Why Trump Was Right to Ditch the INF Treaty

Yesterday, US President Donald Trump announced he intended to withdraw the US from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty*.

The accord, signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, resulted in the elimination of an entire class of US and Soviet strategic missiles; namely, those deployed in Europe and capable of targeting the whole Old Continent.

So why would Donald Trump ditch such a successful treaty, and why was he right to do so ? Read along, and I’ll explain why.

(To summarize for those who don’t want to read the whole thing: Russia has flagrantly violated the pact by deploying missiles that violate the treaty, namely SSC-X-8 “Novator” cruise missiles. Two division-strength units, in fact. Their own top military officer, Gen. Gerasimov, has confirmed this deployment in the westernmost part of Russia. If launched from there, the missiles can hit any target in Europe with nuclear warheads in a matter of minutes. Attempts to convince or coerce Russia to comply with the treaty have been fruitless, so Trump is withdrawing the US from the pact.)

 

The Treaty’s Background

Firstly, a little historical background about the treaty is needed. In the late 1970s, the Soviet Union – then at the height of its military and geopolitical power – began deploying missiles capable of hitting any place on the European continent with up to 3 nuclear warheads. These were the SS-20 Saber and the SSC-4 ground-launched cruise missile.

In a nutshell, these weapons were able to wipe out any target anywhere in Europe within 5 minutes. Command centers, large cities, electric plants, large military bases – any target worth striking. And all of this without involving the Soviet Union’s intercontinental (strategic) nuclear forces, leaving them entirely free to target the US and Canada.

Alternatively, Moscow could’ve simply nuked (or threatened to nuke) Western Europe without threatening the US, and thus without creating an incentive for America to stay out of a new European conflict, just as the US had initially done in the two World Wars.

At the time, the US and its allies in Western Europe had no such weapons deployed. None! Clearly, something had to be done.

So, What Was Exactly Done?

Then as now, leftists in Western countries (including those now advocating sticking to the INF Treaty no matter what Russia does) said that the US should avoid deploying any counterweapons and simply try to negotiate the issue with Russia. But the Soviet Union refused to discuss the issue, or even to slow down its continued deployment of these powerful weapons. Which, by 1983, had grown to 1300 nuclear warheads mounted atop some 400 SS-20 missiles.

Earlier, in December 1979, NATO – led by the US – had decided (unanimously) to deploy American like-for-like weapon systems to deter any Soviet adventurism. These were the Pershing ballistic missile and the Gryphon cruise missile, both capable of carrying multiple warheads.

At the same time, NATO had pledged to cancel the planned deployment if the Soviets would withdraw their own intermediate-range missiles. The Kremlin refused.

And so, in 1983, under President Reagan, NATO went ahead with the planned deployment. Massive demonstrations (sponsored heavily by the Kremlin) took place in many Western countries, including the US itself, but most notably in Britain and Germany.

 

The Peak of Stupidity: Protesting Against… Being Protected!

In other words, the Europeans were protesting… against being protected by the US! Because in the minds of those mistaken people, being strong and equipping yourself with protective weapons is somehow provocative!

Never mind that all human history demonstrates that it is weakness, not strength, that is provocative. Potential agressors (be it states or criminals) only attack victims they perceive as weak. Weakness encourages them to take actions they would otherwise refrain from.

This is true for all humans and indeed for all animal species. In schoolyards, bullies only attack those students whom they perceive as weak (because they usually are). Likewise, in shark-infested waters, if you swim away from a shark, or otherwise act afraid, he’ll likely attack you.  But if you stand your ground, and punch the shark in the nose if need be, he’ll go away.

No nation in human history has ever been attacked by another because it was too strong; but plenty of weak countries, throughout history, have succumbed to aggression by stronger neighbours. Or, as the famous ancient Greek historian Thucydides said, “the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.”

 

The INF Treaty Is Negotiated

In response to the NATO deployment, the Russians initially walked away from the bargaining table at the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks in Geneva.

Nonetheless, relentless pressure from the US – including building up US military power, economic sanctions, and President Reagan’s enormous moral pressure – coupled with the rapid deterioration of the Soviet economy – forced the Soviet Union to come back to the bargaining table.

Put simply, America’s ever-growing might, coupled with the Soviet Union’s own economic decay, left the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) with no choice but electing a moderate communist, Mikhail Gorbachev, as its leader. And Gorbachev was keen to end the arms race as quickly as possible to focus on badly needed reforms at home.

Nonetheless, even Gorby long refused (before finally agreeing in 1987) to accept American on-site inspections at Soviet military bases to verify that Soviet missiles were actually being scrapped. When he agreed, the INF Treaty was finally signed on December 8th, 1987, and entered force in June of the following year.

Under its terms, both the US and the Soviet Union (now Russia) were/are prohibited from developing, let alone building or deploying, any ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles that have a range between 500 and 5,500 km – or any launchers for such missiles.

 

Why the INF Treaty Worked… For A While

As we observed earlier, Gorbachev needed to end the arms race to reduce the burden on the then-moribound Soviet economy and pursue badly needed reforms at home. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, Russia’s first President, Boris Yeltsin, faced similar constraints.

But at least two powerful groups in Russia always hated the INF Treaty : the Soviet/Russian military (and industry) and imperialist, revanchist politicians such as Vladimir Putin.

 

The Putinists and Russia’s Military Undermined the Treaty

These people regret the Soviet Union’s collapse and seek to reestablish Moscow’s former power and sphere of influence. Vladimir Putin himself has publicly stated on several occasions that he regrets the USSR’s dissolution in 1991 and that whoever doesn’t share this feeling “has no heart”. According to polls, 60% of his countrymen do share his opinion.

In particular, the Russian military always hated the treaty. They grudgingly accepted it when they had no other choice, under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. But when Putin and his fellow revanchists came to power in 2000, the Russian military began planning to design and deploy new weapons of this class.

Putin, always keen to do anything needed to restore Russia’s former superpower status, agreed, and in 2008, the Russians began testing the first of the offending missiles, the Novator (SSC-X-8) ground-launched cruise missile. This was the first clear violation of the treaty.

The Bush, and then the new Obama Administrations, knew well of this, but they kept it secret. The Obama Admin, in fact, withheld this information from the Senate when that body debated, and voted to ratify, the New START treaty, another nuclear arms control accord with Russia.

Even so, that agreement barely passed the Senate by the lowest vote of any arms control agreement in history. It is safe to bet that had the Senate known about that violation, New START would’ve never passed.

 

Obama Admin Changes Course… Sort Of

Russia continued to test the offending land attack cruise missile repeatedly throughout the next decade. The Obama Administration, OTOH, kept trying to appease Moscow to buy peace with it, with concession after concession.

At the same time, Russia took the last, third stage out of its RS-24 Yars intercontinental missile and developed, then deployed, the RS-26 Rubyezh ballistic missile. This weapon has a range of 5,600 km and can therefore hit any target on the Eurasian landmass. But, with its range just above the INF Treaty’s upper ceiling (5,500 km), it falls outside its scope. It enables Russia to cleverly circumvent the treaty without violating it, unlike the SSC-X-8 cruise missile.

Then, in early 2014, things changed: Russia invaded and dismembered Ukraine, a country that, two decades prior, voluntarily surrendered its nukes to Russia in exchange for formal Russian, US, and British security and territorial integrality guarantees.

The West awoke to a new Russian military threat, but the alarm bells were slow to ring.

