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Pentagon Makes Case for No More C-17s

All too often, defense programs consume resources like a fountain consumes water in a public park—always flowing regardless of cost or necessity.  Programs with no clear use running billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule remain fiendishly difficult to kill.  It is this unfortunate reality that made the July 13 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management so refreshing.

Department of Defense officials emphatically pressed lawmakers to cease production of any more C-17 cargo planes, saying they were neither requested nor required.  Indeed, they said, the current capabilities of our strategic airlift fleet exceed the military’s present-day needs as well as worst-case scenario projections.  Purchasing additional C-17 aircraft would run contrary to Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ goal of saving $100 billion over the next five years and would necessitate cutbacks in other DoD programs.

(More after the jump)

The U.S. strategic airlift fleet consists of C-5, C-17, and C-130 aircraft, including 223 C-17s and 111 C-5s, providing a capacity of 35.9 million ton-miles per day.  Air Force Maj. General Susan Y. Desjardins, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Mike McCord, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Alan F. Estevez all testified that according to the Mobility Capabilities and Requirements Study-2016 (MCRS-16) conducted by DoD, the greatest airlift demand under extreme cases would be no more than 32.7 mtm/d.

The witnesses repeatedly stressed this point, as well as echoing Chairman Tom Carper’s (D-DE) statement that the military has not requested any more C-17s since 2007.  Despite this, Congress has purchased 43 additional planes since that time.  Senator John McCain pointed out that this amounted to $9 billion in direct spending, as well as billions more in support, training, maintenance, and other recurring costs associated with increased aircraft supply.

In addition, 22 of the lowest-performing C-5s are to be retired, saving money on their associated upkeep costs.  Simultaneously, the remaining C-5s are scheduled to be upgraded with new engines and other systems, prolonging their service life and improving their reliability.  When asked if it would make sense to continue retiring C-5s in favor of new C-17s, McCord said this would be a waste of money.  Carper noted that for the cost of one new C-17, two C-5s can be upgraded, each of which can carry twice as much cargo and fly twice as far as a new C-17 while remaining in service for another 30-40 years.

So far Congress’ appropriations for FY 2011 contain no funding for additional C-17 aircraft, and Secretary Gates has recommended that President Obama veto any bill containing spending on them.  “If you’re in a hole,” said Carper, “stop digging.”

Long-Term North Korea Strategy is Missing

The U.S and South Korea are not currently implementing policies that will garner positive results with North Korea, nor do they have an over-arching strategy for dealing with the isolated nation, agreed three American experts at a policy forum event in Washington D.C Wednesday.  Assessing the current situation from various perspectives, the panelists all implied that a more proactive, cohesive and long-term approach to engagement with Pyongyang would yield better outcomes for all involved.

Steven Linton, Founder of The Eugene Bell Foundation, a humanitarian organization providing development assistance to North Korea, started his analysis by suggesting that for a very long time North Korea has been looking for a positive and client-type relationship with the United States.  Asking rhetorically how Washington managed to “blow it”, he answered by suggesting that American “ideological constructs” may be partly to blame.  Ideological constructs that suggested ‘carrots’ would make North Korea change as a result of being “overwhelmed [with U.S] sincerity and good intentions”, or inversely, that ‘sticks’ would compel better behavior through the use of sanctions and threats.   He put it to the audience that both of these ideological constructs have “now come face to face with reality and been shattered”…..

He remarked that, “North Korea is neither going to be guiled into doing something that it thinks is against its national interest, nor is it going to be threatened.  The sooner we get away from that kind of simplistic approach the better.  And I think one of the ways we can start to build a more realistic framework for understanding North Korea is to at least go back and look at modern Korean history.”

In this regard Linton suggested that while for decades the DPRK had been obsessed with exporting its Juche ideology to the world, as the country became poorer in the 1980s it instead became “focused primarily on building real political and diplomatic relationships to allow it to survive”.  Responding to this situation he asked, “What have we offered North Korea?  Are we offering them national survival or are we offering them another extreme makeover according to an ideology that will essentially negate most of what they consider their primary gains in the last fifty years?”

With the context set, Linton suggested that current policy “does not compute as national survival” for North Korea.  

In moving forward from the current impasse he pointed out that it was imperative that countries such as the U.S and the ROK also stop responding to North Korea in a North Korean manner.  He pointed out that South Korea, despite having a pluralistic society, huge civilian sector resources, and an enormous private sector pool of wealth, nevertheless tries to funnel all possible engagement through the Government – in just the same way that North Korea conducts all of its relations with Seoul.   He conjectured that while private sector is the strongest part of a free society, U.S sanctions currently prevent American enterprise from making a difference, pointing out that “When a free society tries to funnel everything through government initiatives and ministries, you have a weakening rather than a strengthening of the process.”

