By Chad O’Carroll Efforts to place unique pressure on Israel over its presumed nuclear arsenal could scuttle plans for the scheduled 2012 Conference on establishing a Middle Eastern zone free of weapons of mass destruction, President Barack Obama said earlier this month. In summarizing Obama’s comments, the White House suggested that “the Conference will only […]
So it goes…
At 6:15 this evening, in the East Room of the White House, President Obama will sign into law “the toughest ever unilateral US sanctions against the Islamic republic” that nobody believes will work.
The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act was passed last week by overwhelming margins in both the House and Senate: 408-8 and 99-0, respectively.
Despite Congress’ denial of exemptions for cooperating countries sought by the administration, reactions from the White House have been mostly positive. In a statement released Friday, Secretary Clinton welcomed the passage of the legislation, saying that both she and President Obama support the “broad aims” of the Congressional action.
While the final measure does contain significant human rights and development initiatives that should not be discounted, they do little to offset the fact that the people of Iran, not the regime, are most sensitive to broad sanctions such as those passed by Congress.
Update 7/2/10: Remarks by the President at the signing can be found here.
What the $33 billion War Supplemental Has Become
Over the past several months, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others have urged Congress to pass a $33 billion supplemental spending request to continue funding the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In recent weeks, the tone of the rhetoric has intensified, with Gates warning that the military may have to start doing “stupid things” if the supplemental is not passed by the upcoming July 4th recess. Even General David Petraeus has weighed in on the issue in recent days, urging the House to pass the bill during his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
Reversing the usual pattern, the Senate passed its version of the bill on May 27, but the bill has stalled in the House, largely due to two concurrent factors:
1) Large-scale defections of Democratic representatives who do not wish to go on record as having voted for more war funding, and;
2) Republican resistance to billions in spending that has been tacked on to the bill for programs unrelated to the war. These include aid to Haiti, other disaster relief funds, disability payments to veterans, and much more.
Congress won’t make its July 4 deadline for a conference agreement, but the House hopes to pass its version of the bill later today. In the final scramble, the bill is changing by the hour, but as of June 30 it had ballooned to nearly $75 billion.
(Highlights of the bill after the jump)
While we all wait patiently, let’s take a look at some highlights of the Senate’s recommendation:
• $33.43B in emergency war appropriations
• $13.37B in compensation for Vietnam veterans who suffer from a variety of health issues due to exposure to Agent Orange
• $5.48B in domestic disaster response funding
• $2.13B for various Haiti relief efforts
• $1.72B in economic support to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jordan, Vietnam, and El Salvador
• $1.26B for Diplomatic and Consular Programs in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Mexico
• $1.181B emergency funding for the War on Drugs (at least this is a war of some type)
• $30.58M in emergency farm loan subsidies, plus an additional $950M authorized (which technically doesn’t count towards the grand total of the bill)
• $165M global refugee assistance
• $45M to fight H5N1 (bird flu) and H1N1 (swine flu) worldwide
• $22M for increased Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission salaries
• $12.96M for emergency acquisition of a new radio system for the US Capitol Police
• $1.8M to study the ongoing financial crisis
• $174K for the late Rep. John Murtha’s widow, Joyce
• -$111.5M in emergency rescissions from the federal Digital-to-Analog Converter Box program (Americans unable to watch TV? Now that would have been an emergency. Thankfully it seems we overestimated the number of 30 year-old television sets out there.)
The total cost of the bill is $58,962,089,000.
In this Senate version, at least, a slim majority of the funding (56.7%) goes towards the war. 22.7% goes to Vietnam veterans. The remaining 20.6% mostly goes to Haiti and domestic disaster relief, which are at least stated to be part of the bill’s purpose.
With vast sums being spent on unrelated programs such as farm subsidies, police radios, and the never-ending War on Drugs, the definition of the word ‘emergency’ has become blurred. This is not to say that many of these programs are a bad use of taxpayer dollars, but the salient question is: Why must they be included in an emergency supplemental appropriations bill? Then again, the student of American government (also known as “the cynic”) knows that this happens every year.
