How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Missile Defense

Russia is dropping hints that Poland may find itself on the receiving end of an attack for its involvement with the United States in a Missile Defense shield. Why would a major power threaten a small-fry like Poland over a defensive system?

On the face of it a missile defense shield seems like a good idea. The threat of nuclear annihilation did not end just because the Cold War is over. There are several more nuclear powers in the world, India, Pakistan, and a few of the former Soviet states but the theories about the way that nuclear weapons would be used in a conflict have not changed.

Nuclear weapons are incredibly devastating. The one time that they were used it was against a state that had no capacity to retaliate. In fact the bombs dropped on the industrial centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki severely limited Japan's production and ability to fight the War. They had to surrender.

The Cold War brought about some of the best acronyms that government minds had to offer. Nuclear Utilization Theorists (NUTs) developed the framework of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that guided us through the Cold War without nuclear fallout. MAD plays out like this: Country A launches attack against Country B, Country B retaliates with however many nuclear weapons weren't destroyed during the first strike. This is a little simplistic, there are submarines capable of launching nuclear attack and bombers in the air ready to retaliate (a la Dr. Strangelove), but the point is made.

This is why there was an arms race. It wasn't enough to have bombs enough to annihilate your enemy, you need to have a second strike capability that is a credible deterrent to a first strike. Primary targets of nuclear weapons are usually major cities and other nuclear weapon complexes. If you can wipe out a county's nuclear arsenal they cannot retaliate. So the supply needs to be large, theoretically large enough not to be destroyed by the other country's missiles.

If there was no threat of a second strike then there is no deterrent to launching the first strike. This is incredibly destabilizing to a system that has prevent a nuclear war for decades.

The idea of a missile defense shield is a relic. A tip of the hat to Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program. It has never worked in testing. It will likely never work. It is one of the many principles of physics that makes it a near impossibility to hit a moving object out of the sky. The theory goes that you can know where a missile is at any given time and you can know it's trajectory and speed, but you cannot know both at the same time. Increasing the accuracy of one measurement decreases the accuracy of the other. If missile defense is going to work you need to know both.

Bottom-line is that the stupid shield won't work and it gives the countries behind the shield the opportunity to strike first without being retaliated against. The MAD deterrent has been working just fine, so don't mess with it. The Russians are not happy about it and have made some threatening gestures to Poland for even thinking about it. The Russians know the difficulties of a feasible missile shield. They know their physics. But even during the Cold War they felt that if anyone could make such an idea reality it would be the Americans.

Theories are fine, but people are rarely that predictable. If you have not seen Dr. Strangelove of the Fog of War, I strongly suggest you do so. They illustrate the irrationality of people and dictators. Chilling moment during the Fog of War when Robert McNamara recalls a conversation with Fidel Castro about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Unless Castro was thumping his chest to the former Sec of Defense, we were a lot closer to nuclear war than anyone would have liked to admit.

Sure we would have been destroyed, but I still would have bombed the US. Fuck you guys anyway. So much for the assumption of a rational actor.

Georgia on My MInd

It is important to note that this particular Georgia is not a member of these United States. It is actually south of Russia and borders on Turkey and the Black Sea.

Georgia is one of the former Soviet states that broke away after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Georgia is in the "hot zone." It is part of the larger theater of Iraq-Iran and figures heavily in the Petro world. The oil pipeline is speculated to be the real reason, and the involvement of the west in Iraq surely must be the other.

Georgia was one of our allies in Iraq, they had troops along the Iran-Iraq border. They obviously had an interest in keeping Iran from gaining in the Iraq conflict, but the Georgians have much larger problems at this point.

This is the worst case scenario playing out before our eyes. The conflict in Iraq is spreading to neighboring areas and we do not have the forces necessary to be a deterrent to other states who wish to impose their will on other states.

The deterrence of collective security has been one of the hallmarks of foreign relations since World War I.

The basic concept of collective security is that when a state becomes aggressive to another state's sovereignty the other states will band together and attack the aggressor. This is what happened in Kuwait that precipitated the first Gulf War. Kuwait is a major oil port, much like Georgia. The Georgians are being accused by the Russians of depriving other ethnic minorities in South Ossetia of their rights?

Pot? This is the Kettle, you're black.

Are they serious? The Russians are using human rights violations as an excuse to invade. They don't even have a leg to stand on. They don't even have a bloody stump to stand on. They have a horrendous human rights record.

Aside from not having available military forces to deter Russia. Europe is dependent on Russian oil and gasoline. So they can't afford a conflict with Russia.

The new model for foreign security was supposed to "interdependence." While similar to the deterrence of collective security, interdependence simply states that the world is too depend on world trade to instigate conflict. However, some states are more dependent on others. Case in point, we need Russia a lot more than they need Georgia. So we can't enforce collective security and we do not have a credible deterrent against major producers of oil.

