US, Russia Fulfilling their START Commitments – US State Dpt

WASHINGTON, October 26 (Itar-Tass) — The United Sates and Russia continue to cut their nuclear arsenals. This assessment was made by the US Department of States on Tuesday that made public a fact sheet on the fulfilment by the two countries of their obligations under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New Start), which came into force on February 5.

Sacrificing Missile Defense for ‘Reset’

When Barack Obama campaigned for president in 2008, he promised to “cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.” The word “unproven,” folks worried, could be used against every defense system that hasn’t intercepted a missile in combat. And, indeed, Obama did cut missile defense programs. 

Obama Administration Defends Antimissile Plan

In the face of Republican skepticism, a top U.S. official on arms control on Friday reaffirmed the Obama administration’s position that its planned missile shield for Europe would not be constrained by language in a new nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, Politico reported (see GSN, Sept. 14).

Ignoring Russia’s concerns on European defense system could hurt Russia-NATO ties

The reluctance of taking into account Russian interests in the issue of the European missile defense system can cause serious damage to ties between Russia and NATO, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in an interview with RIA Novosti on Friday.

The missiles mind game

Drawing by Niyaz Karim

The debate on a joint European missile defense system that gained momentum after the Russia-NATO Lisbon Summit in November 2010 has reached its logical conclusion. On the eve of the meeting of Russian and NATO defense ministers, the alliance’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, officially declined Russia’s idea of “sectoral” missile defense and Russia’s demand for legal guarantees that the system would not target Russia. The same was said with total finality at the meeting. The discussion has thus been thrown back to the chronic phase in which it has languished for 10 years (the topic was broached by then-defense minister Sergei Ivanov in the early 2000s).

OPINION: The cyclical nature of Russian-American relations

OPINION:

The negotiations conducted over 8 – 9 June on anti-ballistic missile (ABM) issues as part of NATO-Russia Council can not be called successful. The parties involved did not come to a compromise about the format for Russia’s participation in the “European missile defense” project. This gave rise to a plethora of comments in the Russian and American media about the end of the “reset policy”. Russian-American dialogue, of course, will continue. But no one can deny that this is an alarming sign for Moscow-Washington relations.

Reset Regret: Obama’s Cold War–Style Arms Control Undermines U.S.–Russian Relations

OPINION:

In March 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, with a red button symbolizing a new “reset” policy with the Russian Federation. Prophetically, and as a result of an incompetent translation, the letters on the button read “overload” instead of “reset.”

Russian Unease Over U.S. Missile Defense Plans “Legitimate,” Experts Say

By Martin Matishak

WASHINGTON — The Russian military has “legitimate” concerns that its strategic nuclear deterrent might be hampered by the U.S. plan to erect a missile shield in and around Europe, a pair of technical experts said on Wednesday.

Those worries — including the scope of the program that could include deployment of hundreds of missile interceptors — could lead to action by Russian political leaders, the observers said.

“I think a lot of questions are going to be raised by Russian military planners and those questions will inevitably filter up to high-level political decision-makers who don’t have to believe or share those concerns to feel pressured to react to them,” said former Defense Department official Theodore Postol.

Any reluctance by Kremlin officials to oppose U.S. plans could leave them open to domestic accusations that “they are not willing to do what needs to be done to defend their country,” he added during a round-table discussion at the Federation of American Scientists.

The Obama administration in 2009 announced it would replace a Bush-era program for long-range missile defenses in Europe with a “phased adaptive approach” that would deploy sea- and land-based interceptors around the continent as a hedge against missiles launched from the Middle East.

The first configuration will include sea-based Aegis antimissile systems and the Standard Missile 3 Block 1A interceptor, according to a White House fact sheet. The initial component of this phase, the guided missile cruiser USS Monterey, has begun operations around Europe.

Subsequent stages would be put in place through roughly 2020, fielding increasingly advanced versions of the SM-3 system that would first counter short- and medium-range threats, with later interceptors capable of eliminating intermediate-range missiles and ICBMs.

The U.S. system is to be folded into a larger NATO initiative to hook up and augment individual member nations’ antimissile capabilities.

The Kremlin has for years said it considers U.S. and NATO antimissile initiatives a threat to its nuclear arsenal. Brussels and Moscow in November 2010 agreed to consider areas for possible missile defense collaboration, but talks have appeared to achieve little progress.

A key sticking point is Russia’s demand for a legal guarantee that its nuclear weapons would not be targeted by NATO missile interceptors. Moscow also wants a single protective shield, while the alliance favors establishing two distinct systems in which the sides would share data.

Observers to date have seen Russia as opposed to missile defense “mostly because of the geopolitics,” as the Bush plan called for installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, within Moscow’s perceived sphere of influence, according to Yousaf Butt, a physicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. However, the Kremlin has “legitimate” concerns as well, he said during the round-table discussion.

For instance, the size, or “footprint,” of the recently implemented approach has raised flags, according to Butt. He cited a recent Congressional Research Service report that found the missile shield would need around 440 interceptors, 43 mobiles platforms and at least two land-based sites to prove effective.

Of greater concern to Russian military officials is the mobility of much of the envisioned architecture, he said. Though existing plans call for sea-based Aegis antimissile systems to be located in the North Sea and the Mediterranean, they could be moved elsewhere with a change in administrations or if new tensions develop in different parts of the world, Butt warned.

Postol, a longtime critic of U.S. missile defense efforts, noted the adaptive approach could one day be updated to defend the continental United States against a Russian missile attack, though U.S. officials claim such a configuration would not be used.

