Gradually getting rid of the bomb

Obama’s done some good this weekend. Yglesias:

The numbers announced Monday, Mr. Cirincione notes, amount to a 30 percent reduction in the nuclear arsenals of the two countries that possess 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.”

In other words, that’s a roughly 28 percent reduction in the total number of nuclear weapons in the world. It’s also a powerful signal to the French, British, and especially Chinese that the United States and Russia are serious about reducing arsenals and that the Obama administration really wants to pursue a nuclear-free world. The fact that the US and Russia contain such a large proportion of global nukes is, after all, a bit of an anachronism as in pretty much all other respects China has clearly replaced Russia as the number two geopolitical player and in some domains the European Union has set itself up as a more-or-less independent great power. It would be very plausible for the Chinese (and much less plausible, though still possible, for the Europeans) to decide they need to react to this situation by “leveling up” and building their own arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons.

Steps that give the Chinese confidence that they don’t need to do that, that the US and Russia are prepared to level down, will do an enormous amount to help build a more peaceful, more secure world. Not only in terms of the US-China relationship, but also in terms of India’s thinking about its nuclear needs and therefore Pakistan’s thinking and therefore the general problem of proliferation around the world. These reductions, if they come to pass, will be a huge deal.

Oh snap!

Glenn Greenwald pwnage:

Today, this super-tough guy has a column at Pajamas Media explaining — in the context of a new film he saw that joyously depicts men as men and ladies as ladies — what distinguishes real men like him from fake males who have had their manhood taken by women:

[...] I’m the old-fashioned King of the Castle type: my wife knew it when she married me, she knows it now, and she knows where the door is if she gets sick of it. And you can curse me or consign me to Feminist Hell or whatever you want to do. But when you’re done, answer me this: why would a man get married under any other circumstances? I’m serious. What’s in it for him? I mean, marriage is a large sacrifice for a man. He gives up his right to sleep with a variety of partners, which is as basic an urge in men as having children is in women. He takes on responsibilities which will probably curtail both his work and his social life. If he doesn’t also acquire authority, gravitas, respect and, yes, mastery over his own home, what does he get? Companionship? Hey, stay single, dude, you’ll have a lot more money, and then you can buy companionship. [...]

I wonder what he thinks of the women who go and fight the wars for which he’s a vocal (shrieking) tough-guy cheerleader but won’t fight himself?  Ultimately, the only cure for this level of insecurity over one’s masculinity is to become a cheerleader for wars, torture, “getting tough” with our current Enemy (today: Iran), and politicians who prance around in fighter pilot costumes on the decks of aircraft carriers.  The vicarious sensations of pulsating strength must be so soothing to someone like this, so desperate to prove their manhood.

ReTweet: “Smooth Operator”

"Perriello_Petraeus_010809 001211" by Jon-Phillip Sheridan

By publius:

I’ll be honest — I’m a bit frightened of David Petraeus’s political and media savvy.  This guy is good.  I just watched him on Fox News and was very impressed with his answers on everything from Gitmo to torture to the ability of our legal system to try detainees.  The video is here, but I’ve posted some excerpts from the rough transcript:

On closing Gitmo:

What I do support is what has been termed I think a responsible closure of Gitmo.  Gitmo has caused us problems — there’s no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has indeed been used by the enemy against us.  We have not been without missteps or mistakes in our activities since 9/11.

On trying detainees in the US:

I don’t think we should be afraid to live our values.  That’s what we’re fighting for. It’s what we stand for and so indeed we need to embrace them and we need to operationalize them in how we carry out what it is we’re doing on the battlefield and everywhere else. So one has to have some faith I think in the legal system.  One has to have a degree of confidence that individuals that have conducted such extremist activity would indeed be found guilty in our courts of law.

On opposing torture:

PETRAEUS:  [F]or the vast majority of the cases our experience . . .is that the techniques that are in the army field manual that lays out how we treat detainees, how we interrogate them — those techniques work. That’s our experience in this business.

