The United States should cut its nuclear weapons capabilities to contribute to deficit reduction, writes Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. O’Hanlon qualifies this opinion by stating that “our strategic forces should remain as large as Russia’s.” Yet these two statements are mutually exclusive, as the United States is already below Russia’s numbers—considering Russia’s advantage in nuclear short-range systems. Cutting funding for the nuclear weapons complex would only make the situation worse, both qualitatively and quantitatively, as the Russians are vigorously modernizing their nuclear …
It was reported early in October that Russia’s first fourth-generation nuclear-powered multipurpose attack submarine, the Severodvinsk, successfully conducted its first sea trials. In naval terms, a fourth-generation submarine belongs to the latest and most modern generation of submarines. The Severodvinsk is a Project 885 submarine of the Yásen’ (ash tree) class that has been described as “an undersea nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser.” Plans are for six or seven Yásen’ class submarines to be built, with the second vessel, Kazan, currently under construction. The Severodvinsk has significant characteristics and capabilities. It has …
The Obama Administration’s commitment to maintain the U.S. strategic triad appears to be fading, writes Mark Schneider, former special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the New Strategic Arms Control Treaty (New START) negotiations. Indeed, experts at The Heritage Foundation have been pointing out problems with the Administration’s commitment since it announced its plans to sustain the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Unfortunately, it seems that the White House’s commitment will not survive the first year after the treaty entered into force. During the New START debate, …
The recent op-ed by James Woolsey and Keith Payne “Reconsidering the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty” (CTBT) describes the treaty as “an ineffectual gesture that could do more harm than good.” It is hard to disagree with this conclusion. There are many persistent problems with the treaty, which the U.S. Senate wisely rejected in 1999. Nevertheless, the Obama Administration chose to rejuvenate the treaty and try to get the Senate to ratify it—unchanged. The Administration hopes that the U.S. ratification of the treaty would prevent proliferation and bring about a change …
The U.S. Minuteman III intercontinental-range ballistic missile (ICBM) force faces an uncertain future, writes Mark Schneider in his recent post on DefenseNews.com. A set of Minuteman failures in the recent years is as concerning as the exponential loss of design and engineering expertise within the Air Force itself. As Schneider warns, no one involved in the original Minuteman design is active in the program, and no one in the Air Force project office has experience in managing the development of a new ICBM. This could cause substantial problems if a …
The Obama Administration’s “reset” policy with the Russian Federation is failing in yet another important aspect of this relationship: its predictability regarding the development of each country’s respective nuclear forces. This is despite the Obama Administration touting the New Strategic Arms Control Treaty (New START) as one of the greatest accomplishments of the reset policy. The list of U.S. “reset” concessions is extensive: unilateral cuts of U.S. strategic nuclear forces, abandonment of missile defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic, neglect of Russian aggressiveness in the areas of the …
The Obama Administration traded 25 percent of the U.S. operationally deployed strategic nuclear missiles for a Russian nuclear buildup in New START, a bilateral arms control treaty with the Russian Federation, writes Mark Schneider in his latest op-ed. This became clear after the U.S. State Department released a factsheet making the disparity in destruction of accountable systems—delivery vehicles, nuclear warheads, deployed and non-deployed launchers of intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and deployed and non-deployed heavy bombers—official.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il’s visit to China this week has again raised questions about the nature of their relationship. A recently leaked U.N. report described suspected ballistic missile technology exchanges between North Korea and Iran. The technology transited through an unnamed neighboring country, which several U.N. diplomats, under the condition of anonymity, have identified as China. Not surprisingly, China is apparently blocking the public release of that report.
Speaking before a new Congress in his State of the Union address, President Obama gave an alternative suggestion for Congress now that cap and trade is out of the picture. He pitched an aggressive clean energy standard, saying he wants 80 percent of our electricity to come from carbon-free sources of energy by 2035. For reference, the Energy Information Administration shows that carbon-free sources generated 31 percent of our total electricity in 2009 (20 percent nuclear, 7 percent hydroelectric, and 4 percent other renewables). As Kim Strassel points out in …
The impact of U.S. sanctions against Iran and other state sponsors of terrorism have been undermined by loopholes that allow exemptions for humanitarian, agricultural and medical exports, according to a report in The New York Times. Most of the loopholes were created by a 2000 law that created exemptions for agricultural and medical exports for humanitarian purposes and resulted in $1.7 billion of U.S. exports to Iran in the last ten years. Although these exports have not directly aided Iran’s military buildup, some of the exemptions have benefited Iranian companies …
