Obama's North Korean And Iranian Missile Defense Trajectories: Course Corrections; Russian Re-Set Dud
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U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel
speaks on the U.S. missile defense system during a press briefing at the
Pentagon March 15, 2013 in Arlington, Virginia. (Image credit: Getty
Images via @daylife)
The good news is that President Obama appears to have finally awakened from his dream of a nuclear missile-free world, one which requires no American preemptive defense. The bad news is that his alarm clock rang a bit late.
That jarring buzz… actually more of a blast… occurred in December when North Korea launched a rocket that went into orbit, demonstrating a rapidly emerging capability to target sites virtually anywhere. Meanwhile, as the Obama administration had scaled back and cancelled defense programs which were under development, North Korea, Iran and Russia upgraded and expanded their proactive missile and atomic warfare resources.
The Pentagon believes that North Korean missiles can already reach Alaska and Hawaii, and will soon be able to deliver nuclear warheads to Seattle and San Diego. It is unsettling to note that the Pyongyang regime, with its finger on the launch switch, has recently promised to attack the U.S. and turn South Korea into a “sea of fire”.
Is this all just bantamweight bluster? Ellen Kim, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said: “After North Korea’s successful December [orbital] launch and third nuclear test, their threats are not completely empty.”
With its people starving, weapons their key income-producing export, and close relationships with Iran, those threats take on a global scale. Included are North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons which pose an ever-growing danger, particularly to South Korea.
Following a long-range missile test, a nuclear test, and the demonstration of a mobile launcher, the Pentagon now recognizes that North Korea’s technical programs are advancing faster and earlier than predicted. According to South Korea’s Yonhan news agency, earlier this month North Korea fired two short-range missiles, tests which appeared to be in response to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises under way in the region. As Adm. James Winnefeld, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters in the Pentagon on March 15, North Korea’s KN-08ICBM has emerged as a threat “a little bit faster than we expected”.
Reversing an earlier Obama administration decision, the Pentagon has now budgeted $1 billion to expand our West Coast-based missile defense system. Newly-appointed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has announced plans to deploy 14 more ground-based long-range missile interceptors in Fort Greely, Alaska by 2017. This will supplement the 30 already existing on the West Coast. The reasoning he offered was: “The United States has missile defense systems in place to protect us from limited ICBM attacks…but North Korea in particular has recently made advances in its capabilities and is engaged in a series of irresponsible and reckless provocations.”
The U.S. could have already had those 14 more interceptors in place, along with another 10 in Europe next year. The Bush administration deployed the first ground-based interceptor (GBI) in 2004, and had planned to deploy a total of 54. In 2009, Obama pulled the plug on that plan, and cut GBI deployment to just 30.
President Obama also mothballed or killed several other missile defense development programs. This included a scale-back of the Airborne Laser program to enable enemy missile interceptions during their early launch phase, along with the elimination of the Multiple Kill Vehicle and Kinetic Energy Interceptor which uses small warheads on a single rocket to handle decoys and offer a better chance of success. Obama’s 2010 defense budget cut $1.4 billion from the Missile Defense Agency.
A comparison of 2010 and 2013 budgets submitted by the Energy Department and National Security Agency indicates that 5-year budgets for nuclear and missile program modernization has been cut by $4.4 billion, the same amount the president had agreed to add to secure Senate support for his New Start treaty with Russia. This is ocourring as Russia prepares to field a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles, including one type that can carry up to 15 warheads.
President Obama had also promised to build a modern Chemical and Metallurgy Research Replacement facility for handling plutonium which was included in the Treaty Resolution of Ratification and presented in his message to the Senate upon entry of the treaty into force. Yet that facility, which is essential for modernization to extend the life of aging ballistic nuclear warheads, has now been delayed for at least five years, and some believe, permanently.
In addition, planned replacement of the Ohio-class nuclear-ballistic-missile submarine has also been delayed, and no decision has yet been made on whether the U.S. next-generation strategic bomber force will even be capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
After Kim Jong-un announced that Pyongyang was scrapping the 1953 armistice deal that ended the Korean War and threatened to launch a “preemptive” nuclear strike against the U.S., White House spokesman Jay Carney said: “I can tell you that the United States is fully capable of defending against any North Korean ballistic missile attack.” Carney added: “our recent success in returning to testing of the upgraded version of the GBI, or CE2 missile, will keep us on a good trajectory to improve our defense capability against limited ballistic missile threats such as those from North Korea. But let’s be clear, we are fully capable of dealing with that threat.”
It’s important to note that the operative word here is “returning”. President Obama campaigned on gutting America’s missile defense, and he has kept his promise. He has now also delayed funding for ground-based interceptor and radar sites in Poland and the Czech Republic for defense against Iranian missile launchers. He did this after Moscow objected, threatening to target the sites and withdraw from the New Start treaty.