The point is, whether add-on funding comes in the form of highly controversial or legitimately useful programs, this is a war funding bill, and pork is still pork no matter how it tastes.
The House version will no doubt contain much more unrelated spending, with the war quickly becoming a minority provision.
Benefits of US-Russian Missile Defense Cooperation
Guest Post by Volha Charnysh
Yesterday, U.S. ambassador to Russia John Beyrle urged Moscow to join Washington in building a worldwide missile defense system. Last week, prior to his meeting with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, Barack Obama was quoted as saying that “cooperative missile defense with Russia has enormous potential” and that the United States “want[s] to work with Russia to be a key player and beneficiary in this global [missile defense] architecture.”
The idea of U.S.-Russian missile defense cooperation is not new, and the initiatives considered today have been pondered for decades. The two countries agreed to “explore opportunities for intensified practical cooperation on missile defense for Europe” in a joint declaration at the May 2002 U.S.-Russia Summit, but their dialogue reached an impasse when George W. Bush unveiled the plan to build 10 interceptor missile systems in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic.
A window of opportunity for Russia’s participation reopened with Obama’s September 2009 decision to deploy a phased adaptive missile defense in Europe. As per the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, U.S. proposals for missile defense cooperation with Russia include integration of U.S. and Russian sensors; joint research and development; joint missile defense testing; joint modeling and simulations; missile defense exercises; and joint analyses of alternative U.S.-Russian missile defense architectures for defending against common, regional threats. After the U.S. change of plans, NATO has also expressed readiness to explore the potential for linking U.S., NATO and Russian missile defense systems and declared missile defense cooperation with Russia its target for the next NATO Summit in Lisbon in November 2010…
Despite its longevity and revived popularity, missile defense collaboration remains a contentious issue, and not only because the technical plausibility and cost-effectiveness of missile defense systems are still being debated. However modest the scope of cooperation in question – primarily technology and information sharing – some in Washington fail to see its potential benefits. For example, Bill Gertz writes in Washington Times that the Obama administration is “secretly working with Russia” on an agreement that may limit U.S. missile defenses.
I argue that missile defense collaboration with Moscow, which has already become an important U.S. partner in confronting nuclear proliferation challenges, would not only help to reduce Russia’s concerns regarding U.S. missile defense plans, but also provide Washington with additional technology and expertise, send a stronger message to regimes developing ballistic missile capabilities, improve the U.S.-Russian bilateral relationship, and open possibilities for further arms reductions.
First, by cooperating with Moscow, which has a wealth of missile defense technology and expertise, Washington could reap important technological benefits. In fact, U.S. firms like Boeing and Lockheed Martin are already exploring the possibilities of joint design and development projects with Russian companies: a Russian liquid fuel rocket engine is used in new U.S. space launch vehicles, while a Russian rear moveable exhaust nozzle is employed in some models of the Joint Strike Fighter.
Washington could both augment its capabilities and save resources by taking advantage of the Kremlin’s 2007 proposal to grant the United States access to the Gabala radar station in Azerbaijan and the Armavir radar station in Russia’s Krasnodar Territory. The Russian radars are much closer to Iranian targets than any potential U.S. installations, and with some adjustments, they could detect missile launches not only from Iran, but also from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The radars could also be linked to the missile launch data exchange center in Moscow, created by the U.S.-Russian Memorandum Of Agreement in 2000 “to minimize the consequences of a false missile attack warning and to prevent the possibility of a missile launch caused by such false warning,” but never built due to liability and tax issues. The efforts to make the JDEC a reality have intensified with the Obama Administration’s change of plans, and the center could become an important element of the U.S. phased adaptive missile defense in Europe.
Second, U.S.-Russian missile defense collaboration would send a strong message to regimes seeking to develop missile capabilities. For example, Tehran might think twice about developing longer range ballistic missiles if Russia, its long-time economic partner and ally, were integrated into European missile defenses against an Iranian strike. With a stake in the European missile defense system, Moscow might also be more eager to support international sanctions against Tehran and less careless about the technology it exports.
