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May 7, 2009
Exclusive: Strategic Commission Report Delivers Good News – And Bad – About Our Nation’s Defense
The Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States issued its report Wednesday, May 6th. It is both very good and in some places, very bad. Let us start with the good. The Commission recommends the United States keep its nuclear triad of bombers, submarines and land based missiles. It calls for continued efforts to defend ourselves with ballistic missile defenses. It recognizes the value of our strategic deterrent for extended deterrence over our allies and friends. It rightfully acknowledges that our European allies feel threatened by Russian coercive nuclear policy.
The Commission report also calls the previous U.S. policy of integrating missile defenses into our overall strategic deterrent a sound policy. It praises the establishment of the Proliferation Security Initiative, which was established out of the groundbreaking success in shutting down the A.Q. Khan “Nukes ‘R Us” smuggling operation and the end to the Libyan nuclear weapons program during the Bush administration. It also says the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, again established by the Bush administration, is a firm foundation for continued work in preventing such an attack on the United States.
In a real surprise, the Commission speaks intelligently about what deterrence is. It calls for the U.S. to maintain a strong nuclear deterrent and explains the U.S. must hold at risk assets held by the “bad guys” in order to reduce the potential damage to the United States and its allies should deterrence not hold. Says the Commission: “Damage limitation is achieved not only by active defenses, including missile defense, but also by the ability to attack forces that might yet be launched against the United States and its allies.”
The report points out what Secretary Gates said recently and that is the every major nuclear power on the planet, except the United States, is modernizing their nuclear forces, although in the case of Great Britain their modernization consists of replacing their submarine fleet with new Tridents. This is true as the U.S. does not yet have full-up plans for how we will maintain our deterrent Triad into the future. Our ICBMs have undergone a $7 billion life-extension plan that is nearing completion that takes them to at least 2020 according to the Vice Commander of the United States Air Force Space Command General Deppe. Our submarine launched missiles are going forward with a similar extension program. A follow-on submarine is planned. But a new strategic bomber program has been cancelled by the incoming administration.
However, the Commission eloquently explains the value of the land based leg of the Triad, a point that is critical in light of a number of critics urging its elimination. Said the report: “The ICBM force imposes on a prospective aggressor the need to contemplate attacking only with very large numbers of nuclear weapons, substantially depleting its forces while ensuring a devastating response by the United States. The force is also immediately responsive in a highly controlled manner. And for the foreseeable future, there is no prospect that a significant portion of the ICBM force can be destroyed by a preemptive strike on the United States by small nuclear powers…” And thus the report does not endorse the foolish notion of de-alerting our nuclear weapons.
The bad portion of the report involves missile defense and proliferation. In an almost grudging fashion the Commission supports the deployment of missile defenses against long range missile threats but does so only if the effectiveness of such defenses is demonstrated and if the numbers deployed take into account the legitimate concerns of Russia and China concerning strategic stability. This is short hand for maintaining a continued mutual hostage relationship not only with Moscow but with Peking. This means the U.S. can protect Taiwan from Chinese aggression but not to the extent that we protect our nation from long range Chinese missiles. In this way, China can hold hostage American cities as a means of preventing us from coming to the defense of Taipei.
Even worse, the Commission does not discuss with any clarity the extent of the missile threats to the United States from Iran and North Korea, most especially the recent rocket launch by Pyongyang which splashed down some 4000 kilometers into the Pacific Ocean, a range not before demonstrated. And this further highlights the reports failure to accurately discuss proliferation matters.
While understanding the benefits of extended deterrence for non-proliferation, the report rests much of its proposed initiatives on the benefits of refocused and reprioritized diplomacy, which the Commission says they hope will involve the proper mix of incentives and disincentives to positively influence “Iranian and North Korean decision making.” Though they acknowledge that without a “fundamental transformation of international politics” there will be no chance to eliminate nuclear weapons, they continue the fanciful idea that if the United States and Russia lead, others such as North Korea and Iran will follow. They further note that U.S. foreign policy in general can set the right tone as to make counter proliferation policy more likely to succeed. This is another way of saying “If we are loved, the bad guys won’t be so bad.”
