Watchdog Missile Defense & Nuclear Proliferation

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Comment by Laura Alcorn, VA State Director on November 17, 2009 at 4:03pm

Obama said Sunday the US and Russia would have a replacement treaty on reducing nuclear arms ready for approval by year's end, an announcement ending at the summit with Asia-Pacific leaders.

While publicizing progress with Russia on arms control - part of Obama's agenda to advance nuclear disarmament - the president and other leaders bowed to the obvious on climate change. They discussed a compromise agreement for a 192-nation gathering next month in Copenhagen, indirectly admitting that the meeting would not produce a new global treaty to reduce the heat-trapping carbon emissions that are warming the planet.

Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific summit of APEC nations to announced good progress in negotiations on an updated pact to replace the START nuclear arms agreement that expires on Dec. 5.

Obama said the pair discussed a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and described "excellent progress over the last several months." "Medvedev said he hoped negotiators would "finalize the text of the document by December."

Obama and Medvedev agreed in April to reach a new nuclear arms reduction pact to replace and expand upon the one that was signed by former President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev.

During a July summit in Moscow, Obama and Medvedev further agreed to cut the number of nuclear warheads each nation possesses to between 1,500 and 1,675 within seven years.

U.S. officials say the two nations now have agreed on the broad outlines of a new treaty, which could be signed during Obama's travels to Europe in early December to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.



It still was not clear if Obama would use that same trip to attend the Copenhagen climate summit, given that any agreement reached on cutting greenhouse gas emissions would serve only as an interim, political document.



"There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen which starts in 22 days," said Michael Froman, Obama's deputy national security adviser for international economic matters.



The prime minister of Denmark, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the U.N.-sponsored climate conference's chairman, flew overnight to Singapore to present a proposal shifting the goal of the meeting to a "politically binding" agreement, in hopes of breathing life into the struggling process.



A fully binding legal agreement would be left to a second meeting next year in Mexico City, Froman said.



Obama backed the approach, cautioning the group not to let the "perfect be the enemy of the good," Froman said.



A major bill dealing with energy and climate in the U.S. Senate, a domestic priority of Obama's, is bogged down with scant hope of completion by next month. That would leave Obama little to show in Copenhagen.



During his Asia trip, which continued later Sunday to China, Obama also pushed for continued pressure on Iran and its nuclear program. Appearing with Medvedev, Obama said "we are now running out of time."



"Unfortunately, so far it appears Iran has been unable to say yes," to the proposal on uranium reprocessing, Obama said.



Medvedev continued: "We are prepared to work further and I hope our joint work will reach a positive result. In case we fail, other options remain on the table." He has said further sanctions against Iran were possible if it did not open its nuclear program to inspections to prove it was not trying to build a bomb.



The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China - along with Germany have engaged Iran on its nuclear program, most recently with a deal for it to ship enriched uranium to Russia for further processing as fuel for an aging reactor used for medical treatments.



The United States and its allies believe Iran is using it's nuclear program as a cover for building a bomb. Tehran says it only wants to build nuclear reactors to generate electricity.



Obama wrapped his official schedule in Singapore late Sunday afternoon by meeting with Indonesia's Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, president of the world's largest Muslim nation and Obama's home as a boy. Obama said he was excited about the prospect of improving relations with Indonesia and repeated his plan to visit next year.

Comment by Laura Alcorn, VA State Director on November 13, 2009 at 11:00am

Cut/pasted from the Heritage Foundation

Last month, The Washington Post reported that President Barack Obama had asked senior officials for a province-by-province analysis of Afghanistan “to help determine which regions are being managed effectively by local leaders and which require international help.” He supposedly wanted “the clearest possible understanding of what the challenges are to our forces and what is required to meet the challenges.

Two weeks later the Associated Press reports that President Obama has rejected all of the options presented by his national security team and is now asking for “revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government.”

The White House continues to assert that Obama just needs more time to properly calibrate how to communicate to the Afghan government that it “must improve in a reasonable period of time.” But Obama has been President for ten months now, and his rhetoric during the campaign would tend to suggest that he has been aware for sometime of our struggles in Afghanistan.

The truth is the Pentagon has been scrutinizing the failures of our AfPak strategy for over two years and the new administration has benefited from all the work done before it took the White House. The argument that we need more study, or that half measures will do, is wearing pretty thin. All this news makes it look like the president is shopping for a rationale to justify a commitment that is “politically” acceptable in Washington.

