Troubles in U.S.-Russian land
Mar 10, 2010
Good New York Times article today about the difficulties in the “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations.
People may have thought it just like getting back on a bicycle, but it isn’t.
There are too many grievances over the last 20 years – or is it 80 years – between the U.S. and Russia to make buddy-buddy easily again.
Most experts thought that the New START nuclear reductions treaty negotiations would go rapidly and smoothly.
Unfortunately, not so.
The most important deadline was the December 5, 2009 expiration of the START I agreement, and the two countries breezed past that three-month-old deadline.
The U.S. nurses grievances over Russian trade with Iran and Moscow’s harsh response in last year’s Russia vs. Georgia conflict. And their crackdown on dissidents.
The Russians nurse grievances about how we treated the former Soviet Union when it was down (before petro-dollars shot up) and our persistence in placing missile defense in former Soviet dependencies. And our tendency to tell them how to run their country.
Both countries could probably extend their list of grievances as long as their arms (either connected to their bodies or their weapons).
We have heard predictions that the New START agreement is 95% done and will be concluded in a matter of weeks.
But we have heard those predictions before.
The new treaty will be worth the wait and will be positive for American national security and yes, even for improved U.S.-Russian relations, but it has been a wait.
The Times article suggests: “The American officials said the answer might be persistence and patience,” and they are correct.
Persistence. Patience. Say in over and over again.
Frank Gaffney goes ballistic -- again
Feb 26, 2010
Frank Gaffney, one of the right wings most extreme figures, goes off the deep end once again.
A long-time lover of missile defense, he finds conspiracies where there are none to prove that President Obama is selling missile defense down the river to Islam.
The Washington Post Al Kamen on Feb. 26 captured Gaffney's loony logic: "The missle defense logo that bombed."
Gaffney sees the Obama campaign logo being combined with an Islamic symbol to undermine the Missile Defense Agency-- only to find that the logo is three years ago adopted -- gasp -- during the Geoge W. Bush years.
See below.
Obama Plays Hardball with the Russians
Oct 09, 2009
In 1991, at the height of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president of the United States. He immediately heightened tensions using belligerent rhetoric attacking the Soviet Union as "The Evil Empire" while authorizing an enormous military buildup against "the focus of evil in the modern world."
A significant number of Americans were worried about the harsh negatives of the Reagan initiatives. One manifestation was the Nuclear Freeze Movement that sought to decrease tensions as well as the nuclear buildup by limiting all nuclear arsenals at current levels as a first step toward their eventual elimination.
Reagan showed his annoyance criticizing "the placard carriers", giving little credence to the groundswell of support for the freeze campaign that swept America in 1981 – 82. This grass-roots uprising was a major factor behind Reagan's March 1983 speech that initiated the missile defense program (SDI) that continues to waste billions of dollars in the military budget.
Among the protesters supporting the Freeze was Columbia University senior Barack Obama, who in 1983 published a plea in a campus news magazine for "a nuclear free world" opposing SDI and military industrial interests “with their billion-dollar erector sets."
In case you missed it…Obama on Missile Defense
Sep 21, 2009
After eight years of an Administration that seemed impervious to public opinion, what a new era we are in. Over the past three months, Council supporters and advocates sent more than 10,000 letters to elected officials, urging them to oppose wasteful and ineffective missile defense programs, including the proposed "third missile defense site" in Europe.
Last week, the White House announced its intention to reconfigure U.S. missile defense policy in Europe – a move which smartly includes scrapping the missile interceptors in Poland and the accompanying radar in the Czech Republic.
This shift in policy was prompted by a request by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense that the President revise the previous missile defense plan – a request aimed to align missile defense policy with immediate security threats, rather than long-range missile threats from Iran that do not currently exist.
According to Council ED John Isaacs, ““The decision to revamp the missile defense plan in Europe is based on technological reality rather than rigid ideology…The Obama administration’s proposal is a better choice for U.S. and European security.”
For more on the political context of this announcement, click here for an analysis by Military Policy Analyst Travis Sharp.
