Rebuttal of the “sequestration is just a cut in the rate of growth” lie

Ever since the sequester’s inception in August 2011 under the Budget Control Act, many ignorant people, including many anti-defense hacks (such as Mercatus Center’s Veronique de Rugy, AmSpec’s Matt Purple, HumanEvents’ David Harsanyi, POGO’s Danielle Brian, TIME magazine’s Mark Thompson, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and CATO Institute anti-defense hacks) have falsely and repeatedly claimed that sequestration, even WRT defense spending, is a mere cut in the rate of growth, not a real-term cut. They have been repeating that lie incessantly since the sequester’s inception.

But repeating a lie 100 times doesn’t make it true, contrary to the opinion of their godfather Joseph Goebbels. It’s still a blatant lie, and the people spreading it are children of the Father of Lies himself.

For the purposes of this article, a spending cut is defined the way reasonable people would define it: as a situation whereby next year’s spending level is lower than previous year’s.

Also, as always, I will look at the sequester’s impact on defense spending throughout the next decade (FY2013-FY2022), NOT merely at the remainder of FY2013 or on FY2014. The entire decade matters – especially given that some of sequestration’s consequences will not emerge immediately, but later on during the Sequestration Decade.

Sequestration, for those not yet familiar with it, is an automatic process whereby the discretionary portion of the federal budget (but not the mandatory portion, i.e. not entitlements or debt interest) will be significantly and automatically cut – and by far the heaviest cuts, over 60% of the total, will fall on the defense budget. This will reduce defense spending deeply below today’s levels ($525 bn)  in a salami-slicing manner – by automatically cutting everything outside military personnel accounts by 10%. The DOD is not allowed any flexibility in where to make the cuts; it is obligated to cut everything, no matter how important (or unimportant) by 10%. (Not that such deep cuts could be done safely even in a targeted manner, but that’s another story.)

The most accurate, most authoritative report on this subject to date has been compiled by the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO published that report on July 11th, 2012 – almost a year after the BCA became law.

In that report, in Table 1-4, which you can find on page 11, the CBO says what exact caps would there be for defense (and nondefense discretionary) spending under each year from FY2013 through FY2022. The CBO gives such figures in both nominal dollars (unadjusted for inflation) and real-term dollars (i.e. adjusted for inflation, which erodes the value of the dollar over time – significantly over a decade).

In inflation-adjusted, real-term dollars, the lowered budget caps under sequestration for defense would be as follows: $469 bn in FY2013,  $472 bn in FY2014, $475 bn in FY2015, $477 bn in FY2016, $480 in FY2017, $483 bn in FY2018, $485 bn in FY2019, $487 bn in FY2020, $489 bn in FY2021, and $493 bn in FY2022.

The current (pre-sequestration FY2013) budget cap for base defense spending is $525 bn.

This means that by FY2022, at the end of the “Sequestration Decade”, the defense budget will still be $32 bn SMALLER than it is today, and a year earlier, in FY2021, when Veronique de Rugy falsely claims it will be 18% larger, it will actually be $34 bn (i.e. 6.47%) SMALLER than it is today.

Below is a graph nicely illustrating this, also courtesy of the CBO:

 

Nor is sequestration the first real-term cut to defense spending since 2009. Already the first tranche of cuts mandated by the BCA required real-term (though not deep) cuts to defense spending: from $531 bn in FY2012 to $525 bn today. So today’s defense budget, even before sequestration, is already smaller than last year’s.

Nor does adding defense programs outside the DOD’s budget (and there aren’t many of them) to the mix help those who pooh-pooh sequestration. If such programs’ budgets (which, by the way, are ALSO subject to sequestration) are added to defense budgets for later years, they must also be included in this year’s pre-sequestration budget. Which means that the depth of the cuts (and their realness) remains the same, only the starting and final numbers change slightly.

Nor can the DOD and the Congress look to war (OCO) accounts to shore up the base defense budgets, because war accounts, like all discretionary spending, are ALSO subject to sequestration. That’s the problem with sequestration: it treats the entire military budget, and all other national-security-related spending, as sequestrable. Unspent balances from previous years are also subject to sequestration.

Therefore, the DOD and the Congress cannot increase war spending to patch up base defense budget accounts; doing so would require changing the sequestration mechamism itself, and with it, the Budget Control Act itself.

It needs to be stated one more time, to refute the libertarian lie: SEQUESTRATION IS NOT A MERE REDUCTION IN THE RATE OF GROWTH OF DEFENSE SPENDING. UNDER SEQUESTRATION, THERE WILL BE NO GROWTH IN DEFENSE SPENDING AT ALL, COMPARED TO TODAY’S LEVELS. UNDER SEQUESTRATION, DEFENSE SPENDING WILL STILL BE DEEPLY BELOW TODAY’S LEVEL A DECADE FROM NOW, IN FY2022.

Any claim to the contrary is a blatant lie, and the people spreading such lies are children of the Father of Lies himself.

For more on sequestration, see this.

Rebuttal of de Rugy’s and Winslow Wheeler’s blatant lies about defense spending

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act. – George Orwell

Anti-defense organizations such as POGO and the CDI (both of whom employ professional blowhard and liar Winslow Wheeler) routinely and falsely claim that the US spends almost $1 trillion per year on “defense” or the military. Late last year, libertarian propagandist Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at GMU joined them in propagating this blatant lie, uncritically repeating Winslow Wheeler’s false $930 bn figure and presenting it in a table.

But they are lying. How?

Firstly, they falsely claim that Budget Category #050 (“National Defense” in OMB/CBO classification) contained $676 bn in FY2012. But actual data from the OMB says it was $670 bn, and even that is overestimated, because the entire US military budget for FY2012 (the base budget plus OCO spending plus spending on the Energy Department’s nat-sec programs) was $633 bn, not $670 bn or $676 bn, in FY2012. (In FY2013, the maximum authorized amount, per the FY2013 NDAA, is $613 bn.)

Secondly, de Rugy and Wheeler falsely claim various larger and smaller budgetary items as being “defense spending” or “military spending”, even though the vast majority of them have no military nature and have nothing whatsoever to do with defense (though many of them are loosely related to the much broader mission of “national security”, the most important and basic function of the federal government).

In other words, de Rugy and Wheeler dishonestly count many budgetary items as “defense spending” in order to deliberately exaggerate its scale and thus to mislead the public.

These items are: the Department of Veterans’ Affairs budget ($124 bn), the “international affairs budget” ($61 bn), the DHS’s budget ($46 bn), and the DOD’s healthcare programs ($21 bn). They falsely and dishonestly claim that 100% of all of these items counts as “defense spending” and add it to the military budget to arrive at a figure of $928 bn for FY2012.

Needless to say, their claims are utterly false.

Let’s review each of these items and see whether they really count as “defense spending” or “military spending”, which properly defined means  spending on the US military itself as an institution – specifically, to pay, feed, clothe, train, heal, and house the members of the US military and to provide them with the resources (including, but not solely, weapons) with which to defend the nation and carry out all their missions, and the bases where they live, work, and train.

Let’s see if the budget items which Wheeler and de Rugy dishonestly claimed as “defense spending” really count as such:

• The Department of Veterans Affairs ($124 bn): This agency cares for past members of the military – those who no longer serve. It provides them with care, including medical care. It exercises no military functions whatsoever and has nothing whatsoever with the mission of defending America. Thus, it does not count as “military” or “defense” spending.
• The Department of Homeland Security ($46 bn): This civilian agency, while having the mission of protecting the US, is a purely civilian and purely domestic agency. It does not prepare anyone for war and does not carry out any military operations. Its only similarly with the DOD is that it shares its broader mission of protecting America and Americans from harm… and that’s where the similarities end. It has nothing whatsoever to do with America’s military defense or the US military, save for US Coast Guard, a $5 bn portion of the DHS’s $46 bn annual budget.
• The international affairs budget ($61 bn): Again, it has nothing to do with the US military or with defending America. In fact, it doesn’t have anything to do with martial issues at all, save for its small part which finances the training and equipping of certain foreign militaries (the majority of this goes to just two countries: Israel and Egypt). The vast majority of this $61 bn pot of money, however, is civilian in nature: humanitarian aid, the UN’s Millenium Challenge, fighting AIDS, US embassies and consulates, consular services, etc. Yet, de Rugy, Wheeler, POGO, and CDI falsely claim all $124 bn of this money as “defense spending”, which is a blatant lie.
• The DOD’s healthcare programs ($21 bn): as this is a DOD program and as it pays for the healthcare of current members of the US military, this may be legitimately claimed as military spending. However, this small, $21 bn pot of money hardly changes anything in the equation.

So the vast majority of what de Rugy, Wheeler, POGO, and CDI claim as “defense” or “military spending” isn’t “defense/military spending” at all. It’s purely civilian spending and has nothing whatsoever to do with the US military and the mission of defending America; foreign aid doesn’t even have anything to with the much broader mission of national security or protecting the country, as its only purpose is for the transfer of wealth from rich to poor countries under utopian globalist schemes.

Adding the DOD’s healthcare program ($21 bn) and the Coast Guard ($5 bn) to the joint DOD-DOE military budget for FY2012 ($633 bn per the FY2012 NDAA) brings the total to $659 bn, almost $300 bn below the $928 bn number that de Rugy and Wheeler falsely  claimed and deliberately use to mislead the public.

To be clear: whatever its size is, the defense budget – and the entire rest of the federal budget – should be examined for potential savings and efficiencies – as it has already been several times since 2009. Since there is broad political agreement that such examination for potential efficiencies should be made, there is no reason to wildly exaggerate the size of the defense budget.

But de Rugy (who isn’t even an American), Wheeler, POGO, and CDI don’t care about that. They’re not interested in the truth, in careful defense savings, in the country’s security, or in the nation’s fiscal health. All they care about is gutting the US military – POGO and the CDI were founded for that very purpose, and POGO is today generously co-financed by George Soros through his Open Society Institute.

