by Kingston Reif On June 15 the House Appropriations Committee marked up (i.e. wrote) the Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill. The bill passed Committee by a vote of 26-20. Every Democrat except Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member Pete Visclosky (D-IN) opposed the bill. The full committee draft and the […]
Defense Appropriations Bill approved by House Appropriations Committee
Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee approved its version of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 Defense Appropriations Bill. The bill contains $530 billion in funding for non-war programs and accounts, an increase of $17 billion over FY 2011 and a decrease of approximately $9 billion from the President’s request.
In addition to $530 billion in base spending, the bill contains $118.7 billion in spending for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, $842 million above the President’s request and $39 billion less than FY 2011, a decrease due to the drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq. This total includes $12.8 billion for the training and equipping of Afghan Security forces, and $1.1 billion for the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund (PCCF), which has moved from the subcommittee on State/Foreign Operations to the subcommittee on defense.
The total in the bill is $648.7 billion. Other portions of defense spending are contained in the Military Construction and Energy and Water Appropriations Bills.
The bill is expected to be considered by the full House of Representatives the week of June 20. It is expected that germane amendments will be permitted.
What Could Possibly Be Wrong with Ratifying Nuclear Weapons Free Zones? Sen. Kyl?
The Obama administration’s recent submission to the Senate for ratification of two Nuclear Weapons Free Zones has prompted a backlash from Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). The basis for the good Senator’s opposition is about as compelling as the reasons for his opposition to New START. In other words, not compelling at all.
Nuclear Weapons Free Zones are declared zones in which the presence, production, acquisition and use of nuclear weapons are banned by the signatory states. On May 2, President Obama submitted two requests to ratify the protocols of nuclear free-zone treaties- Pelindaba in Africa and Rarotonga in the South Pacific. The U.S. has signed the treaties, but has not yet ratified the protocols which commit us not to test or use nuclear weapons within the zones. The U.S. did sign and ratify, however, the Treaty of Tlatelolco (with Reagan’s support for ratification), the Latin American and Caribbean nuclear weapons free zone treaty, so ratification of Pelindaba and Rarotonga would not be a grand departure from policy.
As the Arms Control Association’s Peter Crail has laid out, the arguments for Senate approval of the protocols are strong.
The treaties can prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons usable technologies by requiring even stricter requirements than those in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Pelindaba, for instance, obligates members to follow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recommended standards of physical protection over nuclear facilities and material. Both Pelindaba and Rarotonga require that member states only engage in nuclear commerce with countries that have applied IAEA safeguards over all of their nuclear activities. This is significant because the two treaties’ members include some of the world’s key suppliers of uranium, including Australia, Namibia and Niger. The treaties, therefore, contribute to non-proliferation beyond the core prohibition on acquiring nuclear weapons.
Nonetheless, a terse press release from Sen. Kyl immediately followed the submission, condemning ratifying the treaties because:
1) signing would support the President’s “flawed nuclear policy” as outlined in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which limits the circumstances under which the U.S. would use nuclear weapons, and
2) the treaties do not address the proliferation threats posed by Iran, Syria and North Korea
Sen. Kyl’s first argument is moot because President Clinton already signed Pelindaba and Rarotonga in 1996, giving our assurance not to test or bomb treaty members. Is Sen. Kyl suggesting that there are circumstances under which the U.S. should renounce its political commitment and threaten to use nuclear weapons against one of the members? If so, he should be asked to name them.
Any future threat posed by members of these zones is addressed in the Nuclear Posture Review, which states that any country using chemical or biological weapons against the U.S. or its allies would still face a devastating conventional military response, and the leaders of the accountable countries would be held personally responsible. This is a far more credible threat – especially as no country has used nuclear weapons since the end of World War II – and thus, a more effective deterrent than Sen. Kyl’s preferred theoretical U.S. nuclear strike.
Also, contrary to Sen. Kyl’s second argument, the fact that Pelindaba and Rarotonga are not directly tasked with curtailing the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs is not an argument against the zones. Senate approval of the protocols of these treaties would actually strengthen the U.S. ability to reign in rogue states because members of the treaties have demonstrated active commitments to arrest proliferation. For instance, Nigeria and South Africa have halted shipments of Iranian arms and ammunition bound for Gambia and North Korean tank parts bound for the Republic of Congo. Australia has employed stronger sanctions against Iran than the U.N. recommended.
“U.S. failure to ratify the [Nuclear Weapons Free Zones] protocols has not prevented such cooperation from occurring, but doing so would be a cost-free way to bolster the case made by the United States that more countries should cooperate in such nonproliferation efforts in the future,” Crail argues.
For fifteen years we have supported these treaties and now, we can only benefit from ratifying them. Ratify-away, Senate.
A Review of the House Version of the Fiscal Year 2012 Defense Authorization Bill
by Kingston Reif On May 26 the House approved the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 1540). Below is a review and analysis of the nuclear weapons related provisions in the bill, both good and bad. For easier reading, the contents include: I. New START implementation and further nuclear weapons reductions II. Nuclear targeting […]
Experts Say Likelihood of Attack on Iran is Small, Should Stay That Way
It doesn’t really matter who you ask, the answer always seems to be the same: an attack on Iran would be messy, to say the least.
Yesterday, I attended the last of four in the Arms Control Association’s series of briefings on Iran, Solving the Iranian Nuclear Puzzle. The briefing covered “The Military Option” and featured Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Jeffrey White with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Alireza Nader from RAND. While all three spoke frankly, none painted a particularly sunny picture of a potential war with Iran.
White noted, as we’ve heard before, that since it is not possible to destroy knowledge or basic technology, any setback would likely be measured in years. The idea of complete destruction of any program is just “not a fair argument to make.”
Further, White noted that, “The attack itself is a complicated thing. It’s not something you can easily gloss over the complexity of.” If we assume an air campaign of days-weeks (which White says would be necessary) then operations would need to be phased, allowing the Iranians to react and the US to respond in kind. The US and its allies would need air defense for ships, intelligence, a plan to counter Iranian missiles – altogether a lot of assets and phases would be required, all with their own complications.
On top of all this, Pickering offered his view that any attack has the very real potential to reinforce Tehran’s drive toward building a nuclear weapon.
Thankfully, Pickering also noted that, right now, the possibility of a US attack on Iran “seems to be as close to zero as one can get it, for which I’m deeply happy.”
Across town, Admiral William Fallon, former US CENTCOM Commander, also said that there is probably “little chance” of a US or Israeli strike on Iran, adding “we ought to be working pretty hard to focus on other things that would have us in a different place.”
“Improvement in relations, in my opinion, will likely occur with the realization that the interests of both people are better addressed with engagement and cooperation rather than antagonism and hostility,” said Fallon.
