It is true, defense budgets increased in real terms about 60% since 2000. But the cost of keeping a soldier has dramatically increased as health care, operations, maintenance, and support costs have gone up. That is the cost of modern defense. And weapons systems have also increased, often in unit costs but also in maintenance, especially as total purchases have declined or when contracts are terminated early. But each modern plane, missile or satellite does far more now than what it is replacing.

So why, over the next decade, must the nation’s security get pummeled while welfare and “entitlement” recipients and government bureaucrats—at all levels—continue to get trillions?

For example, from FY09-16, the February 2011 budget of the administration calls for defense, veterans and Homeland Security—the so-called defense accounts to increase $50 billion collectively, compared to the FY09 baseline. That’s right–$50 billion, just a few billion more than some negotiators were pushing to increase just the Pell Grants.

But overall, spending from the fiscal year 09 baseline for everything else goes up $7 trillion cumulatively OVER the baseline of $3 trillion which this administration inherited.

By FY2016, the administration plans presented to Congress in early 2011 would have kept defense, homeland defense and veterans nearly flat, but overall government spending would go to $4.467 trillion. Why then, in deficit reduction, should defense account for at least 70-80% of the reduction in spending, even as deficits continue to soar? And this does not count any reductions in the spending related to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Remember, the Democrats proposed $500 billion in Medicare cuts to hospitals and doctors and $400 billion more from defense (this was the administration’s budget redo in April in 2011). This was over ten years. The doc-fix has eliminated the arbitrary reduction in Medicare payments and the defense cuts were adopted as part of the August 2011 debt deal.

In reality, what incentive did the administration have to avoid a sequestration? Doing nothing gets the cuts they had been seeking—defense and docs taking it in the shorts. Our security goes off a cliff and some doctors and hospitals go out of business.

One caveat is in order: the House has been able to construct a firewall between security and non-security spending for 2012-13. The only way to prevent a catastrophic attack on our security is to change policy in 2013. That is, of course, what the election in 2012 will be all about.

The debate is not over; it is actually just beginning. The Tea Party folks should be commended. They began this much needed conversation and debate. But we are going to have at least a few debates early in 2012 on the same issues: (1) when the budget is presented that avoids the realities of sequestration; (2) when the two month extension of the payroll tax holiday expires; and (3) when the administration requests another increase of $1.2 trillion in the debt limit. Chris Christie was right—is anybody leading around here?

Some will insist that we can afford to be romanced by the opponents of sound defense spending, including friends of Barney Frank and Ron Paul, who joined together to propose a $1 trillion hit on defense, including decimating missile defense and nuclear deterrence. As the debate unfolds, the drive-bys will tell us that “Yes, everything is on the table” but there has to be a “balanced” way out of this. Behind closed doors, they will put a gun to our heads and say, once again, we will kill the defense department if you do not agree to–guess what?–raise taxes, AND of course defense will be cut anyway (they might adopt Bowles-Simpson and the Commissions proposed defense cuts of $886 billion). And perhaps cuts to Medicare providers will be included. That will be called entitlement reform! But they will do nothing to reform the growth in health care, which the new Wyden-Ryan health care plan would do.

The debate in 2012 will be fierce. But we should understand what it is about. The deal being pushed by some could be disastrous for the country and our nation’s national security. And we will be asked to raise taxes so the welfare state stays intact. Remember, while spending hits $4.5 trillion in FY16 if the administration’s projected February budget numbers are not changed, that number goes to $5.7 trillion four years after that.

Now the August 2011 deal does limit defense cuts to no more than $450 billion out of the initial $900+ billion in cuts over ten years. Security spending such as homeland defense, veterans, and the nuclear portions of the energy department and foreign operation funding in the Department of State will take the rest of the cuts required but there is serious doubts such cuts will be done. Fiscal year 2012 and 2013 defense cuts may not be as severe as they could be. But that is just the pause before the crash.

If so, our adversaries get their wish. But we do the job on ourselves! We kill the “capitalist system” in the US, wipe out America’s defenses, cripple America’s power, and substitute for the “last best hope of mankind” a kind of modified leftist banana republic, in full retreat and broke, looking more and more like Greece.

First, Mr. King apparently does not understand how defense spending can be increased by $30 billion a year as Governor Romney proposes, while other spending declines. It’s called setting priorities.

Second, Mr. King says there have been no defense cuts under this administration, as a rebuke to Mr. Romney’s concern with “massive defense cuts”. Again. King is wrong. He even admits defense is projected to decline by at least 6% over the next five year defense agreement which is precisely the $30 billion a year Mr. Romney would add back into the defense budget of the United States.

Third, defense spending is projected to decline even more than the funds Romney wants to add back into the defense budget. For example, in the 2009 budget, the administration cut $330 billion in weapons acquisition. In 2011, another $175 billion was cut under the guideline of “efficiencies”. And in August, the administration insisted that another $450 billion over the next ten years be eliminated from defense and security spending as part of the new debt limitation agreement. That comes to nearly $1 trillion in defense cuts.

Fourth, all of this does not include the potential for another $600 billion that could be cut from defense if sequestration occurs, a doomsday possibility the administration insisted be part of the debt deal as a backdoor means of blackmailing Congress to massively increase taxes as an alternative.

It should be noted that over the 8 year period from 2009-2016, the February budget ten year plan of the administration shows that defense, the coast guard portion of homeland security, veterans, some state department work, and the nuclear weapons portion of the energy department rose only $50 billion from their FY2009 base. That does not even cover the cost of inflation and hardly constitutes the source of the more than $1 trillion annual increase in the deficit for the past three years.

Fifth, the defense base budget will come in for Fiscal Year 2012 at somewhere between $500-510 billion, roughly the numbers now agreed to by the Senate and House Defense Appropriations Subcommittees, a reduction of $20 billion from the FY2011 baseline. Defense spending as a percent of GDP averaged 5.3% over the past half century, but now the projected spending will fall to just over 3%, half the level at the height of the Cold War and a third of the level at the height of Vietnam.

Sixth, while the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq and other global counter terrorist efforts would add another $118 billion to FY2012 spending, this cost is both $40 billion lower than FY2012, another fact Mr. King neglects to tell his readers, and projected to decline rapidly.

Mr. King quotes former Governor and Ambassador Huntsman as equating more defense spending with more “military entanglements”, making sure the Journal’s readers draw the proper conclusions from Mr. Romney’s remarks. However, Mr. King forgets his history, so intent is he on slamming Mr. Romney. Is Mr. King unfamiliar with the notion of “deterrence”? Can he give us past examples of where America’s military strength invited attack?

In reality, there are numerous times when American weakness invited attack. For example, in 1949, the US Congress cut the defense budget request of President Truman from $11 billion to $7 billion. By one vote, Congress also turned down providing the Republic of Korea economic and military assistance of $150 million.

At the time, our intelligence community, too, reassured the country that no war in the Far East was probable. They assured the White House that the Soviet Union and China had to coordinate an attack by North Korea for it to go forward and they had no such interest in doing so. So why not cut defense? Sound familiar?

On June 25, 1950, communist North Korea aided by Communist China and Stalin’s Soviet Union, invaded the Republic of Korea. America, unprepared to act, having failed to sustain a modern military, nevertheless came to the assistance of Seoul. The cost was needlessly high. Thirty five thousand American soldiers perished along with millions of Koreans.

Seventh, Mr. King tries to gain support for his bias against Mr. Romney by imputing to the tea party an anti-defense spending fervor. Wrong again, Mr. King. Polls just completed for the Committee for the Common Defense show self-designated tea party supporters overwhelmingly support sustaining and modernizing our US national security capability, including stopping the defense cuts being proposed. They are also more concerned with state-run terrorism than other Americans and more willing to spend what is necessary to defeat it.

When eighteen, I lived in Korea as a college student, one of only a handful of American students to do so over the past century. My Korean host in 1969-70 was also my professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. Hahm Pyong Chun eventually became national security adviser the President of the country. Tragically, he was murdered by North Korea in a terrorist attack in Burma. He always said the North would stop at nothing to reunify the peninsula by force. “We must remain vigilant”, he warned me.

At the end of last year, the highest ranking defector from North Korea, and a former tutor of Kim Jong Il,   passed away. He was given a state funeral in Seoul. In an interview before his death with a  now retired USAF American general officer, he warned that Kim Jong Il, the murderous dictator that runs the North Korean gulag, had developed nuclear weapons to aid another invasion of the south.

A number of recent proposals to cut defense, from organizations on the right–CATO-and on the left–Institute for Policy Studies–include withdrawing US forces from Asia, including the ROK. Should that happen warned Professor Hahm to me some 40 years ago, the North would attack. Now they can use the threat of  nuclear weapons to keep the US from coming to the aid of its ally in Seoul.

Mr. Romney also proposed that we deploy a “full national ballistic missile defense system”, a very wise investment given the current missile threat from North Korea and the emerging threat from Iran. Right now we have 30 missile defense interceptors deployed in Alaska and California to defend against that threat, a reduction from the original planned force of over fifty.

Mr. Romney proposes to build an updated, second generation missile defense for the entire US continent, as the current system does not adequately defend the US east coast nor the gulf region, especially from maritime missile threats that could carry EMP, electromagnetic pulse, type nuclear warheads.

Two Congressional Commissions and numerous other professional analyses have called for such defenses as this threat remains unaddressed. Mr. Romney proposes closing that window of vulnerability. A good thing.

Mr. King may think such proposals are “”dramatic”. Perhaps they are. But if I remember my history, there is indeed something there in the Constitution: “Provide for the Common Defense”.  Remember Mr. King? If you don’t, obviously Mr. Romney does.

What’s his strategy?

That is not to say a “security policy vision” would be easy to frame. At the end of WWII the United States adopted a  “containment” strategy as much as anything else for dealing with the Soviet Union. But it neither ended threats nor achieved “smooth sailing” and in the years after Vietnam, was transformed into peaceful coexistence and detente which became an umbrella under which the Soviet Union expanded its reach around the globe.

Indeed it did take the US time to firm up our post-WW II policy. We organized the US security apparatus into a capable force and secured the eventual establishment of NATO. And we adopted the Breton Woods economic structures after considerable false starts that would propel us into the next forty years of the most extraordinary economic growth in world history. But all would take time.

And just as we were seeking to establish a means of defending ourselves from the threat of communist aggression, we actually largely disarmed after defeating Japan or Germany. Not only did 20 million soldiers come home, but defense budgets were continually slashed. For example, in 1950, the Truman defense budget of $11 billion was slashed by $4 billion by a Republican controlled Congress. In debates eerily similar to what we are hearing today, it was argued the US should pay attention to the home fires, as America concentrated on going to school, starting families, buying new cars and otherwise living the American dream.

In the White House in early 1950, President Truman learned from the intelligence community that North Korea had neither the intention nor capability to invade the Republic of Korea (ROK), nor were China or the Soviet Union interested in helping with such an attack.