They and other enemies of America’s defense must be prevented from achieving their goal. America’s and the world’s security depends on it. And to do that, we defense conservatives must first present the public with the facts and counter de Rugy’s and Wheeler’s blatant lies. Intellectual disarmament always precedes actual disarmament.

Pacifist Obama decides on deeper nuclear deterrent cuts

On the ForeignPolicy.com website, R. Jeffrey Smith of the extremely leftist “Center for Public Integrity” saysthat Barack Obama and his administration’s officials have settled on the number to which they will cut America’s nuclear deterrent beyond the cuts already imposed, and to try to justify these cuts, which he enthusiastically supports, he makes a litany of false claims.

In other words, his screed is a litany of blatant lies.

The deployed US nuclear arsenal is to be cut, under Obama’s plans, from 1,550 to just 1,000-1,100 warheads – i.e. by a third. Obama also wants to reduce America’s total nuclear stockpile – including reserve warheads and tactical nuclear weapons – to just 2,500, i.e. by 50%, from about 5,000 today.

Smith tacitly admits that these cuts – and their announcement – were cowardly delayed until Obama was safely reelected so that Obama would not lose the election:

“Several said the results were not disclosed at the time partly because of political concerns that any resulting controversy might rob Obama of votes in the November election. Some Republican lawmakers have said they oppose cutting the U.S. arsenal out of concern that it could diminish America’s standing in the world.”

This is a tacit recognition that American voters would likely NOT approve of his planned gutting of America’s nuclear deterrent, and would’ve likely voted him out of office, had the cuts been announced prior to the election

It is only now that Obama will announce these cuts, now that he’s safely reelected and that he doesn’t have to face voters again.

Smith says that “Senior Obama administration officials have agreed that the number of nuclear warheads the U.S. military deploys could be cut by at least a third without harming national security, according to sources involved in the deliberations”, and falsely claims of the draft nuclear arsenal cut decision and targeting strategy that “It makes clear that an even smaller nuclear force can still meet all defense requirements.”

But that is completely false. A significantly smaller nuclear arsenal will not be able to meet most, let alone all, of America’s defense requirements and those of its allies. It will not be able to effectively deter America’s enemies for the simple reason that it will be too small. Being significantly smaller, it will not be survivable enough and will thus be much easier for both Russia and China to destroy in a nuclear first strike on the US. Even if they refrain from such a drastic action, they will certainly use America’s weakness to intimidateWashington and its allies and to attack American allies and interests around the world. Don’t delude yourself that Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran would refrain from doing that if they had the opportunity to do so.

The fact is that a nuclear arsenal, in order to be survivable, MUST be large – there’s no way around that fact. In order to be an effective deterrent, it also must be able to hold the vast majority of enemy military and economic assets at risk. A smaller arsenal and the new nuclear strategy prepared for Obama’s signature will be utterly unable to do so.

This is because there are simply so many strategic and nonstrategic weapon sites and other important military (and economic) targets in Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran that being able to target a majority of them will require far more warheads than Obama would allow – not a mere 1000-1100, but at least 1,550, if not more. The Heritage Foundation’s nuclear weapons experts have estimated that about 2,700-3,000 nuclear warheads are required for that.

And why is it important to target at least a majority, if not the vast majority, of an enemy’s assets? Because only then will he suffer a truly devastating and prohibitively costly retaliation if he commits aggressions. If he loses only a minority of his assets – even if they’re the most important ones – he will not be deterred from attacking. Only if the vast majority of his assets are held at risk will he refrain from aggression.

Yet, Obama and his bureaucrats and apparatchiks don’t care about that. All they care about is disarming the US and creating their pipedream “world without nuclear weapons”, a fiction that will never exist.

So instead of reviewing possible targets and then deciding on how many warheads the US needs, they’ll instead impose an ideological, arbitrary warhead cut on the military: no more than 1000-1100 warheads, and the military will have to adapt its targeting strategy to that.

They’ve got it exactly backwards. They’re imposing an arbitrary warhead limit on the military and forcing it to THEN come up with a targeting strategy to fit that limit.

Smith also uncritically repeats the 2010 NPR’s false claim that nuclear weapons are

“poorly suited to address the challenges posed by suicidal terrorists and unfriendly regimes seeking nuclear weapons.”

This is a blatant lie. Nuclear weapons are very well suited to defend America and its allies against rogue regimes seeking or already possessing nuclear weapons. When your enemy is seeking – or already has – such weapons, a large and survivable nuclear deterrent is your ONLY chance of survival.

Indeed, America’s nuclear deterrent is its – and its allies’ – only real insurance policy against the large nuclear arsenals of Russia and China, the small but growing arsenal of North Korea (which Pyongyang plans to test again later this month), and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Conventional weapons cannot substitute; only nuclear weapons have the striking power capable of imposing a sufficient retaliation and thus of deterring these enemies.

As I have documented and proven numerous times, most recently last week on CDN, nuclear weapons are not relics of a bygone era; they are vital assets which are very much needed today to deter Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.

Smith also falsely claims that:

“The financial savings from even the modest reduction now being contemplated could be substantial, according to officials and independent experts. Already, to comply with New Start, the Pentagon has been pulling warheads from land-based missiles and making plans to decommission some of the missiles themselves; it is also planning to reduce the number of missile tubes aboard its Trident submarines.

By pushing the arsenal size even lower, it could close perhaps two of its three land-based missile wings and cut at least two of the 12 new strategic submarines it now plans to build — saving $6 billion to $8 billion for each one. Eliminating a single wing of 150 missiles would save roughly $360 million a year, or more than $3 billion over a decade, according to Tom Collina, research director at the Arms Control Association, a non-profit research group inWashington. Modernization of the remaining land-based missiles might also be deferred, bringing additional savings.”

Firstly, Collina is not an expert, he’s an extremely leftist pro-unilateral-disarmament propagandist. He has zero expertise in the field of national security. Indeed, no real expert worth his salt would make claims as ridiculous as those quoted above.

Secondly, compliance with New START treaty produces only tiny “savings” but high compliance costs (of dismantling the missiles and warheads and disabling submarine missile tubes) and, on balance, costs far more money than it saves.

Thirdly, the claim that eliminating a single wing of ICBM would save “roughly $360 million a year” is false. Even eliminating the ENTIRE ICBM leg of the nuclear triad would save only 1 bn USD per year; cutting one of the current 3 ICBM wings would save even less. Furthermore, given that the ICBM leg of the triad is the cheapest and most reliable of the three legs of the triad, the damage thus done to national security would far outweight the meagre monetary savings this would produce.

Fourthly, eliminating one SSBN of the planned new ballistic missile submarine class would save, at most, only $4.9 bn per year (which is their real cost), not $6-8 bn as the author falsely claims. Furthermore, fewer submarines in total means fewer submarines at sea, which means fewer targets for Russian or Chinese attack submarines to sink.

Fifth, the claim – which the author repeates throughout the entire article – that the deep cuts Obama has ordered will save lots of money is also completely false. All of the cuts that Obama has now decided on will not make ANY impact – even the most meager one – on the budget deficit, which is $1 trillion per year. Even saving, say, $10 bn per year on nuclear weapons would not make even the most trivial impact on the federal budget deficit. What’s more, even eliminating the entire US nuclear arsenal altogether would not make any meaningful impact on the deficit, because the US nuclear arsenal costs only $35.2 bn per year to maintain.

Remember: the entire federal budget deficit is 1 trillion per year. Even eliminating the nuclear arsenal entirely would not even make a dent in the deficit.

Moreover, Jeffrey Smith’s claim that China has a “deterrence-only policy” is also a blatant lie. China actually has a far larger arsenal than the author and other disarmament proponents claim. It has at least 1,800, and up to 3,000, nuclear warheads, and the means to deliver at least 1,274 of them immediately, including about 200 of them to the US.

Smith also falsely claims that other nuclear weapon states are also reconsidering their nuclear arsenals, but the only country doing so – and the only example he gives – is cash-strapped Britain where, as in the US, even supposedly “conservative” politicians prefer to cut defense rather than social spending (which, in the British government budget, is 7 times higher than defense spending). An unnamed British official claims that Britain needs a “debate” on nuclear deterrence and might scale back or cancel its procurement or deployment of new SSBNs and their warheads.

But Britain is the ONLY nuclear weapon state other than the US cutting its nuclear arsenal. No other country is doing so. Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, India, and Israel are all GROWING and MODERNIZING, not shrinking, their nuclear arsenals. They have no intention of cutting, let alone giving up, their nuclear arsenals.

So we’re seeing the most dangerous phenomenon and most dangerous world possible: the West is unilaterally disarming itself while Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, and others are growing their nuclear arsenals!

This is a recipe for suicide, aggression, death, and destruction.

Finally, the claim – which the author and Obama administration officials continue to repeat throughout the article – that the US will still be secure even with such a significantly reduced arsenal is also a blatant lie. The US will not be secure. The US will be threatened and frequently blackmailed by both Russia and China. Moreover, even if the cuts are done through a treaty with Russia, it’s very likely that Russia will not comply with it, just like it hasn’t complied with any previous treaty it has signed.

Furthermore, we must not forget that while Russia and China are threats to many and protectors to nobody, the US is responsible for providing a nuclear deterrrent not just for itself, but also for 30 allies. If the US makes the cuts that Obama calls for, many of America’s allies will have no choice but to develop their own nuclear weapons. And you can bet that they will.

Shame on Jeffrey Smith for writing this litany of blatant leftist lies, and shame on Foreign Policy for publishing it.

Folks, please call your Congressman and both of your Senators and tell them they MUST stop this treasonous act of disarming America.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/08/obama_embraces_big_nuke_cuts

Rebuttal of the DOD’s lies in defense of Chuck Hagel

Proving that the once-conservative DOD is now firmly controlled and run by pacifists wishing to disarm the US in concert with their fellow pacifists at the State Department, the Obama DOD has released a pamphlet of blatant lies intended to make Obama SECDEF nominee Chuck Hagel look good. The pamphlet attacks what it calls 7 “myths” about Chuck Hagel and invokes what it falsely claims are “facts”, but which are actually blatant lies.