The Obama Admin, as usual, replied with half-measures: weak sanctions (which only invited Russian derision) and by publicly accusing Russia of violating the INF treaty.

Throughout its second term, that administration tried patiently to resolve the dispute with Russia diplomatically – to no avail. Russia steadily refused to even acknowledge the violation, let alone stop cheating, and replied with false counter-accusations against the US.

 

President Trump Gives Peace a Chance

In 2017, President Trump – initially enamored of Putin – took office, hoping for a thaw in relations with Moscow. Despite the apparent personal chemistry between the two leaders, the conflicting interests and superpower rivalry persisted.

In late 2017, Moscow went even further and deployed two division-strength units of those cruise missile launchers in its westernmost part: the Kaliningrad District. Stationed there, the missile launchers can hit any target anywhere in Europe with nuclear weapons within minutes, giving the West little time to respond. Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, confirmed this deployment publicly in 2018.

Thus, even by its own admission, Russia has violated the INF Treaty.

All half-measures taken up to this point – sanctions, naming and shaming, and negotiations – have utterly failed to convince Russia to resume compliance with the Reagan-era accord.

Therefore, the US now faces a simple choice:

• Tolerate Russia’s continued violation of the treaty while remaining unilaterally constrained by it and not building similar weapons of its own; or
• Withdraw from a treaty that Russia no longer abides by, and has no intention of complying with, accepting the odium coming from being the party that has formally abrogated it, and build countermeasures.

Faced with such a choice, President Trump has wisely chosen to ditch this treaty that no longer serves US national interests. At the same time, he  dispatched his National Security Advisor, John Bolton, to Moscow on Monday to try once more to resolve the issue. Bolton’s talks with his Russian counterpart, KGB Gen. Nikolai Patrushev, and with Putin himself have been fruitless, though.

At the same time, the Administration already has contingency plans to develop and deploy a new American medium-range missile, comparable to what the Russians have, if Moscow still continues to violate the accord.

 

But Won’t This Lead to Nuclear War?

Pacifists of all stripes will, as always, blame the US and accuse the Trump Admin of leading the world to a nuclear war. This is highly unlikely, to say the least.

As we noted above, potential agressors only attack those whom they consider weak, not those who are strong.

The same pacifists – including the Democratic Party and its sycophants at the Arms Control Association, the Center for Non-Proliferation, and the Center for American Progress – are the same people who vocally opposed the 1983 deployment of American Pershing and Gryphon missiles in Europe to counter the Russians’ deployment of the SS-20.

They claimed “detente” and unilateral disarmament would lead to peace. They were wrong.

They claimed the Pershing/Gryphon deployment and President Reagan’s defense buildup would lead to war. They were wrong.

Not only did President Reagan not cause a nuclear war, he actually brought the Soviets back to the bargaining table, forced them to accept steep cuts in their nuclear arsenals (by bargaining from a position of strength, not weakness), and won the Cold War without firing a shot!

 

But Won’t This Spark A Nuclear Arms Race?

There are also those, such as certain “analysts” and European politicians, who claim President Trump’s move will lead to a new arms race.

Ladies and gentlemen, whether we like it or not, there already is an arms race, and it’s been going on for many years.

The US didn’t start it; revanchist Russia did, by developing and deploying several different types of nuclear weapons (and their carriers) that far exceed any of its legitimate defense needs:

• The multi-warhead Yars intercontinental missile, capable of carrying up to 10 warheads while American ICBMs carry only one each ;
• its even bigger cousin, the 15-warhead RS-28 Sarmat, capable of reaching the US while flying over the South Pole to avoid US early warning systems;
• A rail-mobile ICBM, the Avangard;
• The forementioned RS-26 Rubyezh pseudo-ICBM, clearly intended to target Europe because its 5,600 km range is insufficient to reach the Continental US;
• Hypersonic weapons, including the Zircon cruise missile;
• And the most dangerous of them all, the Kanyon nuclear drone, armed with a megaton-class warhead capable of blowing up an entire coastal mega-city such as New York or LA.

Sadly, the US has no choice but to build a new generation of strategic weapons of its own if it doesn’t want to be left behind (and therefore vulnerable).

To refuse to arm the US military with the corresponding weapon types, needed for nuclear deterrence, would essentially amount to unilateral disarmament.

Other Critics Blame America First

Other critics claim that President Trump has killed the INF Treaty and in so doing, has left the Russians unconstrained to build whatever weapons they want while the US takes the blame for ditching the agreement. This is also false.

The INF Treaty is already dead, for all intents and purposes, and has been for several years. It’s dead because Russia has killed it by repeatedly and egregiously violating it . The Obama Admin helped Moscow do so, by first refusing to recognize these violations, then by failing to take any effective measures to counter them while there was still time.

Agreements that one or more parties doesn’t comply with are a dead letter. Treaties that a nation doesn’t respect and observe do not constrain that nation. Arms control pacts are constraints only for those who comply with them.

Other critics claim Russia’s violations are understandable because Moscow has grievances towards the US over missile defense, NATO expansion, etc. Still others claim that nuclear weapons are simply intrinsically evil and that the US shouldn’t respond in kind to Russia’s military buildup.

This is all false because nuclear weapons are not good or evil in and of themselves; it depends on who has them and what purpose they serve. The West has been a responsible steward of these, while Russia uses them for intimidating every country that happens to do something Moscow dislikes.

President Reagan’s words spoken in 1987 at the Brandenburg Gate are as true today as they were then:

We must remember a crucial fact: East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other. And our differences are not about weapons but about liberty.

Conclusion

It would have been preferrable to preserve the treaty, had Russia continued to comply with it. Sadly, the Kremlin has chosen to egregiously violate it (and every other arms control pact it is party to). And throughout President Obama’s two terms, it got away with it, totally unpunished.

The choice President Trump had to make was quite simple. Should America be unilaterally constrained by an INF treaty that Russia has been violating for years and has no intent of comply with? Or should the US ditch this dead-letter agreement and build countermeasures?

Fortunately, he has chosen the latter. And I believe that some time from now, perhaps at the end of his second term, when Russia finally cedes to US pressure, he’ll be able to say something along these memorable lines:

But through it all, the alliance held firm. And I invite those who protested then– I invite those who protest today–to mark this fact: Because we remained strong, the Soviets came back to the table. And because we remained strong, today we have within reach the possibility, not merely of limiting the growth of arms, but of eliminating, for the first time, an entire class of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.

I have no doubt that he will.

 

 

Stop fantasymongering about a world without nuclear weapons

President Obama has just visited the Hiroshima Memorial and has made another impassioned plea for “a world without nuclear weapons.” On this occassion, pacifist organizations all across the Western world have made similar, and equally impassioned, calls for nuclear weapons to be “banished” from this planet. As usual, they claim that such a world would be more peaceful, more secure, and is realistically achievable.

But on all three counts, they are dead wrong.

A utopian fantasy

First and foremost, a world without nuclear weapons is nothing but a childish fantasy. Ever since 1945, the world has been going in exactly the opposite direction : more atomic weapons and more nuclear-armed states in it.

And although the three Western nuclear powers: the US, the UK and France – have significantly cut their arsenals since the end of the Cold War, that example has not been followed by anyone.

Russia did reduce its own stockpile markedly after the Cold War’s end, but only because it couldn’t afford to maintain the vast arsenal she had inherited from the USSR. Thus, the US succeeded convicing Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, to agree to deep cuts in the two superpowers’ arsenals. Gorbachev needed arms control agreements even more so than the US did. He needed them to quickly end the arms race so that he could focus on badly needed reforms at home. For the same reasons, Russia’s first democratically-elected president, Boris Yeltsin, continued that policy. Yeltsin’s Russia simply could not afford to maintain the USSR’s vast arsenal or to start a new arms race with the US.

