James et al

I am not aware of any hyper-partisanship on the issue of the American occupation of Iraq- much less the invasion.  Nor was there much partisanship at all.  Tthe Democrats performed their usual act of docile deference throughout.  It was not until the 2006 Congressional election that one heard any criticiam whatsoever, criticism that was barely partisan at all but rather within the mainstream of an emerging policy debate.  So I don't think the ascription of equivalent hyper-partisanship holds up under close scrutiny.

Historical note: Barack Obama was quoted as saying in October, 2004 the following: "my only disagreement with the Bush administration's policy on Iraq is its execution."  Hyper go-with-the-flow is what I'd call it.  

We are told that the Obama's missile defense system can be installed cheaper, sooner, and will be just as effective as the Bush system. In fact, we really don't know this for several reasons.

First, we are comparing two systems that were never intended to work independently of one another. The Bush system of 10 interceptors was always intended to be supplemented with shorter range missile defenses like the Standard Missile - 3 (SM-3) block I and II systems that Obama is now spotlighting as his "alternative". The SM-3 block I is a known quantity but was never designed to hit ballistic missiles during mid-course (i.e., the longest period) of their flight. Instead it was designed to hit them shortly after they leave the launch pad. The 10 interceptors that Bush's system would employ, in contrast, was designed primarily to hit ballistic missiles midcourse in their flight. That's why the Bush proposal was not just to employ the 10 interceptors, but to employ them along with shorter range missile defense systems geared to hit offensive missiles shortly after take off and as they approached their final target.

Second, while the system that the 10 large interceptors were based on is not as far along  as the SM-3 block I missile is, it can at least be tested since it consists of the first two stages of a missile defense system that already is deployed in Alaska. The SM-3 block II's key interceptor components, meanwhile, are not quite as far along. While we know that the SM-3 block II missile must fit in a standard missile launcher, we do not yet know how well this new relatively small system will perform -- i.e., precisely how quickly and how far it can fly to hit offensive missiles in mid-course. It is worth noting that this system was not originally designed primarily to tackle mid-course interceptions. If it should work well at this mission and not cost much, we may well be able to save some money. If not, we may have to use many more SM-3 interceptors to get the job done. This could easily end up costing more money than the original Bush system and might, in the end, force us to deploy larger interceptors of the sort that Bush originally planned for Poland. No one yet knows which scenario is more probable; time and further testing will tell. What is clear, however, is that the least risky way to secure a defense against Iranian missiles (which Tehran is deploying in significant numbers and upgrading steadily) would be to deploy both the 10 interceptor system and the SM-3 block I and II systems. This, again, was what the Bush scheme originally planned to do.

As for the issue of appeasing Russia, there seem to be two story boards. The first is that Russia's views had nothing to do with Obama's decision to kill the 10 interceptor project but instead was a budgetary decision based on a review of the Iranian missile threat. The second focuses on the timing of Obama's decision, which was just before the Czech elections. This was upsetting to the current Czech leadership, which supports deployment of U.S. missile defenses, and welcomed by the opposition that objects to having any missile defenses on Czech soil. Those arguing that Obama's decision was a form of appeasement also spotlight the Administration's desire to get an strategic arms reduction treaty finalized with Russia before December 5th.

Proving the appeasement thesis is not easy. In any case, the budgetary argument administration officials offer is weak. Again, we really don't know how well the proposed SM-3 Block II system will perform, much less how much it will cost or how long it will take to perfect or deploy. As for the intelligence argument, it also seems a stretch: Since when have our projections regarding the strategic weapons and nuclear programs of countries like Iran been sufficiently on target to design military spending programs and deployments around them? In fact, our intelligence community almost always projects disagreeable threats to be five or more years out and they are almost always wrong.  More important, when it comes to our military and its ability to field a large, new defense system of the sort being discussed, five years is not that much time. In this case, it almost certainly is not enough.

