Blix Backs Obama’s Nuclear Strategy

Friday, May 1, 2009

Pentagon Won’t Echo Obama No-Nukes Pledge

Thursday, April 23, 2009 6:25 PM Article Font Size

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is starting work on a nuclear mission statement that envisions the U.S. maintaining its atomic weapons stockpile for the next five to 10 years, a far more cautious stance than than President Barack Obama’s dream of a nuclear-free future.   The “nuclear posture review” due early next year will focus on the practical and nearer-term goal of deterring the use and spread of weapons, Pentagon officials said Thursday. It is not likely to echo Obama’s pledge to work for “global zero,” or total eradication, as an explicit goal.

http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/us_pentagon_nuclear_weapons/2009/04/23/206720.html

If anyone remembers the movie “Seven Days in May” it was about a plot by the military to take control of the federal government because the office of the president is held by a naive man who wants to totally disarm the US leaving us open to surprise attack. The plot is foiled in the movie. I say remake the movie and let the plot be successful. Then after the militray leader ”teaches” the appeasement peacniks how dangerous the world is, he steps down after rebuilding the military and calling an election to restore the Republic. The final scene is the leader in full military uniform heading off to Leavenworth for life, but knowing he has saved the Republic.

Ms. Napolitano, this is an imaginary movie idea don’t send the DHS brownshirts to get me

I talk politics with my Canadian relatives quite a bit, they are worried that my current emotional low ties directly to the Republican electoral low of today.

One of my uncles told me a story about an election held is Saskatchewan in 1991. In it, the incumbant party, the New Democrats (left of center) were seen as betraying their roots and were thrown out of office. The Progressive Conservatives were elected in a landslide. The New Democrats were almost wiped out. Anyway one of the newly elected Conservatives was a comedian named Metro (he did ethnic Ukranian humor) it seemed the people were willing to elect any Conservative over New Democrats.

To make a long story short the Conservatives believed that this election foretold a permanent shift in the Province and proceeded to over reach and become corrupt.

Is Al Franken the Democratic “Metro”?

From Newsmax:

Gov. Jindal to Cheney: Go Easy on Obama

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, frequently mentioned as a leading Republican contender for president, suggested that former Vice President Dick Cheney should back off of criticizing the national-security intentions of President Obama.

Speaking on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Jindal said, “I don’t think we should question President Obama’s patriotism or his intentions.” …………………………………

Added Jindal: “At the end of the day, I don’t think we should be questioning the administration’s intentions, but I think it’s good to have an honest debate.”

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/jindal_cheney_obama/2009/04/17/204365.html

I like Bobby Jindal, but the quotes above make no sense. Is not a reason for debate to question someone’s intentions? Despite that fact was Bush not a militaristic, bombastic, fascist wanna be tyrant that was going to enslave the world so the stock price of Halliburton would go up? Former VP Cheney is actually bringing up coherent and thoughtful disagreements ON POLICY. Leave him alone.

Our politicians are such wimps sometimes. I watch footage of real Americans standing in the rain and sleet on April 15th and smile with pride at their toughness and love of country. I wish Republicans showed one tenth of this toughness.

From Defense News:

$83.4B for 2009: The Last Supplemental?

By william matthews
Published: 10 Apr 2009 15:20

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“Vowing that it will be the last wartime supplemental, U.S. President Barack Obama sent Congress an $83.4 billion bill April 9 to cover the costs of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for the second half of 2009.”

So the “normal” defense budget was $514.6 billion (approx.) plus this supplemental is $598 billion for FY09. But starting next year these supplementals will be rolled into the regualr budget process.

My prediction – and other defense analysts – the regualr non-war budget will get cut. How? FY11 will have a defense budget of say $600 billion but this might include up to $90 billion for the wars. So the non-war budget will shrink and the services will be forced to used scarce modernization and research funds to pay for it, However, Obama, the Dems and their stenographers in the MSM will tout the massive increase in defense spending because Obama understand the imporatance of national defense yada, yada, yada.

It will be a cut plain and simple.

From DOD Buzz:

The F-22 Decision in Perspective

On December 3, 2008 (only four days from the anniversary of Pearl Harbor), President-elect Obama argued that as President he “would maintain the strongest military on earth.” The decisions announced last week by Secretary Gates undercut the President’s strategic objective. Instead, the decisions re-enforce the ability of the ability of the US to manage occupation, not to ensure the ability of the United States to protect its global interests.

Although the F-22 termination has received significant press, the real issue is that the decisions affecting the power projection forces set in motion a process of reducing the President’s options to protect U.S. interests. The F-22 termination is bundled with a group of decisions – putting on hold amphibious capabilities, next-generation destroyers, pushing the carrier modernization to the right, delaying the bomber modernization, undercutting missile defense and opening up a significant fighter gap – which further reduce the ability of the US to maintain a strategic lead in the development and production of power projection forces for the US and allied forces. We are now entering a period of strategic pause in which others can enhance their ability to undercut the capabilities of the existing power projection forces, while not fearing breakout capabilities delivered by the United States and a general process of further weakening the ability of the US to produce power projection forces The symbolism was stark: the North Koreans launch missiles in our direction, and we respond with a strategic drawdown. I am sure the North Koreans fear the MRAP fleet as a deterrent force; and the Iranians are cringing in their boots about the threat from stability forces.

In other words, the F-22 termination is a symbolic decision that forecasts a different approach to our international involvement in the future. The waning of independent action and the rise of consensus action is upon us. The question of it becoming reality becomes the sort of issue that America never debated in the past 70 years. The larger argument that we should be having is how to expand and not contract the sovereign options we offer to the president.