FOX NEWS:  So is sending this signal that we’re not going to use these kind of techniques anymore . . . What kind of impact does that have on people who do us harm in the in the field that you operate in?

PETRAEUS:  Well actually what I would ask is — does that not take away from our enemies a tool which again they’ve beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion. When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva convention, we rightly have been criticized.  And so as we move forward I think it’s important to . . . live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena into practice.

Very smooth.  Obviously, that’s all good stuff.  But I’m a little wary of relying too much on any argument that begins, “Well, I’m right because General Petraeus says X.”  Most obviously, he is a direct subordinate of Obama — just like he used to be a direct subordinate of Bush back when he was saying arguably unhelpful things about the surge.  And more generally, I don’t like the idea of relying heavily on the public statements of active military officials in political policy debates.

But I do think this passage shows Petraeus’s political dexterity.  He’s someone who can go on Fox News and articulate Obama’s political message, while simultaneously retaining the sympathies of all parties.

If he ever runs for anything, I hope it’s not as a Republican.

Great excerpts. Great points. Great caution against over emphasizing arguments just because “Petraeus said so”. Great post.

ReTweet: “The Most Pernicious Phrase in Washington”

By Ezra Klein:

Over dinner last night, my friend Chris Hayes, who’s also the Washington editor of The Nation magazine (his blog is here), made a very nice point on one of the more villainous turns of phrase in Washington’s ongoing budget conversation. I e-mailed to ask him if he could repeat the point for you fine folks. He was kind enough to comply:

Sure. Basically I said one of the most pernicious phrases in Washington, one you hear all the time in any discussion of the budget is: “non-defense discretionary spending.” Of course, that’s less than quarter of the federal budget. Half of the budget is non-discretionary spending in Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, both of which are administered with a remarkably small amount of staff and quite efficiently. (Also: both are very popular, so it doesn’t behoove politicians to take the axe to them).But the majority of discretionary spending is, of course, defense. It’s always struck me that if you’re a libertarian, the national security state is/should be enemy number one. It features all of the worst aspects of Big Government: a bureaucracy that metastasizes, one which is constantly sprouting new arms and offices to solve the problems it itself creates. It is connected to a massively cartelized, cronyfied network of defense contractors, the most rent-seeking sort of Big Business there is. It sucks up tremendous resources, it can constrain freedom (as in: go kill and die) in a way that no other aspect of the state (save, arguably the criminal justice system) can. And, worst, there simply is no mobilized constituency to stop its spread except for the Quakers, Code Pink and lefties.

The implication of “non-defense discretionary spending” is simple enough. That’s the stuff you can cut. Stuff like, say, education, or roads, or home heating assistance. Defense spending, however, is too politically dangerous for Congress to muck with. It’s not like education, or roads, or home heating assistance. It gets it’s own category. The conversation, in other words, begins from the premise that you can’t question defense spending. That’s a crazy premise.

(Graph credit: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.)

“Cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’”

From the Senate Detainee Report:

UNCLASSIFIED

Executive Summary

“What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight … is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also all human beings. “

– General David Petraeus

May 10,2007

(U) The collection of timely and accurate intelligence is critical to the safety of U.S. personnel deployed abroad and to the security of the American people here at home. The methods by which we elicit intelligence information from detainees in our custody affect not only the reliability of that information, but our broader efforts to win hearts and minds and attract allies to our side.

(U) Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are taught to expect Americans to abuse them. They are recruited based on false propaganda that says the United States is out to destroy Islam. Treating detainees harshly only reinforces that distorted view, increases resistance to cooperation, and creates new enemies. In fact, the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States” cited “pervasive anti U.S. sentiment among most Muslims” as an underlying factor fueling the spread of the global jihadist movement. Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that “there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U. S. combat deaths in Iraq – as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”

(U) The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority. This report is a product of the Committee’s inquiry into how those unfortunate results came about.