It also is clear that the timing of the decision -- so boorishly close to Czech elections -- raised more than a few eyebrows. Some reports have it that Obama officials notified the political leadership in Poland only minutes after the President made his decision, i.e.,  in the middle of the night. If so, it's a message in and of itself. It is fair enough to note that the Polish and Czech public was hardly unified behind the Bush missile defenses project. Still,  indicative of how awkward the Administration's move was is that right after Obama's decision and the Eastern European outcry from some, Secretary Clinton seemed obliged to walk the decision back a bit by suggesting that some of the SM-3 block I interceptors might be deployed in Eastern Europe. As for Russia, there seem to be nearly as many Obama officials conceding that Obama's decision has helped ease our relations with Moscow as there are officials insisting that the decision had nothing to do with this. All of this muddies the waters. In the end, though, Obama's decision on missile defenses, unlike his earlier decision this spring to surge more troops into Afghanistan, has hardly earned him the respect of many hawks either here or in Russia. Ultimately, that, rather than whether the move actually was meant to appease, is likely to be what matters.

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That notion is a myth and always has been. Foreign policy has been an
ingredient of domestic politics (and vice versa) at least since
Hamilton's Federalists v. Jefferson's Republicans. And while the
intemperance and incivility of the current partisan debate is
disturbing, even that pales in comparison with some earlier
historical episodes.

Regarding missile defense specifically, the real problem always has
been the gap, still not closed, between the aspirations of its
advocates (among whom I include myself) and hardware performance
reliability sufficient to justify a major investment.
 

Having a discussion where an administration says an option might simply
be the least worst of all options, or where it says it is trying
something that may not work but that would promise a high payoff, is
increasingly difficult even though we all know these are important
things for any leaders to do. My biggest concern on the ugliness of
national security debates is that it makes it hard for both Democratic
and Republican administrations to pull back from a mistaken policy or
one that has gone awry. Such a move would be painted as a loss and lead
to victory by "the other side." As a result, there is pressure for
continuity once a policy is set -- and then to try to convince all
concerned that success is indeed around the corner.

One of the few silver linings to the economic crisis is that foreign
policy is less in the news. While that may mean a bit less media time
for foreign policy pundits, it does mean that administrations have a bit
more wiggle room as other issues dominate the headlines.

 

The criticism of Obama's foreign and national security policies coming
from some on the Right seems overheated. Yet recall the way that many on
the Left assailed G. W. Bush for his foreign and national security
policies: the criticism was just as fierce and impassioned.

The notion that "politics stops at the water's edge" has been a myth for
decades. But the issue is not simply one of hyper-partisanship. There are
genuine, substantive differences that divide the noisy Right and the
noisy Left. Above all, there is a dispute centered on the question of
military power and its uses. The noisy Right is passionately devoted to
the proposition that the United States must possess supreme military
power and must be willing to use it. They believe war works -- and
nothing that has happened over the past eight years, not to mention the
past couple of milennia, has altered that belief. The noisy Left
rejects that proposition. They believe that war does not work -- except
in rare circumstances -- and see in the past eight years plenty of
evidence to support their view. They would have the United States define
itself and its purposes in ways that push military power toward the margin.

At the present moment, Afghanistan is becoming the focus of heated
debate not because Afghanistan matters -- no serious person can believe
that it does -- but because Obama's decision there will effectively
render a judgment on the larger dispute.


 

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 The intense partisanship that has infected discourse on the issues James Kitfield mentioned is part of a larger partisan polarization that is readily apparent in almost every other major issue of public policy in the United States.  That polarization has been made clear in countless surveys of public opinion and has been commented on by many members of Congress--some of them dismayingly, as they retire from office.  Partisanship on foreign policy and national security issues has intensified significantly over the last three decades or so.  It has been quite a while since politics stopped at the water's edge.  