At least Harry had a plan…

Just the year before the Congress defeated by one vote a $150 million aid bill for the ROK. No assistance would be forthcoming for the next year. In addition, the US Secretary of State announced that the ROK was beyond America’s defense perimeter.

And just days before the invasion, however, the US CIA station chief in China had learned of the North’s intentions but was unable to get the information to the US in time. This  was early  June 1950.

On June 25, 1950, the communist North with significant help from both the Soviets and the Chinese communists, sent a massive invasion force south, capturing the capital of South Korea. The invasion force swept through Seoul, only 17 miles from the border, and marched south, eventually forcing ROK forces into a shallow perimeter around Pusan on the eastern coast.

That war cost the lives more than 35,000 American soldiers and over 3 million civilian and military deaths among the Korean people. While it saved the now free people of the ROK and prevented the extension of the communist gulag in the north over the entire peninsula, we and our ROK allies had to fight the war initially unprepared and undermanned.

Why should Americans care anymore about Korea?

The highest ranking defector from North Korea told an American military officer at the beginning of the past decade that Kim Jong Il, the tyrant ruling the north, had developed nuclear weapons for the purpose of invading South Korea. The bombs would hold at bay any American defense, keeping hostage American cities with North Korean long range missile.

The North would simply wait until US forces were withdrawn, as is now being proposed by some. Iran, allied with North Korea, is developing longer range and more capable ballistic missiles and remains on the road to develop nuclear weapons.

In this context, most thinking about future US security policy is attempting to justify major cuts in the defense budget without any specific reference to how such proposed levels of spending will bolster American security policy or deal with these looming threats. A war weary country may simply want to come home.  For example, the Bowles-Simpson debt commission report advocated a reduction in US military spending of some $1.2 trillion over the next decade. What risks are they prepared to take? We are not told.

Hmmm….lemme think about that

Similarly, the Sustainable Defense Task Force, brought together by Congressman Barney Frank, also proposed a decade cut of over $1 trillion in defense spending under a general rubric of the US seeking to stay at home and “not seek fights overseas” or “minding our own business” as some have put it.

They propose  what I term the “Sing Kumbaya” security strategy.  Apart from serial assertions of how current US force structure is more capable or greater in numbers than current or any foreseen adversaries’, and that subsequent reductions to levels not seen in half a century or more, the task force is largely silent.

Does the US need a vision, especially in the area of nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence and proliferation policy? Do we have one? And if not, what should it be?

Most administration analysts see US nuclear policy as made of some five elements: (1) arms control with Russia; (2) cleaning up nuclear material under the rubric of he administration’s “Four Year” lock-down; (3) Possible ratification of the CTBT or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; and (4) Deterring or stopping the acquisition of nuclear weapons including a dirty bomb or radiological devices by terrorists intent upon using them against the United States.

Here the story is the good, the bad and the ugly.

Why is this the case?

First, there is too much of America’s nuclear security strategy dominated by existing or potential bi-lateral agreements with Russia;

Second, too much of American strategy depends upon what I call the ricochet strategy, getting country  A to do something by getting country B and C to do something first, and they in turn  do something but only until the US acts correctly first;

Third, there is a disconnect between trying to stop terrorists stealing or gaining control over nuclear material under the assumption that such groups as Al Qaeda, are total independent actors, un-tethered to any state, what Michael Ledeen calls the “terror masters”;

Fourth, following from this is the lack of coherence across the political spectrum of what exactly is the terrorist threat we face with too much attention to individual lone wolf bad actors influenced by social media or internet “appeals to jihad”;

Fifth, Americans want to “win” when it comes to dealing with our enemies, a kind of “get in and get it done” strategy. Unfortunately, there is little understanding of exactly what are US goals and objectives that we are trying to achieve;  and finally,

Sixth, there is little appreciation of the “poisonous coalition” we still face, made up of terror masters states (Iran, Syria and North Korea), their allies, (China, Russia, Venezuela) and their terrorist accomplices (Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad).

One may ask, what’s wrong negotiating a new arms control agreement with Russia?

However useful the new START treaty may be, it does nothing to curtail the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, the two most serious threats we face. And as we reduce our nuclear forces, we may undermine the credibility of that deterrent and push our allies to develop their own independent nuclear forces, thereby undermining non-proliferation. As our numbers come down, the temptation will be to save money by cutting too much and undermining stability in the bargain.

So, too, with the CTBT.  For the treaty to go into effect, Iran and North Korea must ratify it. That is not going to happen. The US ratification of the treaty will not change US policy as we have not tested a nuclear device for two decades. So what do we get?

On the other hand, the four year lock down of nuclear material proposed at the Washington summit is a good roadmap for the future. And the country has made real progress in bringing such material either under lock and key or destroyed. Of particular use has been the transformation  of Russian nuclear material, “megatons” for use in US electrical utilities as “megawatts.

But, the most serious threat we face is the terror state itself, Iran. There, the development of nuclear weapons will be paralleled with the creation of a terror group such as the IRGC, solely dedicated to detonating such a weapon on American soil.

The mullahs are not going to participate in any lock-down of nuclear martial.

This threat requires an overall strategy of strong sanctions and divestment from any business that does commerce with Iran.  We have to build more missile defenses sooner and protect our grid and infrastructure from  EMP. We need a continual offensive strategy of taking down the regime in Tehran through offensive cyber. And we need to defend ourselves through a rigorous use of the proliferation security intuitive. And more than ever, we need an  energy and oil policy strategy including an open–fuel standard that could potentially drive the price of oil to $30 a barrel. Of equal importance must be a positive policy to help the democratic resistance in Syria and Iran.

Thus central to our nuclear policy objectives should be a widespread and creative policy of ending the regime in Iran, as originally passed by the US Congress in 1998 that does remain the law of the land.  And that means not tying such a strategy to whether allies of Iran such as China and Russia, finally deem to give us permission to undertake a needed policy..

According to senior US military leaders, we have forensic evidence the Iranian regime has been arming terrorists in both Afghanistan and Iraq that are attacking and killing American soldiers. We do not need to pass some  “international test” to protect American soldiers! .

The Constitution calls upon American elected leaders to “Provide for the Common Defense”. Whether we do so under the rubric of a vision such as President Reagan’s “Peace Through Strength”,  may very well determine whether the US maintains the strength that deflects tyrants and protects our homeland.  When Reagan explained his vision was “We win, they lose” when it came to the Cold War struggle with the Soviets, most off the Washington press corps had a case of the vapors.

Today, our country’s lack of vision may embolden our enemies and discourage our friends.

Six decades ago, America let down her guard and paid an enormous price in the Korean War. In the decade prior to 9/11, after the end of the Cold War, we underfunded our defense acquisition accounts by fully 40%, assumed it was the end of history and ignored the overseas terror storms that were gathering. Our senior officials said taking down the terror masters “was too hard to do”.

Terrorist Investigations “stopped at the water’s edge”.

Today, even though defense accounts are slated to decline by $800 billion in the decade plus from 2009-2021, further cuts of $1.2 trillion are being recklessly bandied about as if the strength of our defenses has nothing to do with our safety or security.  Since 9/11, we have remained safe from a catastrophic terror attack on our soil, even as our resources devoted to defense and homeland protection rose. That is not a coincidence.

Next time, with nuclear dangers rising, can we afford to be wrong?

Wallop: the independent cowboy spirit

Malcolm Wallop, US senator from 1977-1995 has died. We will surely miss you sir.

I wrote many speeches for him. We argued whether he would dare say what we wrote. He always sent them back, with a notation, “Too weak!”

He was fearful of nothing. In the late 1970’s, he urged his colleagues and then Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan to pursue global missile defenses to protect the United States and its allies. Many thought his ideas impractical. But he was right and they were wrong.

Wallop:  in the heat of battle to protect American security

He spoke brilliantly about the underlying contradiction in the arms control philosophy of the time that sought to protect our security by relying upon the good will of our sworn adversaries.

Long before it was accepted, he always told me that Rush Limbaugh was “the greatest satirist of our time”, perhaps this entire century. He repeatedly warned us of the looming terrorist dangers, especially those from states such as Iran, Libya, Iraq and North Korea.

RIP, Senator

I remember in early 1985, he was the deciding vote in the winning effort in the US Senate to finally approve of the deployment of the Peacekeeper missile it FE Warren USAF base in Wyoming. As he came off the Senate floor, he embraced me. He said, “Thank you”.

After an almost decade long fight with the nuclear freeze advocates, he said, “I think this may be the nail in the coffin of the nuclear freeze”. He then paused, and with that wonderful wry smile and twinkle in his eyes, said: “And in the Soviet Commies, too!”

His farewell speech in the US Senate was a conservative manifesto of the first order—where he identified social security as a Ponzi scheme and warned that our fiscal house was far from being in order. More than anything, he gave us a vision of missile defenses for free peoples everywhere and a strong national defense as an imperative for freedom and liberty.

Now, some 16 years after he left the Senate, the US does have deployed over 1000 interceptors with additional hundreds deployed by our allies and friends.

He won election to the Senate with one of the most effective political ads in history. Gale McGee was the sitting Senator from Wyoming against whom he was running. Gale McGee was a moderate Democrat whom I knew and liked. But even as a moderate Democrat, some felt he was not in touch with the Wyoming voter.

In an ad showing a beautiful evening sunset sky, with the panorama of the Rocky Mountains in the distance, to the music of the Grand Canyon Suite, a lone cowboy on his horse is slowly moving across the landscape.

Clip, clop, clip clop, in rhythm with the wonderful music.

And as the camera moved backward to a larger and larger view, there from the saddle’s pommel extends a rope, dragging behind the horse is a Porta John—the latest requirement of OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, for cowboys working the range and their herds.

We will miss you, Malcolm, and your laughter, your courage and your love of this country. I feel honored to have been touched by your life.

Taking down the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq appeared to recognize the role of states in the threat we face but we never carefully connected the two regimes to the terrorism we faced. Yes, the Taliban gave sanctuary to Al Qaeda and yes Saddam gave support and funding to terrorists. But both efforts soon were transformed into nation-building under the idea that governments at least a modest stone’s throw from some elements of “democracy” might be less hospitable to supporting, training and financing terrorists, especially if these same countries were to develop biological and nuclear weapons with which to surreptitiously attack the United States and its allies.

So America remains confused—why are we in Iraq if Al Qaeda primarily remains in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere? And this is where things got complicated, unnecessarily. The drive-by media had a template or narrative of the origins of the terror attacks against us especially on 9/11. Al Qaeda, we were told endlessly, had grievances against us especially the lack of a Palestinian state.

But 9/11 was an attack not of Al Qaeda operatives, anymore than mob hits are solely the work of “button men”. The earlier World Trade Center attack in 1993 was not an Al Qaeda operation but one connected to Iraq. Saddam wrote checks of $300,000 to Al Qaeda’s number two leader. Also, Iran helped the 9/11 operatives travel unnoticed to and from their training centers, a fact now confirmed by a US court.

