WarSclerotic

U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGERSEPT. 21, 2014 Via The New York Times

(While Obama doesn’t have much of a bark, the US military still has one helluva bite.-LS)

CITY, Mo. — A sprawling new plant here in a former soybean field makes the mechanical guts of America’s atomic warheads. Bigger than the Pentagon, full of futuristic gear and thousands of workers, the plant, dedicated last month, modernizes the aging weapons that the United States can fire from missiles, bombers and submarines.

It is part of a nationwide wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers. A recent federal study put the collective price tag, over the next three decades, at up to a trillion dollars.

This expansion comes under a president who campaigned for “a nuclear-free world” and made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy. The original idea was that modest rebuilding of the nation’s crumbling nuclear complex would speed arms refurbishment, raising confidence in the arsenal’s reliability and paving the way for new treaties that would significantly cut the number of warheads.

Modernizing a Nuclear Arsenal

The government is upgrading major nuclear weapon plants and laboratories, which employ more than 40,000 people.

Nevada National Security Site
EMPLOYEES: 2,500
UPGRADES:
1 proposed
The National Criticality Experiments Research Center was built for $150 million.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
EMPLOYEES: 7,430
UPGRADES:
7 approved, 6 proposed
A plutonium processing site was recently renovated.
Kansas City Plant
EMPLOYEES: 2,730
The National Security Campus, recently completed for $700 million.

Y-12 National Security Complex
EMPLOYEES: 4,720
UPGRADES:
5 approved, 4 proposed
The complex’s Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility was built for $550 million.
NEV.
CALIF.
MO.
TENN.
S.C.
N.M.
TEX.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
EMPLOYEES: 5,250
UPGRADES:
2 approved, 6 more proposed

Sandia National Laboratories
EMPLOYEES: 9,880
UPGRADES:
3 approved,
9 proposed
A complex for testing weapons was recently rebuilt for $100 million.
Pantex Plant
EMPLOYEES: 3,180
UPGRADES:
3 approved, 10 proposed
The plant’s high-explosives pressing facility is being built for $145 million.
Savannah River Site
EMPLOYEES: 5,670
UPGRADES:
1 approved
The new Tritium Engineering Building was recently completed.

Sources: National Nuclear Security Administration, Government Accountability Office

Supporters of arms control, as well as some of President Obama’s closest advisers, say their hopes for the president’s vision have turned to baffled disappointment as the modernization of nuclear capabilities has become an end unto itself.

“A lot of it is hard to explain,” said Sam Nunn, the former senator whose writings on nuclear disarmament deeply influenced Mr. Obama. “The president’s vision was a significant change in direction. But the process has preserved the status quo.”

With Russia on the warpath, China pressing its own territorial claims and Pakistan expanding its arsenal, the overall chances for Mr. Obama’s legacy of disarmament look increasingly dim, analysts say. Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington’s escalating confrontation with Moscow.

“The most fundamental game changer is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” said Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top nuclear adviser in his first term and now a scholar at Harvard. “That has made any measure to reduce the stockpile unilaterally politically impossible.”

That suits hawks just fine. They see the investments as putting the United States in a stronger position if a new arms race breaks out. In fact, the renovated plants that Mr. Obama has approved for a smaller force of more precise, reliable weapons could, under a different president, let the arsenal expand rapidly.

Arms controllers say the White House has made some progress toward Mr. Obama’s broader agenda. Mr. Nunn credits the president with improving nuclear security around the globe, persuading other leaders to sweep up loose nuclear materials that terrorists could seize.

In the end, however, budget realities may do more than nuclear philosophies to curb the atomic upgrades. “There isn’t enough money,” said Jeffrey Lewis, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, an expert on the modernization effort. “You’re going to get a train wreck.”

While the Kansas City plant is considered a success — it opened ahead of schedule and under budget — other planned renovations are mired in delays and cost overruns. Even so, Congress can fight hard for projects that represent big-ticket items in important districts.

Skeptics say that the arsenal is already dependable and that the costly overhauls are aimed less at arms control than at seeking votes and attracting top talent, people who might otherwise gravitate to other fields.

But the Obama administration insists that the improvements to the nuclear arsenal are vital to making it smaller, more flexible and better able to fulfill Mr. Obama’s original vision.

Daniel B. Poneman, the departing deputy secretary of energy, whose department runs the complex, said, “The whole design of the modernization enables us to make reductions.”

A Farewell to Arms

In the fall of 2008, as Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency, a coalition of peace groups sued to halt work on a replacement bomb plant in Kansas City. They cited the prospect of a new administration that might, as one litigant put it, kill the project in “a few months.”