“It only takes a decision to say we changed. From the point of view of the military planner that’s a problem because [he or she] needs to … start preparing for the possibility that thing could be converted for another purpose,” said Postol, a science, technology and international security professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “You don’t watch our potential adversary mass troops at your border and sit there and do nothing. You might not attack, but you might build fences in response.”

The missile shield also upsets the “parity” established between the former Cold War rivals by the New START agreement, according to Butt.

The pact, which entered into force in February, demands reductions in each nation’s deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, down from a ceiling of 2,200 set in an earlier agreement. It also caps fielded strategic nuclear delivery systems at 700, with an additional 100 platforms allowed in reserve.

“It’s certainly breaking the spirit of New START and it may be breaking the letter” of the agreement if the United States deploys particularly advanced interceptors that could threaten Russia’s nuclear forces, Butt said.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency dismissed those concerns.

“U.S. missile defense technology poses no threat to the Russian strategic deterrent force,” MDA spokesman Richard Lehner told Global Security Newswire on Wednesday by e-mail.

Both the United States and NATO have made repeated statements that the phased adaptive approach is designed to block possible missile attacks from the Middle East, most notably Iran. Proponents of the plan note that the number of deployed interceptors would still be dwarfed by Russia’s nuclear and missile arsenal.

Postol and Butt suggested one way to ease Russian doubts would be for the United States to explore a speed limit on its interceptor missiles. Moscow floated the idea earlier this week of limiting the interceptor velocity to 3.5 kilometers, or 2.2 miles, per second.

“In English that means they’re OK with [SM-3] Block 1 interceptors, but not OK with Block 2 interceptors” that would be deployed in later years and would burn out at 4.5 kilometers per second, Butt explained.

Another solution would be for Washington and Russia to work out restrictions on the placement of U.S. cruisers, he added before noting that the Pentagon is not likely to accept such limitations.

Despite worries in Washington and Moscow, Butt did not rule out cooperation one day among international partners.

“With what we advertised we want to do it will be difficult … because you’re talking about intentions versus capabilities. The system we put on will have a capability to be reconfigured against Russian ICBMs,” he said.

“Now you can talk until you’re blue in the face about your intentions and transparency but at the end of the day the military planners’ going to look there and ask ‘What is the capability of this mobile interceptor system?’”

SOURCE: Global Security Newswire
http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20110609_6345.php

Protect and Defend the U.S. Missile Defense

By Michaela Bendikova

“The Obama administration continues to demonstrate its penchant for bargaining away missile defense,” write James Woolsey, chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and Rebeccah Heinrichs, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former manager of the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus, in their most recent op-ed [1]. This is indeed the case, as shown by negotiations over New START and other Administration steps pertaining to missile defense.

New START’s preamble links strategic offensive and defensive weapons and serves as a basis for the Russian objections [2] to the third and the fourth phase of the Phased Adaptive Approach, President Obama’s missile defense plan to counter the Iranian ballistic missile threat.

The Russian objections are to be expected. In February, right after New START entered into force, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stated [3], “If the U.S. increases the qualitative and quantitative potential of its missile defense…a question will arise whether Russia should further abide by the treaty or would have to take other measures to respond to the situation, including military-technical measures.”

The U.S. Senate tried to remedy the treaty preamble’s shortcoming in its resolution of ratification to the treaty, which states that “continued improvement and deployment of United States missile defense systems do not constitute a basis for questioning the effectiveness and viability of the Treaty, and therefore would not give rise to circumstances justifying the withdrawal of the Russian Federation from the Treaty.”

These two interpretations are at odds, and it is only prudent for Congress to reinforce its position and make sure no further missile defense concessions will be made.

The Administration threatens to veto the entire defense bill over the U.S. House of Representatives’ provision that would limit the President’s ability to share sensitive missile defense technology information with the Russian Federation. The provision seems only prudent as the Russians might easily use such information to improve their ballistic missiles to be able to overcome U.S. missile defenses—or they could transfer the information to third parties. The latter is particularly plausible given the Russian history of nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation.

Ever since the Obama Administration took office, it has made extensive cuts [4] to the ballistic missile defense budget and cancelled promising missile defense programs, such as the Airborne Laser program, the Multiple Kill Vehicle program, and the Medium Extended Air Defense System, a joint missile defense program with Germany and Italy. It is essential that the U.S. government provide for the common defense and ensure that all the components of the U.S. missile defense program are augmented.

SOURCE: HERITAGE FOUNDATION

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/06/10/protect-and-defend-the-u-s-missile-defense/

The Reset hits a Pothole – Radio Free Europe

By Christian Caryl

For a while now, well out of the limelight, Russia and NATO have been negotiating about how to cooperate on missile defense. On Wednesday we got the announcement that the talks have broken down. For good? Hard to say. But the atmospherics don’t sound promising.

There is, potentially, a lot at stake. The Russians have been dropping hints that they might pull out of New START, the much-ballyhooed treaty on nuclear arsenals that went into force earlier this year, if a deal can’t be reached. Even President Dmitry Medvedev, not usually known as a saber-rattler, has allowed himself a few dire predictions. In May he warned about the possibility of a “new Cold War” if talks on missile defense were to fail. (This actually shouldn’t come as such a surprise. It was Medvedev, after all, who vowed to shift Russian short-range missiles to Kaliningrad a few years back in order to deter construction of the European missile shield.)