On America’s nuclear deterrent – which Hagel would like to do away with (and could, if confirmed as Secretary of Defense), the DOD falsely claims that Hagel is committed to retaining a nuclear deterrent “as long as nuclear weapons exist”, but at the same time shares Barack Obama’s “goal of a world without nuclear weapons”.

Leaving aside the fact that such a world will never exist, that the world is currently going in the exactly opposite direction (with more countries joining the nuclear club), and that nuclear disarmament is undesirable (the risk of war between great powers will be much higher without nuclear weapons being there to restrain them), the fact is that Hagel is NOT committed to maintaining a nuclear deterrent: He’s virulently opposed to it.

Chuck Hagel is a board member of two extremely leftist, pacifist organizations seeking deep unilateral cuts in America’s nuclear arsenal: Global Zero and the Ploughshares Fund. Both seek to disarm the US unilaterally while claiming to seek universal nuclear disarmament. Both also grossly overstate the cost of America’s nuclear deterrent. Ploughshares also pays millions to media outlets each year to slant their stories in favor of unilateral arms cuts and against America’s nuclear deterrent (the NPR has been particularly biased in that, and receives $5 mn per year from Ploughshares) and virulently opposes any military action against Iran.

Global Zero has, for its part, released a “report” co-authored by Hagel which calls for deep UNILATERAL cuts in America’s nuclear deterrent, including the elimination of all US ICBMs, deep cuts in the bomber and ballistic missile submarine fleets, scrapping all US cruise missiles, and scrapping America’s tactical nuclear weapons.

This would be the deepest cut ever in America’s deterrent, bringing it down to only 450 “active” and 450 inactive warheads, and Global Zero wants the US to be unable to use even the “active” warheads until 72 hours after an enemy strike on the US.

This – as experts such as Dr Keith Payne and Rebeccah Heinrichs have pointed out – would dramatically reduce the number of targets America’s enemies would need to destroy in a first strike, from 455 to just 5: 3 above-ground bomber and 2 submarine bases, plus the few SSBNs that Global Zero’s plan would allow America to retain.

This would be a recipe for and a guarantee of a Russian or even Chinese nuclear first strike, as they’d have only 5 targets to retain. Moreover, an arsenal of only 450 warheads would be woefully insufficient to hold the majority, or even any significant share, of Russian or Chinese military assets at risk, meaning such a tiny “deterrent” would be ineffective and wouldn’t be a deterrent at all.

And Hagel signed the plan calling for such an ineffective pseudo-deterrent. (It was sensibly and promptly rejected by USAF and Strategic Command leaders.)

To be effective, a nuclear deterrent must be large – to be survivable as well as to hold the vast majority of enemy assets at risk, thus guaranteeing that he’d pay an unacceptably high price for any aggression. But Hagel doesn’t understand that.

So contrary to the DOD’s lies, Hagel does NOT support the nuclear deterrent – he supports gutting it. (Of course, the DOD is silent on Hagel’s support for that plan.)

On the defense budget, the DOD again tries to have it both ways: claiming that Hagel doesn’t want to cut the defense budget too deeply but also that the DOD „must do its part” in cutting the budget deficit.

But the DOD has already done more than its part in addressing that problem: it has already contributed over 900 bn to deficit reduction, while no other federal agency has contributed ANYTHING towards that goal. And that’s without counting sequestration.

Besides, Hagel doesn’t just want the DOD to „do its part”: he wants to deeply cut its budget for ideological reasons. He has also falsely claimed that it’s „bloated”, when it’s not: it amounts to only 4.2% of America’s GDP, less than 18% of the total federal budget, and is quite modest considering the gravity and wide array of military threats America is confronting: from a rapidly building-up and modernizing China whose military already has a lot of modern, lethal weapons, to a Russia that retains a huge nuclear and conventional arsenal and is run by an anti-American KGB thug, to a nuclear- and ICBM-armed North Korea, to an Iran racing towards nuclear weapons, to various terrorist organizations.

To cut the defense budget under such circumstances would be pure folly.

On Israel, the DOD conveniently cherry-picked the facts, while completely omitting Hagel’s virulently anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic statements, such as „the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here”, „let the Jews pay for it” (the USO facility in Haifa), etc., as well as his calls for US to directly negotiate with Hamas and Hezbollah, thus belying the DOD’s claim that Hagel has been tough on these terrorist organizations.

In fact, Hagel was one of only 12 US Senators to refuse signing a letter calling on the EU to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

On Iran, the DOD conveniently omitted Hagel’s vote AGAINST designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist group while calling for direct talks with Iran and ardently opposing any military option WRT Tehran, claiming that it’s „not a viable or responsible option.”

Last but not least, Hagel completely lacks the experience and qualifications necessary to be SECDEF. Again, the DOD has lied to make him look good. Hagel has never run any large business, university, government agency (being deputy administrator of VA doesn’t cut it),  or any military unit. His ability to act as the DOD’s CEO is completely untested.

So the DOD’s „facts” in defense of Chuck Hagel are all blatant lies. Contrary to Hagel’s defenders’ claims, no one is „smearing” Hagel – we, his critics, are merely using his own words and actions to show people who he really is. Hagel is his own worst enemy. He has no one but himself to blame for the criticism he’s receiving. No one ordered him to support a treasonous unilateral disarmament plan, call for appeasing terrorist groups and regimes, insult Israel and the Jews, or call for deep defense budget cuts at the most dangerous time since WW2. It’s all his fault.

It is the moral and Constitutional duty of the Senate to reject Hagel. Any Senator who fails to carry out that duty must be voted out of office. No exceptions.

Folks, please call both of your Senators and tell them that you will never vote for them again if they vote to confirm Chuck Hagel. Also, please call Republican Senators and tell them to filibuster Hagel’s nomination.

Rebuttal of Robert Burns’ and other leftists’ anti-nuclear lies

On January 30th, the leftist Associated Press published yet another irredeemably biased, utterly ridiculous litany of blatant lies by its “National Security Writer” Robert Burns, a strident leftist biased against the military and against nuclear weapons in particular. As is typical of a leftist media “journalist”, Burns has written yet another garbage screed which is so biased and filled with so many lies as to brainwash the public into supporting leftist policies and presenting Republicans in a negative light.

In this case, Burns wants to mislead the public into supporting deep unilateral cuts to America’s nuclear deterrent (and its eventual elimination) and portray nuclear weapons as dangerous relics of the past and Republicans as dinosaurs supporting an orthodox and outdated policy.

To that end, he makes a litany of false claims and quotes three leftist “national security thinkers” while not quoting a single dissenting (i.e. conservative) expert.

But his claims, and those of the stridently leftist “thinkers” he quotes, are all blatant lies. Here’s why.

Burns starts by gleeing over the fact that Chuck Hagel, Obama’s nominee for SECDEF, backs deep, unilateral cuts to America’s nuclear arsenal and:

“That puts him outside the orthodoxy embraced by many of his fellow Republicans but inside a widening circle of national security thinkers — including President Barack Obama — who believe nuclear weapons are becoming more a liability than an asset, less relevant to 21st century security threats like terrorism. (…)

The customary stance of defense secretaries in the nuclear age has been that the weapons are a necessary evil, a required ingredient in American defense strategy that can be discarded only at the nation’s peril.

Hagel, 66, takes a subtly different view — one shared by Obama but opposed by those in Congress who believe disarmament is weakness and that an outsized American nuclear arsenal must be maintained indefinitely as a counterweight to the nuclear ambitions of anti-Western countries like North Korea and Iran.

In a letter to Obama two months after his former Senate colleague entered the White House in 2009, Hagel wrote that Global Zero was developing a step-by-step plan for achieving “the total elimination of all nuclear weapons,” but with a “clear, realistic and pragmatic appreciation” for the difficulty of realizing that goal. (…)

“Getting to global zero will take years,” Hagel wrote in the March 2009 letter to Obama on behalf of Global Zero. “So it is important that we set our course toward a world withoutnuclear weapons now to ensure that our children do not live under the nuclear shadow of the last century.”

Hagel stands out in this regard in part because history — first the demise of the Soviet Union, then the rise of terrorism as a global threat — has changed how many people think about the deterrent value of nuclear weapons. For decades after the birth of the atomic age in the 1940s the chief concern was controlling the growth, and later managing the shrinkage, of nuclear arsenals without upsetting the balance of power.

Today the thinking by many national security experts has shifted as the threat of all-out nuclear war has faded and terrorist organizations with potentially global reach, like al-Qaida, are trying to get their hands on a nuclear device.

“Hagel’s views reflect the growing bipartisan consensus in the U.S. security establishment that whatever benefits nuclear weapons may have had during the Cold War are now outweighed by the threat they present,” said Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which supports efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Hagel was co-author of a Global Zero report last May that proposed, as an interim step, reducing the U.S. arsenal to 900 weapons within a decade, with half deployed and the other half in reserve. That compares with a current U.S. stockpile of 5,000, of which 1,700 are deployed and capable of striking targets around the globe.

The report said these cuts could be taken unilaterally if not negotiated with the Russians or carried out through reciprocal U.S. and Russian presidential directives.”

What’s wrong with Burns’ claims?

To start with, EVERYTHING.

Firstly, contrary to the image that Burns and the three leftists (Steven Pifer of Brookings, Joseph Cirincione of Ploughshares, and Bruce Blair of Global Zero) attempt to project, nuclear weapons are anything but relics of a bygone era, and the need for nuclear weapons today is as greater as, if not greater than, during the Cold War.

Russia currently has 1,500 deployed and 1,300 nondeployed strategic nuclear warheads (a total of 2,800) and untold thousands (probably around 4,000) deployed and nondeployed tactical nuclear warheads – all of which are deliverable anytime.