Trade and interdependence was supposed to save the post-Cold War world, in this case it appears to have hamstrung us terribly. What does this lesson teach China? That we are not a credible threat to them or Russia. Does that mean that other conflicts are going to start cropping up? Does this mean that countries such as South Korea and Japan can no longer count on American military might to act as that deterrent?

This is eerily similar to what has happened before. Things don't happen the same way twice. The world is far less stable than it was before the Iraq war, and in relative terms, other countries are stronger militarily because of our involvement in Iraq. This war has proved to be not only unnecessary and ill-conceived, it weakened us dramatically.

Although if there was a point to bring democracy not just to Iraq but to the whole of the Middle East, instability was bound to be a part of that change. On many levels, politics is conflict, and war is just another political process. We have been incredibly naive up to this point. It's time to start thinking ahead. If this conflict does spread we had better start watching the President very closely. This could be his excuse to not hold elections and to remain in office as the first American Emperor.

It is my truest and most sincere hope that this conflict subsides before it spreads further. There are too many states and parties with too much at stake, if the conflict spreads or even continues more and more people will become involved with the conflict.

Iran

Umm...what the f__k is this? Its sheer amazement, folks, at the unconscionable melee we have right now. First time in almost 30 years that we send a diplomat to Geneva for direct, unilateral diplomacy with Iran and it happens to be under the lamest duck presidential situation in our nation's history.

By launching their missiles in triplicate last week, Iran effectively broke smoke in this grand chess game. They're going to leverage every ounce of the precarious situation they've created to set the stage for the deal of the century with either Senators Barack Obama or John McCain after the General Election.

We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves; or more accurately, I shouldn't get ahead of myself here. Israel is the X factor in all of this. With hair trigger sensibilities, their foreign policy framework is quite different from most nations: they are willing to go in preemptively. There are specific reasons for this, of which I won't state here, as I would imagine there is character limit to this blog. They are growing more impatient over failed multilateral diplomacy and will closely monitor this recent exchange between the U.S. and Iran. I mean, let's face it, Israeli intelligence knew about the open channel dog & pony show opportunity before, perhaps, anyone.

So, the decision to send an envoy Wednesday will be the exact opposite policy the Bush Administration and the U.S. has held the last 29 years and thats kinda wierd. Hope for the best.

Israel

You can forget about social security, the IRS, or health care, the REAL third-rail issue in American Politics is Israel. There is a real lack of honesty about the situation between Israel and what is left of the state of Palestine.

There is a pretty massive gap in the American consciousness regarding the state of Israel. Israel does a lot of questionable actions, such as the policy of settlements in the West Bank and the destruction of Palestinian homes when there are suspected militants. Obviously this is not a path to peace but to escalating conflict.

Bush is doing his part to fan the flames. His comments regarding the Democratic candidates for President were deplorable, and made on foreign soil. (Dixie Chicks anyone?) Bush should shuffle off the stage, and he should do it silently.

Our sitting President has zero credibility. At home or abroad. It would almost be laughable if it weren't for the fact that Bush is still President and those kind of smears work. When the issue is irrational those kind of attacks are particularly effective.

The first, and most important, is the situation on the ground and the readiness of the parties themselves to take the lead, irrespective of what America is doing. Anwar Sadat’s heroic overture to Israel, and Menachem Begin’s response, made the Jimmy Carter-engineered Camp David peace treaty possible. The painful, post-1973 war stalemate between Israel and Egypt and Syria made Henry Kissinger’s disengagement agreements possible. The collapse of the Soviet Union and America’s defeat of Iraq in the first gulf war made possible James Baker’s success in putting the Madrid peace process together.

What all three of these U.S. statesmen had in common, though — and this is the second criterion — was that when history gave them an opening, they seized it, by being tough, cunning and fair with both sides.

I don’t want a president who is just going to lean on Israel and not get in the Arabs’ face too, or one who, as the former Mideast negotiator Aaron D. Miller puts it, “loves Israel to death” — by not drawing red lines when Israel does reckless things that are also not in America’s interest, like building settlements all over the West Bank.

It’s a tricky business. But if Israel is your voting priority, then at least ask the right questions about Mr. Obama. Knock off the churlish whispering campaign about what’s in his heart on Israel (what was in Richard Nixon’s heart?) and focus first on what kind of America you think he’d build and second on whether you believe that as president he’d have the smarts, steel and cunning to seize a historic opportunity if it arises.

Thomas Friedman, New York Times May 18, 2008

I think that Friedman has been getting it right for a while now, and he appears to be spot on again. Read his whole column to really get the feel of what he is saying.

Shalom