Operation Lionheart: Joint US-Pakistan Army Offensive?

Published by admin | Filed under International Relations

US forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan Army forces in the border region have launched a joint offensive against militant Islamic forces, known as Operation Lionheart. The existence of this operation was broken by the Wall Street Journal.

…U.S. forces have begun working with Pakistan’s military to take on Taliban and al Qaeda fighters along the Afghan border, a development American officials say reflects Islamabad’s new willingness to go after Islamist militants.

The U.S. and Pakistan are waging a coordinated military campaign known as Operation Lionheart, which involves American strikes on insurgent targets in the Kunar region of Afghanistan and a full-scale Pakistani campaign in the tribal areas of Bajaur, a longtime extremist stronghold, according to senior American officials…

According to the Washington Post the underlying planning foundation for Operation Lionheart was set in September, which puts that Naval vessel meeting between The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pakistan Chief of Army Staff (along with his Operational Commander, now serving as chief of the ISI) in perspective.

The Post seems to be trying to hint at a connection with that Heli-borne raid across the border,

…The arrangement coincided with a suspension of ground assaults into Pakistan by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview last week that he was aware of no ground attacks since one on Sept. 3 that his government vigorously protested…

The Post article tells us something very interesting about the nature of US ground operations in Afghanistan, which could well provide a hint for the type of capabilities that the US Army brought to bear in Iraq during the surge (remember Bob Woodward spoke of some “Manhattan” type techno-wizardry thing)

…Current and former U.S. counterterrorism officials said improved intelligence has been an important factor in the increased tempo and precision of the Predator strikes. Over the past year, they said, the United States has been able to improve its network of informants in the border region while also fielding new hardware that allows close tracking of the movements of suspected militants.

The missiles are fired from unmanned aircraft by the CIA. But the drones are only part of a diverse network of machines and software used by the agency to spot terrorism suspects and follow their movements, the officials said. The equipment, much of which remains highly classified, includes an array of powerful sensors mounted on satellites, airplanes, blimps and drones of every size and shape…

This sounds like a JSTARS for tracking insurgents.

The Post article speaks of supporting Pakistan, but what the article fails to mention was that Pakistan was forced to go to the IMF as a result of the financial crisis; Islamabad would have preferred a bi-lateral arrangement to avoid IMF conditionalities. No dice.

They had to swallow an IMF package.

…Pakistan has sought an emergency bailout from the International Monetary Fund, a humiliating step forced on Islamabad after allies refused to come up with the cash needed to prevent the country going bust.

The U.S., China and Saudi Arabia have all rebuffed Pakistan’s urgent money-raising requests, despite Islamabad telling its allies that it should be rewarded for its key role in the “war on terror.”
Relations with Washington may have been damaged as a result, analysts said. A separate political development in Pakistan on Wednesday may test the U.S. alliance further…

…The IMF funding would stave off bankruptcy for Pakistan, which would’ve nudged it closer to instability as the nuclear-armed country fights an Islamist insurrection at home and reinforces the U.S.-led coalition in neighboring Afghanistan. However, Pakistan’s leaders had been desperately trying to find other sources of funding. Finance minister, Shaukat Tareen, recently described going to the IMF as his “Plan C.”

In Pakistan, the IMF programs of the past had been deeply unpopular, requiring the country to agree to strict austerity measures. The previous regime, led by former President Pervez Musharraf, had trumpeted its break from this source of finance.

“Musharraf, everyone, celebrated that Pakistan had graduated out of IMF programs. He said he had ‘broken the begging bowl,’” said Faisal Bari, a professor of economics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. “Going back to the IMF means that the country is carrying the begging bowl again, that it is not on a path of sustainable growth.”

The IMF on Wednesday confirmed that Pakistan asked for funds, “to meet the balance of payments difficulties the country is experiencing.” A deal is expected to provide $5 billion or more for the coming year, with billions more for subsequent years.

Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves will run out in about seven weeks, meaning that it won’t be able to meet external debt payments and will be bankrupt. The restoration of democracy with elections last February coincided with an economic collapse that’s sent inflation soaring and led to a nosedive in the value of the rupee…

The interesting thing about that is that

…Against expectations, a special debate in parliament on counter-terrorism policy, which had lasted nearly two weeks, resulted in an agreement between all the parties that demanded “an urgent review of our national security strategy.” It said that negotiation, not military action, would be the policy used to tackle extremism…

Jason Burke has a very good report on the Pakistan Army offensive, he points out

…The battle of Bajaur has huge local and international implications…

…Not only will its result determine who controls the supply route that crosses the Khyber Pass just to its south - where militants hijacked a 60-vehicle Nato convoy last week - but it will also show if the semi-autonomous ‘tribal agencies’ that line the mountainous zones on the Pakistan side of the frontier can be stabilized…

The battle in Bajaur is

…the biggest single clash of conventional forces and Islamic militants anywhere…

It seems, from these sketchy reports, that the objective of Operation Lionheart is twofold.
Firstly, to control the Khyber Pass to cut off a logistical route for Taliban re-supply and a coordinated thrust alongside both sides of the border to encircle militants.

There are a number of points that could be raised here. Firstly, why has this joint offensive been so publicised by Washington? One would have felt that it would have been better to keep it under wraps. A joint US-Pakistan offensive against militants publicized like this could easily lead to political problems for the government in Pakistan, especially when Washington has hardly been so forthcoming on a bailout of the Pakistani economy.

This offensive has lead to severe human costs as pointed out in a Pakistani paper

… According to official figures, around 250,000 people were displaced. But agencies involved in relief operations say the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) is more than 400,000.

Unofficial figures reveal that around 50,000 people have taken refuge in slum houses, tents and in houses of their relatives or friends in different areas of Peshawar…

That may have consequences for future militancy.

That also demonstrates that re-building Bajaur and the NWFP following this offensive will not be easy, especially when Pakistan may be forced to swallow an IMF package.