But since Vladimir Putin has come to power and revived Russia’s might, Moscow has begun steadily rebuilding its nuclear muscle. Since 2013, Russia’s nuclear stockpile has been growing non-stop and is poised to grow even further, to as many as 3,000 deployed strategic warheads (on top of Russia’s thousands of tactical warheads) by 2020.

Russia’s Nuclear Increases Are No “Temporary Fluctuations”

The recent increases in Russia’s deployed strategic arsenal are not “temporary fluctuations” as pacifist groups (such as the Arms Control Association and the FAS) falsely claim. These are consecutive steps of a large-scale buildup that has been ongoing ever since the New START arms control treaty between the US and Russia was signed in 2010. And since September 2013, i.e. for almost three years now, Russia has been adding warheads at a rapid pace.

Over the last 3 years, since September 2013, Russia has increased her deployed strategic nuclear arsenal from 1,400 to 1,735 warheads – an increase of 335 warheads in less than 3 years! (See the graph below based on State Department data).

Number of deployed strategic warheads possessed by Russia from September 2013 to September 2015. Data provided by Russia to the US State Department and published on the said Department’s website. In just two years, from September 2013 to September 2015, Russia has increased the number of strategic warheads deployed on intercontinental delivery systems (bombers, ICBMs, ballistic missile subs) by 248, from 1,400 to 1,648. By April 2016, she had increased this deployed arsenal even further, to 1,735 warheads.

 

The New START treaty was supposed (and was advertised as an accord that would) prevent a new nuclear buildup by the Kremlin. But, as I warned when it was signed, it has spectacularly failed to do so.

Many Countries Are Growing Their Arsenals

Outside the West and Russia, all other nuclear powers are steadily growing, not shrinking, their arsenals: China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel. China, in particular, has increased its nuclear arsenal from just 250-300 warheads in the 1980s to at least 1,600, and perhaps as 3,000, today.

And now, Iran and, reportedly, also Turkey are developing atomic weapons. Given Iran’s desire to build them and the 2015 VP5+1 agreement’s failure to put meaningful brakes on Iran’s nuclear and missile programme, it is virtually certain that Iran and, concurrently, its longtime rival Saudi Arabia will acquire nuclear weapons at some point.

No amount of  “international pressure”, not even the harshest sanctions, will deter these countries from developing nuclear arms or Russia, China, North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel. These countries, having acquired these weapons, will not renounce them under any circumstances – Israel hasn’t even admitted to having them and has conducted its nuclear programme in absolute opacity.

North Korea is a case in profile. That regime is subject to the most stringest sanctions regime ever devised, one that was reinforced with fresh sanctions just several months ago after its fourth nuclear test. Yet, none of that has stopped Pyongyang from continuing to build up its atomic arsenal (Chinese analysts predict it will number 100 warheads by 2020) and developing ever more effective ballistic missiles – ground- and sea-launched.

In short, while the West continues to daydream about “a world without nuclear weapons”, the rest of the world is steadily building up their arsenals.

We, Westerners, will ignore this reality at our lonely peril. If we continue to indulge in the “world without nuclear weapons” fantasy, it will be the source of our own undoing.

A Non-Nuclear World Would Be More Belligerent

Secondly, there is zero evidence that a world without atomic weapons would be more peaceful and secure than the present one – even assuming for a moment that such a world is even possible, which it isn’t.

Let us not forget that all the deadliest, most destructive wars in history occurred before nuclear weapons were invented : the 100 Years War, the 30 Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, the U.S. Civil War, colonial wars, and the two World Wars.

These conflicts occurred even though, in most cases, there were already established mechanisms for resolving international disputes. What’s more, in the run-up to World War II, the West also indulged in “global disarmament” fantasies, disarmed itself unilaterally, and tried to simply appease evil, imperialist dictators sch as Hitler and Mussolini.

What’s more, before WW2, left- and right-wing parties alike supported unilateral disarmament in the naive hope that “leading by example” would somehow induce Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union to follow that “moral example.”

The result was World War 2, by far the deadliest, most destructive, bloodiest conflict humanity has ever seen, with a death toll of at least 60 million people – the equivalent of nuking a large part of China, the US, or most major Russian cities – or of nuking all of France, all of Italy, or the entire United Kingdom.

Nuclear Weapons Have Kept The Peace

But since the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity has been much more prudent about war. There have been no more wars between the great powers. Instead, wars have been fought between:

• A major power and a weaker state;
• Multiple weaker states;
• Nation-states against insurgents or terrorist groups;
• Various factions in civil wars.

As deadly, destructive, and brutal as these wars have been, they do not even approach the death, destruction and human suffering that was the result of wars between major powers and especially of the two World Wars.

And it is exclusively nuclear weapons that have spared us from this dastardly fate. Precisely because of their unmatched destructive power, they have taught even the most seemingly irrational actors, such as North Korea, to refrain from making war (as opposed to merely threatening it). They have taught mankind, in a manner no other weapons have or could have done, that there is a red line it should not cross.

Without nuclear weapons, the consequences of war, even between major powers, would not be as terrifying, and therefore, the risk of such a  conflagaration would be much greater.

A world without nuclear weapons would therefore be much less secure and peaceful than it currently is.

But that is an academic discussion, because, as stated at the beginning, there is zero chance of such a world ever existing again. The nuclear genie has been unleashed from the bottle – and he will never return there. It is time for the West – and especially for President Obama and all candidates vying to succeed him – to come to terms with this reality.

Originally published at ConservativeDailyNews.

La critique de N. Sarkozy envers Barack Obama : qui a raison ?

Suite à une interview que le président américain Barack Obama a accordé à Jeffrey Goldberg du magazine Atlantic, dans laquelle M. Obama a critiqué Nicolas Sarkozy et David Cameron pour avoir supposement lâché la Libye à son sort après la chute de Qaddafi, M. Sarkozy a répondu avec sa propre critique.

Lors de l’interview avec M. Goldberg, M. Obama a accusé M. Sarkozy d’avoir voulu « claironner ses succès dans la campagne aérienne alors que nos avions [des avions americains – ZM] détruit toutes les défenses anti-aériennes. »

Dans un entretien diffusé le 19 mars par la chaîne iTÉLÉ, M. Sarkozy a répondu ainsi :

« Je ne veux pas polémiquer avec M. Obama, dont chacun sait que l’action n’est pas son fort. (…) Les avions français sont rentrés les premiers dans le ciel libyen. (…) Au bout de huit jours, M. Obama a décidé de retirer l’armée américaine et a conceptualisé cette fameuse théorie du ‘leading from behind’, le leadership de l’arrière. (…) Vous savez, le leadership par l’arrière, ça n’existe pas. On est leader ou on n’est pas leader, et quand on est leader, on conduit une opération. »

M. Sarkozy a aussi taclé le président Obama sur le dossier syrien en le critiquant pour sa decision de ne pas frapper Bachar el-Assad suite a l’utilisation des armes chimiques contre des civils par ce dernier (ce qui fut une grave crime de guerre).

« M. Obama avait dit ‘À la minute où Bachar al-Assad emploie des armes chimiques nous interviendrons’. Bachar el-Assad a employé des armes chimiques, ils ne sont pas intervenus. Quand on fixe des limites, qu’elles sont franchies et qu’on ne fait rien après, ce n’est pas bon signe. »

Alors, qui a raison et qui a tort ?