To deliver the strategic ones, Russia has 434 ICBMs (mostly multi-warhead missiles) which can collectively deliver 1,684 warheads, 13-14 ballistic missile subs which can deliver over 2,000 warheads on their 220 SLBMs; and over 250 strategic Tu-95, Tu-160, and Tu-22M bombers.

To deliver its tactical nukes, Russia has a very wide range of systems including aircraft (e.g. the Su-25, Su-25, the Su-27/30/33/34/35 Flanker family), artillery pieces, surface warships, submarines  armed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes, and short-range ballistic missiles.

It is now working on modernizing all three legs of its nuclear triad, including two new ICBMs, a new long-range bomber, and a new SSBN class.

China has at least 1,800 and up to 3,000 nuclear weapons (not the mere 240-400 often claimed by US disarmament supporters) and many systems with which to deliver them: over 60 DF-5, DF-31, and DF-41 ICBMs; six ballistic missile subs; over 120 DF-3, DF-4, and DF-21 MRBMs; 440 bombers and strike aircraft; and around 2,000 SRBMs and Land Attack Cruise Missiles.

(In another sign of Burns’ bias, his screed does not mention Russia’s and China’s large nuclear arsenals, and barely mentions in passing that Russia and China have nukes in general. This is a deliberate tactic by Burns to mislead people into thinking that the US doesn’t need to deter Russia nor China.)

On top of that, the US has to deter North Korea (which has ca. 12 nuclear warheads and intends to test one soon) and Iran, which is racing towards nuclear weapons. Moreover, while Russia and China are threats to many and protectors to nobody, the US has to provide an effective nuclear umbrella not just for itself, but also to over 30 allies.

If the US makes further cuts in its arsenal, it will become too small to deter enemies and reassure friends, and consequently, these allies will have no choice but to develop their own nuclear weapons, thus making the proliferation problem much worse. But these allies cannot bet their security, and indeed, their very existence on ridiculous “nuclear weapons are relics of a bygone era” and “nuclear disarmament will make us safer” kumbayah beliefs – or on America breaking free of such ridiculous notions and of Democrat-led government by 2017.

The fact is that nuclear weapons are not relics of a bygone era, nor are they “liabilities”. They are indispensable assets in protecting America against the gravest security threats it is facing: Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Terrorism is a threat, but not even close to being as severe as that of Russia’s and China’s large nuclear arsenals and military buildups, North Korea’s smaller but deadly one, and Iran’s nuclear ambitions and quest for regional hegemony.

No amount of shouting the tired “we’re in the 21st century!” and “they’re liabilities and relics of the Cold War!” slogan will change these facts.

Moreover, if nuclear weapons are “liabilities”, a huge threat to those who hold them, and relics of yesteryear, why are more and more countries interested in acquiring them, and why are Russia, China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel all growing their nuclear arsenals?

Answer: because they recognize the inherent value of nuclear weapons, which are NOT relics of the Cold War nor “liabilities”.

The cost of maintaining the entire US nuclear arsenal and its related infrastructure is estimated by the Stimson Center to be about $35.2 bn per year – just 6% of the entire military budget, and a bargain price to keep America safe.

And contrary to what Burns and Cirincione claim, there is zero risk of American nuclear weapons (let alone their delivery systems) being stolen by terrorists. These weapons are well-guarded and secure, and Al Qaeda is not even trying to steal them. So doing away with America’s nuclear weapons will do NOTHING to stop Al-Qaeda from obtaining nuclear weapons elsewhere.

The real risk is that AQ may steal Pakistani nuclear warheads – but scrapping America’s own arsenal will do nothing to prevent that. It will not cause Pakistan’s arsenal to magically go away or encourage Pakistan to dismantle its weapons.

America’s nuclear weapons pose no threat to anyone – except, of course, those who wish to attack the US or its allies.

So the benefits of America’s nuclear arsenal greatly outweigh the costs – not the other way around.

So, by pushing for America’s nuclear disarmament, Burns, Obama, Hagel, Cirincione, and Blair are advocating a ridiculous policy which will gravely weaken the US and its military, jeopardize US national security, invite a nuclear first strike by Russia or even China, leave America’s allies fending for themselves (and thus encourage further nuclear proliferation), and embolden America’s enemies around the world, while completely failing to prevent (or even slow down) nuclear proliferation or nuclear weapons falling into terrorists’ hands.

In other words, nuclear disarmament would make America (and the whole world) dramatically less secure and less peaceful.

And yes, disarmament IS weakness – by its definition, it means laying down all arms, i.e. the state of being disarmed (unarmed). Yet, without weapons (including nuclear ones), the US will have nothing to defend itself with. That would be a state of terrible weakness – and weakness ALWAYS invites aggression.

“But Hagel wants to eliminate all nuclear weapons globally, not just in the US”, you might say. But there will never again be a “world without nuclear weapons” – not even in the next 100 years – Obama’s, Hagel’s, and others leftist’ fantasies notwithstanding. China, North Korea, Pakistan, and India will never give up their nuclear weapons (China refuses to even talk to the US about them). This genie cannot be put back into the bottle.

A world without nuclear weapons is not only utterly unrealistic, it’s also undesirable. For all human history prior to 1945, we did actually have such a world. The result? There was nothing to restrain the world’s great powers – so all human history before 1945 is one of huge, bloody wars between the great powers of the time, including the two bloodiest, most barbaric wars the world has ever seen: the two World Wars, with a combined body count of 100 million people – mostly innocent civilians.

Since 1945, we have not had another world war or any conflict between the world’s great powers – and that is at least in large part, if not wholly, due to nuclear deterrence.

Burns claims that there is “a widening circle of national security thinkers”, whom he also wrongly calls “experts”, who believe that “who believe nuclear weapons are becoming more a liability than an asset”. Yet, he cites no serious “national security thinkers” or “experts” sharing that view – only three stridently liberal anti-nuclear hacks: Joseph Cirincione, Steven Pifer, and Bruce Blair, plus America’s most leftist president ever, Barack Obama.

But they’re strident liberal ideologues, not “thinkers” or “experts”. Cirincione is the president of the Ploughshares Fund, which supports deep unilateral cuts to America’s nuclear deterrent and routinely lies about the subject while staunchly opposing any military action against Iran. Blair is Hagel’s fellow Global Zero member. Pifer is with the George-Soros-funded Brookings Institution, a liberal think-tank.

Meanwhile, I can cite many genuine nuclear deterrence experts who believe further cuts to America’s arsenal, especially unilateral or deep ones, are wrong and foolish: e.g. Heritage Foundation experts Rebeccah Heinrichs, Baker Spring, and Michaela Bendikova; USAF nuclear deterrence affairs chief MGEN William Chambers; former SECDEFs Harold Brown and James Schlesinger; and the nation’s foremost nuclear deterrence expert, Dr. Keith B. Payne.

Indeed, when Global Zero issued its “report” calling for deep, unilateral cuts to America’s nuclear deterrent, STRATCOM commander Gen. Bob Kehler and then USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz rejected it and Dr. Payne testified before the Senate against that report’s proposals, showing how dangerous and suicidal they are.

Moreover, consensus does not determine the truth. Discovering facts does. And the FACTS are that the need for American nuclear weapons today is as great as (if not greater than) it was during the Cold War.

For that reason alone, Hagel’s and Global Zero’s proposals of deep unilateral cuts are absolutely unacceptable and disqualifying.

Please call both of yours Senators, Dear Readers, and please tell them you will never vote for them again if they vote to confirm Chuck Hagel.

There is a group called Americans for a Strong Defense which, as the name suggests, advocates a strong national defense, opposes Hagel’s nomination, and is working to warn Senators to vote against Hagel – or to unseat them if they disregard that warning. Another group opposing Hagel is the American Future Fund.

A summary of Chuck Hagel’s record

As the Senate Armed Services Committee considers Chuck Hagel’s nomination for Secretary of Defense (which should be rejected), here’s a summary of Hagel’s record – of what he has said and done – on several important issues.

1) Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah

• In 2008, Hagel told Aaron David Miller (a former Clinton advisor on Middle Eastern issues) that “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here [in the US Senate - ZM].”
• He has advocated that the US talk to Hamas and Hezbollah.
• He has refused to sign a number of letters supporting Israel and a letter urging the EU to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
• In 1999, he was the only Senator refusing to sign a letter urging then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin to act against anti-Semitism in Russia.
• In 2006, during Israel’s action against Hezbollah, he called what Israel was doing a mindless “slaughter”.
• His friend, self-admitted “self-loathing Jew” MJ Rosenberg (Twitter handle: @MJayRosenberg) (fired by Media Matters for his anti-Israeli rants) says that he knows Hagel is “lying” to the SASC now to win confirmation.
• In 2003, Hagel accused Israel of keeping the Palestinians “caged like animals”.
• Hagel has been endorsed for SECDEF by virtually all critics of US support for Israel, including Stephen Walt of Harvard University.

2) Iran

• Hagel has claimed that a strike on Iran is not a “viable, responsible” option.
• In 2007, he voted against designating the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization at the same time that the IRGC was killing American troops in Iraq.
• As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, he voted to kill certain sanctions against Iran in committee, as he has admitted to SASC member Sen. Kelly Ayotte.
• Hagel is a board member of the Deutsche Bank, which is under investigation for violating sanctions against Iran. He has also received rewards and emoluments from groups that oppose sanctions (let alone a military strike) against Iran.

