In his April 2009 Prague speech on a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, President Obama vowed to purse a number of steps to reduce the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.  “As long as these weapons exist,” the President added, “the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies.”

Vice President Joe Biden takes to the page of the not-so friendly Wall Street Journal op-ed page today to outline how the Obama administration’s upcoming Fiscal Year 2011 budget, which will be released next week, will allow the U.S. to maintain a strong deterrent into the future…  

Recent reports have suggested that the Administration is about to propose a 10% increase in the nuclear weapons budget.  The Vice President confirms these reports:

To achieve these goals, our budget devotes $7 billion for maintaining our nuclear-weapons stockpile and complex, and for related efforts. This commitment is $600 million more than Congress approved last year. And over the next five years we intend to boost funding for these important activities by more than $5 billion. Even in a time of tough budget decisions, these are investments we must make for our security. We are committed to working with Congress to ensure these budget increases are approved.

Biden’s op-ed comes on the heels of last week’s Four Horsemen op-ed which also makes the case for a renewed commitment to our nuclear laboratories and infrastructure.  Like the Four Horsemen, Biden echoes many of the concerns expressed by the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States about the state of the U.S. nuclear infrastructure.  He writes that “our laboratories and facilities have been underfunded and undervalued,” placing particular emphasis on “the growing shortage of skilled nuclear scientists and engineers” and “the aging of critical facilities.”

Nick Roth over at ANA provides a good overview of how this money is likely to be spent.  Expect increased funding for stockpile surveillance, new facilities at Los Alamos and Oakridge, and nonproliferation, and substantial funding for the newly-created Stockpile Management Program.

I think Biden’s op-ed serves a number of different purposes.

First, the op-ed responds to Republican demands, these days expressed in the context of the Obama administration’s efforts to negotiate a new nuclear reductions agreement with Russia, that the U.S. must modernize its “nuclear deterrent.”  While Jon Kyl has repeatedly twisted what both the Strategic Posture Commission and the Defense Authorization Act call for on this front, the administration no doubt seeks to demonstrate that it will keep the arsenal up to snuff, and that it views increased funding for the nuclear enterprise as a necessary step to secure Republican support for a new arms control agreement and the CTBT.  As one administration official put it on background to Politico’s Laura Rozen:

the op-ed can be considered the opening salvo in an Administration effort to reframe the debate on U.S. nuclear weapons policy in advance of key developments this spring: the budget     release next week, which Biden previews, completion of the Nuclear Posture Review, the anticipated signature and ratification of a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty [START] follow-on agreement with Moscow, two key nuclear summits in Washington in the spring, and laying the groundwork for eventual Senate consideration of the comprehensive nuclear test ban convention, the CTBT. He cited White House concerns that critics have been unchallenged on these issues for too long.

Second, while the op-ed expresses (overblown?) concerns about the state of our nuclear laboratories and facilities, it notes that we can continue to maintain our nuclear arsenal without testing, and says nothing about a need to produce new warhead designs or give existing warheads new military capabilities.  The evidence that we can continue to rely on existing stewardship and life extension programs to maintain our nuclear weapons is overwhelming.

Finally, the op-ed reaffirms the strong bipartisan support that exists for President Obama’s nuclear security agenda.  Hopefully the names “Kissinger” and “Schultz” continue to be part of just about every pitch the administration makes in support of this agenda going forward.  

We liked the speech, at least the part dealing with nuclear weapons.  Some excerpts from our press release today:

“The President deserves praise for his continued efforts to lead a bipartisan nuclear security agenda that addresses the grave threat posed by nuclear weapons,” said Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, the Center’s chairman. “As the President said, he has embraced the vision of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan through a strategy that reverses the spread of nuclear weapons and seeks a world without them.”

Gard added, “Nearly every national security expert agrees that terrorist use of nuclear weapons against the United States is our gravest security threat. The best way to address the threat of nuclear terrorism is by securing vulnerable nuclear materials and verifiably reducing nuclear stockpiles, just as President Obama has pledged to do.”

“Today there is a growing bipartisan consensus that the current nuclear status quo is no longer tenable,” said the Center’s executive director John Isaacs. “21st century threats require 21st century solutions, and the President has already taken crucial first steps toward securing our nation from the threat of nuclear weapons.”

“These first steps, including an expected finalized new weapons reduction treaty with Russia, are important and should be applauded,” Isaacs added, “but we still have a long way to go.”

An article in the Washington Independent today, in which I’m quoted, points to one – particularly glaring – problem with President Obama’s proposed spending freeze: Why does the proposal exclude defense spending?