The Kansas City plant, an initiative of the Bush years, seemed like a good target, since Mr. Obama had declared his support for nuclear disarmament.

The $700 million weapons plant survived. But in April 2009, the new president and his Russian counterpart, Dmitri A. Medvedev, vowed to rapidly complete an arms treaty called New Start, and committed their nations “to achieving a nuclear-free world.”

Five days later, Mr. Obama spoke in Prague to a cheering throng, saying the United States had a moral responsibility to seek the “security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

“I’m not naïve,” he added. “This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence.”

That October, the Nobel committee, citing his disarmament efforts, announced it would award Mr. Obama the Peace Prize.

The accord with Moscow was hammered out quickly. The countries agreed to cut strategic arms by roughly 30 percent — from 2,200 to 1,550 deployed weapons apiece — over seven years. It was a modest step. The Russian arsenal was already declining, and today has dropped below the agreed number, military experts say.

Even so, to win Senate approval of the treaty, Mr. Obama struck a deal with Republicans in 2010 that would set the country’s nuclear agenda for decades to come.

Republicans objected to the treaty unless the president agreed to an aggressive rehabilitation of American nuclear forces and manufacturing sites. Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, led the opposition. He likened the bomb complex to a rundown garage — a description some in the administration considered accurate.

Under fire, the administration promised to add $14 billion over a decade for atomic renovations. Then Senator Kyl refused to conclude a deal.

Facing the possible defeat of his first major treaty, Mr. Obama and the floor manager for the effort, Senator John Kerry, now the secretary of state, set up a war room and made deals to widen Republican support. In late December, the five-week campaign paid off, although the 71-to-26 vote represented the smallest margin ever for the ratification of a nuclear pact between Washington and Moscow.

The Democrats were unanimous in favor, their ranks including six senators with atomic plants in their states. Among the Republicans joining the Democrats were Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, both of Tennessee and both strong backers of modernization. (“We’re glad to have the thousands of jobs,” Mr. Alexander said recently in announcing financing for a new plant.)

In open and classified reports to Congress, Mr. Obama laid out his atomic refurbishment plans, which the Congressional Budget Office now estimates will cost $355 billion dollars over the next decade. But that is just the start. The price tag will soar after 10 years as missiles, bombers and submarines made in the last century reach the end of their useful lives and replacements are built.

“That’s where all the big money is,” Ashton B. Carter, the former deputy secretary of defense, said last year. “By comparison, everything that we’re doing now is cheap.”

A Wave of Modernization

The money is flowing into a sprawling complex for making warheads that includes eight major plants and laboratories employing more than 40,000 people. Its oldest elements, some dating to 1943, have long struggled with fires, explosions and workplace injuries. This March, a concrete roof collapsed in Tennessee. More recently, chunks of ceiling clattered down a stairwell there, and employees were told to wear hard hats.

“It’s deplorable,” Representative Chuck Fleischmann, Republican of Tennessee, said at an April hearing. Equipment, he added, “breaks down on a daily basis.”

In some ways, the challenge is similar to what Detroit’s auto industry faces: Does it make sense to pour money into old structures or build new ones that are more secure, are fully computerized and adhere to modern environmental standards?

And if the government chooses the latter course, how does it justify that investment if the president’s avowed policy is to wean the world off nuclear arms?

The old bomb plant in Kansas City embodies the dilemma. It was built in World War II to produce aircraft engines and went nuclear in 1949, making the mechanical and electrical parts for warheads.

But a river flooded it repeatedly, and in the past year it was gradually shut down. Today, visitors see tacky furniture, old machinery and floors caked with mud.

Its replacement, eight miles south, sits on higher ground. Its five buildings hold 2,700 employees — just like the old plant — but officials say it uses half the energy, saving about $150 million annually. Everything is bright and modern, from the sleek lobby and cafeteria to the fitness center. Clean rooms for delicate manufacturing have tighter dust standards than hospital operating rooms.

It is called the National Security Campus, evoking a college rather than a factory for weapons that can pound cities into radioactive dust.

Rick L. Lavelock, a senior plant manager, said during a tour in July that employees had a “very great sense of mission” in keeping the arsenal safe and reliable.

Their main job now is extending the life of a nearly 40-year-old submarine warhead called the W-76. Drawing on thousands of parts, they seek to make it last 60 years — three times as long as originally planned.

The warhead’s new guts, a colorful assortment of electronic and mechanical parts, lay alongside a shiny nose cone on a metal table outside an assembly hall.