An interesting report in The Asia Times suggests that this offensive may in fact be sowing the seeds for Taliban offensives in the next campaign season in Afghanistan.

…With the winter snows fast approaching, Pakistan’s security forces face a race against time over whether or not to pull out of the Swat Valley in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), where for the past one-and-a-half years they have been fighting a losing battle against militants.

The militants occupy about 80% of the strategically vital area near the border with Afghanistan and have managed to choke most supply lines. General Headquarters in Rawalpindi realizes that should the more than 10,000 troops there not be pulled out, they will face a dire war of attrition, but if they leave, the militants will gain strength…

…The dilemma for the army is that if it does retreat under the guise of a peace treaty, it will allow the Taliban to strengthen its bases even further in preparation for the next offensive in Afghanistan in the spring. The anticipation is that the Taliban will receive an unprecedented boost in recruits…

…This opening of a new front against powerful commander Abdul Wali had a cascading effect. Much of the population moved to the capital of NWFP, Peshawar, and other places, allowing the Taliban to open up fronts in the towns of Sabqadar and Michini, situated on the northern edges of Peshawar.

In the past few days the Taliban have infiltrated into Peshawar, where they have killed a worker of USAID, the American government’s development arm, and abducted an Iranian diplomat.

In Khyber Agency, unmanned US Predator drones have targeted the Tera Valley, but have failed to hit any targets of significance. However, in the process, pro-government, anti-al-Qaeda militants belonging to the Vice and Virtue organization of slain Haji Namdar have agreed to join hands with the local Taliban to fight against foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The drone attacks were carried out last week, and since then North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supply convoys have been looted frequently. Pakistani newspapers have published pictures of militants moving around in NATO armored personnel carriers.

This new alliance will strengthen militant attacks in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, which has been quiet for the past several months. On Thursday, the Taliban attacked a NATO convoy in Nangarhar near the city of Jalalabad. NATO said that several Afghan soldiers were killed while the Taliban claimed the killing of five NATO soldiers.

It’s going to be a very long winter for the Pakistani army, whether it stays in the tribal areas or whether it retreats, while next spring could be the hottest ever in Afghanistan…

If Obama surges in Afghanistan and this analysis proves correct, we can expect some of the most serious engagements in the Afghan, and perhaps also Pakistani, theatre of operations next campaign season.

Pakistan is on the edge and the leaking of a joint US-Pakistan campaign, on top of its human effects in the tribal areas, and an IMF austerity programme won’t exactly help matters.

One thing that works against the militants, especially al-Qaida, is that their brand of austere Islam is despised by just about everybody; whenever they implement it there is a severe backlash.

The interesting thing is that the wider campaign they launched on September 11, indeed before then, is one they can never, ever, win. They can only rule by way of tyranny, and get into power by feeding off misery. By their actions they try and create as much misery as possible, for that is there only hope.

Why should we help them any?

Raytheon Awarded Contract For The Multiple Kill Vehicle; Is It BMD’s MIRV?

Published by admin | Filed under BMD

Raytheon has won the contract (Lockheed Martin had it before, but not anymore) to develop the Multiple Kill Vehicle for all class of BMD boosters, the MKV-R. The idea behind the Multiple Kill Vehicle, so we are told, is to develop a BMD version of MIRV. You can see that in one of those little BMD promotional videos that BMD contractors like to make. The video is available here from You Tube.

The video states that it is a “notional” operational demonstration, without further detail.

The report that accompanied the awarding of the contract states

…MKV-R consists of several identical kill vehicles with the same capabilities and flexibility. One kill vehicle serves as the engagement manager by communicating battlespace information to the BMDS, simultaneously assigning targets and providing kill assessment.
All kill vehicles have the same capability to autonomously track and intercept threats with hit-to-kill accuracy, providing redundancy and eliminating the risk of single point failure…

Global Security org has a primer on the Multiple Kill Vehicle

…The Multiple Kill Vehicle program aims to develop small, lightweight, and lethal kill vehicles dispensed from a single booster. The integrated payload would be designed to fit on existing and future interceptor boosters. One or more Multiple Kill Vehicles can be assigned to intercept all credible targets within a threat cluster when discrimination is challenging. Multiple Kill Vehicle has the potential to solve many of the most difficult countermeasure challenges.

In the event of an enemy missile launch, an interceptor equipped with this payload will track down the target using data uplinked to the seeker aboard the carrier vehicle. Once outside the earth’s atmosphere, the seeker will acquire and track all threat objects, including the missile and any countermeasures deployed to disrupt U.S. defenses. The carrier vehicle will then dispense a large number of small “kill vehicles”, guiding them to destroy the targets designated by the seeker. During an engagement with the enemy, the divert and attitude control component will maneuver the carrier vehicle, with its bandolier of 8-20 small kill vehicles, onto the path of the in-bound threat complex. With the enemy now in its sights, the carrier vehicle dispenses the kill vehicles guiding them to destroy their designated targets…

The “all credible targets within a threat cluster when discrimination” is challenging tells us that we are not really talking one-on-one targeting, as the promo video suggests. Rather this is a measure designed to meet the threat to BMD effectiveness from countermeasures, such as decoys.

That would indicate that the concerns raised by the Union of Concerned Scientists and others, such as Ted Postol, that countermeasures would blunt exo-atmospheric BMD is acknowledged to be a real problem, even by the MDA.

You can see what I mean from this part of the primer

…Designed to be a force multiplier for all of the land and sea-based weapons of the integrated mid-course missile defense system, the Multiple Kill Vehicle is a transformational program adding volume kill capability for the war fighter. In the event of an enemy launch, a single interceptor equipped with this payload, will not only destroy the reentry vehicle, but all credible threat objects including countermeasures the enemy deploys to try and spoof our defenses. This many-on-many strategy eliminates the need for extensive pre-launch intelligence while leveraging the Ballistic Missile Defense System’s discrimination capability, ensuring a robust and affordable solution to emerging threats…

In the Missile Defense Agency primer (the Global Security org primer appears to be a collection of MDA and contractor material) leaves little room for such nuance

…the system consists of a carrier vehicle with on board sensors and a number of small, simple kill vehicles that can be independently targeted against objects in a threat cluster. The integrated payload is designed to fit on existing and planned interceptor boosters…

The problem with the MKV-R as the BMD MIRV story should be pretty obvious. Let us assume that the perception that the MKV-R is not only meant to engage all countermeasures within a threat cluster, but all RVs within a threat cluster as well.