From the piece, by Spencer Ackerman:

But while Obama did not rule out future defense cuts in the speech, many of these defense wonks could not understand why an effort at deficit reduction would explicitly exclude defense spending. “Defense spending is over half our discretionary spending,” Olson said. “It would be crazy not to include it. It begs the question whether this is a real effort.” Shortly before the speech, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the speaker of the House, told reporters that any spending freeze ought to include defense spending.

[snip]

Still, Todd Harrison, an defense-budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said he believed the combination of massive defense budgets, massive federal deficits and a weak economy would inevitably compel Congress and the president to cut defense. “It’s likely in the future that everything will come under pressure, defense included,” Harrison said. But he conceded that a variable in that calculation is “political will” for such cuts — which is not in evidence in either the White House or, especially, the Congress, which loves to send defense money back home to individual states and districts.

Also today, Fred Kaplan writes that, “If some Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep in 1982, woken up in 2009, and looked at the U.S. military budget as an indicator of what was going on in the world, he would assume that the Cold War were still raging.”  He notes that, while every aspect of the Pentagon’s budget should not be subject to a spending freeze, there is certainly a large chunk that should.

The second of occasional postings
Guest Post by Afghanistan Ag Man

As it stands today, much of Afghanistan is at risk of experiencing a spring and summer drought on a scale not seen in over a decade. Agriculturally, the full impact of a continued lack of precipitation will not reach its apex until the planting season begins in February and March; however, the security ramifications of a lack of snow for the Integrated Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) in the country have already been felt…

Last Monday, Taliban suicide bombers and militants stormed the usually peaceful Pashtunistan Square in downtown Kabul. Even before this attack, those of us on the ground have been discussing the abnormality of intense violence during the winter months. In recent years, one of the few similarities between traditional wars of the past in Afghanistan and the current unconventional conflict had been that a change of climatic seasons was usually accompanied by a change in the pace of the conflict. Unfortunately, this winter has been different.

Violence has increased dramatically during a season that is typically a time for troops and insurgents alike to pause, plan, and wait for the traditional “fighting season” to commence again when the snow melts off in the spring.  New York Times reporter Rod Nordland notes that insurgents have remained in the war theater this winter due to a number of factors, including a stronger Afghanistan-Pakistan border (which prevents insurgents from filtering back into Pakistan) and the growth of American troops levels throughout 2009.  To give a personal example, the troops of my outpost are finding undetonated improvised explosion devices (IEDs) at abnormally high rates, rocket attacks continue to target our convoys and outpost, and missions are usually prefaced by security intelligence reports warning of heavy Taliban activity in the area.

Eastern Provinces are fighting off insurgents at levels usually seen only in the Southern Provinces while violence is prevalent in both the countryside and in Kabul. ISAF casualty rates for the past three months have all increased compared to previous late fall and winter months. And this January, which is not yet over, has surpassed all monthly casualty reports for previous January combat action since 2001.  As the number of troops is set to continue to increase in 2010, so too will the opportunities for insurgents to mount attacks against our forces. NATO predicts increased IED attacks for 2010.

In my view the lack of snowfall has exacerbated the increase in violence. Since my arrival in late November, there has been one night of notable precipitation in my region which added only a few inches to the now-absent snowpack. A deforested, mountainous terrain of at least 8000 feet in elevation that is usually blanketed by an average of three to five feet of snow currently contains little or no snow.

Even though the privates and sergeants in my unit like to rib me when I promote the relationship between snowpack and instability, I do find merit to my argument. Without cold weather and snow to keep insurgents in caves (where they “plot,” instead of “act”), there will be more violence in the streets and fields, even during the winter months.

In addition, while the risks of a water shortage due to the absence of snowpack will not impact the common farmer when his trees are dormant and his fields are fallow, the consequences in the spring growing season and throughout the summer’s crucial pre-harvest period could be devastating for the development efforts we are trying to implement. With unemployment rates at record levels, the only alternatives for an unskilled, illiterate farmer put out of work by poor crop yields will be to join the Taliban in fighting coalition forces and/or  turn to the production of poppy, which requires far less water than, say, wheat. Needless to say, the ramifications of a drought on the outcome and success of the new counterinsurgency strategy that is currently being implemented would be huge.

Do I think this winter violence is a sign of a strengthening insurgency? No. Instead, I see this as a sign of a desperate one. The US and its allies have committed additional troops and have proportionally increased their civilian and financial presence in the country. To give another personal example, development and capacity building projects in the realm of agriculture are underway earlier than expected in the countryside. Examples include vocational trainings on reforestation, orchard management best-practices, and watershed/irrigation rehabilitation, to road construction projects that will facilitate the movement of goods from farm-to-market in the fall.  The Taliban has reason to feel threatened by this progress and it is no wonder that they are mounting a last-ditch effort to thwart the Afghan people’s efforts.

I think we can prevent the insurgents from succeeding.