In fact, the ongoing public debate about Afghanistan has already cost the U.S. credibility with its NATO allies and is confusing our regional partners who are starting to hedge their bets and plan for a decreased U.S. commitment to the region. As well-known Pakistan expert Ahmed Rashid commented on October 27th in an article in the National Interest, “Every sign of the United States or NATO dithering over strategy only convinces the Pakistani military about keeping its Taliban option open.”

Yes, the recent flawed Afghan election was a setback to international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, but as Heritage senior research fellow Lisa Curtis notes: “Part of the reason Karzai’s reputation has suffered is the deteriorating security situation — so it stands to reason that providing additional U.S. troops to reverse Taliban momentum, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal has requested, would also increase the credibility of the Afghan regime. While the Obama administration is right to demand cleaner rule from Karzai, it also must be realistic about the security situation and acknowledge that stemming Taliban advances is vital to U.S. national security interests.”

The Obama administration used to believe that defeating the Taliban was a vital national security interest. It was just this past August when President Obama said: “This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is a — this is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

We need a decision from President Obama, and pretty compelling rationale to support it, soon. Obama’s Afghan strategy should provide U.S. military commanders on the ground with the resources they need to fight a successful counterinsurgency campaign against the Taliban. Depriving our commanders of the resources they require is a recipe for failure.

Comment by Lee Prince on November 12, 2009 at 3:24pm

I know...I hear a lot of criticism of George W. Bush, but he is speaking now and I MISS him. At least he supported the troops...

Comment by J Neil Jednoralski, P.E. on November 12, 2009 at 3:10pm

Our General should pull a General MacArthur, due to Hussein's lack a support !!! This is what happens when politics is involved with war decisions !!! And our troops pay the price.

Comment by Lee Prince on November 12, 2009 at 11:42am

Let's not Forget--BHusseinO is a Shi'ite follower, not a Sunni...He'd love to have Iran prosper at the expense of both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Comment by John M. Vaughn III on November 12, 2009 at 11:17am

You're so right Jay. Because if there's chaos, then they think no one will pay attention to what they're doing.

Comment by Jay Thomas on November 12, 2009 at 11:15am

Afghanistan has now lost confidence and Barry is to blame for scrapping it all and wanting a new plan as of today. When Pakistan falls, and it will, it's going to be complete chaos, just what the left wants.

Comment by Lee Prince on November 10, 2009 at 10:41am

From Stratfor.com
November 10, 2009--China agreed to sell Pakistan two squadrons of J-10 fighters for as much as $1.4 billion, The Financial Times reported Nov. 10, citing Pakistani and Western officials. A Pakistani official said more sales may follow, but denied that a deal had been made to buy up to 150 fighters. The Pakistani air force expects to buy at least 250 JF-17 Thunder fighters in the next four to five years. A Western official in Islamabad said Iran and Middle Eastern countries can find Western-like technology in China purchases; he added that Pakistan's purchase is a test case for the region.

Comment by Laura Alcorn, VA State Director on November 9, 2009 at 8:38am

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY

The following was adapted from a speech in Washington, D.C., by Ambassador John Bolton on September 11, 2009, in the "First Principles on First Fridays" lecture series sponsored by Hillsdale College's Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship.

I think it is important, on the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, to take a look at our foreign policy and to judge whether or not we're on a path to becoming safer. In doing so, we should not be intimidated by those who say that criticism of foreign policy -- criticism that suggests we're less safe as a consequence of certain policies -- is somehow disloyal or hyper-partisan. It is the essence of political debate over foreign policy to judge whether the interests of the United States are being protected and advanced. If we believe they are not, it is our responsibility to speak out.

For the last eight months, we've had a different kind of president than we've had in the past. Barack Obama is the first post-American president. And by this I don't mean he's anti-American. What I mean by post-American is suggested by a response the president gave to a reporter's question during a recent trip to Europe. The reporter asked about his unwillingness to discuss American exceptionalism -- the notion that the United States has a unique mission, that it's "a shining city on a hill" as Ronald Reagan liked to say (echoing our pilgrim fathers). Mr. Obama responded that he believes in American exceptionalism in the same way that the British believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. Given that there are 192 member countries in the United Nations, I'm sure he could have gone on naming another 189 that believe in their own exceptionalism. But in any case, the idea that all countries believe themselves to be exceptional in the same way leads to the unmistakable conclusion that none are truly exceptional. In other words, the president's response reflects his belief that America is not so different from other countries.

