Scaling Back Missile Defense

I had thought this already happened a couple weeks ago:

WASHINGTON -- The White House will shelve Bush administration plans to build a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, according to people familiar with the matter, a move likely to cheer Moscow and roil the security debate in Europe.

The U.S. will base its decision on a determination that Iran's long-range missile program has not progressed as rapidly as previously estimated, reducing the threat to the continental U.S. and major European capitals, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The findings, expected to be completed as early as next week following a 60-day review ordered by President Barack Obama, would be a major reversal from the Bush administration, which pushed aggressively to begin construction of the Eastern European system before leaving office in January.

Cue the howls that Obama is a terrorist trying to kill all of us in our beds.

Actually, this is a nod to the Russians, who found the missile defense system provocative. Russia wasn't willing to sanction Iran in the UN Security Council, and the Obama Administration wants their support. So as much as I'd like to think that the White House recognized that hitting a bullet with a bullet is kind of fantastical and untested, as the GAO says in this report, and we shouldn't blow a bunch of money trying to make it work, actually it's more of a political play. Anyway, the Administration still wants to fund regional missile defense sites throughout Europe. Leading me to wonder, if Europe is threatened by short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, um, why can't they develop their own defense system?

I know, that's outrageous, we have to be the world's protector...

...I should say that on balance this is a good idea, as Robert Farley explains. I love this notion on the right that Obama is abandoning Europe - because conservatives have been alone in their proud defense of European values over the years, right?

Coming Around?

Maybe the Obama Adminstration's apparent abandoning of missile defense installations in Eastern Europe can signal a new way of thinking about national security, instead of relying on the old thinking.

Expect the usual shrieking from the wingnut gallery. No one could ever conclusively argue why these bases were a good idea; they were supposed to deter Russia, but at the same time weren't aimed at Russia, and couldn't possibly have stopped a Russian attack. They were supposed to defend from Iranian missiles, even though no one could ever figure out a plausible reason why Iran would fire ballistic missiles at Europe. Eastern European missile defense was, in short, insane; it was conceived by missile defense fanatics in the United States, and abetted by policymakers in Poland and the Czech Republic who wanted a clear signal of US commitment to their defense. The latter motivation was defensible; the former not so much.

We cannot just be the world's protector; heck, with our desiccated financial state, we can hardly be our own protector anymore. A more balanced multilateralism will reduce our military commitment globally and promote a more lasting peace. Bugging out of useless missile defense sites in Europe could lead to bugging out of, I don't know, the military outposts in 130 nations throughout the world.

Now, if we can apply this to Afghanistan, and actually think critically about the task at hand and how best to reach it, we may have something. Although, it appears the commanders will ask for another slow and steady escalation of 20,000 more troops. We have to break out of this kind of thinking.

"I don't know what we're getting out of it."

I kind of buried it in a separate post, but the deal in Russia for the world's top two superpowers to reduce their stockpiles is a pretty big deal. This would eliminate up to 28% of all nuclear weapons on the planet. And the President followed on that success with an agreement at the G8 summit to reduce all nuclear arsenals toward a goal of eliminating them; strengthening the Non-proliferation Treaty; and cleaning up loose nukes and preventing them from falling into the hands of extremists. The President will also host a Global Nuclear Security Summit in March 2010, and has taken more legitimate steps to rid the world of nuclear weapons than any President in decades.

And in response, Lindsey Graham says:

Republicans are already demanding that Obama press Russia into allowing a missile defense system in Eastern Europe in return for the U.S. agreeing to reduce its nuclear arsenal to between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads.

“I don’t want the Russians to get something and we get nothing. I don’t know what we’re getting out of this,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an influential member of the Armed Services Committee.

“I think the administration is going to make a mistake if they don’t recognize the missile-defense components of this debate have to be addressed.”

How about the ability to live without the threat of being vaporized?

This is really the problem with a philosophy of selfishness. The idea of eradicating nuclear weapons isn't good enough. We need a payoff as well.

So much for politics ending at the water's edge...

Just Changing The Facade Of The Complex

Brian Beutler has the scoop that the media is reporting inaccurately. I know, I'm as blown away as you.

In other words, by retooling the Pentagon, Obama and Gates plan to move a lot of money around, but they also plan to increase the overall defense budget. In the final year of the Bush administration (and excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) the defense budget was $513 billion. In FY 2010, if Gates and Obama get their way, it will be $534 billion--$534 billion that will be spent much differently than last year's outlays were.

But you'd never know that from the news coverage.

Here's how Politico reports it:

"Now that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has rolled out major cuts to some of the Pentagon's largest weapons systems, the decision to accept or reject those changes falls on Congress....

With all the advance speculation about Gates' cuts, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, has already put forward a few recommendations of his own...."

Republican members of Congress are characterizing the budget changes as cuts, too.

Allow me to interrupt the great love-fest between liberal foreign policy bloggers and Bob Gates by stating the obvious - isn't the fact that the Pentagon budget is increasing, um, THE PROBLEM? And considering that the media-Congressional complex will characterize any effort to put an end to outdated Cold War-era weapons systems as a "defense cut", in the most irresponsible way possible, why aren't we limiting expenditures on a military budget that costs far more than any country on Earth, depriving us of the flexibility to pursue meaningful social investment? I think Ezra Klein has this right.

One problem with the conversation over cutting the budget is that the 20 percent of federal dollars that go towards the defense sector are considered sacrosanct. This is not a very wise move. Defense spending is second only to entitlement spending in total cost. And while it's hard to make the case that seniors need less in the way of guaranteed pensions and that the poor need less in the way of health care coverage, it's certainly arguable that America could get by with less in the way of defense spending. The following graph is ugly, but telling:



But though we know that Robert Gates' proposed military cuts will increase the value we get for our military dollars, we don't know if they will actually cut spending. Gates has announced his intention to end an array of wasteful programs, but we don't know if he means to replace them with new programs. We should have more clarity in a few days, when the Pentagon sends its budget up to the Hill. If Gates is leveraging his credibility to actually make cuts to the military's bloated budget, however, he'd deserve every encomium he's been given.

