Foreign Policy In Focus

In a critical op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor titled A 'New START' to an arms race between the US and Russia? Yousaf Butt of the Federation of American Scientists outlines just how missile defense, among other things, mucked up the New START arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia. Butt writes that

… the domestic bargains struck to ensure the passage of this modest treaty in the US were much more significant – and, ultimately, destabilizing – than its meager benefits. Huge funding increases for America’s nuclear-weapons complex and “modernization” programs as well as the green-lighting of the flawed missile-defense system were offered as concessions to reluctant hawks to get their agreement to sign on the dotted line. Obama entered office not favoring the ill-tested missile defense system but changed his mind because he needed additional votes to pass New START.

But, writes Butt (sorry, couldn't resist)

… this missile-defense “time bomb” in New START is what is now going off. … The problem with European missile defense is that while it’s designed to counter Iran, the faster interceptors due to come online in 2018 will also be able to engage Russian warheads, upsetting this all-important perception of parity. … The anticipated increase in security by slightly reducing strategic-nuclear-warhead numbers is now more than negated by the poisoning of relations with Russia over missile defense [which isn't even] actually effective against Iran or North Korea.

Meanwhile

It is not only the monetary cost of the funding increase for the nuclear-weapons complex and missile defense, totaling about $200 billion over the next decade, but also the negative arms control blowback that make the domestic ransom paid to get passage of New START a ridiculously bad deal. The huge concessions made were simply not worth the modest goals of the treaty and, in fact, are now actively undermining it. A proper cost-benefit analysis carried out before acceding to the demands of defense-hawks would have clearly indicated this.

Butt's conclusion? "Arms control treaties should not be ratified at any cost." By which he doesn't that arms control treaties should never be ratified, but only if the cost is too high. He continues (emphasis added).

It would have been wiser to have no New START treaty and no missile defense and no large funding increases for the nuclear-weapons complex, than having all three as we now do. In fact, signing such treaties casts Russia as an adversary and there are some sound arguments to avoid such neo-cold-war treaties in the future. The data-exchange and transparency measures could have been negotiated without a formal treaty – and without the domestic ransom.

Focal Points readers owe it to themselves to read the rest of Butt's op-ed.

Never fear -- Global Security Newswire reports:

Major cities and other communities in the United States can take a number of preparedness measures to drastically reduce the number fatalities and illnesses that would follow a nuclear strike, a leading nongovernmental organization declared.

Something called Rad Resilient City was created by the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC (the University of Pittsburgh). No indication what Rad means, but Global Security Newswire explains that it's

… a seven-point checklist … that communities can implement to better protect residents from radioactive fallout after an atomic blast. … starting with obtaining broad community support for nuclear incident preparedness; conducting an ongoing public education campaign on … how people can protect themselves. … The plan also calls for establishing a rapid system for mapping and monitoring radioactive fallout [and] developing strategies and logistics for a large-scale, phased evacuation of a municipality.

… Monica Schoch-Spana, a senior associate at the center. … rejected the assumption that lives cannot be saved after such a catastrophic event. "We must reverse this fatalistic thinking." she said during the panel discussion.

Here's a testimonial "Rad Resilient City" from its website.

"UPMC has presented us all with a gift today -- they've given us this preparedness checklist that can help us go back to our families, our communities, our businesses." Tammy Taylor, Leader, Nonproliferation Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory

New York City dad to his family: "The Center for Biosecurity has brought us all a wonderful gift."

Little Emma: "What is it, daddy?"

Dad: "Why, it's a plan to help us survive and recover from  a nuclear attack."

Emma: "Oh, daddy. We don't ever have to be afraid of anything again."

Dad: "Actually, we won't be 100% secure, Emma, until America is completely protected by missile defense."

Emma: "I'll put that on my Christmas list and send it to Santa!"

Mom: "What's most important is that we'll be together as a family, even as we die a slow death by radiation poisoning."

Yes, Ms. Taylor, cities and regions might find the Center for Biosecurity preparedness plans a useful gift. Though where they'll find the funding is another question. But if yours is like most American families, the silence with which the checklist is met will be deafening.