And so successive president’s devoted enormous time to the “peace process” which inexplicitly was to include Syria, which is a card-carrying member of the axis of terror that is at war with us! But the terror states do not want peace with us or two states living together—a Palestinian state and the state of Israel. They want to bring us down.

And added to this poisonous brew are the Muslim clerics and Imams and self-appointed leaders who seek to spread the cults of Wahhabism and Khomeinism along with their totalitarian culture we call “sharia”. So we face not only hybrid warfare—those using our vulnerabilities against us. We face a hybrid enemy—states and terror groups. They appear to attack randomly; they claim to be righteous; they claim to represent all Muslims; or they claim a right to hegemonic empire. But their murderous ways are no different than the murderous ways of the original state sponsor of terrorism the Soviet Union. It is also not coincidence that Soviet client states included Syria, Libya and Iraq! And now Iran and Syria, among others.

The liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan can end up of benefit to this country and her allies. The Arab Spring, having grown out of a vegetable cart owner burning himself alive, was not aimed at expanding some Muslim empire over the earth or even the Middle East. It was aimed at the brutal regimes—many of them state sponsors of terrorism—that deny opportunity and liberty to hundreds of millions of people. Whether the future expands liberty or extends the totalitarian darkness of the mullahs in Iran and the clerics in Afghanistan is the great challenge of this new century.

But, I was struck with the fact that the PRC, however, does not pay its debts to the U.S.

Several decades ago, China sold sovereign bonds worldwide to investors in many nations. They sold tens of thousands of these bonds on U.S. soil to American citizens on the recommendation of our government, indicating it was a solid investment.

Over the last sixty years, China has refused to pay to these bondholders either the principal or interest on these full faith and credit sovereign bonds. (To say nothing of the hundreds of billions also owed to US artists from unpaid royalties on the more recent sale of pirated CD’s and videos).

In 1987, threatened with being kept out of the British financial markets, China acknowledged the debt. As part of the Great Britain-PRC agreement on Hong Kong, the PRC agreed to pay its debt to British citizens who owned these same bonds. By paying the British bondholders, but no other owners worldwide, including U.S. bondholders, China “selectively defaulted” on these bonds.

Standard and Poor’s claims it does not have to find the PRC in selective default because under their view of things, it is their first amendment right NOT to discuss certain things or take such things up. Well, not so fast, boys and girls.

Under the rules, they are granted a license by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States to be a nationally recognized statistical rating organization (NRSRO), a charter to assess the risk of investing in sovereign and corporate debt, stocks, or bonds. The “selective default” of the PRC must be acknowledged, in that the metrics used by the NRSRO organizations that they themselves have promised to follow as part of their license agreement includes just such a requirement. Now this would cause the PRC to have to pay considerably more to finance its debt than it does now.

But because everyone thinks the PRC is the strong economic horse, S&P fudges this issue big time and does a disservice to the American people. It is as if you could pay a credit agency to write-up your credit score according to your own rules! Well, wouldn’t that be nice!

Our fiscal house needs to be put in order, true. But currently, the People’s Republic of China owes a debt of over $750 billion to American citizens who are holding these full faith and credit sovereign bonds (many of them denominated in gold) sold to them by the Republic of China. Worldwide, the debt China owes to all bondholders is estimated to be several trillion dollars.

The debt owed to the American people should be paid. The US government could dollar for dollar offset bond interest we owe China with interest, principal and penalties China owes us.

That would be $750 billion. Split 10 to 1, the US taxpayer saves $700 billion in debt payments and the bond holders receive the balance. As part of the deal, each state could receive badly needed investment funds as well.

And we could contribute significantly over a period of years to reduced U.S. debt. That could even be part of the upcoming budget and debt agreement, paid down over a period of years.

Yes, America pays its debts. Now let’s ensure China does too.

While this ‘investment” includes the US Coast Guard and infrastructure and cyber protection programs of the Department of Homeland Security, Veterans Administration costs, nuclear deterrent programs within the Department of Energy as well as the Department of Defense, it has to be compared to the rest of the US Government. There, we are spending $3 trillion.

Now the bad news and the real bad news. After FY13, which ends September 30, 2013, the next administration will be faced with finding nearly an additional $350 billion in defense and security cuts over the eight years ending in 2021. At that time, if spending planned for this coming year simply stayed the same for another decade, we would have cumulatively spent $6.840 trillion (FY12-21). If the cuts materialize, we will spend about $6.5 trillion, but with no allowance for either inflation or the increased costs of operations and maintenance, health care and benefits for our soldiers. That is the bad news.

If Congress and the administration fail to come to an agreement on the next phase of spending reductions, then fully $500 billion, or half the required sequestration, comes out of defense. Some commentators have been absolutely giddy at such prospects. But $500 billion out of the remaining eight years would put national security spending at six trillion for the decade. That would require cutting tens of thousands of troops or decimate the acquisition accounts. Or return the US military to the “hollow” military of the 1970’s where ships could not steam, planes could not fly, troops were untrained, morale was bad, and the US was in retreat from the world. Remember in the wonderful decade of the 1970s, some 18 nations disappeared behind the totalitarian curtain of the Soviet Union’s empire.

This is the real bad news. And it is punctuated by the complete lack of any security strategy that is to inform those required to protect our security. What security interests are we going to jettison? What allies will we no longer protect? What WMD proliferation threats will we no longer be able to contain?

In short, there is no strategy that tells us we can cut nearly $1 trillion from the national security accounts of the country. While accounting for one-sixth of the nation’s budget, fully fifty percent of the spending cuts come from defense. That certainly gives new meaning to the idea of “balance”!

Some suggest this will be relatively easy. Just withdraw our forces from Korea, for example. Yes and invite an invasion by Pyongyang. The most senior defector from the North told the world last October the prime goal of Kim Jong IL remains to reunify the Korean peninsula. How you ask? Once the US leaves, by force of arms. And to prevent the US from coming back to defend Seoul through the use of nuclear weapons.

Others suggest we eliminate missile defense programs. But what ally and what contingent of US soldiers should we leave unprotected? Do we leave our Persian Gulf allies perfectly vulnerable to Iranian ballistic missiles? Happy to pay $100 for a barrel of oil? Get rid of these defenses and we can see oil go to $150 a barrel again and perhaps even $200. That certainly will help the US economic recovery.

Or we could eliminate more nuclear weapons, right? Well, what country over whose territory extends our nuclear umbrella should we abandon? How many more nuclear weapons states should we invite onto the world stage? How many bandit countries with nuclear weapons such as North Korea, and an aspiring Iran, will be added to our security concerns?

The Constitution explicitly calls us “To Provide for the Common Defense”. We spend, however, more on National Public Radio than we do modernizing our Minuteman missile nuclear deterrent. We annually spend more feeding and caring for wild horses on our public lands than we will this year on a new strategic bomber.

International trade was a few hundreds of billions in the 1960s when John Kennedy assumed office. Just between the US and the rest of the world, it now exceeds $3 trillion. Does anyone believe that our Navy, now near 250 ships compared to nearly 600 during the administration of President Reagan, has “militarized” the oceans—as opposed to protecting international commerce—yet we have many pushing for greater restrictions on the use of space by the United States. How often have we heard the fortune cookie analysis” “Don’t militarize space!”

According to General Martin Dempsey, President Obama’s nominee to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it would be “extraordinarily difficult and very high risk” to cut $800 billion from defense spending. General Dempsey accurately points out that “national security didn’t cause the debt crisis nor will it solve it.”

This sentiment was underscored by four senior military officers at a HASC Readiness Subcommittee hearing Wednesday where all four leaders said they are “currently unable to meet all the needs of the military’s regional combatant commanders.” The Vice Chiefs and the Assistant Commandant all stated on the record that they could not withstand additional, significant defense cuts without fundamentally altering force structure and strategy.

Certainly we should have a debate on the subject before risking such defense cuts. As I have written previously, defense and all national security accounts were slated to increase only by $50 billion from 2009 and 2016. During that period of time, the United States government would increase overall spending by $1.5 trillion annually.

Let me repeat that. Go to the administration’s February budget request. Spending in 2016 reaches $4.467 trillion, compared to 2008 spending of $2.982 trillion. Defense and national security spending accounts for $50 billion of that $1.485 trillion increase, or 1/3^rd of one percent.  But to get our fiscal house in order, the new plan is for spending that accounts for less than 1% of projected spending increases gets it in the shorts for fully 50% of all reduced spending.

Looked at another way; since 2009, the US government has spent $10.8 trillion. By 2016, that number is projected to climb by another $16.2 trillion on top of the $10.8 trillion. So eight years, $27 trillion more in spending, of which $10 trillion was to be borrowed. We now are going to borrow $8 trillion. But of the $20 trillion in non-security spending the US government was scheduled to shell out in just the eight years from 2009-16, $1 trillion will be cut. Maybe. Five percent. That is balanced in Washington.

**(Remember none of these numbers include the overseas global war against terrorism or Overseas Contingency Operations which are scheduled to decline in costs $40 billion this coming year and at least some $700 billion over the coming decade).

It is true, defense budgets have roughly doubled since 2000. The cost of keeping a soldier has dramatically increased as health care, operations, maintenance and support costs have gone up. That is the cost of modern defense. And weapons systems have also increased, often in unit costs but also in maintenance. But each modern plane, missile or satellite does far more now than what it is replacing.

So why over the next half decade, must the nation’s security get pummeled while welfare recipients and government bureaucrats—at all levels—continue to get billions, even trillions?

For example, from FY09-16, the February budget of the administration calls for defense, veterans and Homeland Security—the so-called defense accounts to increase $50 billion collectively, compared to the FY09 baseline. That’s right–$50 billion, just a few billion more than some negotiators were pushing to increase just the Pell Grants.

But overall, spending from the fiscal year 09 baseline for everything else goes up $7 trillion cumulatively OVER the baseline of $3 trillion which this administration inherited.

For FY09-FY12 the spending overall goes up $2.5 trillion over the baseline inherited even if FY12 spending is $100B less than FY11 as projected in the PBR in February.

By FY2016, the administration will keep defense, homeland defense and veterans nearly flat, but overall government pending goes from $3 trillion to $4.467 trillion. Why then in deficit reduction should defense account for 50% of the reduction in spending even as deficits continue to soar?

Remember, the Democrats proposed $500 billion in Medicare cuts to hospitals and doctors and $400 billion more from defense (this was the administration’s budget redo in April). This was over then years.

Add to that interest saved and guess what? We get $1.2 trillion!! This is similar to the revenue sequestered under the “trigger” being considered by the debt limit bill should there be no deal after October 1 but before Thanksgiving.

So if the administration simply obstructs a deal, they could get the cuts they have been proposing. Our security goes off a cliff and doctors and hospitals go out of business. One caveat is in order: the House has been able to construct a firewall between security and non-security spending for 2012-13. The only way to prevent a catastrophic attack on our security is to change policy in 2013. That is, of course, what the election in 2012 will be all about. This agreement, whatever the details are, does not change that.