Caught on open microphone at a photo-op with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev after a meeting in Seoul at the 2012 Nuclear Summit, Obama said: “On all these issues, particularly missile defense, this can be resolved but it’s important for him [past and future Russian President Vladimir Putin] to give me space. This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” Medvedev said that he would communicate the message to Putin.
The Pentagon claims that the change to delay the Eastern Europe missile shield had nothing to do with trying to assuage Russia, and everything to do with the North Korean threat. Yet the shield is also regarded as a sign of NATO’s commitment to protect Europe and former Soviet satellite states against a belligerent Russia. Russia maintains the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and continues to modernize and upgrade its capabilities.
The Pentagon has also said that the fourth phase of Eastern Europe missile shield deployment, if re-started, would not take place earlier than 2022. That proposed phase includes development of the SM-3IIB interceptor, an advanced version of the missile currently provided aboard our Aegis missile defense warships.
The Eastern Europe shield plan also called for the interceptors in Poland and Romania to be complemented by deployed naval ships in the Mediterranean. The system places interceptors close to the treaty organization’s southern flank to deflect Iran’s Shahab missiles, Tehran’s version of North Korean Nodong missiles. The two countries worked together to produce the Shab-3, which can deliver a one-ton payload over a distance of 1,000 miles, and they are now developing missiles that can target Europe, the U.S. and Israel.
Secretary Hagel said the first three phases would be fully implemented, but the fourth (deployment of a large interceptor warhead) would not go forward. He explained that there are technical difficulties with deploying the Poland/Romania system by early next decade, and cited the $1 billion cost of added U.S. homeland missile defense capabilities as playing a key role in his decision.
The Obama administration recently offered another olive branch to Russia, indicating that it would deactivate one-third of the U.S. nuclear arsenal unilaterally, without congressional approval. Yet influential lawmaker, Alevei Pushkov, a Putin ally who heads the foreign affairs committee of the Russian State Duma, said that Moscow still opposes the missile defense system in Europe: “It would be premature to say that something has fundamentally changed. The United States is readjusting the missile defense system due to financial and technology issues…issues not related to the Russian position.”
Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) doesn’t believe that financial realities support this policy. He said: “President Obama’s reverse course decision will cost the American taxpayer more money and upset our allies.”
Now, as North Korea continues to expand its 1,000-plus missile arsenal and nuclear capability, Iran is racing ever-closer to having its own nuclear weapons. A September report from the National Research Council noted U.S. anti-missile shortcomings to guard against an Iranian strike, recommending that an East Coast intercept site also be added.
When Marine General James Mattis, who heads the U.S. Central Command, recently testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee was asked by Senator Inhofe (R-Ok.), “Are the current diplomatic and economic efforts to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapons capability, are they working?”, the answer was blunt. “No Sir”. Mattis later testified that Tehran’s “nuclear industry continues.”
Iran has announced that it will build and install 3,000 advanced-generation centrifuges at its principal uranium enrichment site in Natanz, The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that they have already begun installing the first of 180 of those machines, which are smaller, faster, more reliable, and as much as 500% more productive than their earlier centrifuges. Iran has also recently announced discovering new uranium deposits that triple their domestic supplies. Iran continues to refuse IAEA inspectors access to a military research facility in Parchin, where it is suspected that nuclear weapons experiments are being conducted.
With regard to arresting the impending Iranian nuclear threat, the White House appears to talk loudly and carry a small stick. Speaking at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Vice President Joe Biden explained that America’s policy “is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, period.” He emphasized that “big nations can’t bluff, and presidents of the United States cannot bluff. And President Obama is not bluffing. He is not bluffing.”
Biden also said: “The purpose of this pressure is not to punish” Iran. Yet no one seems to have passed this information along to Jay Carney, who has repeatedly boasted about “the most punitive and comprehensive sanctions regime against Iran in history.”
Yet the Obama administration has abandoned previous demands that Tehran shut down its second enrichment site at Fordo and relinquish its entire stockpile of uranium enriched to 20% (near-bomb grade)…of which they have accumulated an estimated 167 kilos. The U.S. has also offered to soften some sanctions. In addition, the administration is cutting American naval presence in the Gulf region from two aircraft carriers to one, representing budgetary sequester pressures as the reason.
Still, at least we can at least begin to witness some evidence that the chief White House resident is finally awakening from his previous misguided missile ideology…what the Wall Street Journal described as “President Obama’s fantasy of a world without nuclear weapons.” One month before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, candidate Obama had said: “I will cut investments in unproven missile systems. I will not weaponize space.” Seven years earlier, before winning the White House, Mr. Obama told a Chicago TV station: “I don’t agree with a missile defense system.”
Good morning Mr. President. Smell that coffee.