Sur le dossier syrien, c’est M. Sarkozy. Comme il a constaté, l’action d’est pas un fort de Barack Obama. Comme d’habitude, le président américain a dit une chose et fait quelquechose complètement d’autre. Et en permettant au régime d’Assad de rester au pouvoir, il lui a permis d’exterminer davantage de Syriens… et de créer ainsi beaucoup davantage de recrues pour l’Etat Islamique.

M. Sarkozy a également raison que ce qu’essaie de faire en politique étrangère l’administration Obama – le leading from behind – est tout simplement impossible. Soit l’on mène des autres – dans quel cas on est le leader – soit on se cache derrière des autres, dans quel cas on n’est pas le dirigeant du groupe.

Obama est tout simplement un président lâche qui n’ose pas de faire suivir ses paroles et ses promesses par ses actes.

Mais n’oublions pas non plus que l’action n’est pas le fort de M. Sarkozy non plus. Celui-ci a violé beaucoup de ses promesses électorales de 2007 et au debut de 2008 a renoncé à ses projets de réformes importantes de la France, notamment de l’économie. En conséquence, l’économie française avait été profondement frappée par la crise mondiale de 2008, des millions de Français sont tombés au chomage ou en pauvreté, et M. Sarkozy lui-même a été licencié par les électeurs.

Enfin et surtout, M. Obama a raison en ce qui concerne la conduite de l’operation syrienne elle-même. C’étaient en effet des avions américains – pas français ou britanniques – qui ont détruit les défenses anti-aériennes de Qaddafi et qui ont détruit la grande plupart des cibles en Libye. La contribution française était malheureusement très minoritaire, grace en bonne partie aux coupes budgetaires décidées par M. Sarkozy et ses prédecesseurs. L’armée française ne possédait pas, et toujours ne possède pas, assez d’avions de combat, de ravitaillement et de renseignement, ni de missiles et bombes de précision. Souvenons-nous des paroles critiques du ministre de la Défense américain de l’époque, M. Robert Gates, le 10 juin 2011 :

« To run the air campaign, the NATO air operations center in Italy required a major augmentation of targeting specialists, mainly from the U.S., to do the job – a “just in time” infusion of personnel that may not always be available in future contingencies.  We have the spectacle of an air operations center designed to handle more than 300 sorties a day struggling to launch about 150.  Furthermore, the mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country – yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference. »

Traduction :

« Afin de mener la campagne aérienne, le centre d’opérations aériennes otanien en Italie avait besoin d’une infusion important des spécialistes de ciblage, principalement americains, pour faire le boulot – une infusion des effectifs “au dernier moment” qui pourrait ne pas être possible dans l’avenir. Nous avons le spectacle d’un centre d’opérations aériennes intendu de conduire plus de 300 vols par jour qui peine à en conduire env. 150. Qui plus est, l’alliance militaire la plus puissante en histoire conduit, depuis seulement 11 semaines, une opération contre un régime mal armé dans un pays peu peuplé – or, beaucoup d’allies ont presque épuisé leurs stocks d’ammunitions, ce qui a exigé encore une fois aux USA d’y compenser. »

Or, au lieu d’ecouter les sages conseils de M. Gates, M. Sarkozy les a immédiatement réjetés.

 

Pourtant, il vaut mieux que M. Sarkozy et toute la classe politique française prennent les conseils de M. Gates à coeur. Moi, je l’ai fait et j’ai développé une liste des propositions qui feront l’armée française capable de conduire, à elle seule, des opérations militaires d’une envergure sérieuse n’importe où au monde. Cette liste des propositions est disponible ici.

New START treaty: An Utter Failure

The State Department has released the newest (September 2015) data on U.S. and Russian strategic weapon inventories disclosed under the New START treaty.

And boy, is the data troubling!

Since the last disclosure (in July 2015, based on March 2015 numbers), Russia has significantly INCREASED its arsenal of deployed strategic nuclear warheads (i.e. ones aimed at the United States) from 1,582 then to 1,648 today, a hike of 66 warheads. Likewise, its fleet of deployed strategic warhead delivery vehicles (i.e. missiles and aircraft carrying those warheads) has grown from 515 then to 526 now. This does not count Russia’s fleet of 151 Tu-22M strategic bombers (not counted under New START) that are capable of carrying 10 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles each.

As Pavel Podvig explains on his blog:

“The increase of 66 deployed warheads and nine launchers is most likely due to the deployment of Bulava missiles on the Alexander Nevskiy submarine that was completed in April 2015. Also, some older missiles were probably withdrawn from service.”

This is because, as I’ve pointed out in numerous publications, including my forthcoming book on nuclear deterrence, Russia is replacing older, single- and four-warhead missiles with new ones carrying up to 10-12 warheads. The Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile carries up to 10 warheads, as do new Russian Yars and Yars-M ICBMs.

By contrast, the US has unilaterally cut its inventory of deployed strategic warheads and launchers. It currently deploys 1,538 strategic warheads (1,597 in March) and 762 delivery systems (785 in March). This means the US is essentially unilaterally disarming itself while Russia is rapidly building up its strategic nuclear arsenal. In other words, the US is slowly committing national suicide.

This also means that the US is strictly complying with the New START treaty and has already gone below the limit of 1,550 warheads authorized by that accord, while Russia is ignoring the pact and is growing up, rather than cutting or even freezing the growth of, its strategic deployed nuclear stockpile. This is consistent with the United States’ record of rigorously complying with arms control treaties and with Russia’s record of systematically violating them.

All of this means that the pro-arms-control community – including the Arms Control Association, the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, the Ploughshares Fund, et al., as well as the Obama Administration – were dead wrong when they extolled the New START treaty’s supposed virtues.

They claimed the treaty would keep check on Russia’s nuclear arsenal and even lead to cuts in it while promoting strategic stability and transparency. But the treaty has utterly failed to do so. Instead, it has led to a deep, unilateral cut in America’s nuclear arsenal while allowing Russia to embark on the largest strategic nuclear buildup since the Cold War. It has allowed Russia to significantly increase its strategic nuclear arsenal – and if recent experience is any indication, Russia’s nuclear arsenal will grow in the future still further.

Nor has the treaty led to greater strategic stability and transparency. On the contrary, Russia’s strategic nuclear buildup, coupled with America’s unilateral disarmament, are gravely undermining strategic stability – between the two countries as well as globally. And Russia’s transparency on nuclear matters, especially regarding its strategic missiles, has only declined since New START’s ratification.

Yet, these organizations still falsely claim that New START  is “doing its job”. But what is New START’s “job”? What is the treaty’s purpose?

If it is to make the U.S. cut its strategic nuclear arsenal unilaterally, New START is doing that job superbly.

However, if its purpose is, or was, to reduce or at least freeze the Russian nuclear arsenal and to promote strategic stability and nuclear transparency on Russia’s part, the treaty has utterly failed to fulfill any of these purpose. It is an utter, unqualified failure.

Contrary to the pro-arms-control community’s and the Obama Administration’s claims that the treaty – and nuclear arsenal cuts more broadly – advance US national interests, the contrary is true. New START, and cuts in America’s nuclear deterrent more arsenal, only undermine U.S. national interests and national security by undermining its deterring power while allowing America’s potential adversaries to build up their arsenals – and thus their ability to threaten the U.S. and its allies.

No accord is a better example of this than New START.