A proactive approach would instead advocate a more hands-off approach allowing private organizations and enterprises engage North Korea on an individual basis, without the conditions and constructions currently being imposed by the current administrations in Seoul and Washington D.C.   Presenting a video of some of the Eugene Bell Foundations’ success in North Korea, he finished his analysis by illustrating some of the positive impact such activities could have.

Karen Lee, Executive Director of the National Committee on North Korea, suggested that lessons learned regarding the sanctions applied to Iraq had seemingly gone over the head of South Korea.  Remembering the widespread hurt to Iraq’s civilian population caused by the blunt approach applied after the Gulf War, she noted that the international community by consensus currently advocates sanctions that cause the minimal damage to civilian life.  Consequently, South Korea’s decision to now prevent the bulk of NGOs from either delivering aid or conducting monitoring visits illustrates just how far the country is out of touch with today’s international sentiment.  She added that Iraq “was a lesson that was learned the hard way, and I would expect that the South Korean government would come back inside within international consensus and lift that ban on NGO activities as quickly as possible.”

Labeling the various sanctions applied to North Korea as ‘tactics’, Lee rhetorically asked the administrations of South Korea and the U.S, “Where is the strategy? We know what your first and second step is, but what is the third step?”  Citing the measures taken in response to the sinking of the Cheonan case as evidence of this over-reliance on tactics, she pointed to the lack of an exit strategy as smyptomic of the overall lack of an over-arching North Korea strategy in both Seoul and Washington.  

Dwelling on the issue, Lee proposed that for sanctions to work effectively States must be united in their application and all must be in a position to have something to sacrifice.   For its part and as a result of Washington’s decades long policy of economic isolation, she suggested that it correspondingly had very little to lose when pushing for sanctions.  Correspondingly, Beijing, having significant economic trade with the DPRK, would have a lot more to lose if it were to vigorously impose robust sanctions – an important point to remember when accusing China of not currently doing enough, she added.   But from Seoul’s perspective,
“A very interesting new development is that South Korea is now making an economic sacrifice in response to the Cheonan.  It will be interesting to see if South Korea is able to sustain this economic sacrifice…A recent Chosun Ilbo report says that business people engaged in North Korean projects say they will be ruined if trade does not resume.  So lets say that South Korea listens to its people and that trade is restarted again.  How can the US continue to criticize China if it chooses not to engage in sanctions against the DPRK…if it doesn’t also choose to criticize South Korea, if in fact it makes this decision.”

Lee went on to show how little influence the US currently has with North Korea by citing the fact that the Obama administration recently linked visas for Track Two dialogue to success on the nuclear issue, a decision that actually took place before the Cheonan incident.  She remarked, “I don’t think visa denial is an expression of strength, I actually think its an expression of weakness.  I would like to see our government develop a transparent visa policy that encourages dialogue, not discourages it.”

Having illustrated the context behind each countries approach to sanctions, Lee rounded off her talk by pondering the situations they could ever be rolled back, especially with regards to partial compliance – a point that underscored her argument that they should only ever be part of a much larger North Korea strategy.

Doug Bandow, a Senior Fellow at Cato Institute rounded off the talk by recommending a new policy of engagement for Washington to pursue.  

Noting that Pyongyang is currently proceeding on both its nuclear and missile programs with a sanctions regime already in place, he suggested it was clear that current policy was not delivering any real results.  He argued that the concept of ignoring North Korea in the hope that the problem would go away was also imprudent, as illustrated by the fact that Pyongyang often acts belligerently when left alone for too long.   As a result, Bandow suggested that the lack of over-arching policy that the other speakers had alluded to in their presentations illustrated the need for a “refashioned form of engagement” with the U.S involving China involved in a “more positive way”.

While admitting that “I think there is no option that we know will work”, Bandow added, “Nevertheless, we have to look at some options and make some changes compared to where we’re at.  One of which strikes me is that we have to have diplomatic relations with North Korea.  Whatever the rest of the issues, I see little to gain from refusing to recognize North Korea”.   He remarked that such recognition would provide some sense to Pyongyang of respect from the U.S, while giving Washington some strongly needed inside information on a very closed society.  

He added that to get into North Korean society, the more people that could go there from the West and have relationships, the better.  However, he did admit that it was difficult to gauge the overall impact of such liaison.   Consequently he also advocated a separation of Private and Governmental aid as a means of facilitating the work of organizations such as the Eugene Bell Foundation in future times of tension.  