One could argue that a capability to track and engage an RV and all countermeasures also means that one could also track and engage multiple RVs from a single booster (in conjunction with the wider BMDS).

However, that would be a major extrapolation for the greater the number of RVs within a threat cluster we would expect a greater level of countermeasures to accompany the attack. This would not equate to one-on-one targeting.

Iranian and North Korean missiles would come accompanied by their single RV and their decoy package. The collection of RVs and all the decoys would be the threat cluster.

However, say you are a hawk at the Strategic Rocket Forces in Moscow or the missile construction complex with access to the Kremlin. The MKV-R is not limited to any booster, say just to the SM-3.
It would apply across the board, including the GMD interceptors envisaged to be deployed in Poland as a part of the projected East Europe BMD plan.

What would our hawk say?

He would say, look, the Americans are saying that they will only deploy 10 interceptors in Poland. But, the MKV-R means that we should not be talking about 10 interceptors but 80-200 kill vehicles for the entire complex and the Americans say this means that they can hit multiple targets from a single threat cluster per booster; how many RVs would we have after absorbing a first strike?
You can see that all this talk about multiple one-on-one targeting for the MKV-R would make Hawks in Moscow very happy. What has been hitherto presented as a 10 interceptor threat they can easily significantly magnify.

Beijing could do so the same for both Japan’s high altitude BMD programme and the GMD architecture meant to meet the North Korean “threat.”

What we would see here would be an interesting interaction between the military-industrial complexes, i.e., a series of mutual interactions consisting of overselling capabilities and overselling threats that mutually re-inforces each other.

It’s a tacit alliance.

Uranium At Al-Kibar?

Published by admin | Filed under Proliferation

My most recent post on Iran and Syria was written before the al-Kibar uranium story broke, so that stuff I wrote in regards to “evidence warranting a trial” spoke of graphite. However, what is at issue appears to be uranium, according to the diplomatic delegation that has decided to leak this information.

Firstly, we should note that the IAEA is going to report on this within days and because the IAEA leaks like a sieve we shall learn more pretty soon. Too much speculation now would be a bad idea, but we might at least say a few things.

Reuters carried the best report on the topic,

…U.N. investigators have found traces of uranium at a Syrian site Washington says was a secret nuclear reactor almost built before Israel bombed the target last year, diplomats said on Monday.

They said the minute uranium particles turned up in some environmental swipe samples U.N. inspectors took at the site in a visit last June. They said the finding was not enough to draw conclusions but raised concerns requiring further clarification.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and Syria had no immediate comment. However, word of the finding leaked hours after IAEA officials confirmed Director Mohamed ElBaradei was preparing a formal written report on Syria for the first time.…

The interesting thing now is that Syria is not denying that uranium was found at al-Kibar, if we take the following from The New York Times seriously

…Syria has said the site was a disused military building and that U.S. intelligence driving the IAEA investigation is fabricated. It suggested that the uranium particles came with munitions Israel dropped on the site…

That would be a reference to depleted uranium. The problem with that defence is that it does not really tally with the “warrants further investigation” part of this whole story. Depleted uranium is not natural uranium; why in the hell would anybody run uranium through centrifuges to extract uranium depleted in U-235 just for a small reactor, when natural uranium would do for plutonium production?

If it’s depleted uranium then no further investigation is really warranted but, it seems, this is not what the IAEA is saying.

According to Reuters,

…Diplomats accredited to the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog said a wider range of samples had now been analyzed and some showed contamination with minute amounts of a uranium compound.

“It isn’t enough to conclude or prove what the Syrians were doing but the IAEA has concluded this requires further investigation,” said one diplomat accredited to the IAEA.

“It was a man-made component, not natural (ore). There is no sign there was already nuclear fuel or (production) activity there,” another diplomat told Reuters.

This diplomat noted that such traces could have been carried to the site inadvertently on the clothes of scientists or workers or on equipment brought in from elsewhere…

This tallies with the initial reports, and the statement at the intelligence briefing to Congress, that no nuclear material had been introduced to the site. However, what is meant by “introduced?” That could mean actual fuel rods put into a reactor core, which doesn’t necessarily rule out the presence of nuclear material at the site itself. Again, just speculating when we really shouldn’t be.

Now, the New York Times reports reads a little bit different here

…Some diplomats and analysts said the traces were more likely to have come from uranium that was at some stage of processing for fuel, but the origin remained unclear…

This would not be enriched uranium. Gas-cooled Graphite-moderated reactors used natural uranium as fuel; recall that at the heart of the al-Kibar story is that it was supposedly a plutonium production reactor for nuclear weapons. That means natural uranium fuel for Pu-239 production.

This reactor type is like the early Windscale reactors which, probably, used uranium metal clad in aluminium (Hanford did in the US for producing Pu for Fat Man and latter Calder Hall reactors were clad in Magnox hence why they are called “Magnox” reactors)

…Unlike the early US nuclear reactors at Hanford, which consisted of a graphite core cooled by water, the Windscale Piles consisted of a graphite core cooled by air. Each pile contained almost 2000 tonnes (1,968 L/T) of graphite, and measured over 7.3 metres (24 ft) high by 15.2 metres (50 ft) in diameter. Fuel for the reactor consisted of rods of uranium metal, approximately 30 centimetres (12 in) long by 2.5 centimetres (1 in) in diameter, and clad in aluminium…

The compound could be a reference to uranium metal dispersed with its cladding material following the Israeli air strike. The first article did state that it was not “natural ore” which does not mean necessarily that it wasn’t natural uranium metal.