Making matters worse, the treaty:

• Does not count Russia’s 151 Tu-22M strategic bombers as strategic, and therefore doesn’t limit this bomber fleet (and the nuclear weapons deployed on it) at all. Yet, the Tu-22M is clearly a strategic, intercontinental bomber. Even without aerial refueling, it can hit targets on the West Coast if flown from Chukotka. With air refueling, it can hit any targets anywhere in the US (or the world, for that matter).
• Does not prohibit Russia from developing rail-based ICBMs – which Russia is doing right now.
• Does not limit Russia’s nuclear-tipped submarine-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs). (The U.S. has no such missiles, only conventional ones. The nuclear-armed ones were withdrawn from service in 2010 by the Obama administration as part of the administration’s unilateral disarmament policy.)
• Does not at all limit Russia’s tactical nuclear arsenal, which is 10 times greater than that of the U.S.

The New START treaty is, by any objective yardstick, an utter failure and a grave threat to U.S. national security.

What The U.S. Government Should Do

Congress should:

• Fully fund, and where appropriate, increase funding for, U.S. nuclear arsenal modernization – the missiles, the submarines, the bombers, the warheads, and the facilities.
• Require the USAF to make the Long Range Strike Bomber ready for, and certified for, nuclear missions as soon as the said bomber type enters service.
• Completely cut off funding for New START implementation until Russia: a) starts significantly reducing its deployed strategic arsenal; and b) resumes compliance with the INF Treaty.
• Impose the heaviest economic sanctions possible on Russia if it doesn’t comply with the above, and if it still doesn’t comply, permanently prohibit implementation of the New START treaty.

The Executive Branch should:

• Impose the heaviest economic sanctions possible on Russia if it doesn’t comply with the above, and if it still doesn’t comply, abrogate the New START and INF Treaties.
• If Russia does comply, renegotiate new START si that it will cover Russia’s 151 Tu-22M bombers, limit nuclear-tipped SLCMs, prohibit the deployment of multiple warheads on ICBMs, and prohibit the development of rail-based ICBMs. Counting the Tu-22M bombers would increase the number of deployed strategic Russian delivery systems from 526 to 787, and the total number of delivery systems from 890 to 1,041, requiring Russia to dismantle 241 such systems (e.g. all Tu-22Ms and a further 90 delivery systems).

 

Important News: Iran Threatens Nuke Inspectors, China Tests New Multi-Warhead ICBMs

Many important developments have happened in the last several days.

Firstly, China test-fired a multi-warhead heavy ICBM, the road-mobile DF-41, with two mock warheads. This is a sign that the missile is nearing completion. The Washington Free Beacon was wrong, however, to write that the DF-41 will only be the second Chinese multi-warhead-capable ICBM. The DF-31 is also capable of carrying multiple warheads, and in all likelihood, is armed with them.

In any case, the DF-41 and the JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile are now nearing deployment.

Secondly, Iran has thrown even further obstacles in the way of the recently-signed Vienna Agreement between it and the P5+1 countries. It has announced that any nuclear inspector wishing to visit an Iranian nuclear site must receive express approval from Iran’s intelligence agency – which was not mentioned in the Vienna Agreement as a condition of the inspections. However, under that shameful “agreement” (capitulation would be a better word), Iran does have a right to refuse access to inspectors, or to grant it conditionally (based on any conditions it wants). The Western powers simply capitulated to Iran in Vienna on July 14th. There will be NO “anytime, anywhere” inspections, despite the Obama administration’s earlier promises (John Kerry’s blatant lies to the contrary notwithstanding).

Moreover, the Iranians have threatened the IAEA’s Director, Yukio Amano, with physical violence if he reveals the side deals concluded between the IAEA and Iran to the US Congress (let alone to the general public).

Thirdly, today Russia signed a deal with Iran to supply a modernized version of the state-of-the-art S-300 air defense system to the Islamic Republic. This will firmly close Iranian airspace to any nonstealthy bomber and any nonstealthy, unmaneuverable fighter (including, but not limited to, the B-52, the B-1, the F-15, the A-10, the F/A-18, the F/A-18E/F, the F-35, etc.). It will also provide a very capable defense against all but the stealthiest and fastest cruise missiles.

This also means that now there is NO country in the world to which this state-of-the-art air defense system is off-limits. Iran was the last such country.

For the US, this means that the Pentagon’s new Long-Range Strike Bomber and planned air-launched cruise missile are absolutely necessary and that their development should be greatly accelerated – not delayed as some leftists have proposed. The B-52 and B-1 are already hopelessly obsolete and utterly useless, and have been for many years already. The only environment in which these (and virtually all other nonstealthy) aircraft are useful are Counterinsurgency (COIN) environments, where the only opponents are insurgents or weak, primitive states like Iraq or Libya, unable to contest control of the air.

This also means that the Pentagon MUST make the X-47/UCLASS drone very stealthy and capable of carrying a serious payload, because that drone will have to overcome state-of-the-art enemy air defenses. Against such defenses, the Hornet, the Super Hornet, and the partially-stealthy F-35 are utterly useless. Failure to develop such a drone would be an utter waste of American taxpayers’ money and would put American naval aviators in needless jeopardy.

Fourthly, the Investors’ Business Daily has revealed that Russia has violated the INF Treaty not only by testing the R-500 ground-launched cruise missile, but also by testing the RS-26 Rubezh “ICBM” at a range of 1,242 miles:

“A June 6 test of the Yars M, first disclosed by the Free Beacon, revealed it was launched from a missile base at Russia’s Kapustin Yar and landed at an impact range at Sary Shagan, 1,242 miles to the south. That is “clearly INF range,” Schneider said.”

According to the INF treaty, whether a missile is prohibited depends on its maximum range, and in case of ballistic missiles, their “maximum range” is the farthest range to which they have ever been tested:

Article VIIFor the purposes of this Treaty:

4. The range capability of a GLBM not listed in Article III of this Treaty shall be considered to be the maximum range to which it has been tested.

Whether the Rubezh/Yars-M is an INF treaty violation depends on whether 1,242 miles is the farthest range to which that missile has ever been tested. If it has been tested to a range exceeding INF treaty parameters (i.e. 5,500 kms), it is not, in an of itself, an INF treaty violation (though it is a clever circumvention of it).

However, maintaining ANY test facilities for intermediate-range ground-launched missiles IS a clear violation of the treaty, to wit:

Article II

9. The term “missile support facility,” as regards intermediate-range or shorter-range missiles and launchers of such missiles, means a missile production facility or a launcher production facility, a missile repair facility or a launcher repair facility, a training facility, a missile storage facility or a launcher storage facility, a test range, or an elimination facility as those terms are defined in the Memorandum of Understanding.

Article IV1. Each Party shall eliminate all its intermediate-range missiles and launchers of such missiles, and all support structures and support equipment of the categories listed in the Memorandum of Understanding associated with such missiles and launchers, so that no later than three years after entry into force of this Treaty and thereafter no such missiles, launchers, support structures or support equipment shall be possessed by either Party.

Article X1. Each Party shall eliminate its intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles and launchers of such missiles and support structures and support equipment associated with such missiles and launchers in accordance with the procedures set forth in the Protocol on Elimination.

Under the treaty, both the US and Russia (ex-USSR) are prohibited to possess not only ground-launched missiles of a range between 500 and 5,500 kms, but also any support structures for them, including test, training, and production facilities. By maintaining any testing facilities for such missiles, Russia has blatantly violated the INF treaty.