UNCLASSIFIED

xii

(Danke: Sullivan)

Military 2.0

"Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Balad Air Base, Iraq" by jamesdale10

Paul Kane wants to update the military to reflect 21st century challenges:

First, the Air Force should be eliminated, and its personnel and equipment integrated into the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Second, the archaic “up or out” military promotion system should be scrapped in favor of a plan that treats service members as real assets. Third, the United States needs a national service program for all young men and women, without any deferments, to increase the quality and size of the pool from which troops are drawn.

I actually think these are all great ideas. But this:

President Obama has the political capital to make these critical changes. Given the urgency of war and money available under the economic recovery plan, now may be our best chance for decades to truly modernize America’s defenses.

…is dubious. (My emphasis.)

The problem is that there are so many needed changes given the current crisis–and none of these need changes are easy. Yes, Obama has great public support right now. But it is difficult to think that he has the capital to take a swing (and such a large one) at the bloated military in addition to all these other challenges.

I think this might be a good second-term maneuver: if we’re past the economic crisis and still facing huge deficits, and if Obama’s progressive spending reforms have proven to be popular, and if the world has appeared to stabilize some (especially in Af-Pak and Iran), then perhaps trimming the fat off the military and reforming it to reflect modern challenges and combat scenarios would become politically feasible.

Right now, though, it isn’t.

Louie Palu

Photo gallery of Alpha Company of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit Battle Landing Team.

(Danke: David Schonauer)

The new face of war

"MQ-1B Predator, Ali Base, Iraq" by jamesdale10

Saletan takes a look at drones in Pakistan, an excerpt:

7. What are the drones’ psychological effects? Among other things, the Pakistan experiment is testing how a war waged by machines affects the morale of their human adversaries. U.S. officials tell Miller that the militants, hounded and pounded by the drones, “have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust.” One official says that al-Qaida operatives are “wondering who’s next,” that they’re “hunting down people who they think are responsible” for exposing them to the drones, and that “people are showing up dead or disappearing.” Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times adds that in northwest Pakistan, “[s]ome locals have given up drinking Lipton tea, out of a growing conviction that the [CIA] is using the tea bags as homing beacons for its pilotless planes.”

On the other hand, Mazzetti reports many Pakistanis think that the drones “reveal the fears of Americans to take casualties”—that we’re “sending robots to do a man’s job.” He cites P.W. Singer’s book Wired for War, in which Muslim insurgents “said that America’s reliance on drone weapons is a sign that the United States is afraid to sacrifice troops in combat.”

I’m not buying this. I’m not buying the U.S. spin that the drones are reducing al-Qaida to fratricide. And I’m sure not buying this jihadi propaganda about the glory of sacrifice. Sacrifice is for suckers. Even terrorists know that. That’s why, as Drew reports, our ostensibly cowardly drone operators are watching this:

On a recent day, at 1:15 p.m. in Tucson—1:15 the next morning in Afghanistan—a pilot and sensor operator were staring at gray-toned video from the Predator’s infrared camera. … The crew was scanning a road, looking for … signs of anyone planting improvised explosive devices or lying in wait for a convoy. … “We spend 70 to 80 percent of our time doing this, just scanning roads,” said the pilot. …

In short, our people are hiding behind lethal gizmos watching your people plant lethal gizmos and hide. Your people don’t intend to be there when the bombs go off any more than ours do. So if we’re sissies, so are you.

$3.6 Billion to “green” the military

Awesome. And I agree with Sullivan that this is a great investment because of the military’s history of developing tech.

Another part of the $787 billion stimulus package is going towards green energy projects: About $20 billion in fact, including $3.6 billion for energy efficiency improvements and facility upgrades at the Department of Defense. Nathan Hodge over at Wired points out some of the US military’s genuine efforts to green, such as a planned 500MW solar thermal power plant at Fort Irwin, then poses the question of whether “defense contractors who build tanks and bombs will start rebranding themselves as green saviors?” and admits that it might be a cynical question to ask. It is, and here’s why:

Say what you like about the military in terms of the way wars are waged, the necessity or lack thereof of them, but the US military is making some genuine efforts to green their act. They may have more to do with operational strategy, energy independence and fighting effectiveness than green ethics, but the end result can be good for all of us.