Third, engaging Moscow in a joint missile defense project could only improve U.S.–Russian bilateral relations. Information exchange and joint R&D efforts could increase transparency and trust between Moscow and Washington, thereby deepening their understanding of each other’s capabilities and intentions and reducing the incentives for mutual suspicion. By working with the West to defend Europe, Russia would feel more integrated into the European security architecture. In an indirect way, this would help address the concerns expressed by Moscow in its draft of the European Security Treaty, which failed to elicit a thoughtful response from the West.
Most importantly, missile defense collaboration could pave the way for the next round of bilateral strategic arms reductions. Moscow and Washington have reached their first shaky compromise on missile defense in New START. The treaty’s preamble notes the interrelationship between offense and defense and bars the United States from placing missile defense interceptors in ICBM silos or SLBM launchers – something the United States no longer plans to do. In addition, Moscow issued a unilateral statement that it would consider withdrawing from the treaty if the U.S. develops strategic defenses capable of threatening the Russian deterrent –something the United States also has no intention of doing. However, the most difficult and bitter disagreements over missile defenses lie ahead, and the amount of contention generated by the modest wording in the New START in Washington suggests that the road to further reductions will be closed, unless the United States and Russia are able to collaborate on missile defenses in the future.
Of course, whether the benefits mentioned above actually come to fruition depends on overcoming some important political and technical challenges. However, the two sides concluded far more complicated agreements in far less auspicious circumstances during the Cold War. Today, with the “reset in their relationship and with the possibility of the NATO framework bringing the two countries together on this sensitive issue, the success of the U.S.-Russian missile defense cooperation looks even more likely.
In her January 29 speech at L’Ecole Militaire in Paris, Secretary of State Clinton called missile defense “an extraordinary opportunity for us [the United States, NATO and Russia] to work together to build our mutual security.” It’s time for the two countries to muster enough political will to make this happen.
Volha Charnysh is currently the New Voices Nonproliferation Fellow at the Arms Control Association and will begin a Ph.D. in government program at Harvard University in the fall. The views expressed are her own.
Inhofe: “Bipartisan support for New START means I can’t show up at the hearings”
At least Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is honest. At last Thursday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on New START, he explained his absence at the previous nine hearings on the treaty thusly:
I agree that this is the tenth hearing you’ve had. I would suggest that you haven’t had any hearings where the witnesses are opposed to the treaty….We’ve had…seventeen witnesses so far; no witnesses in opposition to it. I don’t know who thinks that can be reasonable.
Inhofe continued that he could finally show up because the tenth hearing included two witnesses (Bob Joseph and Eric Edelman) whose questions about the treaty largely comported with his own.
As you may recall, a day before the hearing our own John Isaacs published a nice little blog over at the Chain Reaction taking the good Senator to task for criticizing New START without bothering to show up for or ask a single question at any of the previous public hearings.
While Inhofe eventually got around to correctly noting that it was John who criticized him for his prior absences (who knew the Council had the power to get a Republican to show up at a hearing??), he at first confused John’s missive with an ad paid for last week by the Partnership for a Secure America (PSA) in which 30 Republican and Democratic leaders backed the treaty. The endorsement included such left wing luminaries as Colin Powell and former Senators Nancy Kassebaum-Baker (R-KS), Howard Baker (R-TN), and Alan Simpson (R-WY). Inhofe actually held up the PSA ad and claimed that it was attacking him!
Ohhh the irony. I doubt Senator Inhofe intended to inadvertently make the case for New START, but he ended up doing just that. As he noted, the seventeen previous witnesses who support the treaty include the likes of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (assumed his position under W. Bush), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen (assumed his command under W. Bush), STRATCOM Commander Gen. Kevin Chilton (assumed his command under W. Bush), Stephen Hadley (National Security Advisor under W. Bush), Brent Scowcroft (National Security Advisor under H.W. Bush), Jim Baker (Secretary of State under H.W. Bush), and James Schlesinger (Secretary of Defense under Nixon and Ford). Add these to the PSA ad (which Inhofe triumphantly displayed at the hearing) and what you get is an ironclad bipartisan consensus in support of New START.
This is just a thought, but maybe the Obama administration should hire Inhofe to do some of its PR on the treaty?
