon.

*Full disclosure: I contributed analysis and research to the Sustainable Defense Task Force’s report while working at the Cato Institute. I also contributed analysis and research to the Rivlin-Domenici report while working at the Stimson Center.