Failing to demonstrate an interest in preparing for an attack might seem fatalistic to the Center for Biosecurity's Ms. Schoch-Spana. But, one suspects that most Americans have no stomach for thinking about and preparing for a nuclear attack with all that it implies about living through the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse. In fact, preventing the attack would be the gift that keeps on giving.

Besides, what's truly fatalistic is when the United States can't envision a national security policy without weapons which can't be used lest they invite retaliation that condemns us to, if not obliteration, a kind of living death for a generation or two.

Meanwhile, the Center for Biosecurity and the government might count 100,000 dead in a nuclear terror attack on a city rather than 400,000 a triumph of civil defense. But to the inhabitants of the city it's a Pyrrhic victory. Especially considering the hell that the 300,000 who were "saved" will be living through.

It's true that Russia seems to feel that it can't divest itself of many more strategic nuclear weapons (the kind you're familiar with). In his notes from the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., the Arms Control Association's Greg Thielmann explains.

The 1000 warhead central limit posited for a New START follow-on agreement by numerous American analysts was also endorsed by Russian participants on two separate Carnegie panels. [But] Sergei Rogov of Russia's USA and Canada Institute predicted that Russia would be willing to reduce to "something like 1000" in the next round. He said this would be a likely floor for bilateral arms control because of Russia's concern with maintaining clear superiority over Chinese and other third-party strategic systems.

But

Equally as circumscribing to further disarmament, though, are issues other than strategic nuclear weapons. There was also fresh evidence in the Carnegie discussions . . . that future enhancements of U.S. strategic missile defenses and Russian resistance to tactical nuclear weapons limits threaten to derail further progress. Indeed, [Carnegie Moscow's] Alexei Arbatov assessed "dim prospects" for a New START follow-on agreement. . . . not because of any problems inherent to a 1000 warhead limit [but] because of the difficulty of resolving the "thorny" issues [such as] missile defense . . . and tactical nuclear weapons.

It's ironic that ancillary issues tie the hands of nuclear negotiators as much as reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons proper. This is especially the case in light of how laughable those issues are. Everyone knows that missile defense isn't effective against the warheads of any nuclear state except maybe, on a good day, North Korea's. As for tactical (scaled down for battlefield use) nukes, does Russia really foresee a time when it will be lighting those suckers off in the middle of a firefight, thus sowing radiation to all, friend or foe?

Cross-posted from the CUNY Graduate Center Advocate.

If you followed the halting progress that the New START nuclear treaty made towards ratification at the end of last year, you know missile defense was a bone of contention. Russians fear its implementation while American conservatives fear the implications on national security of its lack of implementation. Nevertheless, Republican senators swallowed their pride and ratified New START while the Obama administration managed to win Moscow's acknowledgment that current U.S. missile defense systems were no threat to Russia.

Wait, missile defense is still around? "Star Wars" gained infamy at the 1986 Reykjavík summit when it became the security blanket that Ronald Reagan couldn't relinquish in return for the prospect held out by Mikhail Gorbachev of the abolition of nuclear weapons. Replete with lasers, particle-beam weapons, and space-based systems, hasn't it since been laughed off the national security landscape? 

Besides the experimental nature of the weapons, it was obvious that, during the Cold War, a system that could stop Russia's prodigious ICBMs from raining down on the United States was decades from coming to fruition. But, thanks in part to relentless lobbying by the likes of right-wing defense think tanks such as the National Institute of Public Policy, once the Cold War ended, the defense establishment decided that, instead of turning a crisis -- peace -- into an opportunity -- cutting back defense spending -- it would turn the newfound lack of a crisis into one.

In other words, at least for the purpose of the missile defense discussion, it conceded that Russia's nuclear weapons were no longer a central concern of the United States. Instead, it reconfigured the concept of missile defense as a way to halt nuclear attacks from rogue countries with their starter kit nuke programs, such as North Korea and, ostensibly, Iran. Russia, of course, wasn't buying that. For instance, while the missile defense program on U.S. soil has been winnowed down to Ground-Based Interceptor missiles, they're based in the region of the United States in closest proximity to Russia -- Alaska and California.