As part of this approach Bandow stated that it would be essential to simultaneously convince China that it is in their interest to be more proactive with North Korea.  He consequently recommended a new approach that would illustrate both how and why China should think differently.   Firstly, by making Beijing realize that the current situation was not necessarily as stable as it might think- through pointing to the sometimes strong pressure within the U.S to take military action against the DPRK following acts of belligerency.  Secondly, that China should not assume that future WMD proliferation by North Korea will be met with the same restraint that has been characteristic of responses so far.  Thirdly, that the U.S will not be interested in remaining in the middle of the situation forever and might one day allow the ROK or Japan to move ahead on their own nuclear programs.

He also suggested that China should be made clear that the U.S would not try and take unilateral advantage in the event things worked out badly, and that countries such as Japan and the ROK should be willing to share the costs of any future refugee problems.   Longer-term he stated that “If China was helpful in resolving the situation…the U.S would be quite prepared to say America’s military role is over on the Korean peninsula”, noting it is approaching the time when Washington should step back.  

In this regard he noted that without the 29,000 U.S troops stationed in South Korea, the U.S would actually not have much interest in the issue, nor would it be within easy reach of North Korean retaliation.   Without this presence he thus asserted that other countries in the region would face an increased onus to step up and deal with the issue, allowing the U.S to take a more supportive role in future.

The event took place at the CATO Institute in Washington D.C on Wednesday July 14 2010.  It was moderated by d Galen Carpenter, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.

What to do about North Korea – CATO

Payne Again

I’m a little late to the game on this but Keith Payne published an op-ed in the Washington Times last month attacking the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review and the New START treaty.  NoH has long been fascinated by Payne’s views on arms control, particularly his willingness to run roughshod over the final report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, on which he served as a Commissioner.  As Mort Halperin – who also served on the Commission – noted at recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on New START, “the Treaty now before the Senate conforms in every material way with the recommendations of the Commission.”

It appears that the Obama administration has had just about enough of Payne as well.  At the Senate Armed Services Committee’s June 17 hearing on New START with Secretary of Defense Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mullen, Secretary of State Clinton, and Secretary of Energy Chu, Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) asked the witnesses about Payne’s op-ed, specifically the claim that the treaty only requires U.S. force reductions.  To borrow a line from Blades of Glory (I watched it again recently for probably the 24th time), Clinton slipped Payne a very public note in response:

You will find there are unfortunately a number of commentators or analysts who just don’t believe in arms control treaties at all and from my perspective are, you know, very – unfortunately slanting a lot of what they say.

And this is a perfect example of that, because as Secretary Gates just pointed out, there would be reductions on the Russian side.

The perfect example indeed.  Payne’s claim that Russia won’t have to make any cuts to its nuclear forces is both substantively incorrect and misses the point (see earlier posts addressing this issue here and here)…  

Let’s take a closer look at Payne’s argument that Russia gets off scot free:

In addition, the NPR emphasizes the resilience of U.S. strategic forces, but New START limits their resilience by mandating a lower ceiling on deployed bombers and missiles than was earlier suggested publicly by senior Defense Department and military officials, and by effectively requiring only U.S. force reductions – a fact Russians have noticed. Russian strategic analyst Aleksey Arbatov notes in a March 5 Russian article: “The new treaty is an agreement on reducing the American and not the Russian [strategic nuclear forces]. In fact the latter will be reduced in any case because of the mass removal from the order of battle of obsolete arms and the one-at-a time introduction of new systems.” Russian defense journalist Alexander Golts similarly writes in the Moscow Times that Russia can “fulfill its pledge without eliminating a single actual weapon. The same is true regarding warheads.”

First, STRATCOM Commander Gen. Kevin Chilton recently addressed the concern raised last summer by some in the military that New START should not limit deployed delivery vehicles below about 800 (New START limits the U.S. and Russia to no more than 700 deployed missile and bombers and no more than 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers).  According to Gen. Chilton, “time has passed…and we have had the opportunity to do a lot more analysis during this period.  And as we looked at it, it not only made sense strategically, but it certainly is doable to continue to sustain the triad at these current [New START] numbers.” (UPDATE 7/13: See Amyfw’s helpful addendum to Chilton’s comments below. For more on the flexibility offered by New START, see here.) 

Second, while Russia is already under the treaty’s limit on delivery vehicles, Secretary Gates has stated on more than one occasion that the number of Russian deployed strategic warheads “is above the treaty limits.  So they [the Russians] will have to take down warheads.”  In fact, if you believe the open source estimates of the current number of deployed U.S. and Russia warheads, then New START will require Russia to cut more warheads from its deployed force than the U.S.