3) Nuclear deterrence

• Hagel is a proud board member of two extremely leftist groups which support deep unilateral cuts to, and the unilateral elimination of, the US nuclear deterrent – a policy which would not only invite but virtually guarantee a Russian nuclear first strike on the US and its allies. These two extremely leftist groups are Global Zero and the Ploughshares Fund (the latter also opposes any military strike against Iran as well as the US missile defense program).
• Hagel has been endorsed for SECDEF by all pro-disarmament organizations in the US, including Global Zero, the Ploughshares Fund, and the so-called “Council for a Livable World”. He’s also supported by many individual proponents of unilateral nuclear disarmmament, such as Bruce Blair of Global Zero and Stephen Walt of Harvard University.
• As a member of a 5-man Global Zero panel, Hagel co-authored and co-signed a report calling for deep, unilateral, and fast reductions to America’s nuclear deterrent, including the scrapping of all US ICBMs, tactical nuclear weapons, and nuclear-tipped missiles; deep cuts to the nuclear modernization program; cutting the SSBN fleet from 14 to just 10 boats and the retirement of all B-52s and B-2s or converting them to purely conventional roles, as well as cutting the total US nuclear arsenal to just 450 active and 450 inactive warheads – and under Hagel’s and Global Zero’s proposals, even the 450 “active” warheads could not be used until 72 hours after a potential first strike on the US. The report called for all of these cuts to be completed in 10 years, by 2022. That report was roundly (and rightly) rejected by the commander of STRATCOM, Gen. Bob Kehler, and by the USAF Chief of Staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz.
• In 2009, Hagel claimed that the US does not have the credibility to demand that North Korea, Iran, and other rogue states renounce nuclear weapons while the US itself retains nuclear arms – despite the fact that North Korea, Iran, and other rogue states couldn’t care less about America’s “credibility” or “moral leadership” and were pursuing nuclear weapons based on their perception of their own interests, not based on America’s actions. He also ignored the then-18 years of incessant cuts to America’s nuclear arsenal that had passed since 1991, and the failure of such cuts to make any impression on Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, and other rogue states. By making that statement, he also suggested moral equivalence between the US and its allies on one hand and America’s potential adversaries (Russia, China, North Korea, Iran) on the other hand.
• Also in 2009, and many times since, Hagel expressed his support for total nuclear disarmament and the fantasy of a “world without nuclear weapons”, a fantasy that will never again exist but did exist before 1945 – and brought about the carnage of two World Wars, as there was nothing sufficiently deadly to restrain the world’s great powers.

4) The defense budget

• In 2011, Hagel falsely claimed that the defense budget is “bloated in many ways” and needs to be “pared down”, ignoring the fact that the total military budget amounts to just 4.2% of America’s GDP, less than 18% of the total federal budget, and is not bloated at all considering the gravity and wide array of security threats America is confronting today, Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran to name just a few.
• Hagel has been endorsed for Secretary of Defense by organizations seeking deep cuts in America’s defense budget, capabilities, and force structure, such as the Ploushares Fund, the “Council for a Livable World”, and the George-Soros-funded CATO Institute.
• The New York Times has said, citing unnamed Obama Administration officials, that Obama wants to cut the defense budget and “kill some major Cold War era weapon systems” (without specifying what these supposed “Cold War era weapon systems are”), and that “for that, Mr Hagel (…) is needed” – in other words, the reason why Obama has nominated Hagel is because he wants Hagel to gut the US military.

Ask yourselves, Dear Readers: is this the kind of Secretary of Defense you want and America deserves?

If not, please call both of your Senators and tell them that you will never vote for them again if they vote to confirm Chuck Hagel. Also please contact Republican Senators and ask them to filibuster Hagel’s nomination. Republicans can and should do this to spare the nation from an extremely leftist and unqualified SECDEF nominee whom Obama has nominated for purely political reasons, and whom Obama’s lackeys in the US Senate have utterly failed to properly vet and will back solely for political reasons (out of blind deference to Barack Obama).

We cannot afford to lose this fight. We cannot be content with Republicans merely voting against Hagel but letting the Dems use their Senate majority to confirm Hagel. We cannot be complacent with merely opposing a bad and unqualified nominee: we must stop him, in his tracks BEFORE he can get to the DOD and do any damage. We must  hold Republicans’ feet to the fire and make sure they BLOCK Hagel’s nomination by filibuster.

We must also contact AIPAC and urge them to pressure all Senators to vote against Hagel as well as to pressure the White House to withdraw Hagel’s nomination. AIPAC prides itself in being America’s chief pro-Israel organization, but recent media reports indicate AIPAC does not want to get into a fight it believes it would lose.

We must convince AIPAC to jettison that ridiculous defeatism and to join the fight to BLOCK Hagel’s nomination – for America’s sake as well as that of America’s closest ally, Israel.

“Minimum deterrence” is no deterrence at all

Leftist pacifists are waging a purely ideological, bordering on religious, crusade against America’s own nuclear deterrent, claiming that it is somehow a threat to the US and to world stability and a “liability”. They want to do away with it entirely and unilaterally if Russia doesn’t agree to a bilateral treaty.

But an outright, immediate, unilateral nuclear disarmament would not pass, as the Congress and the public would never allow such course of action.

So, like Fabian socialists (and most pacifists, including Barack Obama and many House Democrats, also happen to be socialists), they deceptively advocate a transitional policy called “minimum deterrence” to lull the Congress and the public into a false sense of security by claiming they support providing for nuclear deterrence – just at much lower force levels – while they actually treat such policy as a mere temporary, transitional step on the road to zero nuclear weapons.

So, while they pretend to support nuclear deterrence, they really don’t – and for them, the deep further cuts in the nuclear deterrent they advocate would be just a temporary step towards a disarmed America.

What is wrong with that?

To start with, EVERYTHING.

Let’s pretend for a moment that cuts in the nuclear arsenal would stop at the levels which pacifist organizations like the Arms Control Association, the CATO Institute, the PDA, and Global Zero advocate. The ACA wants to see the total US arsenal down to 1,000 or fewer warheads based on no more than 300 ICBMs, 8 ballistic missile subs, and the current fleet of B-52s and B-2s. CATO and PDA want to see similar cuts. Global Zero wants to see even deeper ones: to just 450 active and 450 inactive warheads, based on just 10 submarines, while all ICBMs, bombers, nuclear-capable cruise missiles, and tactical nuclear weapons would be scrapped or (in the bombers’ case) relegated solely to conventional missions.

Let’s pretend for a moment that cuts would permanently stop at that, ignoring the fact that these pacifist, leftist organizations treat them as a mere step on the road to nuclear zero.

The fact is that such a tiny arsenal would be woefully inadequate. In other words, what they call “Minimum deterrence” is no deterrence at all. It is weakness and an invitation to aggression – even to a first strike by Russia or China.

The US needs a large nuclear arsenal, not a small one. This need is driven by America’s potential adversaries – primarily Russia (6,800 warheads) and China (up to 3,000 warheads). The US nuclear arsenal has to be large in the face of such large enemy arsenals for two reasons:

1)      SURVIVABILITY: A small nuclear arsenal – such as that proposed by the above-mentioned organizations – would be easy for Russia to destroy in a first strike. Fewer warheads, missiles, submarines, and bombers located on fewer bases would be far easier to destroy in a first strike than a large number. 300 ICBMs, a handful of bombers at 3-5 bases, and just 8 SSBNs (only 4 of which would be at sea at any given time) would be far easier to destroy in a surprise disarming first strike than 450 ICBMs, 14 SSBNs, and more bombers at more bases. Global Zero’s cuts would be even more disastrous – cutting the entire arsenal to just 900 warheads (including 450 active ones), zero ICBMs, zero nuclear-capable bombers, and just 10 SSBNs stationed at two bases (Kitsap and Kings’ Bay). This would dramatically reduce the number of targets an enemy would need to strike – from 455 to 2 (or 5, if nuclear bombers were retained) – something that even China could do quite easily, given that it has over 60 ICBMs and at least 72 SLBMs.

2)      CREDIBILITY. In order to deter, a nuclear arsenal must not only be able to survive, it must also be able to hold the vast majority (if not all) of enemy military and strategic assets at risk. Given how large the Russian and Chinese militaries (including their nuclear arsenals and China’s 3,000-mile-long network of tunnels for nuclear-armed missiles) are, this clearly requires a very large nuclear arsenal; a small arsenal would not even be close to sufficient, as there would be way too few warheads to hold enemy targets at risk. The Heritage Foundation has estimated in an impartial, exhaustive study that between 2,700 and 3,000 warheads are needed for that purpose.

A small nuclear arsenal could only target Russian, Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian population centers, as it would be woefully insufficient to hold the majority of enemy military assets at risk. This would mean a shift from counterforce to countervalue targeting – i.e. targeting innocent civilian populations instead of enemy warmaking capability. Is this the policy we want? The proponents of arms reduction do.

But such a policy would arguably be immoral, and would not be accepted by most Americans. So the only credible and acceptable policy is counterforce – which requires a large number of warheads.

Another fact that should warn against further cuts to America’s nuclear deterrent – and which utterly disproves claims that it’s “oversized” or “excessive” – is that while Russia and China are threats to many, they are protectors to nobody, while the US has to provide a nuclear deterrent not only for itself, but also for 30 allies.

And before you shout “They should defend themselves! We should not defend them!”, please think calmly and remember that dumping those allies and failing to provide a credible nuclear umbrella for them will force them to develop their own nuclear warheads – which several of them, including at least 6 Pacific Rim allies, could do in mere months if need be.

This would lead to more proliferation, not less. In fact, as Heritage Foundation nuclear experts Baker Spring and Michaela Bendikova point out, the US nuclear deterrent has done more to prevent nuclear proliferation than any arms control treaty ever signed. In testimony before Congress, analysts such as Stephen Rademaker and Kori Schake have also pointed out the nonproliferation value and contributions of America’s atomic umbrella.

Cutting the US nuclear deterrent will lead to more proliferation, not less.

The nuclear capabilities of America’s adversaries

Russia has a very large strategic nuclear arsenal (2,800 warheads, 1,500 of them deployed and 1,300 in reserve) and the means to deliver it:

• Over 250 strategic bombers (64 Tu-95s, 16 Tu-160s, and 151-171[1] Tu-22Ms), each capable of carrying six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and a nuclear freefall bomb;
• 14 ballistic missile submarines (5 Delta III class, 7 Delta IV class, 1 Typhoon class[2], and 1 Borei class submarine[3]), which can carry 16 ballistic missiles each (the Typhoon class boat can carry 20); these missiles include the 12-warhead Liner SLBM and the 10-warhead Bulava SLBM;
• 434 ICBMs, including (numbers in parentheses refer to the maximum warhead carriage capacity):

1. 58 SS-18 Satan missiles (10 warheads and 30 penetration aids each);
2. 136 SS-19 Stiletto missiles (6 warheads/missile);
3. 171 SS-25 Sickle (RT-2PM Topol) missiles (single-warhead);
4. 74 SS-27 Sickle B (RT-2UTTH) missiles (single-warhead);
5. at least 18 SS-29 (RS-24) missiles (4 warheads/missile).