This unfortunate aspect of the report is repeated in the letter from the chairman, the former Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, William Perry. He notes the U.S. must maintain a deterrent even as it leads efforts in counter proliferation, and that such a strategy had “deep foundations” in U.S. policy, a “lead but hedge” strategy. Fair enough. But then he says there is need for U.S. leadership by example, a slap at the previous administration for sure. He says that the time is possible for the opportunity to reduce nuclear dangers because the Russians have indicated a “willingness to undertake a serious dialogue with the United States,” while obliquely blaming the previous administration for Moscow’s implied previous lack of interest in such matters.
Dr. Perry quite correctly notes the dangers of nuclear terrorism, but implies that terror groups such as al Qaeda could get weapons if sold or stolen. But there is a third avenue – and that is that state sponsors of terrorism, whether North Korea or Iran, for example, would GIVE such weapons to their terrorist proxies for use against the United States or its allies. While it may be true “no terror group” can build a nuclear weapon from scratch, “terror states” such as Iran can and apparently are rushing to do so.
And here the counter proliferation policy being pursued by Perry falls short. He makes much of the fact that an effective counter proliferation regime will require a great deal of international cooperation. Again, fair enough. But isn’t this obvious? And why then go and make America the heavy: “But cooperation of other nations increasingly depends on whether these nations perceive the United States and Russia are moving to seriously reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in their own force posture and are continuing to make significant reductions in their nuclear arsenals.” He does blames Russia for its new nuclear programs and reckless nuclear rhetoric, (correctly in my view), but then trashes the U.S. for developing nuclear “bunker busters” – which he himself pushed to development and deployment in the United States during the Clinton administration, but which is no longer on the U.S. nuclear agenda. [Ironically, the report itself admits that the Bush administration did in fact lessen the extent to which the U.S. would reply on nuclear weapons in its defense posture, a point the Chairman neglects to mention.]
As for the supposed “stall” in nuclear warhead reductions to which he refers, the past eight years has seen the U.S. reduce its nuclear weapons from 6000 deployed warheads to less than 2200, a reduction of nearly 80 percent, all accomplished by the Bush administration. This compares to the Clinton administration during which the START II treaty – completed in 1992 – failed to be ratified by both the Russian Duma and the US Senate in the same form and thus never entered into force.
Despite these facts, Dr. Perry claims the Clinton administration negotiated a new arms control treaty with the Russians – it didn’t – but that the U.S. Senate failed to ratify it. As for START II, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate did ratify the treaty signed by Bush and Yeltsin. The problem was when the Russians ratified the treaty, they did so only under the condition that the U.S. not be able to deploy missile defenses. The treaty thus never went into force.
For some reason, Dr. Perry is enamored by the idea that only if the United States is seen as seriously seeking to eliminate nuclear weapons will North Korea and Iran either stop their nuclear programs or be successfully pushed to do so. The logic escapes me, but apparently for some reason nations that should be cooperating with us – say Burma, Gabon, and Haiti – will somehow join the world collective and join in our efforts to eliminate the nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea but only if the United States demonstrates the proper moral behavior to earn their help.
This implies that if such countries had not remained on the sidelines, and had instead actively participated in sound counter proliferation activities, the two rogue-state nuclear programs, (Iran and North Korea), could have been eliminated some time ago. This further implies that only because the U.S. was acting without proper moral authority – shorthand for the Bush administration’s supposed go it alone cowboy type foreign and defense policy – did these nations withhold their critical help.
I don’t buy it. And as Sen. Jeff Sessions said May 5th, such a strategy apparently has things backward. The reductions in US and Russian nuclear stockpiles, welcome as such measures might be if not undermining of deterrence, are not what everyone has identified as the most serious threat, which are rogue state sponsors and their terrorist group proxies seeking to use nuclear weapons against the United States and its allies.
The Taliban may be within weeks of taking down the government of Pakistan. They will not be dissuaded from their chosen path should the U.S. meet some new “international morality test.” Whether through the use of arms control, counter proliferation, divestment, nuclear forensics, port and maritime security, counter insurgency, missile defense, interdiction, deterrence, or yes, eliminating terror sponsoring regimes, the United States will successfully fight this scourge of nuclear terrorism, but we will do so with our eyes wide open. The Commission’s report actually helps considerably in this respect. The chairman’s letter does not.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting company in Potomac, Maryland.
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