Category Archives: foreign policy

Not Just for Northern Korea

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Arthur Herman, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute wrote of an interesting idea over the weekend in The Wall Street Journal.  The title of his article explains the idea: There’s a Way to Stop a North Korean Missile Attack.

He wrote about a means of implementing a boost-phase missile defense system.  The advantages of intercepting a ballistic missile during its boost phase—the phase immediately after missile launch—are several

  • the missile’s first stage, its booster, is the hottest of them all, and so the easiest to detect
  • the missile is moving at its slowest speed, especially compared to the missile warhead’s reentry speed, which is enormous
  • the booster is very large, especially compared to the warheads and decoys that are the missile’s payload, and so again very easy to detect
  • the boost phase is the least cluttered detection environment—those warheads and decoys, and any associated electronic countermeasures, have not yet been deployed, so there’s less need to sort the defense system’s target out of the clutter
  • the boost phase occurs at the earliest stage of the missile’s flight (of course), and so there’s both far more reaction time and increased opportunity to reservice the missile or to go after deployed warheads in the event of a boost phase miss.
  • debris from a successful intercept would fall closer to the launch facility as opposed to a terminal phase intercept, which debris would fall closer to the missile’s intended target, and with potentially catastrophic result if the terminal intercept occurs late (and at commensurately lower altitude) in the phase

Herman then pointed out that we have the technology.

A BPI [boost phase intercept] would be launched not from a ground- or sea-based system like THAAD or Aegis, but from an unmanned aerial vehicle waiting at 55,000 feet and equipped with infrared sensors that will detect missile launches from 350 miles outside North Korean airspace. Even a submarine-based missile could be detected minutes after launch, something neither THAAD nor Aegis can do currently.

The aerial vehicle would be equipped with a conventional antimissile missile of 225 kilograms, more than enough firepower to bring down even a large intercontinental ballistic missile.

And

There are already American-built unmanned aerial vehicles capable of carrying up to four interceptor missiles of this size, while conventional aircraft have successfully done BPI tests using missiles of this type. Putting those vehicles on a rotating patrol off the North Korean coastline would mean continuous surveillance and detection.

As implied above, Herman suggested deploying such a system to defend against a nuclear attack by northern Korea.  It occurs to me, though, that we should expand the deployment.  We should operate such a BPI system out of Alaska, Greenland, and eastern Europe, to defend against a Russian attack.  We should operate such a system out of Vietnam (a potential ally, and useful at least until we can recover the Philippines as a reliable ally) and enough additional locations in Japan to handle the People’s Republic of China, as well.  We should operate such a system out of southern Europe and Israel for the benefit of Iran.  And we should operate such a system along each of our coasts to handle someone’s submarine launches.

Of What are they Afraid?

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The People’s Republic of China has been vociferously objecting to the US deploying a missile defense system—THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense)—in the Republic of Korea, with the RoK’s blessing and at their behest.  The PRC has begun taking economic retaliatory actions against the RoK and threatening the Koreans and us with further, more serious action if we don’t desist.

So my question.

Ankit Panda, writing for The Diplomat, offered some thoughts last week, one of which centers on the PRC’s concern that the THAAD deployment, relying as it does on a particular radar system—two of which already are deployed in Japan—would let the US degrade a PRC second nuclear strike against the US.  To be clear: a second strike is an ability of one nation to respond to another nation’s (first) nuclear strike with a nuclear strike of its own, the second strike of an exchange.

Since it doesn’t matter that THAAD is incapable of intercepting the PRC’s ICBMs en route to the US, and the US has no offensive interest in the PRC (and not to put too fine a point on it, neither do the RoK or Japan, and neither of them have a nuclear capability even were they offensive minded), I have to wonder why the PRC objects so harshly to a nation having the capability to defend itself against a rogue nation, gang-run, that’s bent on developing nuclear missiles of intermediate and intercontinental range.  Especially when that same rogue nation constantly threatens Armageddon against the RoK.

Especially when that rogue nation is a client of the PRC.

As Panda put it,

To avoid the need for a massive nuclear build-up and to feel comfortable with its several hundred or so nuclear warheads for targeting, China needs to feel comfortable enough its intercontinental ballistic missiles can reliably penetrate US antiballistic missile countermeasures.

Just what are the Warring State PRC’s plans vis-à-vis the US?

What are the Warring State’s plans, via its madchild-run client, vis-à-vis the RoK?

Europe Going Nuclear?

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That’s what The New York Times says the European Union is talking about.

…a European Union nuclear weapons program.

Under such a plan, France’s arsenal would be repurposed to protect the rest of Europe and would be put under a common European command, funding plan, defense doctrine, or some combination of the three. It would be enacted only if the Continent could no longer count on American protection.

Leaving aside the cynically manufactured hysteria underlying this idea, there are a couple of flaws in it.  One is that it assumes that France remains a part of the EU.  A Marine Le Pen victory in this spring’s French presidential election cycle would toss the whole idea into the circular file.  Another is that the French, extremely individualistic when it comes to military action and their military, would agree to such a thing.  Another is that bit about American protection.  The idea that we’d withdraw it is someone’s straw man; we’ve only argued that it’s time for our treaty partners to pay the shares they committed to paying when they signed up to NATO.

And: would Germany trust France—could Germany trust France—to risk French existence defending an attacked Germany, or would Germany begin to acquire its own nuclear arsenal?  After all, this scheme depends on German financing for the French—to show solidarity, of course—and the money might be thought better spent on acquiring a German nuclear arsenal they could more directly and completely control.  On the other hand, could the Germans, with their guilt complex, trust themselves with nuclear weapons?

Of course, there’s an upside, too.  The notoriously unreliable French military participation in NATO would be ameliorated by getting those nuclear weapons more reliably included in the NATO (not EU) arsenal, fulfilling some of the requirement that NATO signatories actually live up to the they obligations incurred with their signatures.

Of Course They Did

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The US, France, and Great Britain presented to the UN Security Council earlier in the week a resolution to apply economic sanctions against all of 11 Syrian military commanders and officials, as well as on 10 government and related entities” for their roles in the Bashar al-Assad government of Syria’s use of chemical weapons against Syrians.  The sanctions also would have barred the sale or supply of helicopters to the regime.

Naturally, Russia and the People’s Republic of China vetoed the sanctions.  Both did it to oppose the US.  Russia did it for the additional reason that it would interfere with getting peace in Syria—by which Russian President Vladimir Putin meant, in issuing his instruction to Russia’s UN Ambassador, peace on Russian terms.

Nikki Haley, the US’ UN Ambassador, had a different, and in my opinion more accurate, more accurate take.

For my friends in Russia, this resolution is very appropriate.

It is a sad day on the Security Council when members start making excuses for other member states killing their own people. The world is definitely a more dangerous place[.]

Who Should Control American Foreign Policy?

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One answer is indicated by the Trump administration’s de-emphasis of the World Trade Organization as the primary arbiter of our international trade policy.  A draft policy document, if the leak of it is a legitimate one, and if it’s being accurately described in the NLMSM might represent a promising start.

The Trump administration is developing a national trade policy that would seek to diminish the influence of the World Trade Organization in the US and champion American law as a way to take on trading partners it blames for unfair practices, according to a draft document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The policy…represents a dramatic departure from the Obama administration, which emphasized international economic rules and the authority of the WTO, a body that regulates trade and resolves disputes among its members.

A welcome departure it is, too.  The WTO, and other international organizations, have important roles in our foreign policy, but those roles have been badly overemphasized over the last too many years.  American foreign policy, American national policy, must be our national policy and no one else’s.

The Trump administration just has to be careful not to go too far in the other direction.