Mr. Obama's supporters in the mainstream media share this view. Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, for example, delivered this revealing comment when previewing the president's speech on the anniversary of D-Day last June:
"Reagan was all about America . . . . Obama is 'we are above that now.' We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistc, we're not just provincial. We stand for something -- I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above -- above the world. He's sort of God."

The image of President Obama standing above his country and above the world sums up the post-American way of thinking. The practical point it makes is that America's interest is no different or better than any other country's interest. But is that true? Is America's interest not superior to Sudan's or Cuba's or Zimbabwe's?

In line with this way of thinking, the Obama administration is pursuing policy that can accurately be described as neoisolationist -- a policy characterized by an unwillingness to be assertive in the world in defense of America's interests and those of our friends and allies. This policy traces back in the Democratic party to George McGovern's acceptance speech at the 1972 Democratic national convention. McGovern's refrain was "Come Home America" -- come home from Vietnam and come home from a lot of other places as well. This is the attitude that has come to dominate liberal foreign policy circles.

Consider our current policy regarding Iraq. The Obama administration is determined to withdraw American forces along the lines of a plan formulated at the end of the Bush administration, but without regard to the actual situation in Iraq. American forces have pulled back from their prominent roles in the major urban areas, and violence has increased. But the administration remains fixed on the withdrawal schedule, because it is withdrawal -- rather than the political stability of Iraq -- that matters to it most. And this strict adherence to the exit timetable without regard to the ilitary and political consequences could prove to be very harmful to our interests -- not only in Iraq, but in the broader region as well.

In Afghanistan, there is legitimate room for discussion about what our strategic objectives should be. I doubt we will transform it into a stable democratic society. It is going to become Switzerland -- or even Honduras. On the other hand, we have a serious strtegic interest in making sure that the Taliban and al-Qaeda don't use Afghanistan as a base to launch future terrorist attacks. But today, what was for years portrayed as the good war by liberals -- as opposed to the "bad" Iraq War -- has become just another war from which they want to get out. This is creating a difficult political problem for President Obama. And the path he chooses to take in Afghanistan is going to be significant, not least because of the consequences it will have in Pakistan.

Our interests in Pakistan are even more acute than in Afghanistan, and the potential risks to the United States and to our allies even graver. The reason is that if radical Islamists are able to create enough chaos inside Pakistan to enable them to take control of the government, they will immediately come into possession of a substantial arsenal of nuclear weapons. This would lead to a greater risk of conflict on the Indian subcontinent and also increase the chance that these weapons will fall into the hands of terrorist groups. So our national interest is not simply preventing al-Qaeda and the Taliban from returning to their safe havens in Afghanistan. The cross-border nature of Taliban and al-Qaeda activities requires us to work even harder to ensure that Pakistan's nuclear capabilities don't fall into the wrong hands.

More broadly, the Obama administration believes that its predecessor didn't negotiate enough on issues like the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The president has said repeatedly -- starting with his Inaugural Address -- that the United States must hold out its hand to countries like North Korea and Iran in the hopes they will unclench their fist and enter into negotiation. This reflects a curious view of history, since in fact the Bush administration negotiated directly or indirectly with Iran and North Korea for six-and-a-half years. But more importantly, it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of negotiation. Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. It is a way of achieving our objectives. It doesn't tell us what the objectives are. The emphasis on negotiation as an end in itself reflects a shallowness in this administration's approach to international affairs, and gives us little confidence that our interests will be served.

The Obama administration has extended its hand to North Korea, only to see that country conduct another nuclear test, launch more ballistic missiles, and kidnap and incarcerate two American reporters. Kim Jong Il apparently didn't get the message about the "reset button" when President Obama replaced President Bush. And in fact, Kim Jong Il will never be talked out of his nuclear weapons program, which he sees as a trump card against the United States, Japan and South Korea. It's the ultimate protection for his regime, and it is a source of revenue and leverage elsewhere in the world, particularly in the Middle East. On the other hand, the North Koreans have been very successful over the years in using negotiations to leverage economic and political concessions. They've even been happy to pledge to give up nuclear weapons -- five times, by my count, over the past 18 years. But of course they never carry through.