The negative impact of this polarization on national security policy is substantial.  Partisan identification determines not just preferred ways of dealing with problems but also perceptions of the problems themselves, or even whether there is a problem to begin with.  Americans have come to view the world in tribal terms, according to whether they identify with the Democratic tribe or the Republican tribe.  E.g., polling indicated that the single biggest determinant of whether any one American once thought that Saddam's Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was not anything that the person may have heard or read from the intelligence community or any other government agency, but instead whether the person happened to be a Republican or a Democrat.  

The vulnerability of policymakers to partisan onslaughts stultifies policy and deters policymakers from embarking on what would otherwise be sound courses.  This contributes, for example, to the quandary that President Obama currently faces in deciding on a course on Afghanistan.  Part of that quandary is of his own making--having earlier declared the expedition a war of necessity.  But another major part is the certainty that his political opponents would pounce on anything--such as a single future terrorist attack that had some link to Afghanistan--that would enable them to use the Afghan issue for partisan ammunition.  

The intensified partisanship has several roots, and I see no reason to expect it to lessen.  One significant contributing cause is increasingly sophisticated gerrymandering that has left few competitive seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, with the polarization of the House reflecting the fact that most members answer to largely homogeneous constituencies of either the left or the right.  If the nation wanted to do something that would decrease partisanship, the single most effective step--to the benefit of national security as well as other public policy--would be to remove the drawing of district lines from state legislatures and to give the task to nonpartisan bodies that would end the gerrymandering.      

      

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Yes, the partisan nature of foreign-policy debates will continue, probably with steadily increasing vitriol. And why not? The last three administrations have made a hash of U.S. foreign policy and have left America a laughing stock among both our friends and foes. Clinton nurtured the growth of our Islamist enemies; Bush made sure that the Muslim world as a whole hated us; and now our "young, wartime president" -- as Mr. Kitfield calls him -- is conducting a foreign policy for a world that exists only in his own mind. The scrapping of missile defense in Europe was simply the extortionate price exacted by a savvy Russia for allowing us to inadequately resupply out marooned army in Afghanistan and thereby keep it bleeding there for nothing.

Will the hyper-partisan debate over foreign policy hurt Obama's ability to achieve foreign policy successes. No. Obama was left a near-certain losing hand by his predecessor and he has deliberately made it an absolute failure via his application of an ideology that can only lead to more dead Americans. Obama and Clinton's pardon-peddler Holder at Justice have declared war on the U.S. intelligence community at exactly the moment the U.S. military is losing two wars overseas and Islamist terrorists seem to be popping up from coast-to-coast in the United States. [NB: Re domestic security, it is worth saying that one of the many things the CIA’s interrogation of senior AQ fighters prevented was the seeding of terrorists into Midwestern universities. You will note neither Obama nor Holder mentioned this to Americans; after all, reelection demands pleasing the ACLU not preventing the murder of Americans.] In this light, it is hard to imagine that anyone can really believe that Obama and his crew give a damn about U.S. security?

What are they interested in? Simple, protecting the foreign-policy status quo and thereby improve reelection chances. In foreign policy that means: (1) making tough noises toward Israel and then abjectly letting Netanyahu spit in your face over settlements and doing nothing to lessen his ability to take America into war with Iran; (2) finding the U.S. president bowing to the Saudi tyrant and warming ties to the Libyan dictator to make sure oil flows and politically dangerous moves toward energy self-sufficiency are not necessary; (3) mandating rules of engagement for our soldiers and Marines that get them killed, protects the Islamist enemy, and make sure the effete Europeans keep loving Obama and the brain-dead, pacifist U.S. media never closely question Obama and the terminal adolescents who man his administration; and (4) postponing for a year or more any thought of enforcing the laws already in place to secure U.S. borders, preferring not to risk the Hispanic vote for such an unworthy goal as protecting Americans and their property.

So let the debate continue. We get the leaders we deserve, and apparently we Americans deserve a disaster of enormous proportions.