Right now, I'm not sure he deserves much for seemingly transferring that bloated budget from one set of contractors to another. For instance, the makers of the F-22 may not be happy today, but the makers of Predator drones, who will see a 127 percent increase in their spending, are giddy. While missile defense gets a cut that is intolerable to the likes of Joe Lieberman, we're still putting $800 million in taxpayer money into a system that doesn't actually work.

Let me say that there is much to like in the proposal - in particular the hiring of civil servants and firing of contractors who perform procurement - and maybe down the road, with the big lift of shiny weaponry out of the way, we can get around to balancing the unsustainably large and inefficient size of our military. But really, let's not go overboard with the "Obama and Gates go to China" talk, when together they increased the Pentagon budget.

North Korea, Missile Defense And Proliferation

North Korea's rocket launch has led to a round of denunciations from global leaders and apocalyptic visions of nuclear proliferation. Can we at least acknowledge that the launch, as consistent with other efforts by the North Koreans in this area, failed?

"The satellite is transmitting the melodies of the immortal revolutionary paeans 'Song of Gen. Kim Il Sung' and 'Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il' as well as measurement data back to Earth," it said, referring to the country's late founder and his son, its current leader.

But South Korea's defense minister and the U.S. military disputed that account. North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command officials said in a statement that the first stage of the rocket fell into the waters between Korea and Japan, while the two other stages, and its payload, landed in the Pacific Ocean.

I heard an entire hour of the Sunday shows about the rise of proliferation and the failure of sanctions without remarking on this. The North Koreans claimed this was a satellite launch, and yet nothing went into orbit. Given that North Korean society is built on juche, or self-reliance, it seems that more sanctions making them MORE self-reliant, none of which have worked to this point (they are already internationally isolated), are less crucial than loudly noting in the international media that they failed. The US response has been that the launch itself is a violation of international law, but doesn't their consistent failure to pull off a launch merit at least some notice?

Obama's speech, by the way, while including a condemnation at North Korea, concerned his vision of a nuclear-free world, which is absolutely commendable, and a first among US Presidents, to my knowledge.

Shifting on an eight-day European trip from the economic crisis to the war in Afghanistan and now nuclear capabilities, Obama said his goal of "a world without nuclear weapons" won't be reached soon, "perhaps not in my lifetime."

But he said the United States, with one of the world's largest arsenals and the only nation to have used an atomic bomb, has a "moral responsibility" to start taking steps now.

It is not only a lofty goal. Gary Samore, Obama's arms control coordinator, said the plan has a strategic aim: to give the U.S. extra leverage in opposing the pursuit of nuclear arms in adversarial countries such as North Korea and Iran. "We are trying to seek the moral high ground," Samore said.

Devoting an entire speech to the longtime "no nukes" cause of the political left is more popular in Europe than in the United States. Obama signaled he would not allow America to become more vulnerable, saying that surrendering nuclear weapons must be a global all-for-one, or not-at-all, endeavor.

In this respect, he conditioned the deployment of missile defense in the Czech Republic to the threat from Iran. Calling the system "cost-effective and proven" is a real stretch - there is no conclusive evidence that hitting a bullet with a bullet works, and it's sad to see Obama going down that road, even in service to the noble goal of a nuclear-free world.

Overall, I give Obama a mixed review on all this, so far.

Paging Bill Richardson

First I heard that my acquaintance Euna Lee was captured at the border by North Korea. Then I heard she was headed to Pyongyang. And now I hear that they are putting her on trial.

SEOUL (AFP) – North Korea is preparing to indict two detained US journalists after it accused them of illegally entering the communist country, state media said early Tuesday.

"The illegal entry of US reporters into the DPRK and their suspected hostile acts have been confirmed by evidence and their statements," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

The report said "a competent organ of the DPRK (North Korea)" had investigated the pair.

"The organ is carrying on its investigation and, at the same time, making a preparation for indicting them at a trial on the basis of the already confirmed suspicions," the report said.

The pair, Euna Lee, a Korean-American, and Laura Ling, a Chinese-American, who work for Current TV in California, would be allowed consular access and would be treated according to international law, it added.

This could not have come at a better time for the North Koreans, just when they are forcing a confrontation over what they term a satellite launch but which the international community considers a missile test. Obviously they are using Lee and Ling as bait so they can continue their launch without American interference.

There is really only one man for this job.

Pyongyang has in the past freed Americans it has detained.

In 1996, former US congressman Bill Richardson negotiated the release of US citizen Evan Hunziker, who had been detained for three months on suspicion of spying after swimming the Yalu river.

Richardson, who is now the governor of New Mexico, at the time described Hunziker as a confused young man who had engaged in an "adventuresome frolic apparently under the influence of alcohol."

In 1994, Richardson helped negotiate the release of a US military helicopter pilot shot down after straying into North Korea.

Dear Bill Richardson,

You are wanted in Pyongyang.

Best,
D-Day

Yay, My Friend Is A Pawn In An Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Game

I'm beginning to understand why my friend Euna Lee and her colleague were taken into custody by the North Koreans last week. Obviously they are being used as bargaining chips, but apparently that leverage will be put to immediate use:

North Korea has placed a long-range missile on a launch pad before a test that the United States, Japan and South Korea said would violate a United Nations Security Council resolution, a news report said Thursday.

Spy satellites detected what looked to be a Taepodong-2 missile in place Tuesday at the Musudan-ri launch site near North Korea’s northeastern coast, said Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s leading daily, quoting an unidentified diplomatic source.
Once the rocket is installed on the pad, missile experts said, the North Koreans can technically launch it within three or four days — the time needed for the fueling of a three-stage rocket.

North Korea has said it would launch a rocket over Japan and the Pacific between April 4 and 8 to deliver an experimental communications satellite into orbit. But Washington, Tokyo and Seoul have said the launch is a cover for testing its Taepodong-2 ballistic missile. Both missions — the satellite and the ballistic missile — use the same rocket technology.