Meanwhile, in September 2009, President Obama announced that the United States was scrapping plans for missile-defense sites in East Europe, in favor of the sea-borne Aegis system. But the United States still harbors long-range plans to to install missile-defense systems just to the west of the former Soviet Union. Besides, though temporarily mollified enough to sign New START, Moscow has long doubted that missile defense is meant to intercept missiles from North Korea and Iran because it knows full well both states are a long way from fielding missiles that can reach Europe. Russia, of course, deploys its own missile-defense, such as the S-300 anti-ballistic missile. In fact, it had planned to sell the system to Iran until a recent round of U.N. sanctions against Iran forced Russia to abandon that idea.

The fundamental question that the controversy over missile defense evokes is: How can a nuclear power, such as Russia, object to the wish of another nuclear power, such as the United States, to defend itself with weapons intended solely to block Russia's weapons once launched, not target its soil and people?

In other words, how can a state be faulted for attempting to erect a shield to shelter it from nuclear weapons? Turns out, conventional thinking on nuclear strategy holds that missile defense upsets -- "destabilizes" -- the whole nuclear-deterrence apple cart.

Here's how it works. A state -- Russia again -- is considered vulnerable to a first, or initial, strike by the United States, during the course of which many of its surface (as opposed to those based in submarines, which are, of course, mobile) nuclear weapons would be wiped out. (This argument requires a suspension of belief that Russia would refrain from launching a counterattack on warning, that is, while the U.S. missiles were in the air, instead of waiting until they struck  -- still the only sure-fire method of verifying a nuclear attack.)

Russia's retaliatory force would be further diminished if much of it was destroyed while in the air by U.S. missile defense. (This requires a suspension of belief that the day when missile defense is that effective will ever come). The crux of this theory is that since Russia knows that under this arrangement it's going to lose missiles both on the ground and in the air it's motivated to build more to compensate. (Why Russian missile defense isn't considered destabilizing to America's "deterrent" is a question seldom, if ever, raised.)

That's what nuclear strategists mean when they make the claim that missile defense destabilizes deterrence -- it disturbs the fragile "balance of power." I know: you're incredulous that in the same year in which we toast the Cold War's two-decade-old demise that the United States and Russia still relegate themselves to such old-school thinking. The other supposedly destabilizing characteristic of building a missile defense system is that it's a red flag to Russia signaling the United States plans to mount a first strike. (Of course, Moscow knows the unlikelihood of that scenario; it's just playing politics. 

Ironically in the 1960s and 1970s roles were reversed. The United States feared Soviet anti-ballistic missile defense and consequently fortified its ballistic missile offense. But the two superpowers realized that it was to the benefit of each to refrain from running what's been called a "missile defense arms race." The 1972 ABM Treaty set a limit to missile defense systems and offensive warhead totals were reduced in kind during the 1980s and 1990s. But, in defiance of the common wisdom that held that reductions in nuclear weapons required keeping missile defense to a minimum, the Bush administration withdrew from the ABM treaty in 2002.

Again, it must be asked: why does the burden fall on the designated victim to keep its defenses to a minimum lest the aggressor augment its armaments? It's like saying the best defense is a bad defense.

Counterintuitive to a fare-thee-well, this argument provides ammunition for conservatives. First, though, we need to mention that many of those who support missile defense share Reagan's child-like fantasy of an umbrella that will shield us from the very same weapons that we're still allowed to wield. Second, consciously or not, many are only too glad to see the other side build up its offensive capabilities to justify the continuation of the U.S. nuclear-weapons industry.

Granted, steeped in game theory, nuclear strategy is not for everybody. But faulting a party for defending him or herself not only encourages passivity, it's a form of blaming the victim. Imagine holding someone who's been attacked responsible for his fate because, in the act of putting up his dukes or even just adopting a defensive crouch, he's provoked the bully into not just attacking with his fists but upping the ante and bringing a baseball bat to the affair.

In other words, those of us opposed to missile defense should cease and desist making the case that defending ourselves tips the nuclear scale. Not only do neither conservatives nor the public understand the argument, it provokes them. While polls on missile defense are few and far between, back in 2006 a pro-missile defense group found that over 70 percent of New York state citizens supported missile defense and in 2004, 84% of Floridians.