This is all just speculation.

Let’s just wait for the report. This whole al-Kibar is wrapped up in secrecy, little leaks and a lot of intrigue so that a true picture is difficult to discern; it is driving me completely nuts.

Doctorate Awarded

Published by admin | Filed under Admin

It is all now officially done and dusted on the PhD front. The Doctorate has been granted, which affords me the opportunity to use the blog to engage in some shameless self-promotion.

If you have a job going either teaching, researching or analysing global security, send us an email :)

Obama on Iran and BMD Plus Some Deterrence and Arms Control.

Published by admin | Filed under International Relations, Nuclear Strategy

Following the election of Barack Obama much speculation has been directed toward what changes an Obama administration will make to US internal and external policy.

I would like to state a few things about the latest Russia and Iran issues and close with some nuclear deterrence stuff.

It would be a bit too early to make definitive statements now, but nonetheless a few comments are in order.

I reckon that “change we can believe in”, whoops that’s now, “change we need”, is mostly campaign spin. I am prepared to wager anybody that the Obama administration will be basically like the Clinton Administration. That would be ironic because “change you can believe in” is a slogan from the primaries that Obama tried to use to tag Hillary as being the “back to the future” candidate. The slogan clearly implies that.

It is said that for ‘W Bush the slogan at the start of his first term was “ABC”…Anything But Clinton. Now it could be “CWH”…Clinton Without Hillary.

Indeed, even Robert Reich is the token liberal in the team of economic advisers that Obama presented at his post election press conference, the rest being senior figures in corporate America. That’s not a dig at Reich. He just had a very interesting article pointing out that the American worker is one of the developed world’s most productive, works many hours per week, yet is accruing a decreasing share of national income.

This all occurred during a period when the wages-profit share shifted further toward profits. All this applied during the Clinton era as well.

No representative from the United Auto Workers labour union is in Obama’s economic team; no representative from the Teamsters was there. No senior official from the AFL-CIO was there.

No community organisers were there also.

See what I mean?

However, let me get back on topic. The Washington Post makes a good point

… During the campaign, Obama issued a series of foreign policy pronouncements that often appeared designed not to box himself in. One prominent exception was a pledge to remove most U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of his inauguration. But in many cases, Obama appears to have left himself wiggle room on many issues that will confront him. During the campaign, in fact, internal briefing materials purposely focused on defining the challenges facing the next president, but did not detail possible policy options, advisers said.…

In other words, Obama has been projected as a blank slate.

The points on Iran and Russia are directly related.

President Medvedev in his Russian version of the State of the Union speech made two interesting statements on European security, one widely reported, the other completely ignored.

The first, of course, was on East European BMD

…Therefore I will now announce some of the measures that will be taken. In particular measures to effectively counter the persistent and consistent attempts of the current American administration to install new elements of a global missile defence system in Europe. For example, we had planned to decommission three missile regiments of a missile division deployed in Kozelsk from combat readiness and to disband the division by 2010. I have decided to abstain from these plans. Nothing will disband. Moreover, we will deploy the Iskander missile system in the Kaliningrad Region to be able, if necessary, to neutralise the missile defence system. Naturally, we envisage using the resources of the Russian Navy for these purposes as well. And finally, electronic jamming of the new installations of the U.S. missile defence system will be carried out from the territory of the same westernmost region, that is from Kaliningrad.…

The Strategic Rocket Forces missiles that Medvedev is speaking of consist of of SS-19 ICBM regiments. The Iskander short-range missile has got a lot of press. It is not stated here what payload the Iskander would have if deployed.

As I have stated in my previous blog the GMD interceptors would be housed in hardened silos. The Russians claim that Iskander is very accurate, but speculation, as I have done at the old blog, is focusing on whether the Iskander would be armed with a nuclear warhead given the silos.

The bit about the Navy is intriguing. I do not know what to make of that. In fact, very recently the Russian Navy conducted an interesting SLBM test

…What’s interesting, the missiles will be launched to the Kura test range in Kamchatka and not to the usual Chizha test site at the Kanin Peninsula. This means that the missiles would be tested at an unusually short range (this would require a lofted trajectory) - no more than about 1500-1700 km and maybe as short as 600 km. The purpose of these tests is not entirely clear at this point (although I’m sure we’ll hear obligatory references to missile defense).…

Might just be BMD related after all!!

One thing not mentioned much in reports on the speech is that from the looks of this the INF Treaty is safe.

Notice that the Iskander deployment is not definitive. It would only occur if the US were to deploy GMD interceptors and the X-Band radar in East Europe.

The other point on European security was

…I would note that the issue of establishing a new global security regime is grossly overdue. And it is especially important that we achieve results in the North Atlantic territory that comprises Russia, the European Union and the United States. I took the initiative to draft a relevant treaty - a treaty on European security. I repeat: such a document would create absolutely clear and comprehensible rules of conduct. It would formalize a unified approach to conflict resolution. It would facilitate a harmonious position on creating reliable instruments of arms control.…

We would get real change if we were to see the development of a post-NATO European security regime that encompasses Russia. But, you just gotta know that is just not gonna happen; otherwise Washington, from its perspective, would have lost the Cold War.

Needless to say, the Medvedev proposal was hardly, if at all, reported.

What is interesting also are reports, both at the Times of London and the New York Times, on how the war started in Georgia. Actually, these reports do not tell us anything new for those who really wanted to know what was happening, rather than repeat neo-con spin about democracy and stuff. OSCE observers, two British officers especially, reported unprovoked shelling of the South Ossetian capital by Georgian forces at a frenzied tempo. They reported explosive impacts 15-20 seconds apart.

These included impacts from Grad MRL rockets. MRLs are for area suppression. If that shelling were conducted by Serbian forces the result would have been a Hague indictment.

The Russia angle is directly related to Iran. Let me explain the connection.