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In reaction to strong criticism that the Obama administration’s decision on missile defense was leaving the United States vulnerable to “blackmail” and “intimidation,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a lifelong Republican, made an interesting comment:

 

“I have found since taking this post that when it comes to missile defense, some hold a view bordering on theology that regards any change of plans or any cancellation of a program as abandonment or even breaking faith.”

 

That phenomenon is not new to any reporters who have followed this issue over the years. Ever since Ronald Reagan articulated his vision of an impenetrable missile shield a quarter century ago, missile defense has been an unassailable pillar of the Republicans’ national security plank. Concerns about its technical merits, costs or effectiveness notwithstanding, for some the issue of missile defense is a philosophical litmus tests for whether someone is “strong” or “weak” on defense. When a Democratic President proposed altering the missile defense plan of his Republican predecessor, it thus inevitably inflamed passions and rhetoric. Matters of theology are often viewed through a prism of “us” versus “them.”

 

Yet recent charges from the right of “appeasement” and “betrayal” leveled at a young, wartime president raise serious issues. As President Obama made clear at the United Nations this week, in the months to come his administration will pursue an ambitious arms control agenda that also guarantees a high emotional content, including pressing for Senate ratification of an expected follow-on Strategic Nuclear Arms Reductions Treaty with the Russians, and a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that Senate Republicans rejected in 1999. In a time of war, the debate over national security seems poised to turn very ugly.

 

Given the harsh rhetoric of the missile defense debate, my question to National Journal’s expert bloggers is whether the hyper-partisanship that we’ve seen in recent years -- on issues ranging from health care, to interrogation policy, to the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war – has become a permanent backdrop to our national debate on U.S. foreign and national security policy?  If opponents adopt a strategy of belittling Obama at every turn as dangerously weak and feckless on national security issues, does it have any impact on the administration’s ability to turn around the war in Afghanistan, withdraw troops from Iraq, and successfully take the fight to Al Qaeda and other enemies? Is the notion that politics stops at the water’s edge a permanent casualty of Washington’s partisan wars, and if so, does it matter?

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I have very much enjoyed the technical discussion that has occurred so far.  It is a cogent presentation of why various missiles systems work better with others and the like.  Complex stuff which poor little policy guys like myself really have a tough time understanding.

However, if I might interject a small political note here -- we have just totally screwed over both Poland and the Czech Republic by backing out of our deal with them on missile defense.  Governments there went to the wall over this deployment.  And, we have essentially ceded to the will of the Russians over our "New Europe" allies.

American memories are deliciously short when it comes to foreign policy matters.  We win wars and go on.  However, let me assure you that Eastern Europe long remembers that Hungary was hung out to dry by the West in 1956 allowing the Russians to have their way.

I am not sure what the Administration thought it was getting out of this one.  Perhaps there is some secret tradeoff they think they are getting out of Moscow.  However, the Russians (read: Putin) are guided strictly by their self interests.  One of those interests is to control former territories (like Georgia) or former vassals states they held prisoner for fifty years like Poland and the Czech Republic.  Pulling the missile shield -- We simply handed Moscow a gift.

 

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James Kitfield has posed an intricate set of questions. A full issue of the NATIONAL JOURNAL would be needed to do justice to them.  So, I propose simply to lay down a few analytical markers as I see them to help guide the discussion.

The now abandoned Missile Shield does not work. That is one. The test results do not justify its deployment on purely technical grounds. A roughly 40% success ratio in a limited set of carefully controlled tests implies that it would have only a slight chance of intercepting a missile fired at a time of the originator’s choosing. An additional factor that it is more difficult to shoot down a primitive ballistic missile than a sophisticated one (decoys aside). That is because the former is more likely to wobble, thereby throwing off the interceptor’s guidance system. It is true that the United States has deployed a number of missile systems based on imperfect test results. The Poseidon SLBM is one that was installed after a 60% success rate in tests (9 of15). But an offensive missile is an entirely different story from a BMD weapon. In the former case, who can choose how, when and from where you want to launch it – deliberately and without pressure. It is a static exercise, not an ‘inter-active’ one. Moreover, the Poseidon’s precise accuracy was relatively unimportant. With thousands of missiles targeted on the Soviet Union, accuracy and even the ratio of successful launches meant little. Finally, no one in his right mind ever thought of actually using them. Records and memoirs confirm that all those whose finger was anywhere near the trigger thought that way. Brezhnev’s finger actually trembled when it approached the button during a test demonstration.