Last, but not least, getting back to China, it has commissioned a second Type 052D (Chinese Aegis) destroyer, with a state-of-the-art air and missile defense system, and it may have developed an AESA radar on par with the F-22 Raptor’s APG-77 radar six years ago.

Stay tuned in, Dear Readers. I will write more on these subjects in the next few weeks.

The Nuclear Deal With Iran: Worth Less Than Nothing

Originally published by this author at http://www.conservativedailynews.com.

Poorly verified agreements are in reality far worse than having no agreement at all.

– Paul H. Nitze. chief U.S. negotiator of the INF Treaty

Yesterday, diplomats representing the US, the UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany concluded an agreement with Iran concerning that country’s illegal nuclear program. Those diplomats and their governments hail the deal as a historic achievement. Barack Obama will no doubt claim that this agreement will “permanently block” a pathway to nuclear weaponry for Iran.

Such optimistic assessments are not warranted, however. The agreement has many huge loopholes, each of which, by itself, leaves a pathway for Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. Taken together, these loopholes – apparently the results of numerous concessions by the West – leave the way to nuclear powerdom widely open for Teheran.

Specifically, the agreement with Iran (whose full text is available here):

1. Does not cover, in any way whatsoever, Iran’s burgeoning arsenal of ballistic missiles, the longest-ranged of which have a range of 2,500 kms, enough to reach southeastern Europe (and more than enough to hit Israel). As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says, “Iran’s missile program is now the largest in the Middle East. It has the largest number of missiles and the most diverse missile array in the region, with both liquid-and solid-fuel propellant systems  (the latter of which offer improvements in safety and life-span and increase the speed with which missiles can be readied for launch). Its arsenal consists of short-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. One of the ballistic missiles, Sejjil, has a range of 2,500 kilometers.”
2. Does not cover, in any way whatsoever, reentry vehicles for nuclear warheads (on which Iran is currently working). Reentry vehicles, in layman’s terms, are essentially “buses” that carry nuclear warheads through most of a ballistic missile’s flight – from the ascent phase, throughout the midcourse phase when they traverse Outer Space, and during the terminal phase, when they’re crucial to allowing the warheads to survive reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. The agreement, as stated above, does not inhibit Iran in any way whatsoever from working on such vehicles.
3. Does not cover, in any way whatsoever, the military site at Parchin (19 miles southeast of Tehran), where most of the work on Iran’s nuclear weapons programme to date has been carried out.
4. Allows Iran to continue operating the Bushehr nuclear reactor built by the Russians. If the Iranians reprocess the spent fuel from that reactor (they can build  a reprocessing facility cheaply), extract plutonium from it, and upgrade it to weapons grade (all of which can be done cheaply), they can produce enough fissile material for a few nuclear warheads within weeks, and enough for several dozens of warheads within a year, as Henry Sokolski points out. Civilian-grade plutonium can also be used to produce a nuclear bomb, even without being enriched to weapons-grade, as the US demonstrated during the 1970s.
5. Allows Iran to retain over 19,000 nuclear centrifuges (machines used for enriching uranium), including 5,060 operational ones – far more than enough to produce enough enriched uranium for a nuclear warhead. Both Pakistan and North Korea produced enough such fissile materials with fewer centrifuges (Pakistan with only 3,000). Moreover, starting in 2023, Iran will be permitted to begin installing far more advanced centrifuges. This will allow it to produce more enriched uranium with fewer centrifuges. So to produce enough highly-enriched uranium for an atomic bomb, it won’t even need the 5,060 centrifuges it is already allowed under the deal – far fewer, in fact, will be needed. (Probably no more than around 3,000.)
6. In addition, “Western powers will also work with Iran to help it install and operate more advanced centrifuges, according to those apprised of the deal”,  WFB’s Adam Kredo reports.
7. Does not obligate Iran to close the underground Fordow nuclear site, where over 1,000 centrifuges will remain, ostensibly in “storage.” What’s more, the West is obligated by the deal to help the Iranians install new centrifuges at that facility.
8. Does not obligate the Iranians to come clean on their past nuclear weapons work, which forced the IAEA to close inconclusively its investigation of the matter last December. Without knowing how far they’ve already progressed, we will never know how much work they have yet to do before they successfully build a nuclear weapon.
9. Provides for lifting the arms embargo on Iran and the missile-related sanctions on Iran in 5 and 8 years, respectively.
10. Allows Iran to reject IAEA inspectors’ requests to visit Iranian civilian nuclear facilities. Any such request can be denied by Iran under the agreement. Also, all of Iran’s military facilities will be off-limits to foreign inspectors. Yet, it is there – not at civilian nuclear sites – that violations of the deal are most likely to occur. This makes the agreement completely unverifiable. As the American Thinker rightly notes, “There will be controlled access to Iran’s facilities, with the IAEA having to seek permission for any inspections. Again, this is not some minor point of contention. This is the guts of the deal and the Iranians are contradicting the president’s understanding of the agreement.”
11. Stipulates that if Iran is caught cheating, sanctions will not be reinstated until 65 days later, a woefully tardive response – and even that ONLY if Russia and China (both of them being veto-wielding UNSC members) consent. If even one of them wields their veto, sanctions will NEVER be restored, no matter how blatant Iran’s violation might be.

Sources for the agreement’s terms: here and here.

For a map of the range of Iran’s ballistic missiles, see the map below from Indian Defense News (source here):

The bottom line is that under the agreement, Iran is officially allowed to become a treshold nuclear power and to continue developing ever more accurate and ever more long-ranged missiles. Meanwhile, the West has no effective means of veryfing whether Iran is even complying with the agreement – Tehran can delay inspectors’ visits to its civilian sites for up to 24 days, and its military sites are completely off-limits.

This being the case, who can blame Israel and Arab states in the Persian Gulf for opposing this deal, which poses a grave threat to their national security?

In short, this is a sham agreement. It is unverifiable, contains no meaningful punishment for Iran in case it violates the deal, and allows Iran to retain enough capacity to produce sufficient fissile material – both uranium and plutonium – for nuclear weapons. And it does not even touch Iran’s burgeoning ballistic missile program or its warhead reentry vehicles.

This is not a good deal from the West’s standpoint. This is an awful deal. It’s a shameful capitulation to Iran.

This is not a good deal. This is not even a marginally acceptable deal. It’s an utterly worthless agreement.

Therefore, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer was right when he wrote that “Obama will get his “legacy.” Kerry will get his Nobel. And Iran will get the bomb.”

Under this agreement, the path for Iran to obtanining nuclear weapons will be wide open.

Obama’s Appeasement of Iran: Idiocy or Treason?

As everyone knows, Barack Obama has been pushing to get a nuclear deal signed between the P5+1 group (US, Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany) and Iran by June 30th, ostensibly in order to regulate that country’s nuclear program. Obama claims that the agreement will “forever foreclose” Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon and that, if Iran cheats, the US will have at least a year to stop the Iranian nuclear program by military means. He has also claimed that Iran had “frozen” its nuclear enrichment activity for the duration of the negotiations.

Evidence has now emerged that Obama was, as always, dead wrong.

During the last 18 months of negotiations, Iran has actually INCREASED its enriched uranium stockpile by 20%. The preliminary agreement signed in Lausanne, Switzerland, in March, obligates the Iranians – as will the final agreement expected to be signed on June 30th in Vienna – to dismantle 96% of their existing enriched uranium stockpile. But rather than dismantle it, or at least freeze their enrichment program, the Iranians have dramatically INCREASED their enriched uranium stockpile – by as much as 20%!