The Satan fleet alone can carry 580 warheads to the CONUS. Russia’s ICBMs are not currently loaded with the maximum possible number of warheads, but can be thus loaded at any time, if the Kremlin so orders.

Russia also has a huge tactical nuclear arsenal – far larger than that of the US. It is estimated to have at least 1,000-4,000 tactical nuclear warheads – by any measure, far more than the US has (about 500). These are warheads of various types: missile warheads, aircraft bombs, nuclear depth charges, nuclear torpedo warheads, nuclear artillery shells, etc. They are deliverable by a wide range of systems, including aircraft (e.g. the Su-24, Su-25, Tupolev bombers, and the Su-27/30/33/34/35 Flanker family; Russia plans to procure 200 Su-34s), short-range ballistic missiles (e.g. the SS-26 Stone), surface warships, submarines, and artillery pieces.

So Russia alone has a huge nuclear arsenal which America must defend itself and its allies against. It has, in recent years, made repeated threats (over a dozen in the last 4 years alone) to use these weapons against the US or its allies if they don’t succumb to Russia’s demands on various issues.

Thus, the Russian threat, by itself, is huge and justifies the retention of a large US nuclear arsenal.

China has 1,800, and potentially up to 3,000, nuclear warheads, as determined in objective, impartial studies independently by Professor Philip Karber (Georgetown) and Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, a former Russian missile force chief of staff. Their estimates are based on Chinese fissile material stockpiles, delivery system inventories, potential targets for China, and itsst, 3,000-mile-long network of tunnels for nuclear missiles.

North Korea has about 12 nuclear warheads and the capability to deliver them to the US, as demonstrated by its successful December 2012 test of a genuine ICBM and the fact that it can mate nuclear warheads to ballistic missiles. North Korea, of course, also has large arsenals of SRBMs and MRBMs.

Iran is currently developing nuclear weapons and may have them by next year. It is also developing an ICBM capable of hitting the US, which US intel estimates it may have by 2015, and already possesses ballistic missiles which can hit targets as far away as Warsaw (e.g. the Sejjil missile).

To disarm in the face of these multiple nuclear threats, including Russia’s and China’s large arsenals, would be worse than a folly: it would be utterly suicidal.

Yet that is what pacifist, pro-disarmament groups such as the ACA, the PDA, Cato, and Global Zero advocate. They want to deeply cut the US nuclear arsenal, down to what they deceptively call a “minimum deterrence” posture, in a few years, and they view such cuts as a mere transitional step on the road to a completely disarmed America.

Contrary to their claims – made in order to mislead those Americans worried about the debt – even very deep cuts to the nuclear deterrent would only bring about puny, phantom “savings” which would be more than outweighed by the tragic consequences of the Russian nuclear first strike such cuts would invite, and the consequences of further nuclear proliferation around the world, as ally after ally would have to “go nuclear” to provide a nuclear deterrent for himself in the absence of a nuclear umbrella.

The costs of maintaining the US nuclear deterrent are small. Its ICBM leg costs only $1.1 bn to maintain; the bomber leg, only $2.5 bn per year. The entire nuclear arsenal plus its supporting infrastructure costs only $35.2 bn per year ($352 bn per decade) to maintain, according to the StimsonCenter (the Obama Administration, despite supporting nuclear disarmament, estimates the arsenal to cost even less). Only biased, anti-nuclear pacifist organizations like Ploughshares falsely estimate the nuclear arsenal to cost over $660 bn per decade – a totally fake number which was rightly rebuked by, of all people, WaPo “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler.

So the policy which pacifist, pro-disarmament organizations advocate would be utterly disastrous. It would invite (if not outright guarantee) a Russian first strike on a small, unsurvivable nuclear arsenal; force allies around the world to “go nuclear” and thus dramatically worsen nuclear proliferation; embolden America’s enemies everywhere around the world;  undermine America’s and allies’ security, freedom, and independence; and allow any idiot to build a few hundred warheads to match the US in nuclear weapons. All while utterly failing to save taxpayers more than a pittance and contributing virtually nothing to deficit reduction.

For all of these reasons, the cretinous, suicidal “minimum deterrence” policy must be completely and permanently rejected. “Minimum deterrence” is no deterrence at all.

 

[1] Reputed analyst Sean O’Connor estimates Russia to have 171 Tu-22Ms; Wikipedia says Russia has 151 (93+58).

[2] Russia also has 2 additional Typhoons in reserve. It is not clear what it intends do to with these boats: scrap or recommission them.

[3] The first four boats of the Borei class will have 16 missile tubes each. All successive boats of this class, however, starting with the fifth, will have 20 missile tubes each, meaning that the Russian submarine fleet’s SLBM carriage capacity will increase as the 5th and every consecutive Borei class boat enters service.

Rebuttal of Mick Mulvaney’s and Keith Ellison’s lies

In an op-ed published on January 3rd in the extremely liberal Huffington Post, RINO Congressman Mick Mulvaney (RINO-SC) and extremely liberal Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) made a number of false claims and a few straw man arguments while promoting their campaign to gut America’s defense together with leftist think-tanks. (Their false claims, previously made in a letter to Congressional leadership, have been refuted here.)

They begin their op-ed by claiming that defense spending must contribute to deficit reduction because it has grown by 1/3 since FY2001. But that’s a straw man argument. Defense spending, in case they haven’t noticed, has already contributed mightily to deficit reduction: to the tune of over $900 bn since FY2010 alone. This included over 50 weapon program terminations in FY2010 and FY2011 (saving $330 bn), cutting the US nuclear arsenal unilaterally under New START (which allows Russia to grow its arsenal), the $178 bn Gates Efficiencies Initiative (upheld by Leon Panetta) and the $487 bn in savings required by the first tier of the Budget Control Act – savings which Sec. Panetta has found and programmed.

By the way, successive SECDEFs and other DOD leaders have repeatedly asked, indeed begged, Congress for authorization to address the REAL cost drivers in the defense budget – military healthcare and retirement programs – and to retire obsolete/niche aircraft (e.g. C-23s, C-27s, and the oldest F-16s, A-10s, and C-130s) and close unneeded bases (Leon Panetta has requested authorization for TWO base closure rounds). Congressional consent is needed for all of these reforms (and for virtually everything else).

Yet, the Congress has repeatedly and consistently refused to authorize ANY of these reforms for purely parochial reasons.

Thus, members of Congress, including Reps. Mulvaney and Ellison, should stop blaming the DOD and look at themselves. THEY are to blame – not the DOD.

But even if such reforms were authorized, the savings would not be nearly big enough to justify deep defense budget cuts. Yet, Mulvaney and Ellison falsely claim that such savage, deep defense spending cuts are possible without harming the US military, even though that is a blatant lie. There is some waste in the defense budget, but not enough of it to make deep defense budget cuts, contrary to what the supporters of such cuts (all of whom are strident liberals) falsely claim. Any deep cuts would have to come from the force structure (which has already been cut excessively), training, maintenance, and modernization (i.e. the development and procurement of new, badly needed equipment, as well as the modernization of existing gear).

Mulvaney and Ellison blatantly lie in their op-ed that “respected policy organizations from across the political spectrum, such as the CATO Institute, the Project on Government Oversight, Taxpayers for Common Sense, the National Taxpayers Union, and the Project on Defense Alternatives” have come up with ways to “responsibly” achieve “$550 bn in defense savings over a decade”, and that the cuts proposed by these organizations would not weaken the US military at all.

But the fact is that the cuts proposed by these leftist organizations would gravely weaken the US military. That is not an opinion. That is a FACT.

Moreover, the cuts proposed by these leftist organizations seem to be deliberately designed to cripple America’s armed forces.

I have already refuted the proposals of all of these organizations here, here, here, here, here, and here. A very detailed analysis of Russia’s and China’s military capabilities is available here. In this article, I’ll refute a few of their destructive proposals to illustrate how badly their treasonous defense cuts proposals would cripple the US military.

All of these leftist organizations propose to dramatically cut America’s nuclear deterrent, even though it has already been dramatically reduced since the end of the Cold War (from over 20,000 to just 5,000 warheads) and is in urgent need of modernization, and even though Russia, China, and North Korea are rapidly GROWING their nuclear arsenals. Russia alone has 2,800 strategic and untold thousands (up to 4,000) of tactical nuclear warheads, all of which are deliverable: Russia has 434 ICBMs (most of them being multiple-warhead missiles), over 250 strategic bombers (Tu-95s, Tu-160s, Tu-22Ms), and 13 ballistic missile subs (with 200-220 missiles, each capable of carrying varying numbers of warheads) to deliver its strategic nukes, and untold thousands of tactical delivery systems (such as warships, aircraft, and artillery pieces) to deliver its tactical warheads (which range from bombs to nuclear depth charges to nuclear artillery shells).

Dramatically cutting the US nuclear arsenal or failing to modernize it – as CATO, the PDA, the NTU, POGO, and TCS all propose to do – would be worse than an utter folly. It would be suicidal, inviting a Russian or possibly even Chinese nuclear first strike on the US. This is for two reasons. Firstly, to be survivable, a nuclear arsenal has to be large, especially if the enemy’s arsenal is also large. A few hundred ICBMs, a few SSBNs, and a few bomber bases would be quite easy for the enemy to take out. Secondly, only a large arsenal can threaten the majority of Russia’s and China’s military assets (the things they really care about) and thus threaten CREDIBLE retaliation upon Russia or China in case of aggression. A small arsenal could only threaten population centers – which Russian and Chinese leaders don’t care about – and would thus not be credible at all. “Minimum deterrence” is no deterrence at all. Contrary to CATO’s and PDA’s false claims, the US nuclear arsenal is not oversized at all, and the US does not have any “overkill” in that regard.