In any event, Payne should have found someone other than Arbatov and Golts to support his point that New START is a bad deal for the U.S.  In April Arbatov opined: “The main significance is restoration of the formal, legally binding dialogue and framework of strategic relationship between the two leading nuclear superpowers.”  Meanwhile, Golts has written that “Moscow gave in to practically all U.S. demands.”  

But to a certain extent all of this is beside the point.  As numerous commentators (including Arbatov) have pointed out, New START is not in the first instance a reductions treaty, although some reductions in deployed forces are required.  Rather, the treaty’s legally-binding limits and monitoring and verification provisions will prevent the growth of Russia’s deployed forces and give us an essential window into their composition and location that we haven’t had since START I expired on December 5 of last year.

This in turn will ensure a predictable and stable U.S.-Russian nuclear relationship, thereby reducing the risk of mutual suspicion, worst case scenario planning, and by extension the chances of an accidental or unauthorized U.S.-Russian nuclear exchange.  And the more stable and predictable the relationship, the better off our allies are, which probably explains why so many of them support New START.

To sum up, I’ll again defer to Gen. Chilton:

If we don’t get the treaty, [the Russians] are not constrained in their development of force structure and…we have no insight into what they’re doing. So its the worst of both possible worlds.

The longer New START awaits Senate advice and consent, the longer U.S. inspectors will remain in the U.S. and not on the ground in Russia inspecting Russia’s nuclear arsenal.  Someone should ask Keith Payne how this benefits U.S. security.

 

Lugar v. Romney on Tactical Nuclear Weapons Cont’d

Last week was a big week for New START on the op-ed pages and blogs.  Joe Cirincione has a nice little summary of what transpired over at the Huffington Post.  Like Jeffrey Lewis, I thought the best response (and there were many good ones) to Mitt Romney’s embarrassing effort to dress himself up as knowledgeable about national security was provided by Sen. Lugar.

Jeffrey highlights Sen. Lugar’s response to the claim that New START is a bad treaty because it doesn’t capture Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons.  As Jeffrey notes, this is just plain dumb, for while Russia’s non-strategic weapons are a concern, failure to ratify New START would make it just about impossible to reach a subsequent agreement with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons, whether that agreement comes in the form of greater transparency, central storage, and/or actual reductions.  

Yet I thought the most interesting part of Sen. Lugar’s response on tac nukes was his view of the threat they pose (or don’t pose) to our allies in Europe…

Writes Lugar:

Russia does have more tactical weapons than we do, but he [Romney] distorts their value by implying that they constitute a serious missile threat to Europe.  In fact, most of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons either have very short ranges, are used for homeland air defense, are devoted to the Chinese border, or are in storage.  He also ignores that our NATO allies have endorsed the New START Treaty.  A Russian attack on NATO countries is effectively deterred by NATO conventional superiority, our own tactical nuclear forces, French and British nuclear arsenals, and U.S. strategic forces.

Senator Lugar is not the only Republican to have expressed such views.  Never one to lack for great arms control one liners, Linton Brooks once stated:

I’ve never completely understood why something that only blows up in Russia is a threat to me unless I plan to invade.

Even Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher seems to get it.  In an exchange with Keith Payne at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on nuclear weapons policy last year, Rohrabacher noted:

Let me suggest that the point you just made, that the tactical nuclear weapons should be a major concern, absolutely not — just the opposite. Tactical nuclear weapons that by the — we’re talking about in terms of their land forces, et cetera, we’re not going to invade Russia; they’re not going to be used against people invading Russia from Europe or from the United States. Those weapons will help deter a communist Chinese attack on Russia and they know that; that’s why they don’t want to give it up and we should realize that as a justifiable fear. And how we do that, perhaps, is making sure that we don’t create this false impression that we are still in a state of Cold War with the Russians by expanding NATO.

A close examination of the types of tactical weapons in the Russian arsenal reveals that Moscow’s alleged advantage (10:1 is the most oft-cited number) turns out to be not that much of an advantage at all.  They simply don’t increase the threat already posed by Russia’s strategic weapons.  This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t want to get a handle on them.  As many security experts have noted, tactical nuclear weapons are more vulnerable to loss or theft than strategic weapons.  But grossly overstating their geopolitical significance is inaccurate and creates a justification for hanging on to far more nuclear weapons than we actually need.

Romney on New START

There has rightly already been a lot of great commentary excoriating Mitt Romney for his absolutely outlandish op-ed on New START in yesterday’s WaPo.  I really laughed out loud when I read the reference to putting ICBMs on bombers.  To my kn…