The debate is not over; it is actually just beginning. The Tea Party folks should be commended. They began this much needed conversation and debate.

But we will be romanced by the opponents of sound defense spending. We will be told in the post October 1 debate, “Yes everything is on the table but there has to be a “balanced” way out of this. Behind closed doors, they will put a gun to our heads and say we will kill the defense department if you do not agree to–guess what?–raise taxes AND of course defense will be cut  anyway (they will adopt Bowles-Simpson and the Commissions proposed defense cuts of $886 billion). And perhaps cuts to Medicare providers will be included. That will be called entitlement reform!

The administration might get a bill on their desk that keeps the Bush tax rates just where they are. But what if they veto the bill? If sustained, they get somewhere around $1.8 trillion according to a bogus chart published by the Boston Globe (read New York Times). This is the number (over a decade) they assume will equal the revenue raised if all the Bush tax rate reductions are allowed to expire. No bad economic impacts will occur, of course.

Now, add this to the $2.5 trillion now agreed to, albeit in two steps, and presto, there is your magic $4 trillion.

They may have lost the argument for the first series of cuts that protect defense and taxpayers from getting fleeced. But the second part of the deal could be disastrous for the country and our nation’s national security–taxes go up by the trillions so the welfare state stays intact. Remember, while spending hits $4.5 trillion in FY16 if the administration’s projected February budget numbers are not changed, that number goes to $5.7 trillion four years after that.

Now the deal does limit defense cuts to no more than $350 billion out of the initial $900+ billion in cuts over ten years. Security spending such as homeland defense, veterans, and the nuclear portions of the energy department and foreign operation funding in the Department of State will take the rest of the cuts required. Fiscal year 2012 and 2013 cuts may not be as severe as they could be.

But even if defense is wrecked less than what otherwise might be a “worst case” scenario, the rating agencies will downgrade our debt anyway, causing us another half trillion or so A YEAR to pay our debt. And George Soros gets his wish: kill the “capitalist system” in the US, wipe out America’s defenses, cripple America’s power, and substitute a leftist banana republic, in full retreat and broke.

But honest book-keeping would already have incorporated the lower defense spending into any baseline from which future debt would be estimated. But in the special way Washington works, the anticipated reductions in such spending is somehow heralded as the proverbial “big deal” that would resolve the budget problem for “decades” (as one excited Wall Street Journal reporter exclaimed) because it is counted as new spending cuts and sounds like a lot of money (which of course it is).

But the reduction was already baked into the administration’s budget proposal in February which also contained $10 trillion in new debt. So how can it be counted again in efforts to further cut the deficit spending projected for the next decades when it was already assumed not to be spent in the first place?

A little background is in order. This year, FY2011, the US will spend $158 billion on the two wars; in FY12, starting this October 1, 2011, that number is declining to $118 billion. Over a decade, that implies a $500 billion cut from the baseline of $158 billion if we simply stayed at the projected spending level for FY2012 of $118 billion. The CBO uses such a baseline because it says “current” US policy is to maintain the force at $158 billion. But as former Secretary of Defense Gates has noted, DOD’s expenditures are already scheduled to be reduced $40 billion, which would imply a $400 billion, ten-year reduction.

But here the news gets even more disquieting. According to most accounts, apparently, on top of this nearly $1 trillion in defense spending cuts, will be another $886 billion reduction in national security expenditures over ten years as proposed by the Simpson-Bowles Commission report, and adopted by some of the Senate “Gang of Six” composite budget, by Vice President Biden, and apparently by Senator Coburn of Oklahoma in his $9 trillion deficit reduction package “Back to Black” released this week. The HASC Chairman Mr. McKeon has wisely commented such cuts would decimate US security. But few appear to be listening.

Now to soften the blow a little, it appears this category of spending cuts would also supposedly also include veterans, nuclear weapons programs in the Department of Energy, Homeland Security, and some elements of the Department of State, although reports are that veterans will be excluded from any future cuts. How realistic is this? Are we really going to be cutting billions from homeland security, especially given the new threats of EMP and cyber warfare? Is our nuclear deterrent, the very backbone if the US deterrent, going to be short-changed which potentially catastrophic consequences? And are our needed diplomatic efforts going to be curtailed?

In fact, when taken together, the Bowles-Simpson proposed cuts and the Drudge reported reductions in what are called “Overseas Contingency Operations”, would cut defense spending nearly $2 trillion over a decade. In short, this means that of the $2.6 trillion in projected overall government spending “restraint” being discussed, nearly 80% comes from national security and defense accounts. This compares to the reduction in defense spending from an assumed flat baseline at the end of the Cold War that reached $1 trillion. We are poised to double those reductions in even less time. That passes for a ”balanced policy” in Washington-speak!

But the critics will counter: defense spending has to be cut. True, a common fairy tale in Washington is that non-defense spending (outside of welfare and entitlements) over the past decade, and particularly the spending of the past three years–CY 2009-10-11–is relatively small and not of consequence in the face of the spending debt we face. This has the benefit of making “non-defense” spending appear best left out of the spending equation. If one brings up the fact that such spending also includes welfare and entitlements, the critics counter that such spending has been “promised” the American people and cannot be curtailed. And so we come back to the idea that defense spending has been the real culprit. So as the Queen of Hearts so eloquently put it with respect to Alice: “Off with her head”!

As a 40 year observer of the Federal budget process, it is not unusual to hear claims that the Pentagon is needlessly spending vast sums of tax dollars. I remember in 1984, at the height of the Cold War, then Senator Biden called for  freeze on US spending as a condition of his support for an increase in the debt ceiling. That would have effectively terminated Reagan’s strategic and conventional defense modernization efforts, returned the US to the days of a hollow military, and effectively ended the Reagan national security strategy of defeating the Soviet Union by bringing down the regime in Moscow.

Unfortunately, a largely false narrative–the fairy tale to which I referred– has taken hold in Washington. It is that the Bush administration recklessly expanded defense spending by liberating Iraq and thus dangerously ran up the debt. Let’s look at the numbers.

In the first year of the Bush administration, FY 2002, defense and homeland security spending rose $54 billion, hardly excessive in the face of the attacks of 9/11. Non-defense spending of all kinds went up $133 billion that same  year. Over the following seven fiscal years of the administration, defense, veterans and other defense spending went up an additional $283 billion. But non-defense spending increased $837 billion over that same period of time, a nearly 300% bigger increase.

Now what are we looking at? Well, between FY2009 and FY 2016, the administration’s proposed budget in February had defense, veterans and homeland security spending increase by a very small $50 billion. These numbers reflected an already built-in relatively significant cut in defense because of the projected US withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq and further five year cuts of $178 billion in unnecessary “overhead”.

Some of the savings were projected to go back into defense but overall, especially given inflation and the increased sustainment and operational costs of maintaining US forces, defense was already slated to take a very big hit.

But what of other domestic spending, especially entitlements and welfare? These accounts according to the same budget documents, were to increase $1.435 trillion. That is right: in five years, such non-defense, non-national security spending is slated to increase annually by nearly one and one-half trillion dollars.

That would be an annual increase equal to seventy-five percent of the entire Federal budget in 2000 or fourteen times all Federal government spending when Dwight Eisenhower left the Presidency in 1960.

It is in this context that we should judge proposals to cut another $886 billion from defense and other national security accounts, as many are proposing in the new budget deal. How can this be justified, when collectively such accounts, in the baseline budget, are projected to increase no more than $50 billion between FY09 and FY16, and thus contribute relatively little to the growth in the US debt?

Want to find $50 billion or $200 billion to cut? Let us try National Public Radio and Television, ($740 million annually), or international family planning, ($725 million) or the feeding and caring for wild horses and burros on our public lands ($720 million). End these programs and save $28 billion a year. Cut agricultural subsidies and save $250 billion over a decade. **

It also appears that there are as of yet no fundamentally serious structural changes proposed by the administration on entitlements and welfare which are by far the drivers of US debt. True, there was rumored to be a proposal to increase the age at which one would become eligible for Medicare from 65 to 66. But this change would take effect in 2036! Boy, what courage!

Much of the debt talks appear to hinge on an agreement to raise taxes by making each taxpayer pay more, rather than simply employing more people and therefore adding more taxpayers! the administration is reportedly asking for at least $1.2 trillion in new taxes. But this would come on top of a minimum increase in taxes of $1.65 trillion already built into existing law. This includes only raising the rates on the top two tax brackets (scheduled to be increased automatically in 2013) and the $900 billion over a decade coming from the new taxes under the new health care law that largely kick in by 2014.

But won’t “masking the rich pay their fair share” help out the budget deficit? Well, let’s take a look. Raising “tax rates on the rich” only brings in at most $750 billion over ten years–compared to ten year projected spending of roughly $46 trillion. Those “required” tax hikes on the rich thus account for roughly 1.5% of the revenue required to balance our books even if all the anticipated revenue actually materialized.

Remember when the extra tax on boats and private airplanes went into effect in 1991 as part of the 1990 budget deal to get the rich to pay up? The country lost $97 million in tax revenue from the sale of boats and shipyard jobs in Massachusetts and Maine, home states of Senators Kennedy and Mitchell, the two key sponsors, fell 25,000.

But critics will argue, these new tax increases allow the debt to be curtailed, for our books to get in order because they are taxes on the rich and not on what they buy. For a fleeting moment I want to believe that just smacking the rich around a little more solves our debt problem. How could I forget Eugene Robinson and Paul Krugman! Haven’t they be arguing this for years?

But then Mr. Reality intrudes. I remember the administration submitted a budget in February that had all of these tax increases included. And still they projected a ten trillion dollar deficit as well!! That’s $10,000,000,000,000.

And what of future projected spending? That reaches some $5.7 trillion annually in ten years from today’s $3.7 trillion. So to quote Mr. Mondale, “Where’s the beef” of deficit reduction? Apparently all the cuts are in defense and they are exceeded by new taxes, yet all the drive-by media can complain about is “cuts” in social spending and on the poor?!

Americans are right to ask: how does increasing taxes cut spending when taxes go up by trillions and spending goes up by tens of trillions? It appears more likely that the increased revenue generated simply leads to the government deciding to spend more money, while at the same time decimating our defense.

Put another way, the February budget included $4800 in new taxes  on average for every American even while adding $4.1 billion in spending every day to the nation’s debt. To repeat, there appears to be no correlation between raising taxes, and raising taxes by significant amounts, and any reductions in projected future spending. In fact, the opposite is occurring as the Tea Party repeatedly warns–increased taxes are being used to justify greater US Government spending.

Note also that current law requires all tax rate reductions to expire in 2013. These tax increases are built into current law.  These estimates assume raising taxes would not slow the economy or curtail consumer spending or dampen business investment. And thus any agreement that keeps these rates at their current rates beyond 2013–a good idea to spur job growth, is considered a “tax cut” by big-spenders in Congress. That’s right: your taxes do not go up and that considered for budget purposes a needless “tax cut”!

This is important to understand. The debt relief negotiations are setting up the American people for one great big kick in the face–huge new taxes, and huge new spending. That is why the House Republicans and their allies, including many Democrats, will not concede.

