FEDERAL BUDGET WATCH

Sticker Shock and Awe at the Pentagon
Editorial | New York Times | May 30, 2008

A lot more spending and far too little oversight, those are the bottom lines of two disturbing new reports on the Pentagon’s flawed-to-broken budgeting process. The Pentagon’s inspector general plaintively reported this week that his staff is overwhelmed. For good reason. The Pentagon’s budget has doubled since 2000, while the number of auditors has remained static.

An auditor previously responsible for vetting $642 million in defense contracts must now somehow deal with more than $2 billion worth. That’s proving impossible in practice. According to the inspector general, of $316 billion spent last year on costly weapons acquisitions, a mere half received “sufficient” auditing.

Global Military Spending Soars 45% in 10 Years CommonDreams | June 9, 2008

STOCKHOLM - World military spending grew 45 percent in the past decade, with the United States accounting for nearly half of all expenditures, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said Monday.

Military spending grew six percent last year alone, according to SIPRI’s annual report. In 2007, 1,339 billion dollars (851 billion euros) was spent on arms and other military expenditures, corresponding to 2.5 percent of global gross domestic product, or GDP, and 202 dollars for each of the world’s 6.6 billion people.

The United States spends by far the most towards military aims, dishing out 547 billion dollars last year, or 45 percent of global expenditure.

NUCLEAR NOTES

McCain and Obama Reps. Discuss Candidates’ Nonproliferation Strategies at ACA Meeting

View the transcript and C-SPAN video here. The Arms Control Association's (ACA) Annual Meeting on June 16 featured representatives of the campaigns of Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama on what the candidates would do to advance U.S. and international nonproliferation and disarmament efforts.

Marie Rietmann, WAND public policy director, reports:

John Holum, former Arms Control and Disarmement Agency head, represented Senator Obama. He quoted the Senator when he said, “America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons.” Mr. Holum said that Sen. Obama called for a world free of nuclear weapons in a speech in October of 2007. Not talking [to our adversaries] is the diplomatic equivalent of holding your breath. The absence of diplomacy hasn’t worked. We need to reconnect with the world through other means than bluster and arms. Barack Obama would consider the Reliable Replacement Warhead in light of the US role in the world; he will state his intention from Day One that we ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons from the world. Senator Obama supports and would place a high priority on Senate ratification of the nuclear Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Steve Biegun, a Ford Motor Company executive, represented Senator McCain. He referred several times to a speech Sen. McCain made in Denver in May. In that speech, Sen. McCain quoted President Reagan’s dream of the day nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the earth. Mr. Biegun told us that Sen. McCain supports diplomacy. Also that we don’t have the ability to maintain the safety and security of our nuclear weapons absent testing, and that “nuclear weapons play a very important role in our security.” Sen. McCain opposes the spread of nuclear weapons. Although McCain has said that he would reconsider supporting ratification of the CTBT (he opposed it when the Senate voted in 1999).

Surrogates for presumptive presidential nominees Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) described yesterday cautious approaches the candidates would take to the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW)--though neither side outlined full support or dismissal of the proposed nuclear upgrade.

Addressing the Arms Control Association's (ACA) annual meeting in Washington, a McCain adviser said the Republican candidate has pledged to only support developing new nuclear weapons if they are essential to deterrence and help decrease the nuclear arsenal while advancing global nuclear security--and would apply that standard when gauging the RRW.

Meanwhile, during the ACA panel discussion on "how the next president can strengthen the nonproliferation system," an Obama surrogate used language more cautious of the RRW program and warned against "rushing to deploy a new nuclear warhead."

The U.S. Air Force's indifference toward nuclear weapons
By Lawrence J. Korb | 17 June 2008 | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Article Highlights

• During the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force received a bulk of the country's defense budget because of its significant role in delivering nuclear weapons.
• But after the Soviet Union disintegrated, the air force became more interested in traditional air missions and the next generation of fighter planes.
• This disinterest manifested itself in two recent nuclear-related mishaps that cost the air force chief of staff and secretary their jobs.
• Generally, the military considers nuclear weapons costly and unnecessary, as conventional weapons can capably complete nuclear missions.

In somber tones, Gates told reporters his decision to remove Wynne and Moseley was based on the findings of an investigation of the Taiwan debacle by Adm. Kirkland Donald. The admiral found a "lack of a critical self-assessment culture" in the Air Force nuclear program, making it unlikely that weaknesses in the way critical materials such as nuclear weapons are handled could be corrected, Gates said.

