Category Archives: defense policy

Disarming While Our Enemies Grow Stronger and Get More Aggressive

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The Pentagon said Tuesday it would sharply cut the number of US submarine and bomber-launched nuclear weapons, and preserve most of the nation’s land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles to comply with the New START treaty with Russia.

Never mind that the subs and bombers lend an enormous flexibility of response that’s utterly lacking in the missile force.  Never mind, also, that the submarine force is the most survivable (so far) of our nuclear forces.

Never mind that we shouldn’t be disarming unilaterally at all, much less while our enemies are building up their military forces and actively employing them against our friends and allies.  Never mind, also, that Russia is actively supporting Bashar al Assad’s butchery of his own people in Syria and has returned to obstructing efforts to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

Defense officials said the decision on the US nuclear forces needed to be made well in advance of the 2018 deadline set by the New START treaty.

Only a bureaucracy thinks it needs four years advance notice to start making such drawdowns.  Only this administration thinks we need to honor a treaty that our treaty “partner” has abrogated already, in fact, if not within the letter of the treaty, by attacking our friends and by threatening our allies and other of our friends.

Of course, the People’s Republic of China is watching this timidity closely, as it pushes its territorial designs on Japanese, Philippine, Viet Namese, and Republic of China/Japan (disputed) islands and sea holdings in the East and South China Seas.  The PRC also is watching closely, as it continues its support for northern Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear weapons programs.

What is this administration thinking?  Oh, wait….

Russia vs NATO

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What’s Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next move, after he’s finished absorbing Ukraine?  I offered some general thoughts here.  Next up, or soon after next, are the Baltics, all of which are NATO members.

General Jack Keane (USA, Ret) had this to say about NATO’s capabilities vis-à-vis Russia:

NATO shouldn’t be taken lightly.  There are 4 million people under arms.  That’s not counting the United States.  With the United States, it’s over 5 million.  And the fact of the matter is the Russians have 1 million under arms.  So at some point, capabilities, quantities, matter.

Indeed, they do.  But what are those capabilities, quantities, really?

  • The UK doesn’t operate any actual aircraft carriers (the closest thing they have now is an assault ship).  An aircraft carrier, or a fleet of them, would only be of sometime use in the duck pond that is the Baltic Sea, anyway.
  • The Netherlands (with its unionized, weekday army) has disbanded its heavy armored division.
  • France and the UK have all of 200 main battle tanks.  Each.
  • Germany is cutting its troops to 180,000.
  • France has cut to 213,000 troops.
  • The UK has cut to 174,000 troops.
  • The US is cutting to 445,000 troops.
  • Poland—the only serious member on the continent (perhaps after the target Baltics)—has 100,000 active duty troops and less than 130 fighter aircraft.  They do have 1,000 aging main battle tanks.

Defense spending is falling off as a per centage of national GDP, too, with most member nations utterly failing to spend as much as 2% of their GDP on defense—nominally a requirement for NATO membership.

The effective force ratio NATO would be able to bring to bear against the Red Army, then, is of a piece with the force ratio a motley gang of Persians had against a relative handful of Greeks some 2,500 years ago, and they still had very much trouble breaking through.  NATO’s effective force ratio is of a piece with that enjoyed by a heavily armored French force that failed to break a relative handful of English archers some 600 years ago.

It’s not confidence inspiring.  Not for our side, anyway.

A Dangerous Precedent

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In a speech before the assembled state legislature of Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered a number of justifications for his invasion and partition of Ukraine.  One of the more chilling “justifications” was this:

Crimea is our common property and a very important factor in the stability of the region.  This strategic territory should be under a strong, sovereign state and that in fact can only be Russia.

And, of course, Russia is the only “strong, sovereign state,” and so Russia can, under this logic, occupy the rest of Ukraine, and it can use this rationale for seizing the Baltic States to the west (a useful set of outlets into the Baltic Sea and thence the world’s oceans), the ‘Stans to the south (a useful buffer against the People’s Republic of China), expand its holdings in Syria (a useful outlet directly to the Mediterranean Sea), and any number of other states who aren’t a strong militarily as Russia, and so can’t be held to be sovereign and whose acquisition might be discovered to suit Russian…interests.

Energy Security

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There’s energy security and there’s energy.

The US could suffer a coast-to-coast blackout if saboteurs knocked out just nine of the country’s 55,000 electric-transmission substations on a scorching summer day[.]

This FERC study also pointed out that it’s not a fixed nine substations; there are various combinations of the nine that can achieve this.  Furthermore, if a transformer manufacturing plant is added to the mix of targets, a memo written by FERC staff for then-FERC Director Jon Wellinghoff warned

Destroy nine interconnection substations and a transformer manufacturer and the entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably longer[.]

This vulnerability has been known to FERC and others in the Federal government for quite some time, but FERC’s response has been limited to two actions: one has been to order the various utilities to “Handle it, handle it.”

The other has been to cover its own behind by calling out the press that exposed FERC’s failure:

Today’s publication by The Wall Street Journal of sensitive information about the grid undermines the careful work done by professionals who dedicate their careers to providing the American people with a reliable and secure grid.  …  Nonetheless, the publication of other sensitive information is highly irresponsible.  While there may be value in a general discussion of the steps we take to keep the grid safe, the publication of sensitive material about the grid crosses the line from transparency to irresponsibility, and gives those who would do us harm a roadmap to achieve malicious designs.  The American people deserve better.

You read that right.  FERC is busily denigrating those who’ve publicized this vulnerability failure.  What they should be doing is correcting this…weakness.  And explaining how they allowed this weakness to exist 13 years after terrorists attacked so devastatingly.  Or resigning their positions in the disgrace they’ve earned.

The American people do, indeed, deserve better.