In effect, this approach resembles another mistake made by progressives: reciting the mantra that the U.S. presence in the Middle East creates terrorists. Even though, these days, realpolitik types ring in with this refrain as often as progressives, the reaction of conservatives runs something like this: since when does the United States worry about making enemies when (in their eyes, anyway) it's in the right?

But opponents of missile defense, who, by definition, are also disarmament advocates, still have a great fall-back position, right? When you get down to it, what good is this curtain of the heavens if it fails to protect us when we most need it -- against states like Russia with formidable nuclear arsenals? In fact, as missile defense stands, it's questionable whether it would even prove effective against North Korea's nuclear weapons.

But making that case is walking into a trap. It caters to conservatives all too eager to stand in judgment of a state, because of its perceived potential for mounting such an attack, as insufficiently "rational" enough to be allowed to develop a nuclear weapons program. In other words, despite failing to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Israel and India, yes. Iran and North Korea, on the other hand, no. Worst of all, it encourages a recent tendency on the part of nuclear-weapons advocates to deny the link between nonproliferation and disarmament. States deemed unworthy of nuclear weapons are to be denied them, by force if necessary, without reciprocity in the form of substantive disarmament (beyond the tepid New START), as ordained by the NPT, on the part of the large states.

Missile defense is ultimately a more defensible investment than nuclear weapons. But it's best for disarmament advocates to keep their eyes on the big picture -- nuclear weapons themselves, as well as the overarching subject of massive casualties. Missile defense is just a subdivision of nuclear weapons and when the rationale powering their acquisition runs out of steam, the umbrella of missile defense will collapse upon itself as well.

In the interim, one argument remains to which we can avail ourselves. If, however unlikely, we ever succeed in building the perfect missile defense, why would we need nuclear weapons any longer?

References

Podvig, Pavel. "Russia and missile defense in Eastern Europe," russianforces.org, August 26, 2009.

Podvig, Pavel, "The false promise of missile defense," The Bulletin Online, June 14, 2009.

Thielmann, Greg, "Strategic Missile Defense: A Threat to Future Nuclear Arms Reductions?," Threat Assessment Brief, Arms Control Association, January 16, 2010.

At the Union of Concerned Scientists blog All Things Nuclear, David Wright writes that:

"the Obama administration's approach to missile defense has been particularly disappointing -- and is potentially dangerous. Originally the administration said it would require missile defenses to be 'proven,' . . . So it was surprising when (a) the administration’s Ballistic Missile Defense . . . Review stated that 'The United States is currently protected against limited ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] attacks,' and (b) the President called the Aegis missile defense system 'proven' in the announcement of his proposed European system in September 2009."

"Neither of these statements are [sic] true in any meaningful sense. Neither the Aegis system nor the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system fielded in Alaska and California has been subjected to realistic tests against the kind of attacks and under the conditions you would expect in the real-world."

Wright goes into more detail.

The Pentagon is using sleight of hand: it is defining the "threat" very narrowly. [It] has defined a "limited missile attack" as an attack by a limited number of missiles, and by missiles that have no countermeasures. . . . But it makes no sense to assume that North Korea, Iran, or any other country would spend years developing a long-range missile to hit the U.S. . . . and not have some of its aerospace engineers also design countermeasures that would make the missiles effective against [U.S. missile defense. After all] effective decoys and other countermeasures can be built with less sophisticated technology than is needed for a long-range missile and nuclear warhead. [Emphasis added.]

Then Wright demonstrates the threat that hyping missile defense can pose to national security.

First, if military and political leaders believe they have defensive capabilities that they do not in fact have, that can lead them to make bad decisions. For example, if [they mistakenly believe that] they have effective anti-missile systems it may encourage them to take aggressive actions that are in fact likely to make another country launch missiles at them.

[Second] the claim that Aegis is "proven" has led officials to believe the U.S. should buy and deploy many hundreds of Aegis interceptors before they have actually been shown to be effective.

Wright sums up:

It would be ironic if the administration's real steps to reduce nuclear threats to the United States were derailed . . . by its pursuit of a system with known shortcomings that has yet to undergo realistic testing.