Officials Fear Bomb Design Went to Others

By David E. Sanger & William J. Broad | New York Times | June 16, 2008

WASHINGTON — Four years after Abdul Qadeer Khan, the leader of the world’s largest black market in nuclear technology, was put under house arrest and his operation declared shattered, international inspectors and Western officials are confronting a new mystery, this time over who may have received blueprints for a sophisticated and compact nuclear weapon found on his network’s computers.

Working in secret for two years, investigators have tracked the digitized blueprints to Khan computers in Switzerland, Dubai, Malaysia and Thailand. The blueprints are rapidly reproducible for creating a weapon that is relatively small and easy to hide, making it potentially attractive to terrorists.

Groups take aim at nuclear program
By Jen DiMascio | Politico | June 4, 2008

“My intention would be to provide no funding,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee.

But killing government programs of this kind is about as difficult as getting rid of nuclear waste. Even though leading appropriators oppose the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, it retains widespread support among lawmakers for strategic and parochial reasons.

"If you walk away from it for a little bit of time, the ability to maintain the standard that you set for yourself is gone," the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff explained. "It becomes more of a disappointment than something that you look forward to. And so when I stopped, I stopped."

John McCain Discovers Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament
By Lawrence S. Wittner | HNN | June 2, 2008

Citing former President's Ronald Reagan's statement that his "dream" was "to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth," McCain stated: "That is my dream, too."

It was certainly a very impressive speech, if it is to be taken seriously. But is it?

McCain's Big Non-Proliferation Speech: Cheers, Jeers, and Questions
Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation | June 2, 2008

In his speech about nuclear weapons issues delivered on May 27, 2008, Senator John McCain raised important issues for the next Administration. His remarks signaled a welcome shift from the Bush Administration's repudiation of important tools that can effectively reduce the dangers posed by nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, tools which served us well during the Cold War and which remain important for the continued viability of the non-proliferation framework.

NPT: Past, Present, and Future
Arms Control Association | June 2008
by Daryl G. Kimball

Over the course of its 40-year existence, the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) has established an indispensable yet imperfect set of interlocking nonproliferation and disarmament obligations and standards. Rather than the dozens of nuclear-armed states that were forecast before the NPT was opened for signature in July 1968, only four additional countries beyond the original five possessors have nuclear weapons today. On the other hand, several states have abandoned nuclear weapons programs.

The NPT, bolstered by nuclear export controls and a safeguards system, makes it far more difficult for non-nuclear-weapon states to acquire or build nuclear weapons. Equally important, NPT Article VI commits the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China to achieve nuclear disarmament.

Yet, once again the nuclear nonproliferation regime is at a critical juncture.

IRAQ UPDATES

Iraq Ain't No Insurgency, Say Former Petraeus Aides
By Noah Shachtman | June 17, 2008 | Wired

Iraq cooled from a raging boil to a slow simmer, thanks mostly to tactics taken from the military's counterinsurgency manual. Or, at least, that's the accepted wisdom. But a group of military thinkers and Iraq veterans says the established narrative is all wrong. According to them, Iraq may not even be an insurgency at all...

Instead, what seems to be going on in Iraq is a “competition among ethnic and sectarian communities for power and resources,” as General David Petraeus put it. Shi'ites are fighting Shi'ites; Sunnis are battling Sunnis; splinter groups from both sects are waging a low-level religious war; AQI and other jihadists are stirring chaos; and criminal gangs trying to profit from the mayhem. It's an "extremely difficult and lethal problem," observes Lt. Col. Ollivant, who, until recently, was the chief of planning for U.S. military operations in Baghdad. "But it "is not exactly an insurgency."

IRAN HAPPENINGS

WAND public policy director Marie Rietmann reports:
The phones were busy for the whole three-hour period. LOTS of press covered the event, and there was excellent participation in the press conference by groups from Pat Buchanan’s to FCNL, and electeds and former electeds -- from Barbara Lee (D-CA)/WiLL Honorary Co-Chair to Bob Barr (R-GA)/Libertarian candidate for President. WAND/WiLL Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) is pictured here. Big gold stars to Carah Ong, Iran Policy Analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, for putting the whole thing together!

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