Franks Missile Defense Amendment Defeated
Jul 01, 2009
Rep. Franks (R-AZ) proposed amendment H.AMDT.266 to the FY 2010 Defense Authorization bill, which increased funding for missile defense by $1.2 billion which was subsequently defeated on June 25th. There were a number of Representatives that defected from their party lines, as shown below, but the general effect was awash.
Money for Pentagon programs that even the Pentagon doesn't want?
Jun 23, 2009
Last week, the House Armed Services Committee approved the 2010 Defense Authorization bill. As Travis mentioned in the Center blog, a number of proposed amendments to the 2010 Defense Authorization bill have been submitted to Congress - and unfortunately some of them show a dangerous lack of priorities when it comes to our national security.
In the next few days, some very important amendments affecting missile defense and non-proliferation issues will likely be coming to a vote. Missile defense proponents are launching amendments to reverse Pentagon-requested cuts in missile defense programs.
Yes, that's right. The Pentagon has asked for less funding for several missile defense programs that it finds wasteful and unworkable, but some Members of Congress are trying to waste taxpayer money on them anyway. Agreeing with the Pentagon's request to end funding for these wasteful programs that prohibit funds from going to national security and other programs that we do need, are the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Director of the Missile Defense Agency.
One of these missile defense amendments would add $80 million to missile defense spending by taking funds from international materials protection and cooperation, the global threat reduction initiative, and North Korean anti-nuclear program initiatives. The Global Threat Reduction Initiative is a significant non-proliferation program in the Department of Energy, which tracks down and secures loose nuclear material around the globe. Given that everyone from Barack Obama to George W. Bush in recent years has acknowledged that terrorists obtaining loose nuclear materials would be the greatest threat to our national security, it seems like these might be programs that should receive an increase, not a decrease in funding.
This is why we just sent out an e-alert about these amendments.
Special thanks to Intern Extraordinaire, Andrew St. Denis!
CLW Sends Letter on Missile Defense to House Armed Services Committee
Jun 19, 2009
On June 2, 2009, Representative Ike Skelton introduced H.R.2647, or the FY 2010 National Defense Authorization Act. This bill was approved by the House Armed Services Committee on June 17, 2009.
Thankfully the Democratic members on the Committee were able to thwart Republican efforts to attach amendments to the bill for funding national missile defense programs. The Council for a Livable World played an active part in rebuffing Republicans by sending a letter on June 15th to members of the Armed Services Committee on behalf of national security non-profit community.
The Obama administration under the leadership of Secretary Gates has undertaken a fundamental realignment of the US military. A critical component of the shift in defense policy is to eliminate costly, unproven defense systems of which missile defense is top of the list. Through its rejection of missile defense funding amendments, the House has shown its support of the President's initiative for creating a military that can better meet the challenges of the 21st Century.
Pentagon Budget Faces Uncertain Future
Feb 03, 2009
If you follow national security you know that the first Monday in February is the big, big day when the President typically submits his defense budget requests to Congress. And Monday night is the long, long night when people like Travis Sharp, our resident defense analyst, fight the paper monster to deliver us a cute, little brief we can all actually read and understand. (Ed: Travis does not endorse use of the word “cute” or “little” to describe his brief).
But this year Sharp has so far been spared the heroic duty, as the Obama administration delayed submission of its defense spending request to take an “exhaustive line-by-line” look at the federal budget. So, to kill some time he prepared a new report that documents the skyrocketing recent growth in defense spending, catalogs calls for budget cuts by key policymakers, looks at the complicated procedure the fiscal year 2010 budget is set to follow, and provides background information on four weapons systems to watch in 2009.
Speculators expect the new President to file for a $527 billion request for fiscal year 2010, 10 percent less than a $584 billion fantasy budget suggested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the Bush administration. Critics of defense thrift are already up in arms. “It doesn't make fiscal sense to cut the defense budget when everyone is scrambling for measures to stimulate the economy,” Robert Kagan argued in today’s Washington Post. On Iran, he added that “the already-slim chances of success will grow slimmer if Iranian leaders believe that the United States may soon begin pulling back from their part of the world.”