Obviously the American reaction to this is bound to be tempered by the fact that Pyongyang has two American journalists in their custody. While the Secretary of State has called for sanctions if the missile launch goes forward, and Japan has put interceptor missiles on alert and dispatched warships toward the peninsula, with Lee and Ling captured, the opposition is bound to be toothless.

This just makes me feel great on a Friday!

They Call It Diplomacy

In his final year, George Bush almost restarted the Cold War by demanding that the missile defense boondoggle be placed in Eastern Europe, raising the ire of the Russians, who threatened to site their own missiles there as well. It's a new Administration and a new era:

Russia has dropped plans to install missiles near Poland after the Obama administration signalled a change in US attitude to the region, a Moscow military official has reportedly said.

The official suggested that Mr Obama's White House had made clear it would not prioritise executing the Bush administration's plan to install a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

An unnamed official in the Russian military's general staff said: "The implementation of these plans has been halted in connection with the fact that the new US administration is not rushing through plans to deploy" elements of its missile defence shield in eastern Europe, according to the Interfax news agency.

Very pleasing. We're going to need the Russians' help on a variety of issues, and even if we didn't, pointing missiles at one another for the sake of installing a non-functional Star Wars system is needlessly hostile. This is a very smart move.

Now let's take missile defense out of the budget so we can deal with that deficit, right Blue Dogs and Republicans?...

Military-Industrial Complex Stretches Their Tentacles

We're not going to get rid of lobbyists completely anytime soon. They are backed not only by lots of money but Constitutional protections (the right to petition your government for redress of grievances). And bills like the recovery package are catnip for lobbyists who want to get a piece of the action of all that money flowing into projects from the Feds (though I think the AP makes it out to be more sinister than it is). Obama has laudably tried to put in safeguards against this process and make ethics reform a hallmark of his Presidency.

The message is weakened by putting a Raytheon lobbyist into the #2 position at the Pentagon. Especially when the #1 position is Bush's leftover Defense Secretary. So the most senior appointment at Defense is someone who explicitly violates Obama's own ethics rules.

William Lynn III, the top lobbyist for Raytheon Co., was chosen by Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the position of deputy secretary of Defense.

The new ethics rules banned lobbyists from serving in the administration. But the executive order allowed waivers to let some former lobbyists take government jobs if doing so was in the public interest.

On Thursday, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the armed services committee, said he would need further information on the White House waiver for Lynn before considering his nomination.

Levin said he was worried that if Lynn had to recuse himself from any issue that could affect Raytheon, he would be unable to do his job effectively. The Pentagon deputy typically runs much of the day-to-day operation of the Defense Department and handles many key budget and procurement decisions.

Raytheon, one of the five largest U.S. defense contractors, is a key supplier of missiles and radar to the military. The Waltham, Mass.-based company also produces components of the missile defense system.

Great, so #2 at Defense will have at least some tangential interest in keeping the missile defense boondoggle alive.

The article claims that Bob Gates was the one who really pushed for this appointment. I would argue that the entire military-industrial complex did the pushing. The corporate infestation of military issues over the last 50 years has ensured that the only people qualified for these civilian jobs must have ties to industry. This is at least one area where I wouldn't expect a whole lot of change.

Testing The Young President

A day after the Iraqi Cabinet approved a withdrawal agreement that would remove US forces entirely from the country by the end of 2011, the White House is trying to snooker the press by saying that they agreed only to "aspirational dates." There is nothing aspirational about this agreement. It is a firm deadline for withdrawal that wouldn't even allow for residual forces in the country.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is out there today claiming that no we can't leave on this kind of schedule. This is just the beginning of the pushbacks that we can expect to see from the military as we move into a new Administration.

The U.S. military would require two to three years to remove its roughly 150,000 troops and equipment from Iraq safely, and the timing of that withdrawal should be based on security conditions on the ground, the nation's top military officer said today.

"To remove the entire force would be, you know, two to three years," Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a Pentagon news conference.

While Mullen said that he and the top commanders for Iraq and the region, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Ray Odierno, were "comfortable" with the status of forces agreement signed with Iraq today, he described some logistical hurdles to a U.S. troop withdrawal along a fixed timeline.

"We have 150,000 troops in Iraq right now. We have lots of bases. We have an awful lot of equipment that's there. And so we would have to look at all of that tied to, obviously, the conditions that are there, literally the security conditions," he said.

"Clearly, we'd want to be able to do it safely."

This isn't some option thrown out at a briefing. This is a signed agreement between the US and Iraq that has very strict demands on withdrawal. Mullen is treating it like some war game scenario that he doesn't like. And he wants a word with Obama.

Mullen emphasized that he still believes any U.S. troop reductions should be based on the levels of violence in Iraq - a position that runs counter to the official Iraqi stance.

Anticipating possible policy shifts on Iraq under the Obama administration, Mullen indicated the Joint Staff was planning for a range of options. "We're always taking into consideration plans based on what we understand possibilities might be," he said.

"President-elect Obama has also said is that he would seek the counsel of myself and the Joint Chiefs before he made any decisions. And so I look forward to that discussion, look forward to the engagement," he said.

This lays the groundwork to undermine the agreement, and to push the President-elect in that effort. And by the way, the most likely outcome of this is to erode support in the Iraqi Parliament, which only trusts the US as an honest broker because of the presence of Obama. If the agreement is vacated there will be a very early showdown between militia and the occupying forces, which could prove deadly for US troops and embarrassing to the incoming President.

They have a word for this, I believe - sabotage. And this isn't the only area of military/national security issues where we might see something similar. While Obama and the military may be able to salvage a productive working relationship, we have examples like the Air Force general who is already pushing Obama on the missile defense boondoggle:

The Air Force general who runs the Pentagon's missile defense projects said that American interests would be "severely hurt" if President-elect Obama decided to halt plans developed by the Bush administration to install missile interceptors in Eastern Europe.

Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told a group of reporters Wednesday that he is awaiting word from Obama's transition team on their interest in receiving briefings [...]

"What we have discovered is that a lot of the folks that have not been in this administration seem to be dated, in terms of the program," he said. "They are kind of calibrated back in the 2000 time frame and we have come a hell of a long way since 2000. Our primary objective is going to be just, frankly, educating them on what we have accomplished, what we have been able to do and why we have confidence in what we are doing."

