Russia should reveal more about a possible missile treaty violation

The Washington Post, September 7, 2014 by Editorial Board

IN THE EARLY 1980s, a wave of fear about nuclear war rippled across Europe. The Soviet Union deployed a new generation of intermediate-range missiles carrying nuclear warheads aimed at Western Europe. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization responded by offering to negotiate while deploying its own missiles aimed at Soviet targets: the fast-flying Pershing-II and ground-launched cruise missiles, both carrying nuclear warheads. A new arms race got underway.

We now know that the dangers were felt not only in the West but in Moscow, too. In 1986, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev confided to aides that the West’s nuclear missiles were “a gun at our temple.” The following year, Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan signed an agreement eliminating the whole class of nuclear weapons in Europe. The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was good for Europe, and remains so today, long after the Cold War has ended.

So it was unsettling when the Obama administration recently published acompliance report saying that Russia had violated the treaty. At issue is a provision that prohibits the possession, production or flight-testing of ground-launched cruise missiles with a range of 500 kilometers (311 miles) to 5,500 kilometers (3,417 miles) or launchers for such missiles. The United States has not published details of the claimed violation, which makes it hard to evaluate, but it reportedly involves tests of a ground-launched cruise missile.

Cruise missiles are dangerous because they can use terrain-hugging technology to fly under radar and sneak up on an adversary. The administration is right to go public with this concern. However, very little is known about the Russian weapons system at issue. Are there plans for serial production and deployment, or was this some kind of experimental test series? Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying the U.S. claims are “unsupported.”

Both Washington and Moscow have expressed interest in new talks that would deal with this issue, and that is the best way to approach it. Russia should be transparent and reveal what was tested and why, and the United States ought to say publicly what is behind the charge of a violation. Russia has long chafed at the treaty, but this is no time for either side to abandon it. If there is a violation, then it should be dealt with straightforwardly.

What is often forgotten about the Cold War arms race is that it was not only a competition for bigger and more destructive weapons. It was also a contest of mistrust, misperception and deception. At times, such as the Cuban missile crisis and a war scare in the autumn of 1983, the mistrust may have been more dangerous than anything else. The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was a worthy attempt to reverse this mind-set and eliminate the missiles. If there are loose bolts or squeaky joints in the treaty after a generation, the right course of action is to address them squarely, and openly, rather than revert to mistrust and deception. There is enough of that already from Russia’s misadventure in Ukraine.

4.Experts Urge President Obama to Conclude Landmine
Policy Review and Join the Mine Ban Treaty

The Washington Post

February 5, 2014 by Ashley Luer

It has been more than a year since the White House announced that it would “soon” be releasing the results of a U.S. Landmine Policy review that was launched early in President Obama’s first term in office.

Since 2009, the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL) has been urging the Obama administration to conclude its review and to join the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, typically referred to as the “Ottawa Convention” or “Mine Ban Treaty.”

The Mine Ban Treaty requires that states commit to not using, developing, producing, acquiring, retaining, stockpiling, or transferring anti-personnel landmines. Anti-personnel landmines are defined by the treaty as mines “designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person and that will incapacitate, injure or kill one or more persons.”

In November 2013, the USCBL members sent a letter to the White House, requesting that the United States go public with its position before the Mine Ban Treaty’s annual meeting in December. It didn’t happen.

On Friday, January 31 the USCBL released a second letter, signed by experts on arms control and human rights issues, urging the administration to release the results of their now 5-year review and to announce that it has “determined that it is in the best interests of the United States to join the world’s 161 States Parties to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.”

The signers include leaders from Amnesty International, Handicap International, Human Rights Watch, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and the Arms Control Association, among others.

Mine Ban Treaty supporters are frustrated with the delayed process and say that the United States should prohibit the use of antipersonnel mines and begin destruction ofcurrent stocks immediately. In their most recent letter, the USCBL members argue that there has been enough time for the review to be concluded and that a prompt decision “would allow the United States to explain its decision at the Mine Ban Treaty’s Third Review Conference, which opens in Maputo, Mozambique on June 23, 2014.”

The USCBL letter argues that it is vital for the United States to take a strong stand against landmines. To date, the United States is one of only 36 countries–including North Korea and Iran–that have not joined the Mine Ban Treaty. The United States is the only member of NATO and the only country in the Western Hemisphere (besides Cuba) that has not joined.