The Iranian President has sent a letter to Obama, making much of Obama’s campaign call for dialogue with Iran. Obama’s (my spell checker is telling me that should be Osama’s) response to that was noteworthy

…“Let me repeat and state what I stated during the course of the campaign,” he said. “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable. We have to mount an international effort to prevent that from happening.”…

Obama has left open what he means by “international effort”, but notice that he stated that Iran definitely has a nuclear weapons programme. That would even make Team Bush proud. After all, it was the Bush Administration’s latest Iran NIE that concluded that an Iranian nuclear weapons programme was halted in the fall of 2003.

That is interesting given the BMD angle. The Polish leader stated that Obama is on board with East Europe BMD, however an Obama adviser has backtracked and in response stated

…When asked about the declaration, McDonough said that the US president-elect had had “a good conversation” with Mr Kaczynski about the American-Polish alliance and discussed missile defence, but “made no commitment on it”.

“His position is as it was throughout the campaign, that he supports deploying a missile defence system when the technology is proved to be workable,” Mr McDonough told the Associated Press.…

Notice that is the old Bush capabilities based approach, in contrast to a threat based approach. As you can see for Obama the threat is real; he completely rejects the NIE and states that Iran has a weapons programme.

To be sure the IAEA is having a hard time on the “alleged studies” and an Additional Protocol, but the “alleged studies” file is concerned with reaching clarity on past actions not current ones.

Do not forget also that even the Missile Defense Agency states that you don’t need East European BMD to meet an Iranian threat, such as that threat is made out to be.

On deterrence just a very brief point. The Obama administration will conduct a Nuclear Posture Review early in its term. This does not mean that current Presidential Guidance will be changed, even if the rhetoric of the NPR differs from the Bush version. Clinton’s NPR, drawn up when Les Aspin was the Pentagon chief, was not couched in talk about prevailing in a protracted nuclear war, stuff that the Reagan Administration was into, but NSDD-13 was not changed as a result of the NPR.

The Reagan Directive was changed well into Clinton’s period in office and did not follow on from the NPR.

What will matter here is whether the Obama administration NPR will result in a change to Guidance away from NSPD-14.

Many are stating that Obama will keep Robert Gates as Pentagon chief, perhaps for an interim period. That puts his recent speech on nuclear deterrence in a new light. It has correctly been reported that this speech was a call for a post Bush administration not to ditch Bush nuclear strategy. If Gates stays on then he will bring the full weight of the Pentagon in the inter-agency NPR process behind such notions as tailored deterrence.

If Gates, or anybody else, were successfully to get the Obama administration to buy tailored deterrence then a lot of the staples of Bush nuclear strategy will follow.

This is going to be an important conceptual battle. I feel that a paper on tailored deterrence is now more in order than ever.

Let me close on strategic arms control. There were two US draft proposals for a post START strategic arms control treaty, one from the Pentagon and one from State. Moscow and Russia are currently involved in discussion on a post START Treaty and the final US position is a compromise between the two drafts

…At the same time, the United States prepared a draft of a new agreement, which is supposed to replace START. The draft is a compromise between a “SORT-plus”, suggested by DoD, and a longer 100-page document prepared by the State Department - it is said to be about 60 pages long.…

Actually two centrist Democrat types from the Brookings Institution published a book that is best seen as a sort of memo to a new Democratic or moderate GOP administration called Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security. At p219-220 they call for a treaty that cuts strategic weapon levels to 1,000.

This is related to the above. Would 1,000 be in sync with NSPD-14? If an Obama administration cuts to 1,000 it might require revision to NSPD-14 like the way in which a projected START III led to changes from NSDD-13 to PDD-60 during the Clinton era.

Although the State 100 page document was meatier than the Pentagon version this likely reflects verification and counting rules proposals. It would not have in any way necessitated a revision to NSPD-14, and most certainly the 60 page compromise would not do so.

If Obama actually ditches the compromise document and goes for pretty much the draft State document that would be a sign that NSPD-14 stays.

Of course, this is all just speculation for now. We need more time to see what will happen. Obama could go in a completely different direction and even reject the thinking behind the arms control document produced by the Rice State Department.

That would mean that a new treaty would come after the NPR.

A Chick For The Lucasian Chair?

Published by admin | Filed under Admin, Op-Ed

I have an article on the search for a new Lucasian Professor at the University of Cambridge upon the vacating of this chair by Stephen Hawking at On Line Opinion.

Washington’s Iran Bombing Talk Goes Bi-Partisan

Published by admin | Filed under International Relations, Proliferation, Stupid

Further to my post on the Iran and Syrian nuclear fronts below, an intriguing report has appeared in The New York Times on cognoscenti discussion on bombing Iran. The report states

… It is a frightening notion, but it is not just the trigger-happy Bush administration discussing — if only theoretically — the possibility of military action to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Of course, no president or would-be president ever takes the military option off the table, and Barack Obama and John McCain are no exception.

What is significant is that inside Washington’s policy circles these days — in studies, commentaries, meetings, Congressional hearings and conferences — reasonable people from both parties are seriously examining the so-called military option, along with new diplomatic initiatives.

One of the most thorough discussions is in a report by the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center, founded by four former senators — the Republicans Robert Dole and Howard Baker and Democrats Tom Daschle and George Mitchell — to devise policy solutions both parties might embrace.…

Other figures mentioned here include Ashton Carter and Dennis Ross. You can see here that, in so far as national security and foreign policy are concerned, “change that you can believe in” means just going back to Bill Clinton and the centrist Reagan-lite Democratic Party that he created.
I would not even be surprised that, should Obama win, that on election night we will hear Fleetwood Mac’s Don’t Stop, Thinkin’ About Tomorrow…

But, seriously.

One thing that is interesting here is the Israel angle. How exactly would Israel launch an air attack? Through Saudi Arabia? Man that would please Osama no end. Through Turkey? That’s possible given the Phantom Alliance, but even Turkey might look askance at any request for Israeli attacks launched from Turkey.

From Iraq? That might just about kill the Status of Forces Agreement, and Washington does not want that. Then again, now would be the time to go through Iraq i.e. before a SOFA comes into force.