Not only that, but the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has categorically ruled out any Western inspections of any Iranian military installations!

Not only that, but the accord’s few restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program would expire after 15 years, and it contains NO restrictions whatsoever on the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missiles, nor would it obligate Tehran to stop supporting terrorist organizations.

Still worse, the Obama administration has dropped its previous demand that Iran reveal the entire scope of its past nuclear weapons work, which means the West will not know how far the Iranians have advanced already.

With Iran rejecting those inspections, and with such blatant Iranian cheating, how can one trust any agreement signed by Iran? One cannot. An agreement with Iran would not be worth the paper it would be printed on.

Yet, the NY Slimes and Obama administration officials are still deluding themselves – and the NYT’s readers – that Iran is a trustworthy partner and that the increased enriched uranium stockpile is a “problem” for Iranians which they will have to “solve.” They don’t realize at all that the Iranians consider their enriched uranium stockpile to be a great asset (for future nuclear weapon production), not a problem.

Iran is not negotiating in good faith. It is does not want to end its international isolation. It wants to develop nuclear weapons – and is apparently ready to do so at any cost, including crippling economic sanctions and international isolation.

It should be underlined that the only Western country to have taken a firm stance on the Iranian nuclear program (although that stance is not firm enough) is France, which has bravely and steadfastly resisted American pressure to agree to a Munich-style accord that would legalize Iran’s nuclear program without providing for any meaningful inspections or any strict limitations on that program.

That being the case, it is no wonder that the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf are increasingly looking towards France, rather than the US, as their primary military partner and arms vendor. Qatar has already ordered 24 Rafale jets, and the UAE are expected to follow suit later this year. Paris is also negotiating arms sales with Riyadh. Already, $12 bn worth of military and civilian sales have been concluded recently by French FM Laurent Fabius and the Saudi Defense Minister.

This confirms what I’ve recently said: being a poodle of Washington does not pay off. It’s far better to rely on France.

Further reading:

How France Became an Iran Hawk

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2015/03/25/01003-20150325ARTFIG00431-tensions-franco-americaines-sur-le-nucleaire-iranien.php

Two China threat deniers leave the Obama administration

Two highly-ranking officials responsible for handling East Asian affairs left the Obama administration a few days ago. These two officials were reputed to be China threat deniers – blind about the Chinese government’s intentions towards the US and its allies, desperate to please Beijing, and determined to hide from the public the scale of the Chinese military buildup. The officials in question are Paul Heer, former national intelligence officer for East Asia, and Evan Medeiros, a “senior China specialist for the White House.”

For many years, China realists – including this author – have been working hard to reveal the true nature of China’s military buildup and its bellicose intentions towards the US and its allies. We have been toiling hard for several years now to obtain, and share with the public, the facts about Chinese military capabilities and intentions, rather than China threat deniers’ spin and wishful thinking.

Have you ever wondered, Dear Readers, why the Pentagon, the State Department, and the intelligence community have been dramatically downplaying the Chinese military threat for the last decade, especially under the Obama administration?

It was because many highly-ranking administration officials – up to and including then-SECDEF Robert M. Gates, then-SECSTATE Hillary R. Clinton, and these two officials – Paul Heer and Evan Medeiros – blinded by their naivete towards China – were determined to play down and hide China’s military capabilities and aggressive designs from the public.

That is why the US military and the State Department have been very late and very slow to respond to China’s huge military buildup. This is why key weapon platforms, including the F-22 Raptor, that would’ve effectively countered China’s military capabilities, were killed. This is why report after report from US government agencies – as well as administration officials’ rhetoric – was dramatically downplaying China’s military capabilities and offensive designs. This is why the US federal government was completely surprised – time after time – by China’s new weapon platforms, tests, and military capabilities.

But now that these officials have left the administration, the policy is slowly changing, as is the rhetoric. As Bill Gertz reports:

“The Obama administration appears to be in the early phase of a policy shift on China. Tougher rhetoric and policies, most recently demonstrated by remarks in Asia from Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, coincide with the departures of two key officials long known for advocating more conciliatory policies toward Beijing.

Paul Heer, who for years held the influential post of national intelligence officer for East Asia, retired recently, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. From his position as the most senior intelligence official on China, Mr. Heer was known for a steadfast bias that sought to play down the various threats posed by China in favor of more conciliatory views. His influence also is said to have extended to personnel appointments within the CIA’s analytical section, which critics say resulted in “groupthink” on China.

A second major personnel change was the departure last week of the White House’s senior China specialist, Evan Medeiros, who left after a reported dispute with White House National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice. Ms. Rice has a reputation as a prickly manager known for swearing profusely at subordinates. Mr. Medeiros was regarded by critics as among the most pro-China policymakers in the White House’s highly centralized foreign policy and national security power structure.

Congressional Republicans have said Mr. Medeiros was behind the White House decision several years ago to deny sales of advanced U.S. F-16 jet fighters to Taiwan to bolster its flagging air forces.

Mr. Medeiros, in academic writings before his White House posting, has asserted that the Chinese military posed little or no threat and that Beijing’s policies are generally benign.”

One should not celebrate too jubilantly yet, but this may be the first step in the right direction.

Also in the last few days, following China’s test of its WU-14 hypersonic strike weapon, some commentators have repeated the usual ballyhoo that the missile designed to carry it – the DF-41 ICBM – is only “in development” and not deployed yet, whereas it has already been deployed; and that the Chinese would have a heck of a time sinking an American aircraft carrier, even with anti-ship missiles, because the Chinese would need to detect the carrier, keep tracking it, guide the missiles towards it, correct the guidance midcourse because the carrier is moving, and then, overwhelm the carrier group’s defenses.

But detecting American aircraft carriers – the largest ships in the world – is extremely easy, especially with the Over-the-Horizon radars China has, and guiding missiles towards it won’t be difficult, either, using those radars, as well as satellites… not to mention Sunburn or Sizzler hypersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, which can be carried by Chinese surface ships, submarines, aircraft, and coastal platforms.

Visit this site regularly, Dear Readers, for more updates on China’s military buildup.

Preliminary Assessment of the Nuclear Accord Between the P5+1 And Iran

Both Western and Iranian leaders have hailed the accord struck recently in Lausanne between the P5+1 group and Iran on the issue of that country’s nuclear program. US President Barack Obama claims this agreement permanently closes any path to nuclear weapons for Iran.

Such an optimistic assessment of the agreement is not warranted, however. While this is a preliminary accord and many details remain to be fleshed out, one can already see from the White House’s own so-called “fact sheet” that the provisions of the agreement leave Iran multiple paths to nuclear weapon acquisition. Specifically, the agreement:

• Allows Iran to maintain over 6,100 nuclear centrifuges, enough to enrich a quantity of uranium sufficient for a nuclear warhead within a timeframe of months, not years. Even if the other 13,000 centrifuges are decommissioned, that doesn’t solve the problem at all.
• Allows Iran to keep those other 13,000 centrifuges in storage – with no control over how these will be used and no way of preventing Iran from re-using these.
• Does not require Iran to close any of its nuclear sites, and allows the Islamic Republic to continue producing heavy water at Arak.
• Allows Iran to retain a 300 kg stockpile of enriched uranium – more than enough for one nuclear warhead if it were enriched further to a 90% degree.
• Allows Iran to continue all of its nuclear research programs.
• Does not limit Iran’s ballistic missile development, testing, production, and deployment in any way.

In addition, this agreement does not require Iran to cease supporting terrorist organizations.