Note the framing in terms of how American interests will be "severely hurt" if the incoming President, who's totally ignorant about us big boys and our big toys, by the way, cancels this program. Indeed, the contractors and the military-industrial complex are already gearing up to push back hard if one dime of military spending is cut.

The uniformed services are trying to lock in the next administration by creating a political cost for holding the line on defense spending. Conservative groups are hoping to ramp up defense spending as a tool to limit options for a Democratic Congress and president to pass new, and potentially costly, social programs, including health care reform.

They also like the idea of creating an unrealistically high baseline of expectations for defense spending that will allow them to claim President Obama has cut defense spending.

Let us be clear: There is no indication that the president-elect intends to cut defense spending, and indeed, during his campaign he promised to increase the size of the ground forces, which makes an increase in spending almost inevitable. As with any transition, there will be some adjustments to specific programs, but cutting individual weapon systems is not and has never been synonymous with cutting spending overall.

There are so many things wrong with this emerging process that it is hard to address the issue concisely. Promoting overspending on defense in order to forestall popular social spending is undemocratic - it creates a false tension between national security and other public policy goals.

The informal alliance between the services and conservative think tanks threatens to further politicize the military. The abuse of national security arguments to win political arguments is both morally suspect and threatens the security of the nation by delinking strategic assessment from public policy.

And now there's this Mullen incident, which is very reminiscent of how the JCS rolled Clinton in 1993 on the subject of gays in the military.

In yesterday's 60 Minutes interview, which had a lot of positive signs in it (including Obama's desire to keep moving forward on a new energy economy despite falling oil prices, to dismiss neo-Hooverist griping about deficit spending and instead use government to stimulate the economy, to overhaul the auto industry, and more), Obama was clear that he would have his national security team execute a drawdown policy in Iraq as soon as he entered office. Mullen is already laying down the marker that he disagrees. This tension will also spill over to the intelligence community. One of the brightest moments in the interview was this exchange:

Kroft: There are a number of different things that you could do early pertaining to executive orders. One of them is to shutdown Guantanamo Bay. Another is to change interrogation methods that are used by U.S. troops. Are those things that you plan to take early action on?

Mr. Obama: Yes. I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture. And I'm gonna make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.

That is excellent news, and yet there's still the matter of implementation, and without new leadership at the top, expect similar Admiral Mullen-like scenarios as Obama attempts to climb out of the muck of the Bush Administration.

"I am confident President-elect Obama understands the need for new leadership of the intelligence community and will appoint competent, capable people who will work aggressively to ensure the safety and security of Americans without undermining our laws and Constitution," Feingold said in the statement.

"For eight years, the current Administration has shown contempt for the rule of law, including in intelligence-related matters, while repeatedly refusing to work cooperatively with Congress. At the same time, the Administration has failed to develop comprehensive strategies to protect our nation against our most immediate threat, al Qaeda and its affiliates. New leadership is needed to move our intelligence policies in the right direction," Feingold's statement concludes.

It's quite something when you see a headline like Democratic Pressure on Obama to Restore the Rule of Law. But this is not totally about Obama's instincts by themselves, but the need to fight against and, in some cases, clear out those who may have more loyalty to the status quo than following the orders of their new chief executive. This has historically been an issue for Democratic Presidents in the modern age, and in this incoming Administration it will be no different. If Obama thinks he can just use his own personality - or force of character - to stop the challenges from inside his own government, I wouldn't call him naive, but let's say he'd be shouldering a heavy burden. One that he plans to make heavier by seeding the government with even more Republicans at every level.

This is something that Obama needs to think about, IMO. A "Team of Rivals" government is a nice theory on paper, but Lincoln's era was quite different - the real "rivals" split off and formed their own government and seceded from the Union, and Lincoln's political foes were kind of thrown together by circumstance. Obama is doing this by choice, and he had better be prepared to be undermined at the highest levels. In many respects, it's already happening.

Fiscal Responsibility I Can Believe In

I'm resisting the temptation to analyze every little story about what the incoming Obama Administration might or might not do once in office. I can probably find you 10 stories that would suggest progressive boldness (the Office of Urban Policy, going big on stimulus, negotiations to end the war in Afghanistan) and just as many that would suggest the polar opposite (Larry Summers, no material change in intelligence policy, general wariness to call the election a progressive mandate). All of them or none of them may be true; it depends on the unnamed source doing the leaking and how certain it is that they reflect Obama's thinking. I'm at pains to draw many conclusions from them.

However, the typical Village revisionism that warns incoming Democrats to dump the left or suffer the consequences does have me concerned. Clearly there is this emerging consensus that Obama simply must govern in a bipartisan fashion (I remember so clearly the same exact demands put on George W., don't you?) If the President-Elect were smart (and he is), he would use the concepts of this Pentagon advisory group to turn that argument upside-down.

A senior Pentagon advisory group, in a series of bluntly worded briefings, is warning President-elect Barack Obama that the Defense Department's current budget is "not sustainable," and he must scale back or eliminate some of the military's most prized weapons programs.

The briefings were prepared by the Defense Business Board, an internal management oversight body. It contends that the nation's recent financial crisis makes it imperative that the Pentagon and Congress slash some of the nation's most costly and troubled weapons to ensure they can finance the military's most pressing priorities.

Those include rebuilding ground forces battered by multiple tours to Iraq and Afghanistan and expanding the ranks to wage the war on terrorism.

"Business as usual is no longer an option," according to one of the internal briefings prepared in late October for the presidential transition, copies of which were provided to the Globe. "The current and future fiscal environments facing the department demand bold action."

This is pretty obvious. But Washington works on the shared fiction that military funding doesn't involve real money, but magic cash growing on a fantasy unicorn tree somewhere in Langley. Blue Dogs like to talk about fiscal discipline, but get funding from contributors and provide jobs for their constituents through these bloated contracts. There is a cottage industry funneling cash to these contractors, and they're exceedingly powerful.