Already the built-in assumptions for the US budget are that spending will increase from $3.7 trillion a year to somewhere north of $5.5 trillion. Furthermore, there is a common assumption that tax increases–from eliminating deductions (or “tax breaks” as they are too often erroneously referenced)–have to provide “balance”, even though huge tax increases are already built into law!

But this is the way Washington works: you rig the debate so its terms favor ever increasing spending and taxation. Lost in the discussion is the one unassailable fact: the massive “spending built-in” has to change.

Now why is this important for the security of the United States? And why should the defense policy and national security strategy issues linked to such projected defense spending restraint be part of our national dialogue and campaign debate? For a number of reasons:

(1) The proposed defense budget numbers are wholly fictional–they are without a strategic framework;

(2) There appear to be thrown together from nearly a decade of miscellaneous government  reports about possible, hypothetical and recommended defense cuts but with no rhyme or reason;

(3) They appear to rely on a not inconsiderable amount of “Double Counting”; and

(4) They either assume or would require a major US retreat from the world, based on further assumptions that such retreat will not have major negative consequences.

Now it is true a number of Presidential candidates want to severely curtail America’s role in the world. So do many currently holding office. For example, Congressman Ron Paul, now trailing the current President by only  four points in the newest Rasmussen poll, wants America to bring all its troops home from nearly everywhere. When asked by Sean Hannity whether we have terrorist enemies, he repeatedly blamed America for their attacks on us. If only we did not make them angry, Paul argued, they would not attack us.

What Paul ignores, as many did during the Cold War, is that totalitarian forces see freedom, liberty and free enterprise as their enemy. The fight against terrorist tactics is a fight against totalitarian state sponsors of terrorism and their allies. Today, Iran is identified by the US State Department as the premier sponsor of terrorism against the United States in the world. Its allies include Syria, North Korea, China, Russia, Venezuela, and Libya, and their associated terror groups including but not limited to the Moslem Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, FARC, the Palestinians, the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says there is forensic evidence linking Iran to the killing of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Israeli rocket expert Uzi Rubin, Iran also now possesses ballistic missiles with ranges approaching 3500 kilometers–they can reach Bonn, Paris and London.

Its nuclear program has been repeatedly been identified as a military effort to build nuclear weapons, not produce nuclear energy. Iran’s subsidiary Hezbollah and puppet state Syria have now been fingered for the murder of numerous top Lebanese government officials. And in a lawsuit in the District of Columbia, Iran has also been found by a judge as having given assistance to the 9/11 hijackers.

There is also evidence that Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center bomb mastermind, worked with Iraqi intelligence. Yousef traveled from tightly-controlled Iraq to the US on an Iraqi passport, showing his trip beginning in Baghdad. A fellow conspirator, an Iraqi-American, fled to Baghdad after the bombing.[1] Yousef himself later turned up in Manila, conspiring with his uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the mastermind of 9/11 —on a plot to blow up a dozen US passenger jets over the Pacific. But there has been strangely little interest in the question of the sponsorship and financing of these two terrorist masterminds, several years before al Qaeda was even operational.

That brings us back to the current debate about security policy, or lack thereof and the cavalier attitude of some in Washington toward massive cuts in US security programs.

In an article on the website (Gerdab) of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, America is described as having lost her stamina. It is claimed we are beginning a “quiet and deliberate” withdrawal from the Middle East. We are finished it says. America, it is claimed, has no stomach for the fight Islam is bringing to its shores. It says the “Arab Spring” will sweep jihad into power.

Actually, the “Arab Spring” is a chance to help direct the passions of millions who seek freedom to “reset” the Middle East away from totalitarian Islam. It may indeed have been triggered by the elimination of two key state terror masters: the liberation of Iraq and the removal of the Taliban from power. Unfortunately, too many are seeking to accommodate the very forces–such as the Muslim Brotherhood–which are at the heart of the terrorism directed at us.

Our enemies see us as depleted and unable to get our house in order, unwilling to stand up for our security interests. Iran sees this and simultaneously supports Shia militia’s in Iraq and Taliban and Al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan. They see important American political leaders saying the war in Iraq “is lost”, calling for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, and engaging in support for “Gaza flotillas” to undermine Israel’s security.

As former Wyoming senator Malcolm Wallop has observed, Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan’s politics are so far right and Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers and George Soros’s politics are so far left their collective political butts are touching. It may make for interesting political theater for the far left and far right to play at budget polygamy. But defense budgets are serious things and they should be treated as such.

My friend Reza Kahlili has recently written that Iran sees “this [as] the century of the Islamic awakening and that Islamic nations will soon be able to control the world’s economy through the control of oil and the world’s strategic passages. Continues Kahlili:

“The Iranian leaders also believe that as long as the U.S. is financially weak, as long as oil prices remain high, and as long as it is involved on too many fronts it will not dare confront Iran. That is why they have made a decision to continue on with their nuclear program in spite of four sets of UN sanctions. They’ve even gone so far as to mock the U.S. for the ineffectiveness of those sanctions.”

“One thing is for sure: the jihadists in Tehran feel invincible because, despite the continuous killing of our soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan and despite their pursuit of the nuclear bomb, America and the West have shown little stomach for confronting the Islamic regime in Iran.”

“Weakness is being observed. The belief in Islam is for one to deceive the enemy until they are strong enough to take them out. Radicals ruling Iran think that is only a matter of time.”

In my view the regime in Iran in fact has serious weaknesses. We should be seeking to bring the regime down. The US Department of State has called for regime change in Syria. We should extend that to Iran as well. Legislative initiatives now in Congress, if pushed, could go a long way toward ending the mullahs’ rule in Tehran. If combined with a smart strategic defense policy, the US could bring an end to most of the terrorism we now face.

These initiatives include the flex-fuel vehicle standard which would allow cars in America to use a variety of fuels including methanol, ethanol, gasoline or diesel, as well as electric plug-in technology, and then allow the market and the ingenuity of American entrepreneurship to provide fuel choice to customers. In the process, according to Anne Korin and Gal Luft, oil can be turned into salt–a key commodity but one which no longer is the monopoly fuel for US transportation. As a result, world oil prices could drop to $30 barrel, sufficient for long term sustained production but insufficient for Iran’s pursuit of a hegemonic and terrorist campaign against the US and its allies.*

Next can be passage of genuine sanction (I would add divestment) measures as proposed by Senator Mark Kirk and Congressman Howard Berman.These would be designed to “unplug” the Iranian economy, especially its banking and oil and gas sectors, from the world’s economy. Companies would be given a choice: you can trade and invest with Iran or the United States but you cannot do both. Further, there is no justification for endowments or pension funds to contain any securities of any business that does commerce, directly or indirectly with Iran. Divestment must be fully implemented.

Of critical importance would be the passage of the Iran Human Rights and Democracy promotion Act. This provides us with a genuine chance at pulling a Solidarity campaign within Iran aided by the various ethnic and national groups within that country seeking the elimination of the mullah’s tyranny.

Given Iran’s rush to acquire nuclear weapons and its current possession of missiles with which to deliver them, it is imperative the US protect itself from such terrorism. The Shield Act, supported by a widespread and ideological diverse group of members in the House of Representatives (a variant of which passed unanimously last year), would protect critical elements of our electrical grid from what is known as an electromagnetic pulse attack.

Such an attack might come in the form of an Iranian nuclear device detonated some 70-100 miles above the United States. Recent evidence surfaced that the PRC has developed a nuclear EMP capability and is planning to use it against the Republic of China. It could also be transferred to North Korea or Iran, as has other PRC nuclear and missile technology.

The US should also commit itself to the deployment of a robust missile defense capability especially a space-based and boost-phase capability, even as we enhance and sustain the current deployments that now protect us and our allies. Such efforts should also include further work on Airborne Laser technology.  Particularly noteworthy has been Israel’s deployment of Iron Dome which now can effectively shoot down short range rockets from Gaza and southern Lebanon terrorist groups.

Two US Congressional mandated commissions and a National Academy of Science assessment have  concluded that an EMP attack could be devastating, including violent solar storms. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission officials have concluded such protection is doable in short order.

My own estimates and those of experts conclude that a few hundreds of millions of dollars in one-time utility costs would protect the nation’s key electrical transformers from both an Iranian EMP generated attack or solar storms. The cost for each American would be $1. The Shield Act sponsored by Congressman Franks and Bartlett must be passed this session of Congress.

Unfortunately, one key Senate committee recently only called for additional study of the effects of solar storms and nuclear EMP. That is unnecessary–it is time to protect our key infrastructure from these two potential catastrophic threats.

An Iranian missile-carrying freighter could launch just such an attack, mimicking a test Tehran conducted in the Caspian some years ago. They could do so without the US being able to attribute such an attack to its sponsor.

Nuclear forensics, a very valuable tool, has not made sufficient progress to give the US confidence we could in fact identify the sponsor of such an attack.

Finally, sound US  counter terrorism measures and a complimentary military policy are also required. We need to win the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can do both. Premature withdrawal, based on an arbitrary withdrawal deadline attuned solely to the American political calendar, would be an epic tragedy.

We cannot let America’s enemies besmirch the sacrifice of our soldiers who liberated both Iraq and Afghanistan. They did their job. It is time we did ours as well and let our brave soldiers, diplomats and contractors successfully finish the job. Iraq was a major state sponsor of terrorism. Its connections to Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed point an incriminating finger at Saddam Hussein for the 1993 World Trade Center attack but 9/11 as well.

A sound military and security policy in the Middle East also will require the deployment of a strong naval presence, long range prompt strike capability, missile defense and airpower worthy of our strategy. It makes no sense to junk modern air power acquisitions and go back to rely on legacy systems as many of the proposed budget cuts would require. It takes more “old” assets to provide the same protection as “modern” technology, and this in turn increases the need for pilots, mechanics and other support crew. And we should not be sending  American soldiers anywhere in the world unless they are equipped with the best US technology.

We should also reject all facile attempts to glom together unrelated and rather shallow analyses of hypothetical defense budget cuts. Such “what if” paper projects that generate specific illustrative budget savings have nothing to do with the adoption of a sound strategic plan or strategy.

If the defense cuts being contemplated materialize, the US may very fulfill the fondest wishes of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps referenced above. We have choices, indeed big choices. We could too rapidly withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. We could fall into the foolish trap of believing Iran wants “stability” in the Middle East. We could recklessly cut almost every major weapon system not in or nearing production and cripple US deterrence and military capability.

During the Cold War, it was always a struggle to get our allies to contribute sufficiently to the defense of freedom. Great Britain’s Thatcher and Germany’s Kohl were heroes, too. Allied with President Reagan they together won the war against totalitarianism from the East.

In many respects they and Pope John and Lech Walesa, representing the faithful and the workers of so much of those enslaved by Communism, achieved a victory for freedom and liberty that many still today do not appreciate. they did it with defense spending many then called not necessary.