All of these leftist organizations also propose to cut the SSBN fleet down to just 7-8 boats, meaning that only 3-4 at most would be at sea at any time; to cancel the overdue construction of new nuclear facilities to replace old, dilapidated ones; and to cancel the Next Generation Bomber.

The Next Generation Bomber is absolutely and urgently needed, and the need for it has been proven many times already (vide e.g. here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), and reaffirmed numerous times by successive Defense Secretaries (Rumsfeld, Gates, Panetta), USAF Chiefs of Staff (Moseley, Schwartz, Welsh), other USAF leaders, and by Air Force Secretary Michael Donley.

Why is it needed, when B-1s and B-52s have decades of service life left? These legacy bombers have huge radar signatures, meaning they are extremely easy even for legacy Soviet radars (let alone modern Russian and Chinese air defense systems such as the S-300, S-400, S-500, and HQ-9) to detect and for enemy SAMs to shoot down from a long range. Any airspace defended by even primitive 1960s Soviet systems, such as the SA-2/3/4/5/6, let alone the newest Russian and Chinese air defense systems, is thus firmly closed to the B-1 and the B-52.

And that makes these legacy bombers completely useless, because a bomber’s sole purpose is to penetrate enemy airspace and deliver bombs to its targets. If it cannot do so for any reason whatsoever – e.g. being unable to penetrate enemy airspace due to a large radar sig and thus high risk of getting shot down – such aircraft is useless. Launching cruise missiles is no solution: cruise missiles have small bodies and small warheads and thus can strike only small, soft, unhardened, static targets. And due to their cost, they are useful only for short, scope-limited campaigns.

Today, the USAF’s only bombers capable of surviving in enemy airspace are its 20 B-2s (which POGO opposed, BTW) – and 20 bombers are nowhere near enough to defeat anyone but the most trivial adversary.

Thus, the NGB is urgently needed – NOW.

PDA and CATO also propose to dramatically cut the Navy’s size, to just 230 ships and 8-9 carrier groups. Similarly deep cuts would fall on submarine, surface combatant, amphibious assault, and landing dock ships. PDA and CATO would also dramatically cut the procurement of Virginia class submarines (which are needed to replace noisy LA class subs) and P-8 Poseidon aircraft. This would make the Navy unable to meet many of the missions it currently has to meet. The Navy is already able to supply only 59% of Combatant Commanders’ requests for ships and only 61% of their needs for submarines. With the cuts that PDA and CATO propose, the Navy would be able to meet even fewer of COCOMs’ needs – probably less than half. In other words, the majority of Combatant Commanders’ needs would go unmet. National security would suffer as a result – because the missions required to keep America safe would not be executed.

A ship, no matter how advanced technologically, can be in only one place at any given time. Yet, the world hasn’t shrunk since the 1980s, the world’s sealanes – which must be safeguarded – are long, the Persian Gulf remains volative, China cannot be allowed to turn the WESTPAC into an internal Chinese lake, and thus, the Navy has many commitments around the world which it must meet.

I could go on and on like this all day. PDA, CATO, POGO, TCS, and the NTU demand deep, crippling defense cuts across the board: in the ground force, in the fighter fleet, in support aircraft (such as the wrongly-maligned V-22) in crucial weapon programs across the board, in missile defense, etc. 

The fact is that, contrary to the pious denials of those RINO and Democrat Congressmen, the massive defense cuts proposals of these think-tanks would severely weaken the US military and imperil national security for the reasons stated above. So despite their pious denials, national security would be severely compromised and harmed.

In short, for all of the reasons listed here and the linked articles, their defense cuts proposals would gravely weaken the US military and put US national security at risk – despite their, Mulvaney’s, and Ellison’s pious denials. Mulvaney and Ellison falsely claim that they wouldn’t embark on this cause if it would lead to weakening America’s defense – but this is precisely what their campaign and those leftist organizations’ deep defense cuts would lead to. If they don’t know it, they should stop pontificating about issues they know nothing about.

(And does anyone really believe that strident liberals like Keith Ellison give two hoots about America’s defense?)

By the way, those “policy organizations” are not “from across the political spectrum”. Only the NTU could be said to be on the political right. CATO, the Massachusetts-based (and Barney-Frank-supported) PDA, POGO, and TCS are from the far left.

CATO was founded by anarcho-libertarian Murray Rothbard, who opposed any form of government whatsoever (i.e. favored anarchy), opposed having any military whatsoever, considered the US military to be a tool of internal oppression, blamed the Cold War solely on the US (while claiming Moscow was merely the aggrieved side), supported Islamofascists over Israel, and hailed Nikita Khrushchev during his visit to the US.

Today, CATO’s VP for “foreign and defense studies” is Chris Preble, a guy who thinks America’s military power is a problem to be eliminated and a thing that makes America less safe – i.e. he accepts the discredited liberal thesis that military strength is dangerous and provocative. (He has written a book titled The Power Problem: How America’s Military Power Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free).

CATO and POGO are co-funded by George Soros and his Open Society Institute.

POGO was founded in 1981 to oppose and to stop Ronald Reagan’s attempt to rebuild the US military after 12 years of massive, disastrous defense cuts. They have opposed every crucial weapon system the US has developed or fielded since 1981, most of which have performed brilliantly – such as the M1 Abrams tank, the M2 Bradley IFV, Ground-Launched Cruise Missiles (put in Europe in 1983 to deter the USSR), the F-15, the B-2 bomber, the V-22, the F-22, and so forth.

The Massachusetts-based “Project on Defense Alternatives” is supported by the House’s most strident liberals, such as Barney Frank, and like POGO, TCS, and CATO, sits on the far left fringe of the US political spectrum.

Mulvaney and Ellison falsely claim that in the past, lower defense spending levels have provided “more than adequately” for national defense. This is false and, in any case, irrelevant. False, because deep defense cuts have, in the past, always led to severe weakening of the military. This is what happened after the Civil, World, Korean, Vietnam, and Cold Wars: the US proceeded to reap a “peace dividend” which turned out to be illusory, short-lived, economically useless, and deeply damaging to the military, whose force structure, training hours, maintenance funding, and equipment orders were dramatically cut, and as a result, the US military was significantly weakened each time.  And after each of these drawdowns, the US military had to be rebuilt later – at a much greater fiscal cost. So in the long term, these drawdowns and “peace dividends” saved nothing.

The only periods of the Cold War when defense was adequately provided for were the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the Reagan years. During the Reagan years, the base defense budget was significantly LARGER in inflation-adjusted dollars than that of today: $590 bn in FY1987 compared to $525 bn this year.

Yet, in the next breath, Mulvaney and Ellison admonish their readers that past military spending levels are irrelevant to today and that defense spending levels should be determined by military needs and threat assessment, not by past spending levels or percentage of GDP. Thus, they’re contradicting themselves. So which is it, Congressmen? If past defense spending levels are irrelevant, why did you bring them up? By your own admission, they’re irrelevant.

You can’t have it both ways.

Also, what Mulvaney and Ellison fail (or refuse) to acknowledge is that America’s current defense needs are large and require large and sustained investment in the military. They cannot be met on the cheap.

Defense on the cheap is not possible.

Here is an objective, impartial assessment of Russia’s and China’s military capabilities, as well as a short assessment of the North Korean and Iranian threats. To deeply cut America’s defense budget – and to eliminate the platforms, people, weapon programs, and units targeted by CATO, PDA et al., would be worse than pure folly: it would be downright suicidal. Any notion that the US can afford such cuts in the muscle of its military or that potential enemies are many years behind the US is false: Russia and China have already closed most of the gaps with the US military (while creating their own, nontraditional advantages), and are working hard on closing the remaining few gaps.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey has testified that the current threat environment is the most dangerous he has seen in his entire military career spanning over 38 years.

In short, Mulvaney’s and Ellison’s claims are all blatant lies or, in a few cases, straw man arguments. Their advocacy of the disastrous defense cuts proposals made by leftist “think tanks” like CATO, PDA, POGO, and TCS is an absolute disqualifier. Not one of their claims are true, and if they don’t know that, they’re mentally deficient.

Shame on them for supporting the defense gutting proposals made by these leftist organizations.

Rebuttal of John T. Bennett’s and DefenseNews’ blatant lies and biased reporting

The leftist DefenseNews website has recently published an irredeemably biased, lying piece of “reporting” by its biased, extremely leftist anti-defense hack John T. Bennett. Titled “For Defense Sector, Americans’ Support for Military Cuts Is an Inconvenient Truth”, it falsely claims that “For Pentagon officials, defense-sector CEOs and congressional hawks, it is perhaps the most inconvenient of all truths: Most Americans want Washington to spend less on the military”, based on a Reason magazine commissioned poll which, however, does not indicate such results at all.

In other words, Bennett is making false claims based on a poll which does not back his claims up at all.

So his claim is not “a truth”, let alone “the most inconvenient of all truths”. It’s a blatant lie – i.e. Bennett’s trademark product.

Bennett continued with his lies, claiming that

“More Americans pointed to the Defense Department and wars than to any other issue when asked for their opinion about areas where Washington spends too much, according to a new poll released Jan. 30. 

Twenty-one percent pointed to Pentagon and war spending, with 17 percent identifying federal-employee salaries and campaigns, states the Reason-Rupe poll, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Thirteen percent pointed to welfare and social programs, with the same percentage citing foreign aid.

But such data often is excluded from the kinds of breathless warnings uttered for the last 18 months by Pentagon leaders, industry executives and hawkish lawmakers about pending defense budget shrinkage.”

Yet, the poll’s actual data do not indicate anything that Bennett claims.