Does Israel have the munitions required to knock out Natanz and the associated mountain tunnel? The Massive Ordnance Penetrator is for the B-2.

I still believe that the purpose of an air campaign is to strike Iranian strategic facilities beyond just the nuclear energy infrastructure. I could not imagine Israel gaining assistance from any neighbouring state for the large number of sorties that would be required.

One point mentioned in the Times report is not accurate

… With Iran projected to produce enough fuel for a nuclear weapon by 2010…

Who is projecting that? What is being projected by some is that Iran would acquire a theoretical break-out capability by 2010 not that it would actually produce enough weapons-grade uranium by 2010; that’s a big difference and this is coming from a critic of the bombing talk.
In so far as the Iran nuclear file is concerned all this bombing talk is quiet counter-productive. The most important thing now is not uranium enrichment suspension, but rather getting Iran to adhere to the Additional Protocol. However, Iran won’t adhere to the AP because it wants to keep some of its centrifuge technology away from those who say that they may bomb it.

Wolfowitz Report On China and Strategic Dissuasion

Published by admin | Filed under Nuclear Strategy

Our good friend Paul Wolfowitz has remerged with a vengeance. He has written a report as a part of the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board. The report is on Chinese force posture. This report is important because it is a report from State; although it was supposed to, State did not join in on the Department of Defense and Department of Energy report to Congress on nuclear strategy for the 21st century.

Of course, this is just a report from a small part of the Department. However, although the report is on China’s strategic modernisation, the most important thing about this report is what it tells us about US nuclear strategy; especially what it tells us about dissuasion.

The main tenets of the report have been refuted at the Federation of American Scientists in a point-by-point fashion.

The following bits of the report put the point I like to make about dissuasion in context

…The major objective is to counter U.S. presence and U.S. military capabilities in East Asia through the acquisition of offensive capacities in critical functional areas that systematically exploit U.S. vulnerabilities…

…The high priority modernization of China’s nuclear arsenal reflects the importance Beijing assigns to strategic forces as the umbrella under which its political military interests will be enhanced in and beyond the Asia Pacific area…

…Most important, China has established the goal of becoming a global power through dominance in the Asia/Pacific region a goal that is seen as clearly within its grasp as long as it can sustain economic growth through rapid modernization. While China’s economic base is being enlarged and strengthened, Beijing seeks greatly enhanced military power and reach…

The report has issued a number of findings and recommendations

…Washington should also make clear that it will not accept a mutual vulnerability relationship with China something Beijing seeks through its expansion of offensive nuclear capabilities. To avoid the emerging creep toward a Chinese assured destruction capability, the United States will need to pursue new missile defense capabilities, including taking full advantage of space. The United States must explore the potential that space provides for missile defenses across the spectrum of threats…

To see how off this statement is we need only recall that an “assured destruction capability” equates to an ability to inflict enough “equivalent megatonnage” (EMT) on urban and industrial complexes to destroy a given percentage of the population and industrial capacity of the state targeted AFTER absorbing a first strike.

The exact percentages depend upon initial assumptions and are largely arbitrary, but the usual assumption on assured destruction comes from McNamara. For him that meant the capability to take out 25% of the population and 50% of industry AFTER absorbing a first strike.

Does anybody seriously believe that China is “creeping” toward such a capability against the continental United States? Not even the USSR attained parity, in these terms, until the Brezhnev buildup. Of course, the Russians went beyond that in a pretty useless exercise one that, it seems, Beijing has no desire to repeat.

It would be better to look at this statement with respect to the strategy of dissuasion that formed an important part of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, which also figured in the now famous 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States and appeared in the controversial 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance.

Here are the relevant bits from the Wolfowitz report

… Using superior U.S. military technical capacities, the United States should undertake the development of new weapons, sensors, communications, and other programs and tactics designed to convince China that it will not be able to overcome the U.S. militarily…

…in addition to reducing U.S. vulnerabilities in areas such as space and cyber through more effective defensive measures, the United States should explore new offensive capabilities in these areas. Specifically, in addition to improving the ability to defend existing U.S. force capabilities targeted by the Chinese, the United States should focus R&D on high technology military capabilities not included in China’s military plans military systems that will demonstrate to Beijing that trying to get ahead of the United States is futile (much the way SDI did against the Soviet Union).…

We see here, I believe, good grounds for adopting my long hunch on what dissuasion really means. I have always felt that dissuasion refers to a form of “pre-deterrence” that is supposed to “dissuade” potential peer competitors from seeking to challenge US strategic primacy by denying them a mutual deterrence relationship.

I have always felt that the Reliable Replacement Warhead programme was partly dissuasion driven. I am now more convinced of this. For instance the Wolfowitz report, in the above context, states

…For almost two decades, the United States has allowed its nuclear posture its stockpile, infrastructure, and expertise to deteriorate and atrophy across the board. The United States cannot risk China perceiving the United States as either unprepared or unwilling to respond to Chinese nuclear threats and use…

See what I mean? Even the most die-hard sceptic should agree that I have at least an argument to go on. The way to achieve dissuasion is through the establishment of escalation dominance. Consider this point on escalation in the Wolfowitz report

…The modernization of Chinese strategic forces provides Beijing with this double edged sword in the event of a conflict along its periphery: they help limit vulnerability to U.S. deterrence threats by forcing the United States to weigh the potential costs of any threatened escalation; and they provide China with means to issue coercive threats against the United States. The improved survivability and offensive strike capabilities of Chinese strategic forces contribute to both goals.…

The problem with dissuasion as a concept, given the above, should be clear. It is obvious that any state that aspires to, or seeks to maintain, global strategic primacy cannot really accept mutual deterrence relationships with other great powers.

However, by pursuing a policy of dissuasion the US would only encourage near peer competitors to react in the strategic field by boosting their nuclear forces to maintain deterrence.