Sometime during the next year, North Korea will probably agree to negotiate. And why not? It's to their advantage. It buys them time, it increases the possibility of further economic and political concessions, and it will fundamentally satisfy a U.S. administration whose supreme objective is negotiations. It won't reduce the nuclear threat that North Korea poses to the world, but it will take it out of the media spotlight. And for this administration, that would appear to be as good as solving the problem.

In Iran we see another example of the outstretched hand being slapped away. Indeed, there is now at least anecdotal evidence that the regime in Tehran saw the Obama administration so eager for negotiations that it would overlook any harsh steps Iran might take internally. So in response to the administration's friendly overtures, the mullahs in Tehran conducted a grossly fraudulent presidential election on June 12 and have spent the subsequent months repressing their opponents. Close observers believe that there is no longer a power struggle in the Iranian government between hard-liners and moderates -- if any moderates are left -- but rather that power is flowing away from the ayatollahs and toward the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In other words, Iran is being transformed from a theological autocracy into a theological military dictatorship. And given that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls both Iran's nuclear weapons program and its funding of international terrorism, this means that Iran will only become more dangerous as time goes on.

As the failure of negotiations with Iran becomes more obvious by the day, the Obama administration's next strategy seems to be reliance on sanctions. In theory, sanctions will take advantage of the vulnerability stemming from Iran's inability to refine petroleum. But this is the strategy that the Europeans and the Bush administration persued unsuccessfully for the last seven years. The U.N. Security Council has passed three sanction resolutions, which have had almost no impact whatsoever on Iran's ongoing nuclear weapons program. Another U.N. resolution is not likely, especially given Russia's firm opposition. And if Europe and the United States don't help Iran with oil, Venezuela's President Chavez has pledged his country will do so.

There are really only two scenarios by which Iran can be stopped from possessing nuclear weapons. The first is regime change, which seems less and less likely now that the outrage following the fraudulent presidential election has dissipated. The second is preemptive military force. This is an extraordinarly unattractive option, but the alternative is much less attractive. The Obama administration almost certainly will do nothing militarily, which puts the entire onus on Israel. In the past, Israel has not hesitated to act when faced with an existential threat. It destroyed Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor outside Baghdad in 1981, and in September 2007 it destroyed a North Korean reactor in Syria. So the spotlight in the near future is very much going to be on Israel.

Toward Israel, the Obama administration's policy to this point has been an essentially European policy. It's underlying assumption is that solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem will lead to a greater peace in the Middle East. But the real root of the problem in the Middle East is Iran's continuing support for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Nonetheless, the administration has thus far spent more time and energy pressuring Israel to stop building settlements than pressuring Iran to stop funding terrorism.

Here at home, the Obama administration has gravely impaired our capability to gather human intelligence by declassifying hundreds of pages of documents that explain our interrogation techniques -- information that is now probably in al-Qaeda training manuels. And at the time of the grossest profligacy in domestic spending in American history, the administration has imposed a ceiling on defense spending. At the same time it advocates an $800 billion stimulus plan that seems to include every idea ever hatched in Washington, it is making radical cuts on missle defense and cancelling the F-22 fighter aircraft. It supports a deposed president in Honduras -- deposed, in accordance with the Honduran Constitution, for attempting to subvert the Constitution as his thuggish ally President Chavez did in Venezuela -- against its legitimate government which promises a free and transparent election. The list goes on. And even where the administration has pursued sensible policies, it has only done so grudgingly, and with the clear understanding that, absent political constraints, it would have done things differently.

I understand that Americans are concerned about the economy. And I understand that every new president is going to have domestic priorities. But our adversaries around the world are not standing idly by while we debate these domestic issues. Our current focus on health care is very important, but people like Kim Jong Il don't care about it. We need a president who is going to provide us with leadership in international affairs -- not one who believes that America should simply come home. And we need a president who believes that the best place to defend our interest is overseas rather than in the streets of America.

Comment by Jay Thomas on November 8, 2009 at 1:48am

Iran doesn't need much, just a few boats and their med ranger. Biden will probably be proved right....for once.

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