Should the United States, though, abandon its leadership role against the new totalitarians from the Middle East and elsewhere, the sacrifice of great Americans–and our allies– from Concord, Gettysburg, Normandy, Chosin, Khesan, and Ramallah, will have been in vain. Defense budgets are serious things. Let us treat them as such. ___________________________________________________________________________

*And eliminate some $350 billion in oil import costs flowing overseas, some of it to state sponsors of terror. As former DCI R. James Woolsey has argued, “why should we be paying for both sides in the war against terror states”?

** Lee Iacocca said the national debt in 1981 was $1 trillion; in 1985, $2 trillion; and expected the deficit to hit $3 trillion by 1988. “But if the debt keeps piling up at the same rate that it has since 1980, it’s going to hit $13 trillion by the year 2000: That’s fourteen times the debt in 1980. … And yet every month the government is spending $17 billion more than it takes in.” The government now spends roughly $120 billion a month more than it takes in.

041211 NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION AND NATIONAL DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATION BREAKFAST FORUM WITH SENATOR JON KYL (R-AZ), ON “SENATE PERSPECTIVES ON IRAN, MISSILE DEFENSE AND NUCLEAR DETERRENCE.”

(For additional information on NDUF/NDIA forums contact Peter Huessy at huessyp@nduf.org)

[This is a rush, unofficial transcript provided by www.NationalSecurityReports.com]

MR. PETER HUESSY: Good morning. My name is Peter Huessy and I want to thank you on behalf of the National Defense University Foundation and the National Defense Industrial Association, your sponsors of this, the 30^th year of our Congressional seminars on arms control, defense policy, missile defense and nuclear deterrence and homeland security. We are honored to open our series this year, as we did last year, with Senator Jon Kyl.

Five terms in the House of Representatives, been in the United States Senate, elected in 1995. He is the Minority Whip in the United States Senate and a member of the Finance Committee and also a member of the Judiciary Committee. He is considered one of the best minds in the United States Senate on security policy, particularly with respect to missile defense and nuclear weapons.

And I remember shortly after the new START debate was finished, a couple pundits, friends of mine who will remain nameless, said that obviously we’re not going to hear from Senator Kyl again because the new START Treaty was approved. I think the evidence is that Senator Kyl is still here and when he speaks people listen. And on behalf of NDUF and NDIA, Senator Kyl, and our sponsors that are here today, I want to welcome you and thank you for your staff, Tim and Rob, for their work to come here and open our 30^th year of our series on nuclear deterrence and missile defense issues.

Would you give a warm welcome to our friend?

(Applause).

SEN. JON KYL: Thank you. Thank you all very much. It’s great to see you. Congratulations on 30 years. It doesn’t seem like it has been that long.

And yes, you’ll still have me to kick around for another year or so. In fact, god willing, I’ll be happy to come back again next year, still as a senator, Peter. After that, I may depend on some of you.

Peter mentioned START, and of course that’s where we should start. What’s after START? That’s the subject for my comments this morning.

Obviously, among other things, START was the opening round in the president’s march towards his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. And so I thought it’d be interesting to just survey what I think are perhaps three of the next steps that the administration intends to take, and some of my comments about those. I see immediately in front of us at least two items, and a third that could come along at any time.

First, changes to the United States’ nuclear doctrine, targeting guidance and concomitant further reductions in nuclear forces as a precursor to either unilateral or negotiated reductions, but quite possibly unilateral reductions. Second, CTBT ratification, who knows when the administration might bring that up? And third, constraints to missile defense through cooperation with Russia.

So let’s take the first one, changes to U.S. nuclear doctrine. I think that the United States government, the administration, intends to justify more reductions by defining down our targeting requirements; in effect, matching the test questions to the answers that they want. And this is clear, I think, from a speech that Tom Donilon gave not too long ago when we both spoke at Carnegie. He talked about making preparations for the next round of nuclear reductions.

And this is a quotation, “reviewing our strategic requirements and developing options for further reductions in our current nuclear stockpile.” And pointed out that, “to develop these options for further reductions we need to consider several factors, such as potential changes in targeting requirements and alert postures that are required for effective deterrence.” And we now have reports that the department of Defense may very soon initiate a 90-day sort of mini-NPR at the direction of the NSC.

According to Donilon, that review is intended to implement our disarmament policy on behalf of the administration. And not even by way of reducing Russian modernization efforts, necessarily anyway, the Associate Press reported, and I’m quoting now a senior administration official confirming that, “the United States is considering these cuts independent of negotiations with Russia.” So it could be, well, just the administration’s own actions.

Now there are several reasons why this modification in our targeting requirements at this time, I think, is a bad idea. First of all, the levels that are bandied about by people who write op-eds and – well, then-Senator Feingold when he was in the Senate, for example, I think are quite inadequate for our security requirements. I just wanted to quote one exchange between Senator Feingold and then-Stratcom Commander Kevin Chilton.

Feingold asked whether the START level of 1,550 nuclear warheads was more than is needed and whether 300 nuclear weapons would be more than sufficient. And General Chilton responded, “I do not agree that it is more than needed. I think the arsenal that we have is exactly what is needed today to provide the deterrent.” And I agree with General Chilton.

To go below what we have now would be a huge mistake unless, of course, you want to change the terms of reference – you want to modify our targeting requirements. And then, of course, theoretically you could justify going lower. But what is this new guidance then going to result in in terms of a new strategy for the United States? Clearly the world hasn’t changed. In fact, we have additional countries of interest which would presumably add potential targets to the current list.

Well I think what it results in is a move away from the United States’ traditional counterforce approach to deterrence, and more into what we used to call MAD. Our deterrence requirements have been very consistent since the Cold War in Democratic and Republican administrations. We deter potential adversaries, we assure our allies – remember there are 31 countries that rely on our nuclear deterrent – we dissuade would-be strategic competitors, and if needed we defeat an attacker while limiting damage to the United States.

And I thought it would be interesting to just compare the verbiage of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review which embodies these concepts, with the comment of the 2010 NPR of the Obama administration. Here’s our previous NPR, quote, “To hold at risk what opponents value, including their instruments of political control and military power, and to deny opponents their war aims. The types of targets to be held at risk for deterrence purposes include leadership and military capabilities, particularly WMD, military command facilities and other centers of control and infrastructure that support military forces. Obviously this is not a counter-city or assured destruction or, as I said, MAD approach to deterrence, but rather a strategic approach that takes into account the opponent’s objectives and war aims, as well as a calculation of what it might take to deter them under all various likely circumstances.

Now the 2010 NPR statement says this, that “U.S. nuclear forces must be capable of supporting strategic stability through an assured second-strike capability.” That’s a very different strategy. What is meant by a second strike capability? Did the authors envision a minimum deterrent capability along the lines of what Feingold posited of 300 weapons, for example?

Are they going to just try to justify – another level that has been proposed is 1,000. That was advocated by Madeleine Albright and Igor Ivanov on the editorial pages last week. That was 1,000. Have they considered the nuclear umbrella of the United States in the development of this strategy?

My view is that at a minimum this counter-city strategy is not only immoral but it lacks any sort of strategic context and is inconsistent with, as I said, the strategies of both Democratic and Republican administrations ever since the end of the Cold War. A deterrent force that’s too small or vulnerable to enemy attack, and which does not provide the president the full spectrum of options that he needs to have during a conflict or even a crisis, could lack credibility when it’s needed the most.

And you top this all off with the big white elephant in the room that the administration loves to ignore, because it’s really an ugly elephant, it’s hard to deal with, and that’s the current real threat which is coming from countries like Iran and North Korea and perhaps even Syria; the threat of nuclear terrorism, the threat that rogue states would acquire nuclear weapons. These are the really tough problems. And I suspect that one way the administration can ignore these problems, at least in its own mind, is that it will tackle some other aspect of nuclear deterrence and shunt attention away, in this case by re-defining deterrence and unilaterally reducing our nuclear weapons. It’s a lot easier to achieve a success and hang a skin on the wall, than to try to deal with the problems of North Korea and Iran. Well just to make it clear, if the administration does pursue this direction it will be strongly opposed by many of us, including in the Senate, and specifically by me.

The second subject may or may not be a follow-on to START, but at some point this administration would like it to be. I think it’s simply a calculation on their part of when the right time to try to accomplish the ratification of CTBT is. But it has made clear that it wants to pursue it. Donilon in his speech, for example, reiterated that. And the State department has released a series of what can I think very generously be called fact sheets concerning CTBT in the context of international monitoring, which has matured somewhat since the treaty was defeated back in 1999.

The National Academy of Sciences has done an assessment of the technical issues associated with the ability to detect and identify underground nuclear explosions. And it’ll come out one of these days. It’s been given to the administration but, of course, it hasn’t been given to the Congress, which I think demonstrates its lack of objectivity and their lack of neutrality. Also, if you look at the study panel, with few exceptions, it is loaded with people who are known treaty proponents.

So this is not an objective or neutral document, but it will be used by the administration in an effort to say that things have changed. Well, things have not changed. It’s been 12 years since the treaty was defeated 51 to 48. That’s a majority. Remember that it only takes 34 to defeat a treaty. But that treaty was defeated soundly.

And if you look at the arguments that proponents adduce in support, nothing really has changed. In fact, in some respects, I think things have gotten worse. The treaty hasn’t changed so you still have problems like, for example, the fact that it doesn’t even define what it prohibits, namely a nuclear test. Countries interpret its requirements differently. And obviously if the treaty were to go into effect countries, including the United States and some of our – some of the folks who are not quite on the same page with us, would continue to treat the terms of the treaty differently.

I don’t think that even with the new international monitoring systems it’s going to be possible to detect or especially prove a violation has occurred. Even with the additional new sites some tests, especially if cheating is involved, are not going to be detected. But even when cheating is not involved, in the case of the North Koreans for example when they announced in advance that they were going to do a test, this was in 2009, I think it was noteworthy that the United States, even with our additional technical capabilities, could not prove that the test that the Koreans said that they conducted had occurred.

And perhaps this is the lawyer in me, but if you look at the mechanisms of the treaty for following up on a detection – assuming that you did detect it and thought you could prove it – you then have to run a gauntlet of United Nations-like requirements that I think would be impossible to ever work if we’re to hold a country accountable. Under the terms of the treaty a state can’t be determined to have cheated unless 31 of 50 states on a separate body agreed to an order to inspect that state. And there’s not even a guarantee the U.S. serves in that body, by the way. But if you look at the various countries of the United Nations that currently sit on things like the Human Rights Council and so on, you just wonder how we would ever get authority to do that in a time that would be relevant to the determination or proof that cheating had occurred. It is not a structure that I think is conducive to workability.

And to me the biggest argument is that you just can’t predict the future. And I talked to the scientists, for example, and they’re pretty confident that if we fund the work that needs to be done we can continue to extend the life of the weapons that we have right now. But there are so many uncertainties, and uncertainties about what other parties might do.