Defunding Defense

The Washington Post , March 9, 2014 by Robert J. Samuelson,

The crisis in Ukraine reminds us that the future is unpredictable, that wars routinely involve miscalculation and that brute force – boots on the ground, bombs in the air – counts. None of these obvious lessons seems to have made much impression in Washington, where the Obama administration and Congress continue their policy of defunding defense and reducing the United States’ military power.

The administration’s new 2015 budget projections show how sharply the Pentagon shrinks. In nominal dollars (unadjusted for inflation), defense spending stays flat between 2013 and 2024. It’s $626 billion in 2013 and $630 billion in 2024. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, it drops by a quarter. As a share of the federal budget, it falls from 18 percent in 2013 to 11 percent in 2024. Meanwhile, Social Security spending in nominal dollars increases 85 percent to $1.5 trillion by 2024 and Medicare advances 75 percent to $863 billion. The inflation-adjusted gains are also large.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has outlined some program cuts behind the spending declines. The Army drops from a recent peak of 570,000 to 450,000 – the lowest since before World War II – and, possibly, 420,000. The Marine Corps falls 10 percent from its peak to 182,000. The Air Force retires all its A-10 “Warthog” ground-support fighters, as well as its U-2 spy planes. The Navy halts purchases of its Littoral Combat Ships at 32 instead of the planned 52.

The United States has a military for two reasons. One is to deter conflicts. Even if every Pentagon spending cut were desirable – manifestly untrue – their collective size symbolically undermines deterrence. It telegraphs that the United States is retreating, that it is war-weary and reluctant to deploy raw power as an instrument of national policy. President Obama’s undisguised distaste for using the military amplifies the message.

This may embolden potential adversaries and abet miscalculation. The United States’ military retrenchment won’t make China’s leaders less ambitious globally. (China plans a 12 percent increase in military spendingfor 2014; at that pace, spending would double in six years.) Nor will it dampen Iran’s aggressiveness and promote a negotiated settlement over its nuclear program. Probably the reverse. Diplomacy often fails unless backed by a credible threat of force.

The second reason for a military is to defend national interests – and prevail in conflict. Just what this requires is hard to say, because the nature of war is shifting to include cyberattacks, non-state adversaries and the threat of weapons of mass destruction. “When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements,” former defense secretary Robert Gates has noted, “our record [since Vietnam] has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right.”

There are many potential war theaters: Persian Gulf nations, including Iran if the United States bombed its nuclear facilities; the South China Sea; the Korean Peninsula; Pakistan, if theft of its nuclear weapons were threatened. Russia’s aggression in Ukraine raises the prospect that a sizable number of U.S. troops might be stationed in the Baltic nations or Poland. All belong to NATO; all must now feel more threatened by Russia.

The Pentagon has already downgraded its capabilities. It has abandoned its past assumption that it could fight two major wars simultaneously. It has also disavowed any long-lasting counterinsurgency. “Our forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale prolonged stability operations,” says the latest Quadrennial Defense Review. The self-serving premise is that wars can be fought and won quickly, because otherwise budgets don’t work.

All this is a huge gamble. Hagel says that today’s reduced funding creates “added risk” (translation: higher combat deaths, lower odds of success). He warns that a return to “sequestration” (deeper congressionally mandated cuts) would create a “hollow force.”

Defense spending should reflect a strategic vision of the U.S. global role. This would balance Americans’ unwillingness to be the “world’s cop” with the observed truth that, given today’s interconnectedness, distant events can affect vital U.S. interests. In reality, strategy is driven by political expedience and a shortage of cash. It reflects popular disillusion with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It presumes that the world won’t punish the political preferences of America’s leaders. Obama and Democrats won’t sacrifice social spending for defense spending; Republicans won’t admit that higher defense spending requires higher taxes.

The inattention to these developments is stunning. The Post’s main story on the administration’s 2015 budget barely mentioned defense; the same was true of the comparable story in the New York Times. Christine H. Fox, the acting deputy secretary of defense, recently noted that “the world has gotten no less dangerous, turbulent or in need of American leadership. There is no obvious peace dividend as was the case at the end of the Cold War.” But we’re pretending there is – and spending it madly.

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