Our national interests are being reduced to becoming the armed custodians in two nations, Afghanistan and Iraq. It is our inherent strength in deterrent or global engagement forces that allows us to engage in wars of our choosing; sapping this strength limits our choices or bring to us the agony of a war not of our choosing.

The evolving strategic environment simply does not support the reduction of US engagement to imperial custodianship. A strategic debate worthy of the name must take into account that recent intelligence actually advanced the fielding date for the Russian fifth generation fighters; and sees nuclear capability for North Korea and Iran as very near term, which could spark regional or larger conflict. China has accelerated its strategic military funding; and at the same time worries about poverty driven uprising; and may need an external focus to meld their country. Future estimates of demographics indicate that the energy-rich north Asian landmass currently owned by Russia will dramatically lose population; On the other hand as China’s energy appetite accelerates the region’s population is increasingly Chinese nationals. Consensus on peace may well be the talk of the society; but there are near-term indicators that this might not be acceptable to rogue leaders who are more concerned with strengthening their hold on power than achieving international good will. Resetting of global relationships should not be defined as accommodation to what others offer us regardless of cost.

So the argument about America’s place in the world should be actively debated; the clear signal on weakening America’s global engagement forces; while investing heavily in occupation forces, will not go unnoticed. From an analytic policy standpoint, we are weakening our asymmetric advantage, and becoming symmetric with our peers in order to become more qualified to fight groups that do not threaten our nation.

Another strategic consequence of Gates’ decisions would be to provide a searing indictment of America’s capability to design and build modern weapons. The terminations in the air, space, helicopter and bomber domain will essentially gut American aerospace engineering — the very area that has provided our sea-locked nation with strategic advantage and strategic reach. This action; in combination with the actions to save finance and automotive should make our heads spin. Lockheed made the case that 95,000 jobs were dependent on the F-22; well, you can more than double that for the other products. In addition, this will make any other products or design and development work more expensive.

This may prove to be the greater weakening of defense; as we found out in the last lost decade. We lost talent that was available for the Reagan buildup; but was not there when we need it now. Now we are giving up design and development talent with no means to carry it into a dimming future.

In other words, I see this not as a single action stopping the F-22 well below the recommended military level; but as a broader action by a weary Defense Department to limit our sovereign options in the foggy future, by postulating ‘Peace in our Time’

A group of disarmament activists led by main sponsor the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have issued two reports advocating deep cuts to the nuclear arsenal and a massive reduction to the weapons infrastructure. First, the NRDC are a far left environmental group that has opposed pretty much every weapons system the US has ever wanted to deploy. So their latest report is not too surprising. However, they are being just described as nuclear weapons experts, which I admit they are, with no mention of their long history of wanting “peace through unilateral disarmament”

An article describing the latest report can be seen at ”Global Security Newswire”. One big quote from the article immediately drew my attention for its MASSIVE contradiction. Read the full quote below and see if you can spot it before I comment afterwords.

“A new ‘minimal deterrence’ mission will make retaliation after nuclear attack the sole mission for nuclear weapons,” the assessment states. “We believe that adopting this doctrine is an important step on the path to nuclear abolition because nuclear retaliation is the one mission for nuclear weapons that reduces the salience of nuclear weapons; it is the self-canceling mission. With just this one mission, the United States can have far fewer nuclear forces to use against a different set of targets.”

Did you see the contradiction? They want to downsize to a force capable of mimimum deterrence or the least number of weapons needed to deter enemies. This force will be have as it sole mission to retaliate AFTER a nuclear attack.

Why would we have to respond after a nuclear attack if we have enough weapons to deter our enemies, oops. We can say deterrence worked during the Cold War because there were NO ATTACKS not because there was just a few.

So only after deterrence fails and five milllion Americans are vaporized in a nuclear fireball whose temperature exceeeds that of the surface of the Sun will we use our nukes. But I have another secret about these groups, which I have studied for years (to give the NRDC credit their “Nuclear Weapons Databook” series is excellent).

First, I guarantee they would council against retaliation and use the tragedy of a nuke over Manhatten to INCREASE calls for total disarmament. Secondly, they have always blamed the US for any arms race and would advocate unilateral disarmament. They do not beleive nukes will ever be used and that the entire nuclear infrastructure has been a waste of money. They really want no nukes RIGHT NOW. They hide behind what they believe to be reasonable arguments.

There is no “real” strategic rationale for going under the current number of deployed weapons (which have been massively reduced since the end of the Cold War by the way, something Obama misconstues when he equates the current arsenal to the Cold War) Cutting weapons will not enhance our security and may actually embolden aggressors to “match” US capabilities that they can now never really hope to do.

Although I have diarized and commented on the need to maintain a strong conservatism based on the founding principles of the nation every once in awhile I get frustrated with what looks like a real uphill battle.

Although, not a perfect representation of an average left wing or right wing voter/person, I can’t help but be shocked by the divide. As an example a conservative caller will talk about tax cuts, military strength, smaller government, etc. A liberal caller, despite the current explosion of government spending, wants the government to do more and more and more. They want free healthcare, more cuts to defense, get their mortgage paid, get free government cheese, etc.

Listening to these callers tells me two things 1) It will be difficult to educate enough people, to sway enough people that conservatism is the way to go but more importantly 2) Moving to the left to try and get the centrist or liberal voter will result in the death of the Republican party. You will never be able to bribe enough of the liberals to vote for you if the first place and any that you do will result in the loss of two times the number of conservatives.

So the battle is going to be hard and long. But that said 2010 is still key as a first battle on the road to ultimately taking back the country.

Russian Experts Question Role of Conventional “Prompt Global Strike” Weapons

Monday, April 6, 2009

By Elaine M. Grossman

Global Security Newswire