We know, for example, that our Russian friends are very aggressively looking at alternative kinds of designs and to achieve specific kinds of military objectives. But we’re forbidden from doing that. And I think there’s a real sense that the country should never – a country that abides by the law and will abide by the law, should be very careful about committing itself to forever never again test – to conduct a nuclear test, given the fact that that genie is out of the bottle and everyone else has access to the technology. And if we decide that we’re going to forever preclude ourselves from testing, I think we have committed a huge error with respect to our future generations. We just don’t know what the future holds.

And put this against the backdrop of the purported benefits. I quote my friend, Secretary Rose Gottemoeller, who talks about the United States recovering our moral leadership on nonproliferation. Well I don’t think there’s any moral leadership that needs to be recovered. You know, we’ve had a moratorium now for 18 years, and I’ve not seen any evidence that that moratorium has changed anybody’s behavior. And I can’t imagine how just signing or ratifying the document is going to change the behavior of countries that haven’t been willing to sign on at this point.

So I don’t think any of the arguments that are raised justifies support for the treaty today. And I can assure you if the treaty were to be brought up for ratification that members of the United States Senate will – well I can’t assure you that they would defeat it. But I can assure you that a bunch of us are going to do everything we can to defeat it and I would not put its prospects as very good, put it that way.

Finally, let’s talk about missile defense. This is really headed in the wrong direction. The United States seems to, and this is the administration, seems to have decided that its primary goal in missile defense is to make sure the Russians are not offended. Their policy has been to curtail defense of the homeland, our U.S. strategic or homeland missile defense requirements in favor of regional missile defenses insofar as those do not offend the Russians.

Now of course regional defenses are necessary, but they are not sufficient, especially at the expense of defending our homeland. But because any force that we would deploy, that could theoretically be effective against a Russian missile, will offend the Russians, then this administration is bound and determined not to go forward with it. That’s very dangerous.

Obviously the administration believes this is important to its reset. I have not seen a lot of evidence that this reset has really benefitted the United States. but I guess we can argue that another time.

But if you just look at the funding, for example, the GMD funding reduced by $500 million in the first Obama budget. The spending between fiscal 2010 and 2013 reduced by $4 billion less than the last Bush budget. Now that’s the homeland defense – one of the components for our homeland defense. And this is a very odd time when the secretary of Defense has noted the capabilities of North Korea, for example, soon posing a threat to the United States with its ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, as well as Iran’s recent progress with its space launch systems, which of course would signify an intercontinental ballistic missile capability.

But in addition to our own unilateral cuts to key components of our missile defense program, we’ve been working with the NATO allies and with Russia to pursue what the administration calls cooperative efforts with the Russians. And I think these are a direct response to Russian pressure, which has always been part of the Russian mantra. And I’m not suggesting the Russians are doing anything that’s inappropriate to the considerations for their national defense or security.

But I do suggest that the United States needs to evaluate our own requirements. And that while cooperation with Russia is obviously very much to be desired in as many areas as we can make it happen, it would be a very large mistake to in effect make them a partner in our missile defense system. I don’t see, for one thing, how they would be an equal contributor to the process, but they could certainly be interested in some of the technology that would be provided if they gained access to it.

I also wonder whether this is maybe a fool’s errand in a way, because at least up to now the Russians have made it pretty clear that they want nothing less than a finger on the red button. Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov – I’m quoting here – he said, in practical terms, he was talking about what joint control meant. And Ivanov said, “In practical terms that means our office will sit, for example, in Brussels and agrees on a red button pushed to start enabling an anti- missile regardless of whether it comes from Poland, Russia or the UK.” So, I mean, on the assumption that we’re never going to agree to that, one wonders just how far this string can be pushed.

We’ve already altered our missile defense plans in Europe, as you know. We surprised some key allies in doing that. There are negotiations going on between Secretary Tauscher and her counterpart, Rybakov. By the way, these are being kept secret from Congress. We’ve asked several times to be briefed on what they are and we’re told that if something ever happens they’ll let us know. But in the meantime, they continue these negotiations. I don’t know how much material or anything else they’re sharing with the Russians, but it bothers me that they’re going to at some point the Senate for consent, if nothing else than to fund things, but they aren’t interested in our advice going into the discussions.

If you look at what happened and what was announced in Lisbon about the U.S.-NATO activity, there are also some red flags. I think, especially with respect to the phase three and four of the Phased Adaptive Approach. As you know, the administration moved away from the GBI system to this four phase Phased Adaptive Approach of a shorter range interceptor deployed in Europe, and the last phase of which is merely a concept. It’s not even something that’s been developed yet.

But in Portugal, there’s some very troubling questions based upon the briefings that were given with respect to the U.S. commitment to move forward with all phases, sufficiently that the Senate demanded as part of the START Treaty debate a confirmation or an affirmation of the administration’s intent to follow through with all four phases as it had said it would do as a substitute for GBI. And it took a while to get communication from the president that verified his commitment to do this. He’s put it in writing. I remain unconvinced that the administration is thoroughly committed to GBI as a backup system and to all four phases, if the Russians were to raise an objection to the way that phase three and four might be developed and deployed.

At the very least, I think this so-called cooperation with Russia could drive a wedge between us and our allies that could jeopardize deployment of SM-3 missiles, for example in Romania in 2015, Poland in 2018; as I say, to say nothing of the phase four 2B missile in 2020 when it’s scheduled to be available. And on a technical level, information sharing or a technology exchange with Russia, I think, would probably be problematic, as I alluded to before. Joint development activities could involve the exchange of technology, for example, on U.S. hit-to-kill technology, which would obviously not be in our interests. I’m not going to go any further into that, but I think you get the drift here.

In all three areas: the intention to move forward with a redefinition of what our targeting requirements are, thus to be able to unilaterally reduce the number of weapons we have; the potential for CTBT; and a diminution in the quality of our missile defense, especially as it relates to the homeland; I think the administration is making some serious errors. We know about this 90-day mini-NPR, as I said. Forty-one senators have written a letter to the administration warning about this, asking to be informed. We’ve gotten no response from the president on that.

We’ve gotten very little in the way of commitment by this administration to effectively deal with North Korea and Iran, which I submit are the real front-range threats that we have. And we’ve got a budget coming up and the appropriations bills that will follow the budget – it’s kind of doubtful that we’ll have a joint budget between the House and Senate because of the divided party control. But you’re going to have appropriations bills, hopefully. At least I think they’ll be coming out of the House. And the question is, where will defense spending generally be, and specifically where will missile defense be? These are all very important questions as we go forward, and especially as it relates to this idea of cooperating with the Russians on missile defense.

So I think we’ve got some huge challenges in front of us. And Peter, to your point about now that START is over that’s the end of it, I think START is just the start of it. And I hope that my comments today about at least three of the areas that we need to be focused on, will cause you to agree with that proposition.

Thank you, I’d be happy to take questions.

(Applause).

SEN. KYL: Sorry, Frank, I didn’t see you sitting there. Good morning.

MR. FRANK GAFFNEY: If I can ask the first question? First of all let me say thank you, Senator, for your long and distinguished service. There’s nobody who has probably contributed more, and I think Peter would agree, to these conversations and certainly the work of the Senate, than you have, in these two areas especially.

SEN. KYL: Thank you.

MR. GAFFNEY: You have talked a lot about issues that flow from something that you haven’t addressed. And I just wondered if you might directly speak to that, which is the president’s ambition to rid the world of nuclear weapons. CTBT, targeting cuts, diminishing missile defenses all seem to flow from that. Would you just describe how you feel, both personally and perhaps corporately, the Congress ought to be looking at this proposition?

SEN. KYL: Yes, indeed. I just alluded to it. The question is, how does all of this fit in with the president’s vision of a nuclear free world and his desire to pursue that goal during his time in office?

He announced the goal – well, at least he reiterated it in Prague in that speech. I don’t know, I think he had made comments about it before then. But clearly he and other administration spokesmen have not been shy about noting that that is their goal. And it’s clear from what Tom Donilon said that the administration’s effort to redesign the guidance requirements, targeting requirements, are part and parcel of the ability to bring the numbers down even further if they can.

To some extent, I think this is disingenuous on their part because during the START debate a lot was made of the support of the military for the levels that they had designed the START Treaty to get down to. And you had a lot of qualified general officers saying we could live with the levels that the administration identified in the START Treaty. The problem is that to go below that, then you actually have to change the rules of the game. You have to, as I said, change the test questions in order to get the answer that you want.

And so the first thing about why this is so dangerous is that instead of focusing on our defense requirements, we’re focused on this loopy vision of a world without nuclear weapons as driving our national security decisions today at a time when if there ever is a time for nuclear zero, I don’t think one can say that it exists today. And even the four statesmen, as they’re called, who have been writing about this for some time now, acknowledge freely that while this may be a vision worth pursuing in the long run, the world is not ready for it now. That was also confirmed by the Perry-Schlesinger Commission report when they said interesting subject to look at, but clearly conditions in the world would have to change dramatically for us to even conceive that it could be done.

So the idea that we are anywhere near ready to begin doing this, even if it were a good idea which it is not, is absurd. And yet here the administration is right on the heels of the START ratification moving forward with the next level.

You’re all familiar with the litany of arguments against going to zero. These are the essence of the talk that I made at Carnegie, and I’d be happy to give you copies of that speech if you’re interested. I think my staff may have a couple copies, Rob Soufer (sp) and Tim Morrison (sp) in the back there, if you would like to get a copy of it.

But the bottom line is that it’s not going to change bad guys behavior. And so when the good guys go down to zero or close to zero, we all know what happens. It encourages potential enemies to gain an advantage. It encourages people who are barely in the nuclear game to achieve parity with you because you’re now at such a low level that they can actually match you.

There are a variety of very practical reasons why it just doesn’t work, especially in this world today. But think about a world in which finally the lion and the lamb lie down together and everything is hunky-dory. What about tomorrow? Every conflict then becomes a hair-trigger, potential nuclear breakout kind of conflict. And it just doesn’t seem to me that any practical view of how the world works today, or could work in the future, would justify the notion that if we all simply give up our nuclear weapons we can live without fear.

Just go back to the last century. In just 20 years of the last century, how many millions of people were killed? There were no nuclear weapons before August 1945. But you had – some of you historians will know the numbers of millions of people who were killed in combat.

Once the weapon was used – or when it was used twice, the three major power of the world since then: China, Russia and the United States, have not fired a shot in anger against each other. It has a deterrent effect, and that cannot be denied. Now maybe it’d be nice to have something a little less onerous with the deterrent effect, but maybe that’s what it requires for true deterrence.

So the bottom line is before you get rid of that which has provided a great deal of deterrence in the world since August of 1945, you’d better know what you’re going to have to replace it with. I finished my speech at Carnegie with a quotation from Winston Churchill, who in his very last speech to Americans, said – I’m paraphrasing now, but he said before you ever get rid of the atomic weapon, he said you need to think very carefully and then think again about the wisdom of doing so. And I think he’s absolutely right.