The last stop on the tour was a giant storage room. Mr. Lavelock said it covered 60,000 square feet — bigger than a football field. Laughing, he likened it to the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” scene showing a vast federal warehouse that seemed to go on forever.

If the Kansas City plant is the crown jewel of the modernization effort, other projects are reminders of how many billions have yet to be spent, and how even facilities completed successfully can go awry.

At Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb, plans for a new complex to shape plutonium fuel emerged a decade ago with a $660 million price tag. But antinuclear groups kept publicizing embarrassing details, like the discovery of a geologic fault under the site. The estimated cost soared to $5.8 billion, and in 2012, the Obama administration suspended the project.

A different problem hit the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. A $550 million fortress was erected there to safeguard the nation’s main supplies of highly enriched uranium, a bomb fuel considered relatively easy for terrorists to make into deadly weapons.

In 2012, an 82-year-old Roman Catholic nun, Megan Rice, and two accomplices cut through fences, splashed blood on the stronghold and sprayed its walls with peace slogans. The security breach set off major investigations, and the nun was sentenced to almost three years in prison.

Now, the site’s woes have deepened. As Oak Ridge prepared for an even bigger upgrade — replacing buildings that process uranium — the price tag soared from $6.5 billion to $19 billion. This year, the Obama administration scuttled the current plan, and the lab is struggling to revise the blueprint.

Robert Alvarez, a policy adviser to the energy secretary during the Clinton administration, recently wrote in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Oak Ridge was the “poster child” of a dysfunctional nuclear complex.

Across the nation, 21 major upgrades have been approved and 36 more proposed, according to the Government Accountability Office. In nearly two dozen reports over five years, the congressional investigators have described the modernization push as poorly managed and financially unaccountable.

They recently warned — in typically understated language — that the managers of the atomic complex had repeatedly omitted and underestimated billions of dollars in costs, leaving the plan with “less funding than will be needed.”

The Military Deployments

The Obama administration says it sees no contradiction between rebuilding the nation’s atomic complex and the president’s vow to make the world less dependent on nuclear arms.

“While we still have weapons, the most important thing is to make sure they are safe, secure and reliable,” said Mr. Poneman, the deputy energy secretary. The improvements, he said, have reassured allies. “It’s important to our extended deterrent,” he said, referring to the American nuclear umbrella over nations in Asia and the Middle East, which has instilled a sense of military security and kept many from building their own arsenals.

The administration has told the Pentagon to plan for 12 new missile submarines, up to 100 new bombers and 400 land-based missiles, either new or refurbished. Manufacturing costs for these forces, if approved, will peak between 2024 and 2029, according to a recent study by Dr. Lewis and colleagues at the Monterey Institute.

It estimated the total cost of the nuclear enterprise over the next three decades at roughly $900 billion to $1.1 trillion. Policy makers, the report said, “are only now beginning to appreciate the full scope of these procurement costs.”

Nonetheless, lobbying for the new forces is heating up, with military officials often eager to show off dilapidated gear. In April, a “60 Minutes” segment featured a tour of aging missile silos. Officials pointed out antiquated phones, broken doors, a missile damaged from water leaks and an old computer that relied on enormous diskettes.

The looming crackup between trillion-dollar plans and tight budgets is starting to get Washington’s attention. Modernization delays are multiplying and cost estimates are rising. Panels of experts are bluntly describing the current path as unacceptable.

A new generation of missiles, bombers and submarines “is unaffordable,” a bipartisan, independent panel commissioned by Congress and the Defense Department declared in July. Its 10 experts, including former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, echoed other estimates in putting the cost at up to $1 trillion.

The overall investment, the panel said, “would likely come at the expense of needed improvements in conventional forces.”

In August, the White House announced it was reviewing the atomic spending plans in preparation for next year’s budget request to Congress, which will set federal spending for 2016.

“This is Obama’s legacy budget,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic’s political delicacy. “It’s his last chance to make the hard choices and prioritize.”

Already, the administration has delayed plans for the Navy’s new submarines, the atomic certification of new bombers and a new generation of warheads meant to fit more than one delivery system. And debate is rising on whether to ax production of the air-launched cruise missile, a new nuclear weapon for bombers, its cost estimated at some $30 billion.

One of the most dramatic calls for reductions came from Chuck Hagel shortly before he became defense secretary last year. He signed a study, headed by retired Gen. James Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that proposed cutting the nuclear arsenal to 900 warheads and eliminating most of the 3,500 weapons in storage. The nation’s military plan, the study concluded, “artificially sustains nuclear stockpiles that are much larger than required for deterrence today.”