In political terms, the Europeans have been divided in their calculations about the missile shield from the outset. That is two. Each balances strategic interests somewhat differently. They include solidarity with the United States, maintaining good working relations with Russia, and promoting a common, coordinated European foreign policy. Leadership in Prague, Warsaw and London attaches the highest value (comparatively speaking) to the first of these interests. The Czech and Polish governments devalue the Russian factor, in part due to fears eclipsing positive expectations. Germany, among others, views the missile issue as seriously exacerbating increasingly fraught relations with Putin’s newly assertive Russia. For none of the European governments is the projected Iranian threat as salient as it is in Washington. Few lose sleep over it. In this sense, the missile shield is the occasion and cause of political tensions as an American initiative highly valued in official Washington, but not something of great strategic importance in itself as far as European leaders are concerned.

For Bush and Obama alike, the missile shield has been about confronting Iran credibly without being hamstrung by nervous European allies within reach of its conjectured nuclear weapons. That is three. This is the essence of it. The oft expressed conviction that a nuclear armed Iran is intolerable does suggest that this administration will take whatever action is necessary before Iran acquires a capability to strike what Washington sees as core assets. Only the time frame has changed under Obama. Logically, that should make the European missile shield a moot question. For what is the point of building a defense against missiles that Washington never will allow to be deployed? There are two reasons for pushing ahead. One is to provide existential reassurance against any possible military threat emanating from the Greater Middle East. The other consideration figured in the thinking of the Bush people. It anticipated the state of affairs when another American president may face either a recrudescent Iranian nuclear challenge or a threat posed by someone else. In effect, the Bush people aimed to shift the odds in favor of a tough American response to whatever might emerge at whatever future date. That logic downplayed a competing line of thinking that postulates a Europe, secure behind its missile shield, seeing less need to take other risks in confronting would-be evil doers. That circle can be squared only if one believes that the shield can make Europeans braver even as they remain scared enough to judge it imperative to eliminate the source of the danger. Of course, the Bush people were practiced in exactly this kind of exercise albeit without success. 

Now the Obama people seem to be concentrating more on protecting American forces in the region than protecting the Europeans. They are confident that the latter will go along with whatever Washington decides about Iran - with or without a missile shield. No one is taking to the streets in Western European cities demanding missile protection from the Iranians. As for the East Europeans wanting any sort of physical American presence to deter the Russians from whatever, perhaps the torture camps in Poland, Romania and Lithuania could be reopened.  Given the apparently high value that Washington continues to attach to 'black sites', the Russians would be ultra cautious about doing anything against a country on whose soil they are located.

Last, the whole matter of anti-Iranian BMD should be placed in the context of American alarmism about all manner of threats from the Islamic world. We have become an unnaturally scared country.  We seek zero threat level – as I argued a few weeks back. That is why we are on a fool’s errand in Afghanistan; that is why we chomp at the bit to pacify Northwest Pakistan on our own terms; that is why we blissfully ignore our record of stunning incompetence and corruption on this score in Iraq; that is why we still worry about losing our free hand in Iraq; that is why the FBI this weekend seized 100 wooden tongue depressors as material evidence in its latest pre=fabricated cases against supposed terrorists. And that is why we are frightened out of our minds by Iranian weapons programs on the far horizon. Yes, of course precautionary steps should be considered. But let us do so with a cool head so as to avoid being locked into a mentality liable to generate the very threat that scares us so.