So all of those arguments are fleshed out in that speech if anyone is interested in it. Most of you are pretty familiar with them. As I said, it is a loopy idea to think that the world is anywhere near ready for that. And that’s why it’s so dangerous, that the president is pursuing it with such aggressive action today.

And I would suggest in a way which is – I’ll not use the pejorative I’m thinking of, but which is very inappropriate, namely to change the rules of the game in order to get the answer that he wants. We’ll just make up a new set of targeting requirements and that we don’t need as many weapons. That’s not what the NPR was ever designed to be.

I’ve gone to preaching now, I’d better be careful here.

(Laughter).

MR. : Senator, thank you very much for being with us this morning. I think you laid out quite clearly your concerns about the administration’s shifting nuclear doctrine and targeting strategy. I’d like to ask you what you think the Senate should be doing, or what it is doing, to exercise oversight of nuclear policy? I’m thinking more broadly, a little bit, also oversight of the effort to reinvigorate the nuclear enterprise of the Air Force – a growth area for the Air Force – and recapitalizing the triad. Could you speak to that a bit?

SEN. KYL: Yeah, the question is what kind of oversight should the Senate be conducting in this issue generally, recapitalizing the triad for example? We talked about that a fair amount during the START debate. We talked about both the weapon facilities and the weapons themselves – nuclear weapons — as well as the triad.

And we got a fair degree of commitment from the administration at that time about its efforts to recapitalize the triad. What it’s plans are, are not adequate in my view as to its commitment to a new bomber, for example. It’s a pretty unclear commitment about whether it will be even nuclear capable, whether it will have nuclear cruise missile capability, unclear what its plans are relative to the ICBM force. But I think we extracted about as much clarity as we could at that time, and I think the treaty was a good opportunity to, in effect, conduct a different kind of oversight at that time.

But I think you’re quite right that both the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, but particularly Armed Services, should be really diving down into this. And one of the good things is that the House of Representatives has just as much of a role to play in ensuring that the funding for modernization, both of the triad as well as our weapons complex, goes forward. And it is in the hands of people who care deeply about this. I know, I’ve talked to them.

And I suspect that they will be conducting a little bit more oversight about this than will Carl Levi’s committee, for example. But Republicans on the Senate committees certainly can drive that up to some extent. And I have not backed off in my commitment to ensure that the modernization funding goes forward, as well as the robust planning for the concomitant to our deterrent, namely the triad.

MR. JOHN ISAACS: John Isaacs. Senator, you have been very vocal in terms of nuclear modernization. Another issue that has been before Congress is nonproliferation funding, which the House cut dramatically and the Senate came up with a higher number. And I guess they came to an agreement on Friday, but how do you feel about the nonproliferation programs?

SEN. KYL: Yeah, the three parts of the nuclear funding and the Energy and Water budget which really ought to be national security and understood as that, to some extent do go hand-in-hand. Obviously, you’re correct. I was focused on the modernization money. That was the subject of the 1251 report and I’m not going to try carry the administration’s entire budget, obviously. It was hard enough just to get the modernization money.

By the way, I don’t know the final numbers out of that CR, so I can’t confirm what you said. But if it’s true that the nonproliferation funding was down – and the third component, of course, is Navy nuclear and there’s no way to cut that. I mean, you’ve got to keep that funding going. I’m supportive of all three, and the administration ought to be supportive of all three. But, you know, the administration can do some lobbying too.

MR. : Senator, Frank raised the issue of going to no nuclear weapons, but I’d like you to speculate in the other direction. If we’re not effective in going after the North Korean and Iranian programs, how rapidly do you see other states going towards a nuclear weapons capability? And what is the future of the nuclear nonproliferation regime?

SEN. KYL: Well, thank you for adding one of the other arguments that I didn’t make to the litany of reasons why it’s not a good idea. To the extent that both that group of countries that rely on our nuclear umbrella today by treaty or agreement, as well as some who don’t but could feel jeopardized by acquisition of such weapons by, for example, the Iranians, there’s obviously – they would be foolish not to look at the possibility of acquiring that capability themselves.

And it’s not as if they would all have to start from scratch. We know about the A.Q, Khan network. We know about the fact that – well, I’m not going to discuss what we know. But there has been funding for such projects from areas of the world that would certainly be areas of concern. We know that they have been looking at this possibility.

And so just stop and think about it for a moment. Today you’ve got a handful of countries with that capability. And do you want to get to a point where others feel that the only way to make themselves secure is to acquire that capability so that you have it all around the Gulf region, for example? I don’t think so. And that’s another very troubling reason why I think folks that believe in this zero nuclear better think twice before they are pursuing it so aggressively, at least at this time.

MR. : I wanted to ask you about the modernization funding, in particular for NNSA. I know you may not know the exact number, but it’s very close to the request. So I wanted to ask you for your comments on that. And also, it was quite a difficult battle to get that funding back up to that level. Does that make you concerned about in two or three years what it might take to ensure that the administration’s commitment to modernization sticks?

SEN. KYL: Yeah, the question was, how confident am I that the administration’s commitment to the full nuclear modernization funding will be pursued by the administration and achieved? And to be fair to the administration, let’s acknowledge an additional factor that’s come into play here. And that is a House of Representatives significantly influenced by the Tea Party and others who are very aggressively seeking to reduce funding. I mean, that’s a reality that House leadership has to deal with, even with respect to national security funding.

So I think on the one hand you have an administration that – I’m just going to say came to its conclusions somewhat reluctantly and under some degree of pressure, on the one hand. And then you have a House of Representatives, at least currently strongly influenced by a desire to further reduce federal spending, including in defense, and that makes for a challenge in getting the funding for this modernization program accomplished every year. But having said that, I just have nothing but accolades for the House leadership, specifically Speaker Boehner and his commitment to see that this was done.

And the others who have jurisdiction in the House of Representatives, notwithstanding the pressures, they saw to it that it was done properly. And after some amount of urging and telephone calls and the like, the administration seemed to be supportive primarily on the Senate side, with the result that we got it done, almost. I mean, it’s just a tad lower than it should have been. But both sides, I think, at the end of the day weighed in in a way that I have no complaint about.

The question is the future, and it’s going to continue to be a challenge for the two reasons that I identified. But I hope that the administration will continue to be strongly committed to this, as well as the Democratic Senators who were supportive of the START Treaty and made significant commitments about supporting modernization. And I hope that my House colleagues, and a couple on the Senate who are very highly motivated to reduce spending, appreciate the need to prioritize and to distinguish between programs.

Some programs need to be cut, some need to be eliminated, some need to stay the same and some need to be plussed-up. And that’s just the reality of life as we go on. So hopefully if we continue to work at it very, very hard, we’ll get the funding that’s set forth in the president’s budget. And by the way, the administration kept its part of the bargain on the 2012 budget. So I have no complaint about their willingness, at least at this point, to stick with the commitments that were made.

MR. HUESSY: Senator, let me ask you a question. You and Senator Lieberman and Congressman Berman recently sent, I believe, a letter to the administration over Iran policy, and particularly sanctions. Could you broaden this issue and look at how you feel about not only the sanctions but the whole issue of divestment, particularly in light of Iran being the primary state sponsor of terror in the world today?

SEN. KYL: The question is sanctions on Iran. This is probably one of the most frustrating things in my time in the Senate in recent years. We continue to pass legislation giving the president authority. Neither the previous administration nor certainly this administration is using all of the authority that’s been given to them. The announcements they make about companies that they’re going after generally involve companies that they have previously gone after, or at least not the primary targets. I’m not going to get real specific here.

But the bottom line is that we could be doing so much more with respect to individual companies and other countries in their investment into Iran. So I don’t know what else you do in legislating. You’ve got to force the administration to act, which as you know is very, very difficult. And that requires pressure from people on the outside as well as committed members of both the House and the Senate.

The fact is both Iran and North Korea are really hard problems. If they were easy the previous administration and this administration would have solved them. I don’t have all of the answers about North Korea and Iran.

But I think the fact that they are so hard has at least caused this administration to say well, let’s focus on something where we can really get a lot of good PR. We’ll do a bunch of treaties and talk about ridding the world of nuclear weapons and that will divert attention away from this really hard problem that we haven’t figured out how to solve. But eventually the chickens are going to come home to roost here. And at that point there are going to be some really tough decisions to make.

Just one other word about sanctions. Given what we’ve seen in North Africa and the Middle East, it seems to me — and of course this would have worked a lot better had we started doing it five or six years ago. I’m not sure it works as well today. But if our sanctions with respect to Iran are clearly conveyed to the people of Iran as intending to support their aspirations for more representation in their government, as opposed to simply making it easier for us to make a deal with a regime which many of them despise, then the economic dislocations and discomfort that that will visit on the people of Iran will be better understood.

And I think the people will be more inclined to suffer those consequences knowing that there’s a better day ahead for them if the sanctions result in the current regime changing its way of doing business or going out of business. If it’s simply a matter of we’re trying to impose sanctions that hurt the people of Iran so we can make a deal with their regime about nuclear weapons, they couldn’t care less about that. And they’re going to be resentful of what we’re doing.

And right now you’ve got a populace that is, I think, yearning for support from the West and from the United States specifically. And so it seems to me that the administration has foregone a wonderful opportunity here to engage in the kind of public diplomacy and various ways of communicating to the Iranian people that one of the purposes here is to assist them as well.

If we were to do that, who knows what the people of Iran might do. And I don’t have any hope that this administration would dive in and help them. And maybe that wouldn’t be helpful under the circumstances. It would all depend on how things evolve. But at least, it seems to me, that that’s the best chance we have of influencing the administration or changing the government in Iran so that the objectives that we have can also be satisfied. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if the objectives of a lot of the people in Iran who yearn for more freedom could be satisfied as well? That would be a great day’s work.

Well let me just ask all of you to sort of challenge you. As this series goes on you’re going to be addressed by a lot of different folks who, it seems to me, will want to talk about the three subjects that I raised here this morning. And I would be pleased to work with you about these matters in the ensuing months.

I think you should press the people who come to visit with you about that. And if you agree with me, perhaps we can work together in trying to influence the administration’s policy so that they will be a little bit more realistic. I always find it interesting that the great realists of our day have now become the starry-eyed idealists. And maybe it’s just a function of me getting old, I’m not so sure.

But in any event, god willing, I can be here one more time as a senator, Peter. I hope to be able to join you to do that. I thank all of you for your interest and appreciate your being here this morning.

(Applause).

MR. HUESSY: For those of you who would like to join us Thursday with Congressman Turner, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, please let Elma know. And then we’ll take a break for the Easter and religious holidays. We’ll be back here I think – I can’t remember exactly, but May 1 or 2. But let us know so we can get a schedule for you.

I want to thank you all for coming today. This is a great turnout for Senator Kyl and a great start to our series. Thank you all for your support, our sponsors.

Thank you all as guests, particularly the members of our embassy friends around the world. And I want to thank all of you who were here for the first time. Please let us know when you’re coming back, we’d welcome you as well.

And I’ll see you all Thursday. Thank you very much.