In a speech in Berlin last year, the president said he would cut the arsenal to roughly 1,000 weapons — but only as part of a broader deal requiring Russian reductions. So far, the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has shown no interest, and Mr. Obama has made clear he will not cut weapons unilaterally. Unless either man changes his approach, the president’s legacy will be one of modest nuclear cuts and a significantly modernized atomic complex.

“I could imagine Putin might well decide it’s in his interest to seek more cuts,” said Rose Gottemoeller, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, and the country’s top arms negotiator. “I don’t discard the notion we could do it again.”

Few of her colleagues are so optimistic. They predict that if Mr. Obama is to achieve the kind of vision he entered office with, he will have to act alone.

Iranian talks with Saudi Arabia may signal thaw in relations
Reuters in Dubai
The Guardian, Monday 22 September 2014 05.15 EDT

(In the House of Saud, they now say, “The enemy of my enemy was my friend until they became my enemy and made my other enemy a friend who is still an enemy of my other friend, the USA.”…got it? Good for you. You couldn’t make this crap up.-LS)

Iran and Saudi Arabia have held their first foreign minister-level meeting since the 2013 election of President Hassan Rouhani, official Iranian media have reported, signalling a possible thaw in relations between the rival Gulf powers.

Shia Muslim Iran and the conservative Sunni kingdom have been engaged in a bitter contest for influence in the region, evident in political and military struggles in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen.

The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, suggested after his meeting in New York with his Saudi counterpart, Prince Saud al-Faisal, that the talks could lead to an improvement in relations.

“Both my Saudi counterpart and I believe that this meeting will be the first page of a new chapter in our two countries’ relations,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted Zarif as saying.

“We hope that this new chapter will be effective in establishing regional and global peace and security and will safeguard the interests of Muslim nations across the world.“

IRNA reported that Prince Saud, in a reference to the advance of Islamic State (Isis) militants in Iraq and Syria, said he was aware of the sensitivity of the situation.

“We are aware of the importance and sensitivity of this crisis and the opportunity we have ahead of us. We believe that by using this precious opportunity and avoid the mistakes of the past, we can deal with this crisis successfully,” he said.

“These two countries are influential in the region and cooperation between them will have clear effects on the establishment of regional and global security.“

US Reportedly Providing Indirect Military Aid to Hezbollah
By Ari Yashar date 9/22/2014 Via Israel National News

(Yet another reason for the US military to sit this one out.-LS)

Hezbollah PR chief gives rare interview about group’s quest for legitimacy, as Lebanese experts reveal US cooperating covertly against ISIS.

Mohammed Afif, the new head of public relations for the Lebanese-based Iranian-backed terror organization Hezbollah, gave a rare New York Times interview as Lebanese experts reveal his group is indirectly receiving American intelligence aid in its fight against Islamic State (ISIS).

Following ISIS’s temporary conquest of Arsal last month on the Lebanese side of the Syrian border, the US sent new weapons to the Lebanese army, which coordinates with Hezbollah. Likewise, US intelligence has found its way to Hezbollah according to Lebanese experts.

That leaked intelligence may explain some recent impressive achievements against ISIS, including the first known Hezbollah drone strike.

It is worth noting by contrast to the blasé indirect provision of intelligence and weapons to a terror group in Lebanon, during Operation Protective Edge US President Barack Obama blocked a routine Hellfire missile shipment to Israel and ordered strict supervision on future transfers.

Afif told the American newspaper “we need to open up a new page with the world media, with the Arabs and internationally,” hinting at the international legitimacy he hopes to achieve for the terror group under his role as media adviser to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Nasrallah recently expressed his fears of the ISIS “monster,” calling the fight with the group “a battle of life and death no less important than fighting the Israeli enemy, as (ISIS) actions and objectives only serve Israel.” Indeed Hezbollah has called to wipe out Israel numerous times, and fought terror wars against the Jewish state.

Ali Rizk, a Lebanese analyst at the pro-Hezbollah Al-Mayadeen news channel, told the New York Times that while the US cannot publicly ally with the terrorist organization Hezbollah, “what happens underneath is something totally different.”

Justifying the aid, Rizk said “Hezbollah is not representing an imminent threat against the world. It represents a threat against Israel, as Israel represents a threat against Lebanon. But Hezbollah is not going to threaten the US and Europe. Nobody said Hezbollah is cutting off heads.”

While Hezbollah may be benefiting indirectly from the US, it remains antagonistic to America over Syria, where it has joined Iran in supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad against the very rebels the US is arming. However, the ISIS threat has indeed raised talk that the US may even join forces with Hezbollah’s sponsor Iran.