The cynical might argue that is precisely what somebody like Wolfowitz wants; to distract China from economic modernisation and growth and shift resources to waste production, which is what an economist would consider military production to be (even though it does increase GDP).

So far as I can see the main purpose of Chinese strategic nuclear forces is to maintain the minimum means of reprisal. This provides a shield behind which Beijing may engage in economic modernisation. Beijing, should it feel that this means of reprisal would erode, would need to make the necessary investment to maintain this capability given US moves.

To assert, however, that China is embarking or creeping toward second strike assured destruction against the entire continental United States is something to be taken seriously only in an episode of Roger Ramjet.

It is said that Wohlstetter played a formative influence on Wolfowitz. This document has Wohlstetter all over it.

Syria and Iran Nuclear Fronts Hot Up A Notch

Published by admin | Filed under International Relations, Proliferation

Both the Syrian and Iranian fronts have hotted up a little notch. On Syria, the IAEA has called for further study on al-Kibar and reports have spoken of an Iranian draft plan to reprocess the fuel rods from the current research reactor to extract Highly Enriched Uranium.

These two matters are directly related.

The Syrian front is of note given the recent US raid into Syria from Iraq. Washington has asserted that the target of the raid was an al-Qaida operative smuggling insurgents across the border into Iraq. It is said that the operative was taken out, but it appears that many innocent people were killed in the process. In this sense, the raid is similar to operations across the Afghan border into Pakistan that inspire anti-American sentiment.

The raid was a helicopter borne raid very much on a par with a Chinook raid into Pakistan that drew fire from the Pakistani Army.

That fact has led to an interesting re-think, in my opinion totally warranted, by strategic analysts. The emerging tribal strategy in Pakistan has followed, according to credible reports, President Bush giving orders authorising raids across the Afghan border.

But, the raid into Syria suggests something else; that the Bush Administration has issued generic authorisation for military strikes across borders against insurgent infrastructure wherever US troops are deployed.

In other words, what applies to Syria can equally apply to Iran. If there is some form of strike against Iran in the lame-duck period of the Bush administration then this authorisation could be a trigger, provoking and sucking Iran into a response.

There exists also an interesting report suggesting that the Syrian raid was actually a joint US-Syrian affair that went wrong after US forces drew fire from insurgents inside Syria. Not so long ago a mysterious car bomb went off in Damascus and any hint that Syria is tacitly supporting the US combat Sunni insurgents in Iraq is explosive stuff for a regime dominated by a small Alawi-based elite, in a country dominated by Sunni’s.

This story could be legit or it could be dis-information to put Damascus further under the pump to drop its long demand for a return of all of the Golan Heights as a pre-condition for peace with Israel, as well as cutting off its strategic relationship with Iran.

As all this was happening further developments occurred on the al-Kibar front. The IAEA has previously stated that it had found no evidence of small particles of graphite at the al-Kibar site. However, now

…Preliminary results regarding environmental samples collected from the site by an IAEA team and made public earlier this year were inconclusive, adding weight to Syrian assertions that no trips beyond the initial IAEA visit in June were necessary. But the diplomats told The Associated Press that the IAEA’s final evaluation, completed a few days ago, has the agency convinced it needs to press on with its investigation…

Basically that means, if accurate, that there is enough evidence to warrant a trial, so to speak. I have seen reports, very sketchy, suggesting that the department of safeguards at the IAEA is of mind that al-Kibar was indeed a nuclear reactor.

Let us wait for the report, due very soon.

On Iran we get the following

…Iran has recently tested ways of recovering highly enriched uranium from waste reactor fuel in a covert bid to expand its nuclear program, according to an intelligence assessment made available to The Associated Press. The intelligence, provided by a member of the 145-nation International Atomic Energy Agency, also says a report will soon be submitted to the Iranian leadership for a decision on whether to go ahead with the project.

The alleged tests loosely replicate Saddam Hussein’s attempts to build the bomb nearly two decades ago. But experts question the conclusion by those providing the intelligence that Tehran, too, is trying to reprocess the fuel to make a nuclear weapon…

…The 3-page intelligence report, drawn from Iranian sources within the country, says the source material would be highly enriched — some at above 90 percent, the rest at 20 percent…

…”Procedures were evaluated for recycling fuel by dissolving fuel rods” for irradiated waste and then reprocessing the material into uranium metal, says the intelligence assessment. Uranium metal is used for nuclear warheads.

“Sufficient data was collected for planning production lines for recovering the fuel,” says the assessment, which gave Tehran’s Jaber ibn Hayan Laboratories, run by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, as the location for the experiment.

Top officials of AEOI are “in the final stages” of writing a report for the Iranian leadership for assessment on whether to go forward with reprocessing, according to the intelligence.
The laboratories and the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, where the research reactor is located, have figured in numerous experiments that have raised the suspicion level about Iran, including plutonium separation attempts that Iran owned up to only after it was pressed by IAEA experts probing its nuclear past.…

It would appear that this intelligence came from the MEK, and that they have tried to sex it up by speaking of a weapons inspired diversion effort. According to ISIS there is about 0.007 t of HEU associated with the research reactor, not enough for a bomb. The above report suggests that although some of that is WgU, most is 20% enriched.

If this story is true then it suggests the start of a formal re-processing programme, in addition to the enrichment programme. The re-processing of the spent fuel could be seen as an attempt to embark on re-processing experiments toward that end.

If this is accurate, and Iran decides to proceed, then Iran is indicating that it will pursue a closed fuel cycle strategy that will include re-processing spent fuel from Bushehr, but perhaps, more ominously, from the Heavy Water moderated IR-40 a.k.a “the bomb factory.”

Re-processing from IR-40 need not follow, but it is a possibility. IR-40 would be safeguarded, as presumably would be any re-processing plant. However, safeguarding re-processing plants has its problems.

Needless to say, the Iran UN Security Council resolution on Iran calls for Iran to suspend any chemical re-processing. We might soon end up with a new front, this time on the back end of the fuel cycle, in the Iran file.