 

cheers

 

 

 

 

 

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I think there are major problems with the criticism directed at the Obama administration’s plan for missile defense. First,

I find that the less observers know about missile defense, the more inclined they are to think that the Bush plan that has been scrapped represented a known capability that we are now “giving up.” In fact, President Obama didn’t “give up” a missile defense system, for the simple reason that there was nothing to give up. The radar in the Czech Republic had serious flaws, and the interceptors hadn’t even been placed in Poland yet. The missile defense system proposed by the Bush administration for Eastern Europe was also deeply unpopular with a majority of the public in both countries. In fact, the previous Czech government fell because it couldn’t get parliament to approve the system. The Obama administration has also taken steps to reassure both countries of our commitment to their security, in the case of Poland by agreeing to proceed with the deployment of Patriot air defense systems.

Secondly, under the Obama plan the United States is going to deploy anti-missile defense assets quicker, with the ability to protect more countries, than the Bush system would have. I’ve always been deeply skeptical about the claimed effectiveness of missile defense systems, but this is the most reasonable plan I’ve seen yet. It takes existing weapons and deploys them against an existing threat. It then lays out a phased plan for upgrading that defensive system to keep pace with an evolving threat. That makes sound military sense, which is why it has the complete support of Secretary of Defense Gates and all the entire Joint Chiefs.

There is also no Iranian long-range missile capability to defend against at this time, period. Conservatives cannot point to any evidence that Iran is even working on a long-range ICBM presently. So there was never a pressing need for the kind of crash deployment of an untested missile defense system that the Bush administration was trying to cobble together in Poland and the Czech Republic. We have time to get this right. So I support the Obama plan, as do a lot of serious independent analysts like former Republican National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft.

Finally, in terms of Russia, I do think some Obama administration officials are a bit disingenuous when they said that relations with Moscow played no role in their deliberations. Clearly U.S.-Russian relations did play a role, but I see no evidence that it was the determining factor. The U.S. made this decision in its own strategic interests, and Russia should react in a way that is consistent with its own interests. But the basic decision and Obama anti-missile defense plan is justified on the basis of the current threat assessments, our military capability, and sound strategy.

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The Heritage Foundation has for a long time strongly supported an Aegis-based anti-missile defense system, and we believe that it can lead to a very capable system that eventually is capable of intercepting even long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). If the Obama administration was willing to support development of such a sea-based system over time, we agree it could prove quite capable. 

On the other hand, I also think the Obama administration’s announced plan will needlessly snubbed friends and allies in Eastern Europe. We will pay a price for that snub that was totally unnecessary. The administration could have pursued both programs, a ground-based system in Poland and the Czech Republic and a sea-based system based on the Aegis. So I am critical of this decision as a whole.  

I also doubt that the Obama administration is remotely serious about developing and sustaining the kind of sea-based anti-missile system that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates outlined in his press conference. During the campaign, for instance, President Obama made an unqualified commitment not to “weaponize space.” The administration has also agreed to enter into talks on the “prevention of an arms race in outer space” with China and Russia. They did that without even bothering to submit a U.S. counter-proposal to long-standing Chinese and Russian proposals, which leads me to believe that they are going to accept the Chinese and Russians positions.

 

The Chinese and Russian proposals will almost certainly prohibit the development of any U.S. military capability that has anti-satellite implications, directly or indirectly. That’s important when you talk about further developing sea-based anti-missile systems, because the Aegis system in 2008 already demonstrated such capabilities when it was used to shoot down an errant U.S. satellite. So I suspect the eagerness that the Russians and Chinese have shown to limit weapons with possible anti-satellite implications is based on their concerns with our sea-based anti-missile capabilities. That’s why I was astounded that the Obama administration agreed to enter into those talks without even developing a counter-proposal that protects our sea-based anti-missile systems.

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