However, despite the long odds this is a battle worth waging. Busting this fiction would remove a major institutional constraint to the progressive agenda - while the Pentagon just wants to use the money saved from outdated weapons systems to fund internal improvements and armed forces expansion, eventually the capital costs would fade and the weapons contracts wouldn't come back. And mind you, we're talking about massive, budget-busting sums, without much justification.

A recent analysis by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, assessed the Pentagon's 95 largest weapons programs and found that as of March 2008 they had collectively increased in cost by nearly $300 billion over initial estimates.

"None had proceeded through development while meeting the best-practice standards for mature technologies, stable design, and mature production processes all prerequisites for achieving planned cost and schedule outcomes," the GAO said in documents published last week to help guide the presidential transition.

It added: "Over the next five years, [the Defense Department] expects to invest more than $357 billion on major defense acquisition programs. Much of this investment will be used to address cost overruns rooted in poor planning, execution, and oversight."

All the branches of the military are in a similar situation. The Army plans to invest an estimated $160 billion in the coming years on a set of new combat vehicles collectively known as the Future Combat System. But their capabilities "are still early in development and have not yet been demonstrated," according to GAO.

$300 billion here, $300 billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. Enough to finance a new energy grid or universal health care.

(Incidentally, skyrocketing health care costs are one of the military's biggest burdens - over half of their budget goes to personnel costs, including $60 billion for health care.)

This is obviously an area where the pull of lobbyists and the military-industrial complex would be extreme. Of course this is a Defense Department internal agency making the recommendation, so there are at least some allies to be rallied. Defense contractors have shops in practically every Congressional district in America, for just this reason, so they can characterize any reduction in their payments as a jobs issue.

But there are opportunities to convert these manufacturing jobs - into clean energy construction, building out broadband, creating a 21st-century energy grid to transmit alternative forms of energy, repairing and modernizing infrastructure. Those would be sustainable jobs based on creation rather than destruction. It happens to be more fiscally responsible than the current path, too.

Indeed, the Obama Administration has already signaled an end to replacement nuclear warheadsm (as part of a big picture strategy to rid the world of nuclear weapons) and missile defense:

The incoming administration, according to the paper, may retool the intelligence under secretary office established by Donald Rumsfeld; create a new high-level energy security post; and divide the substantial portfolio of the assistant secretary for special operations/low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities.

It will also mull cuts to high-profile weapon systems, the paper states, naming three: national missile defense, the Airborne Laser and the Army's Future Combat Systems program.

Selling this to the Village as exactly the neo-Hooverist fiscal austerity they appear to be looking for, while going big in terms of a stimulus package. And putting all appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan on budget would mean that the Bush Dogs couldn't abandon their supposed fiscal principles in favor of "supporting the troops."

If there's one area where Obama should highlight a commitment to reining in spending it ought to be the military budget. It's dangerous, and the powerful forces who want the gravy train to continue would be gunning for him. But with a ground army of supporters willing to help, I think you might be able to sufficiently confuse the Village into thinking of this as a bipartisan, transpartisan, postpartisan kneecapping of the Left.

...I hope it doesn't seem like I'm buying into this Village tenet that all Democratic Administrations must only act in a bipartisan fashion. In fact, the polls show that they actually want full Democratic control of government so that the country can actually function. But that will erode if these Village means go unchecked, and a good way to deal with it is to subvert them.

The World Is United!

Except, you know, it's not.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned in a nationally televised address Wednesday that he will deploy short-range missiles near Poland capable of striking NATO territory if the new Obama administration presses ahead with plans to build a missile defense shield in Europe.

The threat, which came just hours after the conclusion of the U.S. election, appeared intended to signal Moscow's priorities to the American president-elect. It could present an early foreign policy test for Obama, who says he supports a missile defense system against Iran but has also accused the Bush administration of exaggerating the system's capabilities and rushing deployment for political purposes.

If he were smart, Obama would cancel missile defense, which doesn't work at all and is both costly and unnecessary. Yet there's this whole puffed-up serious foreign policy establishment that thinks their testicles will shrink if the big bad Russian Bear forces Obama to back down from a policy that no sane person would ever want in the first place.

So there's that box. And then there's Hamid Karzai's take:

The Afghan president congratulated Barack Obama and called on him Wednesday to halt civilian casualties as villagers said U.S. warplanes bombed a wedding party, killing 37 people — most of them children.

President Hamid Karzai said airstrikes cannot win the fight against terrorism.

"Our demand is that there will be no civilian casualties in Afghanistan. We cannot win the fight against terrorism with airstrikes," Karzai said. "This is my first demand of the new president of the United States — to put an end to civilian casualties."

Which he needs to do, of course; these airstrikes do far more harm than good. But there's also the matter of sabotage from Afghan forces seeking to undermine American troops and attack them.

This is the source of a lot of my tension today. People say "we have great challenges" because we do. The Bush regime has driven us into a ditch and I am concerned there's no way out.

The Other Consequence

I think Digby is definitely right in saying that the hostilities in Georgia will give the neocons another historical incident they will use in the future as an example of how we cannot abandon fellow freedom fighters. But there's another consequence of this resumption of Cold War-era rhetoric - the resumption of Cold War-era weapons systems:

The Wall Street Journal's August Cole had an interesting take on Russia's invasion of Georgia this weekend: it's great for Lockheed Martin, Boeing and other mega-defense contractors. A stock analyst is quoted as saying that the invasion was "a bell-ringer for defense stocks."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recently thought out loud about cutting major weapons programs like Lockheed and Boeing's $143 million F-22 Air Force raptor jet and Boeing and SAIC's $160 billion Future Combat Systems. Gates has argued that they bear no relevance to counterinsurgency fighting that is currently taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Russia's invasion of Georgia at least raises the possibility of a future U.S.-Russia conflict. according to Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), who said as much to the Journal.