Firstly, 21% is not even close to being the majority, Mr Bennett. Not even close. That’s barely one-fifth of the public. Furthermore, the truth – which Bennett claims to be propagating – is not determined by popular vote. It’s determined by the facts – namely, by empirical evidence.

And the empirical evidence is that ENTITLEMENTS, not the military, are the programs Washington overspends on. According to the Heritage Foundation (see its graphs below), entitlements alone consume 62% of the total federal budget (and are on track to consume 100% by 2050), and the broader category of social/welfare spending consumes 70% of the entire federal budget.

So according to empirical evidence, only 17% of Americans have identified the TRUE category of federal spending on which Washington overspends most – while 83% of Americans have failed to identify it. And it isn’t the military. (This isn’t the first time, BTW, that the majority of Americans have failed to identify the true source of America’s fiscal woes, and WaPo “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler has given the American public four Pinnochios – the worst rating you can get from him – for that failure.)

The reason is quite simple. A significant majority of Americans lives off the federal dole, i.e. most Americans draw money from at least one federal program and can’t imagine a life without a government program. So, rather than make tough personal choices and start providing for themselves and their own families, they pretend to point fingers to small budgetary items that have had little impact on the nation’s budget deficit: defense, foreign aid, etc. The vast majority of the public – as polls have consistently shown – still refuses to accept the reality that entitlements are the real drivers of America’s debt and will have to be severely curtailed if America is to have a balanced budget ever again.

Moreover, when asked specifically about defense spending – whether it should be cut or not – the poll itself says that only 49% of Americans – NOT a majority – said it should be, while 45% said it shouldn’t be, 6% are undecided, and the poll’s margin of error was 3.8 pp, as Bennett himself admits later in his screed.

49% is not a majority. Moreover, given that the poll’s own MoE is 3.8 pp, it could just as well be that 48.8% of Americans OPPOSE any defense spending cuts while only 45.2% support such measure.

Why should it be automatically assumed that the MoE favors defense cuts supporters and thus that the majority of the public supports such measures when the poll’s own MoE is so big that the opposite result could be drawn just as reasonably? Such automatic assumptions only reveal Bennett’s and DefenseNews’ bias, not any “inconvenient truth.”

Furthermore, the poll’s own results indicate that even when pressed to specify defense budget cuts, 18% of respondents still say “I don’t know how deep they should be”, 15% still say there should be no cuts at all, and 21% say these cuts should be less than 9% deep. Only 47% support cuts to the tune of 10% or more.

So by that poll’s own numbers – and by Bennett’s own admission – 53% of Americans – even when pressed to specifically name some defense budget cuts – say either “no cuts”, “I don’t know how much to cut”, or “less than 10%.”

This is consistent with National Journal polls which say that most Americans either oppose defense budget cuts or are prepared to see only modest cuts. Only a small minority, about 20% of Americans, supports deep cuts according to the National Journal.

Then there is the fact that America’s defense budget is not bloated, that deep defense budget would severely weaken the US military (all those troops, weapons, maintenance, training hours, etc. have to be paid for, remember?), that there are numerous and serious military threats to US security, and the fact that even cutting the defense budget deeply – or even eliminating it altogether – would do nothing to address the budget deficit.

But that is another inconvenient truth that Bennett has deliberately left out.

Last but not least – and this is yet another inconvenient truth ignored by Bennett – America is not, and was never supposed to be, a democracy. America is a Constitutional Republic. The people are not to make policy – they are supposed to elect their Representatives and Senators who will make policy on their behalf.

The reason why such system (with election of Senators by state legislatures, BTW, not by the people) was set up by the Founding Fathers is obvious: most people are way too ignorant and too self-centered to make good policy (as the cited Reason-Rupe-Princeton Poll and numerous other polls show, the vast majority of Americans refuse to recognize that entitlements are the real drivers of America’s debt and will have to be severely curtailed). Under the original Constitution, the people were supposed to elect ONLY the House. The Senate was elected by state legislatures, and the President is chosen by electors, who were originally appointed by state legislatures, NOT elected by the people.

So, to sum up, what John T. Bennett claims is an “inconvenient truth” is not a truth at all. It’s actually a blatant propaganda lie invented by Bennett himself, who is a stridently leftist anti-defense hack and who apparently wishes to mislead the electorate into accepting deep defense cuts. In any case, he’s far from impartial (which is what a journalist should be).

In the best case scenario for Bennett, the Reason-Rupe-Princeton poll MIGHT be saying that a plurality – but by no means a majority – of Americans support some sort of defense cuts, with a deep division among those who support such measure on how much to cut, and only a minority supporting cuts to the tune of 10% or more.

But the poll has such a large MoE – 3.8 pp – that it could just as well indicate that 48.8% of Americans OPPOSE defense spending cuts and only 45.2% support such course of action.

Bennett’s piece is an utterly biased piece of “reporting.” DefenseNews should be ashamed of itself for publishing such ridiculous propaganda screed and take it down.

Rebuttal of Gordon Adams’ newest blatant lies

Speaking recently to National Public Radio and USA Today “journalists”, former Clinton Administration defense budget chief Gordon Adams (in other words, the principal architect of Clinton’s disastrous defense cuts) yet again called for massive defense budget cuts while making blatant lies about the security environment designed to lull the public into a false sense of security.

Adams falsely claimed that the world’s regions, and as a result, the world at large, are the safest they have ever been in the last 65 years and the safest in his lifetime; that the US is super secure; that there is no existential threat to America; and that the US can afford to and should reduce its defense budget and the size of its military “quite sharply” and there’s “plenty of room” to cut defense spending.

All of his claims are blatant lies, as usual.

The world is actually the most dangerous it has ever been since the end of WW2; Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey calls it the most dangerous world he has seen in his entire military career (spanning over 38 years from 1974 to today). China is bullying its neighbors – from Japan to the Philippines to Vietnam – making huge territorial claims and conducting a military buildup that long ago exceeded its legitimate self-defense requirements. Russia is rapidly rearming, threatens the US and its European allies with the preemptive use of nuclear weapons, and still retains a huge nuclear arsenal. North Korea now possesses an ICBM capable of reaching the US and is able to mate a nuclear warhead to it. Iran, according to most recent estimates by experts, will have enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon by 2014, and the US intel community projects it to have an ICBM in the 2015-2016 timeframe. It also continues to sponsor Islamic terrorism throughout the world. Venezuela and the Castro brothers continue to do mischief in the Western Hemisphere, while in the Arab world – from Algeria to Egypt to Iraq – Islamic terrorists continue to make gains. In the Arab world, as a result of the Arab Spring, nations previously ruled by authoritarian dictators friendly to the US are now ruled by Islamists hostile to America and Israel. The Jewish state is now facing a real threat of extinction for the first time since 1973.

Only a traitor, a drug or alcohol addict, or an idiot could claim that the world is safer than ever since WW2. The reality is the opposite: the world is more dangerous than ever in the post-WW2 era, and more dangerous than during the entire Cold War, excepting possibly only the brief period of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It is also not true that the US faces no existential threats. It actually faces three:

• Islamic jihadists aim to conquer the entire world (as Islam has aimed for centuries) and to forcibly convert to Islam – or kill – all non-Muslims;
• Russia remains an existential threat, thanks to its rabidly anti-American leadership, its huge nuclear arsenal, its huge conventional force, and its rearmament program;
• China is rapidly building up and modernizing its military and has global (if as of yet unstated) ambitions of pushing the US aside and becoming the world’s leading power – and the hegemon in East Asia and beyond.

To dramatically cut the US defense budget and the size of the US military in the face of these existential threats – and other threats to US security – would be an utter folly.

Furthermore, the capabilities of America’s enemies – including Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran – are far better than most people know and what Gordon Adams would have you believe. I have written on their capabilities in great detail numerous times, most recently here on December 29th, 2012. (A full list of my studies of these subjects can be found here.) The strength of their militaries is, in short, such that the US cannot afford to further cut the size and capabilities of its military or the defense budget (which would lead to the former).

To give just one example, Russia and China have fielded such advanced air defense systems (S-300, S-400, HQ-9) that their airspace is firmly closed to all nonstealthy aircraft, i.e. to all Western aircraft except the F-22, the F-35, the B-2, and the planned Next Generation Bomber. To give another example, Russia’s ICBM fleet alone, numbering 434 missiles, could deliver 1,684 warheads to the CONUS, while the Russian Air Force has over 240 strategic long-range bombers.

Deep cuts in the defense budget would inevitably have to mean deep cuts in the military’s size, maintenance and training programs (i.e. a dramatic reduction of the military’s readiness), and modernization (the modernization of existing weapons as well as the development and procurement of new ones – even ones that are badly needed, such as the Next Generation Bomber).

While there is some waste in the defense budget (e.g. studies of beef jerky and whether Jesus died for Klingons, too), there isn’t much of it left, contrary to what the proponents of disastrous defense cuts would have you believe. Sen. Tom Coburn has identified only $6.79 bn per year in genuine DOD waste. The vast majority of what defense cuts proponents call “waste” are actually needed, crucial defense programs, such as the Next Generation Bomber.

Also contrary to Adams’ lie, the defense budget has not “doubled” since 2001. Not even close. In FY2001, the defense budget was $291.1 bn in then-year dollars, i.e. $390 bn in today’s money. Today’s total military budget (including spending on Afghanistan and the DOE’s nat-sec programs) is $633 bn (per the FY2013 NDAA), representing growth of only 65% – not even close to doubling and very modest considering that in FY2001, defense spending was pathetically low and woefully inadequate (thanks to the disastrous cuts that Adams and his boss Bill Clinton orchestrated).

Gordon Adams is blatantly lying, as usual. No, there isn’t “plenty of room to cut the defense budget”. No, the world is not safer than ever in the post-WW2 era; quite the contrary, it’s the most dangerous it has ever been since 1945. No, America cannot afford to significantly cut its defense budget or the size of its military further.

Shame on Adams for lying so blatantly, and shame on NPR and USA Today for uncritically reprinting his blatant lies.