Or, as the Washington Post’s editorial board has recently written:

“The “key parameters” for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program released yesterday fall well short of the goals originally set by the Obama administration.

• 1) None of Iran’s nuclear facilities — including the Fordow center buried under a mountain — will be closed.
• 2) Not one of the country’s 19,000 centrifuges will be dismantled.
• 3) Tehran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium will be “reduced” but not necessarily shipped out of the country.
• 4) In effect, Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will remain intact, though some of it will be mothballed for 10 years.
• 5) When the accord lapses, the Islamic republic will instantly become a threshold nuclear state.
• 6) The UN resolutions call for Iran to suspend the enrichment of uranium. Instead, enrichment will continue with 5,000 centrifuges for a decade, and all restraints on it will end in 15 years.
• 7) That’s a long way from the standard set by President Obama in 2012 when he declared that “the deal we’ll accept” with Iran “is that they end their nuclear program” and “abide by the U.N. resolutions that have been in place.”
• 9) The proposed accord will provide Iran a huge economic boost that will allow it to wage more aggressively the wars it is already fighting or sponsoring across the region. They are even removing sanctions that have nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
• 10) The President has ignored the US Congress.

Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry emphasized that many details need to be worked out in talks with Iran between now and the end of June.
We hope they will make as much effort to engage in good faith with skeptical allies and domestic critics in Congress as he has with the Iranian regime.”

In short, this agreement will certainly not live up to the Obama administration’s promise. Contrary to its claims, it permits Iran to retain a path to nuclear weapons development.

Jeffrey Lewis drops his mask, shows his true face – that of a traitor

The leftist Foreign Policy magazine has recently published a ridiculous screed by the ultra-leftist pro-disarmament agitator and pseudo-expert Jeffrey Lewis of the Monterey Institute for International Studies.

In that screed, Lewis – who some have called an “expert” on nuclear weapons and who has testified before Congress on more a few occassions – drops his mask of an “expert” and shows the whole world his true face – that of a traitor, a hyperpartisan liberal Democrat, and a campaigner for America’s unilateral disarmament and for an appeasement policy of allowing hostile regimes to build up their nuclear arsenals.

The title and introducing sentence of that diatribe alone reveal Lewis’s true face:

“Why A Bad Deal With Iran Is Better Than No Deal At All”

“Look here, you hypocritical Republicans”

But Lewis doesn’t stop there, of course. In his diatribe, he lectures Republicans that obtaining an agreement that limits the number of Iranian centrifuges to just 164 or some other low number is impossible. But – says Lewis – if Barack Obama and John Kerry are just given a free hand to conclude a “bad deal” with Iran, Tehran’s nuclear program would be frozen – allowing the West to somehow stop the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons before they’re able to do so but after they decide to resume their nuclear weapons program.

Furthermore, Lewis believes any military strike on iran would be “half-assed” and would only unravel the sanctions regime by depriving the US of the support of its allies, and that the Bush Administration was wrong to withdraw the US from the Agreed Framework with North Korea in 2002. And, as a hyperpartisan Democrat, Lewis strongly condemns the letter 47 Republican senators have sent to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

Lewis is dead wrong on all counts.

To start with, the kind of deal that Obama and Kerry are prepared to accept – allowing Iran to keep thousands of centrifuges and continue enriching uranium on a massive scale, as well as continue developing ballistic missiles of ever-increasing range – would only facilitate Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Republican Senators are thus right to oppose any such proposed deal, and to warn Iran’s supreme leader that such a deal would not be legally binding without the Senate’s advice and consent. (More on that later.)

Such a deal would not only be a foolishness, it would actually undermine any effort to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program. That’s because Iran would keep thousands of centrifuges while the US – and the West at large – would have to abolish sanctions against Iran – thus relieving Tehran of economic pain.

That would only greatly facilitate Iran’s path to nuclear weapon state status: thousands of centrifuges producing weapons-grade uranium and sanctions relief. And, of course, no limitation of its ballistic and cruise missile programs.

And that is assuming Iran would actually keep its end of the bargain. If it cheated – and it would certainly do – such an accord would be even more detrimental to US and allied security.

As for the Agreed Framework with North Korea, that accord – agreed by the Clinton administration in 1994 – was an utter foolishness which allowed North Korea to develop nuclear weapons. Under that utterly failed deal, North Korea was allowed to keep enriching uranium and maintaining a reactor producing plutonium – and, of course, to continue developing ballistic missiles. The US, in return, unilaterally withdrew its tactical nukes from South Korea. The Bush Administration rightly withdrew the US from that agreement when North Korea was caught CHEATING in the early 2000s – proving that the Agreed Framework was never worth the paper it was printed on.

As for the Republican senators letter – in which they reminded Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei that no US-Iran agreement would be legally binding without Senate consent – they are absolutely right.

Under the US Constitution, the President may conclude legally binding agreements on behalf of the United States ONLY with the advice and consent of AT LEAST two thirds of Senators present in the Senate’s place of meeting. The Constitution mentions the President’s agreement-making power only once – when it provides the above rule for concluding legally binding agreements on America’s behalf.

The Founding Fathers knew very well that it would be VERY dangerous to give the power to conclude such legally binding agreements (then called “treaties”) to the President alone. Had they done so, there would’ve been no limit to the commitments a President could undertake on America’s behalf. Thus, they put in place a system of checks and balances to ensure the President could never, by himself, make such commitments to foreign countries on the country’s behalf, and put in place a very high (2/3 of the Senate) requirement for any such agreement to be law.

Alexander Hamilton explained it nicely in Federalist #69:

“The President is to have power, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the senators present concur. The king of Great Britain is the sole and absolute representative of the nation in all foreign transactions. He can of his own accord make treaties of peace, commerce, alliance, and of every other description.

It has been insinuated, that his authority in this respect is not conclusive, and that his conventions with foreign powers are subject to the revision, and stand in need of the ratification, of Parliament. But I believe this doctrine was never heard of, until it was broached upon the present occasion. Every jurist² of that kingdom, and every other man acquainted with its Constitution, knows, as an established fact, that the prerogative of making treaties exists in the crown in its utomst plentitude; and that the compacts entered into by the royal authority have the most complete legal validity and perfection, independent of any other sanction.”

As Alexander Hamilton narrates above, the President of the United States cannot, by himself, conclude legally binding agreements on behalf of the US – he needs the advice and consent of two thirds of Senators present for that. By contrast, the British king of the time, King George III, against whom the former American colonies had previously rebelled, had the power to conclude any agreement of any kind on Britain’s behalf alone – as was the unanimous opinion of every British lawyer, and every other man acquainted with British constitutional law.

Thus, for example, when Britain’s then-Foreign Secretary the Lord Grenville concluded the so-called Jay’s Treaty with US Chief Justice John Jay, the treaty only needed King George III’s sanction to be ratified by Britain. But for the treaty to become legally binding on the US, two thirds of the Senators of the time (all of whom arrived in Philadelphia upon President Washington’s request to debate the treaty) had to vote for it – and the Senate resolution of advice and consent significantly modified the treaty (notably by striking its Article XII).

So the Senate Republicans are absolutely right – and Jeffrey Lewis, as always, is dead wrong. The Obama administration is desperately trying to conclude a deal with Iran at any cost – even if that means allowing Iran to freely develop and, one day, obtain a nuclear weapon one day. Republicans are right to oppose this – and to remind Iran’s supreme leader that ANY agreement between him and Obama won’t be legally binding unless it receives the Senate’s advice and consent.