As the piece notes, this is a bipartisan problem. There are pieces of the military industrial complex in every state and every Congressional district. The perceived threats we face in the world mean absolutely nothing to those who want to build weapons to face those threats. The mere appearance of a new Cold War is enough to build F-22's and missile defense systems and plenty of other prototypes. The Iraq war has been a windfall for contractors and a new arms race would just open that up even more. This is going to be unbelievably difficult to beat back, and without a recalibration of the military budget providing the kind of investments needed in moving to a post-carbon future, providing health care to all Americans and rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure will be next to impossible.

It's the cherry on top of all the neocon warmongering.

Mission Accomplished!

They did it! The US Navy hit a slow-moving satellite with a consistent trajectory after initially calling the whole mission off because of weather! This just goes to show you, missile defense can save all of our lives - as long as it doesn't rain, and the weapons it's trying to hit go very very slowly, and in a deliberate manner. And we have about a week's notice.

Exciting!

...by the way, this development means we obviously need to give the Air Force billions more dollars so they have the tools they need to help us go house-to-house in Iraq and blow missiles out of their orbit.

Plot From An 80s Film

In a world, where a runaway satellite is hurtling toward Earth, one man has one shot at history. Trapped between deceit and desire, can he realize his dream, or spawn a nightmare?

The military will try to shoot down a crippled spy satellite in the next two weeks, senior officials said Thursday. The officials laid out a high-tech plan to intercept the satellite over the Pacific just before it tumbles uncontrollably to Earth carrying toxic fuel.

He's been preparing all his life for one moment... or has the moment been preparing for him? And what does that exactly mean?

The three-ship convoy assigned to the new task will stalk the satellite’s orbital path across the northern Pacific, tracking the satellite as it circles the globe 16 times a day. The sensors and weapons in the operation, modified from antiaircraft defenses for use as a shield against incoming missiles and installed on Navy cruisers, have been used just in carefully controlled tests.

This time, the target is not an incoming warhead or a dummy test target, but a doomed experimental satellite the size of a school bus and weighing 5,000 pounds. It died shortly after being launched in December 2006 and contains a half-ton of hydrazine, a fuel that officials said could burn the lungs and even be deadly in extended doses.

Will they reach their goal... of previewing a ballistic missile system that's never worked in any meaningful test in the hopes that Congress can continue to put billions and billions of dollars into a needless boondoggle?

The effort will be a real-world test of the nation’s antiballistic missile systems and its antisatellite abilities, even though the Pentagon said it was not using the effort to test its most exotic weapons or send a message to any adversaries [...]

In many ways, the task resembles shooting down an intercontinental nuclear missile, although this target is larger, its path is better known and, if a first shot misses, it will continue to circle the Earth for long enough to allow a second or even a third try.

And can they save the planet... from exposing spy secrets to other countries...

President Bush ordered the action to prevent any possible contamination from the hazardous rocket fuel on board, and not out of any concern that parts of the spacecraft might survive and reveal its secrets, the officials said.

Suddenly, this isn't sounding like such a noble, heroic effort...

But dammit, it's important!

“This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings,” said James F. Jeffrey, deputy national security adviser.

This summer, or actually in two weeks but it sounds more dramatic if you say "This summer," strap yourself in for a non-stop thrill ride that will blow you out of the back wall of the theater... or at least, if you suspend your disbelief, will make you forget that missile defense is both useless and unnecessarily provoking Russia into a resumption of the Cold War...

Satellite. A shot into the Heavens is all that can save us from hell.

Rated R.


by dday

In a world, where a runaway satellite is hurtling toward Earth, one man has one shot at history. Trapped between deceit and desire, can he realize his dream, or spawn a nightmare?

The military will try to shoot down a crippled spy satellite in the next two weeks, senior officials said Thursday. The officials laid out a high-tech plan to intercept the satellite over the Pacific just before it tumbles uncontrollably to Earth carrying toxic fuel.

He's been preparing all his life for one moment... or has the moment been preparing for him? And what does that exactly mean?

The three-ship convoy assigned to the new task will stalk the satellite’s orbital path across the northern Pacific, tracking the satellite as it circles the globe 16 times a day. The sensors and weapons in the operation, modified from antiaircraft defenses for use as a shield against incoming missiles and installed on Navy cruisers, have been used just in carefully controlled tests.

This time, the target is not an incoming warhead or a dummy test target, but a doomed experimental satellite the size of a school bus and weighing 5,000 pounds. It died shortly after being launched in December 2006 and contains a half-ton of hydrazine, a fuel that officials said could burn the lungs and even be deadly in extended doses.

Will they reach their goal... of previewing a ballistic missile system that's never worked in any meaningful test in the hopes that Congress can continue to put billions and billions of dollars into a needless boondoggle?

The effort will be a real-world test of the nation’s antiballistic missile systems and its antisatellite abilities, even though the Pentagon said it was not using the effort to test its most exotic weapons or send a message to any adversaries [...]

In many ways, the task resembles shooting down an intercontinental nuclear missile, although this target is larger, its path is better known and, if a first shot misses, it will continue to circle the Earth for long enough to allow a second or even a third try.

And can they save the planet... from exposing spy secrets to other countries...

President Bush ordered the action to prevent any possible contamination from the hazardous rocket fuel on board, and not out of any concern that parts of the spacecraft might survive and reveal its secrets, the officials said.

Suddenly, this isn't sounding like such a noble, heroic effort...

But dammit, it's important!

“This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings,” said James F. Jeffrey, deputy national security adviser.

This summer, or actually in two weeks but it sounds more dramatic if you say "This summer," strap yourself in for a non-stop thrill ride that will blow you out of the back wall of the theater... or at least, if you suspend your disbelief, will make you forget that missile defense is both useless and unnecessarily provoking Russia into a resumption of the Cold War...

Satellite. A shot into the Heavens is all that can save us from hell.

Rated R.

UPDATE: Ok, this might be turning into a romantic comedy with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson:

The Pentagon says it has to shoot down a malfunctioning spy satellite because of the threat of a toxic gas cloud. Space security experts are calling the rationale "comedic gold." [...]

Even if the hydrazine were released, he noted, the effects would likely be mild -- akin to chlorine gas poisoning, which can cause burning in the lungs, and elsewhere. The area affected would be "roughly the size of two football fields [where you might] incur something that would make you go to the doctor."