In reality, these arguments make little sense. First, military spending may provide some economic stimulus, but there are other types of spending – such as on infrastructure – that would better jumpstart the U.S. economy. Second, Obama has shown no sign of withdrawing from Iran’s neighborhood. Quite the opposite, in fact – Obama has pledged unprecedented engagement in the Middle East. Of course, it helps to remember that the United States is on track to spend 99 times more than Iran on defense in 2009.
Statements by administration officials reveal that the President is actually intent on making defense budget choices that will boost the U.S. ability to wage stabilization and reconstruction missions such as those we face in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are the missions that the United States is likely to face in the Middle East and around the world in the years ahead. And, just in case, the U.S. military’s unmatched supremacy in naval and air forces will provide insurance against any potential big-state challengers.
So the ax instead may fall this year on expensive toys such as the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor, which hasn’t performed a single mission in either Iraq or Afghanistan, and the Navy’s DDG-1000 destroyer, a vessel originally designed to support land-based troops but that now is more appropriate for blue-water open naval warfare.
Other candidates for resizing are the Army’s Future Combat Systems and the missile defense system, which has yielded mixed results in various operational tests. During the campaign, then-candidate Obama promised to “responsibly deploy missile defenses that would protect us and our allies,” but “only when the system works.”
What’s on Obama’s plate?
Dec 17, 2008
What’s on Obama’s plate?
We’re not talking chicken or fish, we’re talking more like nuclear terrorism and the war in Iraq.
When Obama gets sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009, he’ll have more than a full plate of items to deal with, addressing issues like the war in Iraq, the U.S. and now global economic crisis, global climate change, energy, terrorism, health care, the list – unfortunately – goes on and on, and on.
The Council for a Livable World’s research center has prepared – along with 60 leading national security experts – a transition report on how the Obama administration can effectively address the gravest threat to U.S. security: the spread of nuclear weapons and materials.
The executive summary and full report is available here.
The Council believes that given the rise of terrorist networks and the amount of unsecure nuclear weapons material worldwide, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism is one of the gravest threats to U.S. and international security.
“Every presidential candidate since 2000 has said that loose nuclear weapons are the most serious threat to international security. Yet for the past eight years we’ve done very little to address loose nukes seriously,” said John Isaacs, executive director of the Council and our research Center in a press release today. “What we need now is strong leadership as promised by President-elect Obama during the campaign.”
Besides unsecure nuclear weapons materials, we also have actual weapons to deal with. Almost twenty years after the end of the Cold War, Russia and the United States continue to maintain about 16,000 nuclear weapons. The arms control process has been stalled since the late 1990s when the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was rejected by the Senate.
The experts in the report recommend that Obama Announce intent to seek ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and begin working to build the bipartisan support in the Senate needed for approval.
Basically, the Bush administration was not only was sleeping (though we wish it was only that) on arms control issues, it actually reversed arms control gains made in the past 40 years. When Obama and the 111th Congress gets in office, they’ll have an historic opportunity to provide some real leadership on the most serious component of our national security.
Now you know our priorities, what are yours?
There’s not a dime’s worth of difference
Dec 01, 2008
The media has been all abuzz with the formal announcement that Obama's former favorite foe has been appointed Secretary of State. But, most of that coverage has been focused on exaggerated disagreements during the presidential campaign and behind-the-scenes political maneuvering, all of which miss the point.
On policy, Obama and Hillary are not night and day, but more like 4:30 and 4:45.
“When it comes to foreign policy, Obama and Clinton agree far more than they disagree,” said John Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World. To paraphrase the late Alabama Governor George Wallace, Isaacs added: “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Obama and Clinton on foreign policy.”
Isaacs based his assessment on a thorough examination of Obama and Clinton’s Senate voting records; national security platforms as laid out in articles and op-eds; and responses to queries in debates, public appearances, and questionnaires.
Isaac's analysis compares and contrasts their policy positions on Iraq, Iran, nuclear weapons, missile defense, and other relevant foreign policy issues. Read his full analysis here.