Perhaps Iran is upping its bargain chips as it anticipates talks with an Obama administration. But, then again, Tehran might be serious about a self-sufficient nuclear fuel cycle across both ends of the fuel cycle.

It might be a latent break-out strategy, but the capability in itself provides such a capability.
Assurance of supply has been presented, for the most part, as a front end issue. However, one can see how a state worried about assurance of supply would go for a closed fuel cycle.

The US is talking about advanced breeder reactors and plutonium re-processing, reversing the Ford-Carter era policy against re-processing. Expect to hear more about that from Tehran if Obama goes for the GNEP.

Iraq SOFA Deters Democracy.

Published by admin | Filed under International Relations, Op-Ed

The Government of Iraq and the Bush Administration have reached a draft agreement on the status of US military forces stationed in Iraq, known as a Status of Forces Agreement or SOFA, which still needs approval from the Iraqi Parliament to come into force. If Iraqi lawmakers abide by the wishes of the people they will reject this agreement or any other agreement that codifies the US occupation.

This agreement, and the long history of its negotiation, tells us a lot about the nature of the underlying rationale for the US invasion and the future of Iraq policy after November.

From the earliest moments of the US occupation, Washington has sough legal sanction for unlimited freedom of action to conduct military operations in Iraq, to retain the option of using Iraq as a springboard for enforcing US interests in the oil rich region and to essentially maintain a permanent military presence that would have included the right to detain Iraqis at will and to essentially do all this completely immune from Iraqi law.

We know this because earlier this year documents from US Central Command, the Coalition Provisional Authority and Coalition Joint Task Force-7, the official designation of the coalition high command in the Iraqi theatre of operations, dating back to 2003 demonstrate this without the slightest hint of ambiguity.

In fact, Washington sought to wrap up a Status of Forces Agreement prior to the establishment of an interim Iraqi government in June 2004 and the election of a transitional parliament in January 2005. In other words, the US wanted to set up a SOFA prior to the emergence of any authority in Baghdad the least bit subject to popular will.

Most likely the rising insurgency and the prospect of a Shiite revolt led by the Mahdi Army of Moktada al-Sadr deterred the US from wrapping up an all encompassing SOFA so early.

In November 2007 the Maliki Administration in Baghdad and Washington signed a Declaration of Principles that essentially codified these objectives. The Declaration called for the development of a security agreement that would “deter foreign aggression”, which is an Orwellian phrase opening up the prospect of regional operations from military bases in Iraq, especially against Iran. At the time a possible large scale military campaign to degrade Iranian strategic capability, under a cover provided by Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, was widely discussed.

The November 2007 Declaration also expressed an interest that the US should continue to “support” Iraq to combat “all terrorist groups”. No definition of “all terrorist groups” is specified. However, the 2003 de-classified documents stipulate that CJTF-7 sought freedom to conduct military operations in order “to fight anti-coalition forces”, a term that provides the real meaning of the phrase “all terrorist groups” in the 2007 Declaration.

An internal US military presence would be able to meet any domestic challenges to the US instituted order which would include, according to the 2007 Declaration, preferential access for US investors.

In June 2007 the Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, effectively let the cat out of the bag on a permanent military presence in Iraq for he stated that “what I’m thinking in terms of is a mutual agreement where some force of Americans — mutually agreed with mutually agreed missions — is present for a protracted period of time.”

After the signing of the Declaration of Principles Washington and Baghdad embarked upon serious negotiations to complete a Status of Forces Agreement. Washington sought to complete these negotiations by the end of July this year.

Leaks to The Independent showed that the US sought the establishment of a permanent military presence through some 50 bases, the freedom to conduct internal and external operations from these bases, and to do so unhindered by Iraqi law. Terms which are entirely consistent with the de-classified 2003 documents.

The leaking of these provisions provoked a firestorm of opposition in Iraq, where the majority of the population, especially in Arab Iraq where US troops are deployed, opposes the US occupation. The highly respected and influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, also expressed opposition in a rare political intervention. This forced the Maliki government to backtrack and dig in its heels, much to the displeasure of Washington.

The Maliki administration was able to do so after employing the Iraqi Army, essentially lead by the former Badr brigade, in operations against a rival Shiite militia in Basra and Sadr City in Baghdad. This lowered, but did not eliminate his dependency upon US forces, thereby marginally increasing his leverage in negotiations.

By the same token Iran maintains influence with the government in Baghdad as an important political partner of the Dawa Party and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the driving forces in the Maliki Cabinet, even before the 2003 invasion and because of increasing economic ties subsequent to the invasion. Iran, naturally, opposes any security agreement with the US that would leave Washington with unlimited freedom of action in the region.

The draft agreement that has finally been reached, the details of which are only publicly available in excerpt form and may not even be scrutinised by Congress, provides some limits to the maximal objectives long sort by the United States but it still provides wide scope for US military operations in Iraq and beyond.

It still gives immunity from Iraqi law for US military forces engaged in military operations. It does, however, set up a joint US-Iraqi body overseeing combat operations. How much teeth Baghdad will have within this body in practice is another matter. The Iraqi security forces are dependant upon the United States for logistical support and advanced firepower, dependence fostered quite deliberately by Washington. This will provide US commanders with great leverage in any joint military body, much as Hitler’s Panzers did with Mussolini.

It is true that the leaked excerpts speak of a US military withdrawal by 2011, but careful reading shows that the agreement provides a springboard for the development of a follow-on agreement. It stipulates that after US combat forces are withdrawn an agreement can be reached so that Washington can “keep forces for the purposes of training and supporting Iraqi security forces.”

None of this is any way inconsistent with statements coming from the Obama and McCain campaigns, suggesting more convergence with current policy than “change you can believe in” so far as Iraq is concerned. It should be clear that the presence of foreign military forces in Iraq, against the wishes of the populace, completely lacks legitimacy and can only proceed given the coercive leverage provided by the internal US military presence.

Democracy is as relevant in all this as was “weapons of mass destruction” in the lead up to the 2003 invasion.