This... summer?

There Can Never Be Wasteful Defense Spending

Yeah, I know, there's an election or something today. But first, I have a bunch of little things to get to, like, you know, the unabated rise of the defense-industrial complex, which apparently has never made a substandard weapon system:

Congress has yet to approve $102 billion left over from the supplemental for FY 2008. And so—in terms of how much Congress is being asked to authorize this year—that brings us to $713 billion.

But let's delve into the Pentagon's base line figure—the $515.4 billion that has nothing directly to do with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What's in there? Do the U.S. armed forces really need that much for the everyday maintenance of national security?

About a quarter of that sum—$125.2 billion—is for personnel costs: understandable. Another third—$180 billion—is for operations and maintenance of equipment (a bit more mysterious, since this is apart from the O&M costs brought on by the war). But a larger sum still—$184 billion—is for what the Pentagon calls "major weapons systems." [...]

What efficiencies is the Pentagon taking to accommodate these technological risks? The "Overview" section of the Pentagon's budget document contains a section called "Program Terminations." It reads, in its entirety: "The FY 2009 budget does not propose any major program terminations." (emphasis mine)

Is it remotely conceivable that the Defense Department is the one federal bureaucracy that has not designed, developed, or produced a single expendable program? The question answers itself.

They are crackerjack over at the Pentagon. Apparently everything they make can pinpoint a terrorist at 2,000 yards, even the submarines!

We spend more on defense than every other country combined for absolutely no reason, and in fact, this is the great hole that is sinking our budget. Paul Krugman has some questions for those Republican deficit hawks:

Three words: defense, Medicare, Medicaid. That’s the whole story. Defense up from 3 to 4% of GDP; Medicare and Medicaid up from 3.4% to 4.6%, partially offset by increased payments for Part B and stuff. Aside from that, there’s been no major movement.

Behind these increases are the obvious things: the war McCain wants to fight for the next century, the general issue of excess cost growth in health care, and the prescription drug benefit.

So the next time Mr. McCain or anyone else promises to rein in runaway spending, they should be asked which of these things they intend to reverse. Are they talking about pulling out of Iraq? Denying seniors the latest medical treatments? Canceling the drug benefit? If not, what are they talking about?

The answer, of course, is that they're not talking about anything, just making vague assurances about "stopping wasteful spending of the taxpayer's money" but making sure boondoggles like missile defense don't ever enter into the equation. Which also suits members of Congress fine, as the defense contractors are spread around liberally enough so that practically everyone is beholden to them (some, like John McCain, more than others. His warmongering feeds an economic boomlet in Arizona).

It'd be nice to see a little more talk about the defense budget, which is almost a QUARTER of the entire budget for FY2009. I recognize that this would require someone in the traditional media to read.

Doh!

So the Democrats gave and gave and gave to get the defense authorization bill passed with what amounts to a blank check for Iraq. But now George Bush wants them to give some more.

At the behest of the Iraqi government, President Bush will veto the annual defense authorization bill, saying an obscure provision in the legislation could make Iraqi assets held in U.S. banks vulnerable to lawsuits.

The veto threat startled Democratic congressional leaders, who believe Bush is bowing to pressure from the Iraqi government over a technical provision in the bill. The veto is unexpected because there was no veto threat and the legislation passed both chambers of Congress overwhelmingly.

Democratic leaders say the provision in question could easily be worked out, but in vetoing the massive defense policy bill, military pay raises may be on hold, as well as dozens of other programs.

Steve Benen notes later in this post that Iraqi assets are probably immune to US lawsuits anyway, regardless of what this bill says. And the Democrats have a pathetic "you didn't tell us what to cave on!" plea at their website.

Why would that be the first statement out of the gate? Look what the President is vetoing here.

Keep in mind, the veto of the defense authorization bill puts a variety of key spending measures in limbo, including a pay raise for the troops, VA care for wounded veterans, a new "Truman Commission" to fight fraud and waste by military contractors, and expanded job protections for family members of severely wounded troops.

If Democrats can't make hay out of Bush vetoing a pay raise for the troops, they're useless. Plus, this bill passed with SWEEPING margins, like 400-6 kind of margins, in both houses. There's something unsaid here, and I think it's to do with the missile defense restrictions. Old Reagan-era habits die hard. But this should be used to pummel Bush for the next three months. And there's no need to pass any new bill. Not that the leading Dems will listen to me, of course.

Questioning The Facts That Don't Fit The Dementia

The neocons call for Team B:

Senate Republicans are planning to call for a congressional commission to investigate the conclusions of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran as well as the specific intelligence that went into it, according to congressional sources.

The move is the first official challenge, but it comes amid growing backlash from conservatives and neoconservatives unhappy about the assessment that Iran halted a clandestine nuclear weapons program four years ago. It reflects how quickly the NIE has become politicized, with critics even going after the analysts who wrote it, and shows a split among Republicans.

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) said he plans to introduce legislation next week to establish a commission modeled on a congressionally mandated group that probed a disputed 1995 intelligence estimate on the emerging missile threat to the United States over the next 15 years.

If Democrats dare to allow this politicization of the intelligence community, I really have to throw up my hands. But I don't think they will. I must admit to being amused by this freak-out on the right, where conflicting opinions MUST be wrong and must be challenged. If the NIE says Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program, the NIE must be doctored. Contrary opinions don't exist.

The truth is that the nation's intelligence professionals understand that Iran retains key capabilities to restart a nuclear program, and may do so. But the NIE reflects an assessment of the facts as they are, not as neocon warmongers wish them to be.

What's breathtaking is how the Administration is truly acting as if nothing happened. They're still moving forward on a missile defense program that is now simply ludicrous, as nobody has the capability to launch missiles that the program would purport to shoot down (even though it can't). They're still seeking support for sanctions against the Islamic Republic, and they're actually receiving that support.

"Iran continues to represent a threat," Mrs (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel said during a joint news conference with Mr Sarkozy in Paris.

She did not specifically express support for a new UN sanctions resolution against Iran, which the US is calling for.