Afif blamed Americans for causing ISIS by supporting Syrian rebels, saying “this beast which you raised up, as in past cases, you find it’s dangerous for you.”

(As one commentor said, “I would think direct intelligence from the White House would be impossible.”-LS)

Netanyahu warns of easing sanctions on Iran – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Kerry, Zarif meet for talks on nuclear program, also possibly discuss Islamic State group, as Netanyahu warns not to appease Iran to fight Islamic threat.

Noam (Dabul) Dvir, AFP

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday warned the West against easing sanctions on Iran to win its support in the fight against jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

He made the comments US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamad Javad Zarif for talks expected to focus on the prospects of reaching an agreement on reducing Tehran’s atomic activities in exchange for an end to nuclear-related sanctions on the Tehran.

Zarif with Kerry (Archive: Reuters)

Their meeting Sunday comes on the third day of the latest round of nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers – the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

As the Islamic republic and six world powers started a new round of talks in New York, Netanyahu said “respected commentators in the West” were counseling a softer approach on Iran to enlist Tehran in an alliance against Islamic State militants.

“I know what Begin would have said…They are fighting the IS out of their own interest,” he told an audience in Jerusalem’s Begin Center, which was marking ten years of activites.

“They are struggling over who will be leader of the Islamist world which they seek to impose on the whole world,” he said, referring to Iran.

Israel bitterly opposed an interim deal which world powers struck with Tehran last November, paving the way for talks on a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s future nuclear activities.

Iran and the six powers – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany – are meeting at United Nations headquarters on the sidelines of the General Assembly.

Israel has refused to rule out military action against Iranian nuclear facilities to prevent any possibility of it developing the technology for an atomic bomb.

Putin ‘privately threatened to invade Poland, Romania and the Baltic states’
By Justin Huggler 18 Sep 2014 Via The Telegraph

(Joe Biden to Putin: ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.’.-LS)

President Vladimir Putin privately threatened to invade Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, according to a record of a conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart.

“If I wanted, in two days I could have Russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw and Bucharest,” Mr Putin allegedly told President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, reported Süddeustche Zeitung, a German newspaper.

If true, this would be the first time that Mr Putin has threatened to invade Nato or EU members. Any threat to send Russian troops into the capitals of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Romania would cause grave alarm among Western leaders.

If Mr Putin were to act on this, Britain could find itself at war with Russia. All five countries mentioned in this alleged conversation are members of both the EU and Nato. They are covered by the security guarantee in Article V of Nato’s founding treaty, which states that “an attack on one is an attack on all”. In a speech in Tallinn earlier this month, President Barack Obama confirmed Nato’s commitment to this doctrine.

Mr Putin’s alleged threat bears similarities to remarks he made to Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, in which he warned: “If I want to, I can take Kiev in two weeks”.

Süddeustche Zeitung claims to have seen a European Union memorandum of a meeting between Mr Barroso and Mr Poroshenko in Kiev last week, during which the latter is said to have described Mr Putin’s threat.

The Russian president made these remarks in series of telephone conversations with Mr Poroshenko over the current ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.

Mr Putin also warned Mr Poroshenko not to put too much faith in the EU, saying that Russia could exert its influence and bring about a “blocking minority” among member states.

On Tuesday, Ukraine ratified a historic Association Agreement with the EU, placing the country on the path towards eventual EU membership. It was the refusal of the former president, Viktor Yanukovych, to sign this agreement last year that triggered the Ukraine crisis.

The EU recently announced further sanctions against Russia, focusing on the energy, financial and arms sectors. But there have been divisions among member states over sanctions, with many worried about the impact on their own economies.

The Baltic states are particularly nervous about Russian intentions, and Mr Obama sought to reassure them with his speech in Tallinn earlier this month.

“If you ever ask again ‘Who will come to help?’ you’ll know the answer: the Nato alliance, including the armed forces of the United States of America,” he said. “We’ll be here for Estonia. We will be here for Latvia. We will be here for Lithuania.”

Mr Poroshenko is the only alleged source for Mr Putin’s latest threat, and there will be concerns he might be motivated to exaggerate in order to strengthen EU and Nato support for Ukraine.

The European Commission refused to confirm or deny whether Mr Barroso had held such a conversation with Mr Poroshenko. “We will not conduct diplomacy in the press or discuss extracts of confidential conversations,” said Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, the Commission spokesperson. “What matters to the EU and the Commission is to contribute to lasting peace, stability and prosperity in Ukraine.”