"We and our partners would like to continue with the UN process," Mrs Merkel said.

"I think we and our partners need to continue to seek dialogue with Iran," she said.

Mr (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy said he agreed with his German counterpart that Iran still posed a danger, and that he supported the push for more sanctions.

"Notwithstanding the latest elements, everyone is fully conscious of the fact that there is a will of the Iranian leaders to obtain nuclear weapons.

"What made Iran move up to now, it was sanctions and firmness," he said.

Look, the neocons have been wrong about every foreign policy challenge of the last 50 years. They make things up whenever the facts don't fit their politics. The great danger is that the people in power act based on those self-created facts. Frankly, let's see some hearings on the Iran NIE. I'd love to know why the report was delayed for about a year. I'd love to know why the President first said that he was informed about changes in the intelligence on Iran in August, but he wasn't told what the changes were. I'd love to know if this speculation is true.

There are, oversimplifying, two threads going around, one that the 'Iran doesn't have an active program' preliminary finding was circulating in the Administration in late '06 (Hersh, etc), and the other that Bush was told about the upcoming finding in August by McConnell, after which he changed his characterization so as not to be so obviously lying about the nature of the threat (all the while still intentionally leaving a grossly misleading impression).

The two threads can be reconciled. The basis for the findings had, indeed, been circulating beginning in late 2006, and ever since. One has to assume that Cheney and his forces marshaled full fire on those findings, and successfully suppressed them, preventing their release. That effort, however, eventually failed, probably due to intelligence and Pentagon unwillingness to take the fall for another war.

What happened in early August was not that Bush learned of the findings, but that McConnell informed him that the NIE containing the findings would be released. Those on the side of releasing them (which had to have included Gates) simply won the battle, and either faced down Cheney, threatened to resign if they lost or utilized whatever other strategy required. It was not the discovery of the underlying truth of the findings that caused the change in rhetoric (becoming more vague on Iran's nuclear status, but more bellicose on Iran generally). It was the realization that the NIE would become public.

Bang that gavel. Thanks, Sen. Ensign.

Take A Hint From Vlad Putin, Democrats

On foreign policy issues, you just divide and conquer:

President Bush said yesterday that a missile defense system is urgently needed in Europe to guard against a possible attack on U.S. allies by Iran, while Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested that the United States could delay activating such a system until there is "definitive proof" of such a threat.

The seemingly contrasting messages came as the Bush administration grappled with continuing Russian protests over Washington's plan to deploy elements of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. The Kremlin considers the program a potential threat to its own nuclear deterrent and has sought to play down any threat from Iran.

From the moment that the White House announced this European missile defense system, Putin went to work. He would not be persuaded in a series of meetings. He gave the option of placing the missiles in a country he controls, Azerbaijan. He showed up in Tehran talking with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. And generally he threatened a return to the Cold War if Bush moved forward. Now he's got the Defense Secretary wobbling and the White House in disarray.

Obviously Putin is impervious to the type of demagoguing Bush routinely does to the Democrats, claiming that they are invting terror or would rather see attacks on America or so forth. But those simply don't have the force that they did in, say, 2002. Russia has plenty to fear from a hostile United States. None of the leverage points worked. And they shouldn't work with the Democrats, either. In fact, they have some allies inside the inner circle.

The new chairman (of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Adm. Mike Mullen, expressed deep concerns that the long counterinsurgency missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have so consumed the military that the Army and Marine Corps may be unprepared for a high-intensity war against a major adversary.

He rejected the counsel of those who might urge immediate attacks inside Iran to destroy nuclear installations or to stop the flow of explosives that end up as powerful roadside bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan, killing American troops.

With America at war in two Muslim countries, he said, attacking a third Islamic nation in the region “has extraordinary challenges and risks associated with it.” The military option, he said, should be a last resort.

Now, Mullen's going to be asking for large military spending to offset the cost of equipment replacement and restoring the armed forces after two long wars. There's an opportunity there to make some agreements.

My point is that you stand firm. Putin's obviously a shady character, and emulating his kind of anti-democratic style is not advisable. But he absolutely played the Bushies on this missile defense thing. For want of a backbone, the Democrats could do the same thing.

Senate Blocking Missile Defense

Democrats in the Senate appear ready to join the House in eliminating funding for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

The Senate appears ready to join the House in cutting from the defence budget the millions Mr Bush requested to fund US missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. The president would have to use his veto to go ahead but that would put the whole defence budget in peril.

The Senate move would add to the lengthy list of obstacles that have built up to Mr Bush's plan. A consequence would be to end the stand-off with Moscow, which views the missile system as a threat. Speaking on Monday at the Bush family retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, reiterated his opposition to placing the missile system so close to Russia. There is also opposition within Poland and the Czech Republic.

It's exceedingly smart not to piece out the missile defense funding in a separate bill, but to cut funding within the defense budget and force the highly unlikely scenario of Bush vetoing the entire appropriation.

Missile defense doesn't work and it's completely provocative, already straining relations with another nuclear power (Russia) who views it as a threat. It's also being pushed as a direct challenge to Iran, and in fact, Bush aides in the Armed Services Committee hyped the threat of Iran in order to keep the funding in the bill, and on thos score the Democrats came up strong:

The Bush administration, in evidence to a committee hearing, argued that it would be dangerous to delay because Iran may be further forward in developing its alleged nuclear weapon programme than the rest of the world realises. But the committee's conclusion, reported in the Washington Post yesterday, said: "There is uncertainty about whether Iran will have such long-range missiles, or nuclear warheads that could work on such missiles, by 2015."

Could have been stronger, but this suggests that the Democrats won't be bullied by threats about Iran into loosening purse strings. Walter Pincus has more in the aforementioned WaPo article.

As Big Tent Democrat mentioned today, spending power is an excellent way for the Legislative branch to provide a check on the Executive or even the Fourth branch. In this case, Democrats are also being responsible by stopping a program that is increasing tensions with Russia and plainly attempting to force a confrontation with Iran. So to anyone who says that it doesn't matter who's in control of Congress, let this be exhibit A.