Values creep.

David Brooks’ new column is a little surreal. Lamenting the sorry state of personal and public finance in this country, Brooks pines for a time when our “country’s cultural monitors” were more interested in guiding Americans’ economic behavior than in fighting about prayer in the schools. Why “cultural monitors” should be guiding Americans’ economic behavior is not totally clear, but the conflation between the cultural and the economic pervades the piece: if we do need, as Brooks says, a “moral revival,” I’m not sure it should be aiming at a bump in the savings rate. I’m not really sure what an “economic value” is.

He’s not wrong about where we stand and that it needs fixing; I’m just saying. There’s a way to talk about these things, and I don’t like the implication that financial discipline is only an acceptable conservative issue if it’s about values. Moral decline is not the only sort of decline this country faces.

Update— You’ll never believe it. Krugman goes with “it’s not moral decay, it’s Republicans.“

a.j.m.

Filed under: Domestic, Economics , Brooks

The progressivism of the powerful.

The New York Times’ Green Inc. blog has been tracking an interesting trend lately: in the last couple of days, three major power utilities have withdrawn from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over that body’s opposition to climate change legislation. Pacific Gas & Electric was first, followed by New Mexico’s PNM, and, today, the major nuclear utility Exelon.

This is just the latest reminder not to assume the interests of domestic groups a priori, or assume that their commitment to their apparent material interests are intractable. Of course, these assumptions often hit the mark; but just as often they fail to pick up on countervailing material interests, longer-term interests, ideology, altruism, or other forces. More often than many people expect, progressive causes like environmental sustainability come to be seen as win, win, win, win issues; but other times, corporations are willing to take a small financial hit for a big boost in prestige. The rising number of LEED-certified buildings is one example. Another is the annual op-ed on one of the major pages by some wealthy altruist arguing that many of the well-to-do have no trouble consenting to higher taxes, and may even prefer them. Be careful out there: whether you’re a rationalist or an idealist, don’t assume against the progressivism of powerful actors.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Domestic, sustainability , positive sum

Naming conventions: If it looks like a missile edition.

It’s something of a pastime in the “arms control community” to point out the media’s wanton disregard for technical precision or, in some really egregious cases, basic facts. Doubtless a more trafficked blog than this one will point out that no, darling, Iran did not test long-range missiles today. According to a U.S. government convention, ballistic missiles fall into one (although there is some overlap) of the following categories:

Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM): over 5500 kilometers
Intermediate-Range (Long-range) Ballistic Missile (IRBM): 3000 to 5500 kilometers
Medium-Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM): 1000 to 3000 kilometers
Short-Range Ballistic missile (SRBM): up to 1000 kilometers.

Iran’s Sejil and Shahab-3 missiles are more precisely referred to as medium-range ballistic missiles. Iran would very much like to have IRBM and ICBM capabilities, of course, but intelligence estimates place this date still a ways off. Iran’s persistent missle troubles lend some credence to these predictions.

To its credit, the Washington Post gets it right in the lede:

Iran reported Monday that it successfully test-fired its most advanced and powerful medium-range missiles as part of war games it said were intended to deter the country’s enemies.

And moreover, the error is in the title of the Times article. The body instead refers to Iran’s “longest-range” missiles.

But does it matter? Certainly for diplomats, who need to have a stable vocabulary on which to negotiate agreements and compare capabilities in a lexically simple fashion. Certainly for wonks because most of us write for diplomats and decision makers, and for whom precision is something of a cult religion professional norm.

You could make the argument, however, that the general public is more likely to focus on the words “ballistic missile” than the two words preceding them. And people are just as likely to underestimate the deadliness of a “short-range” missile as they to overestimate the threat posed by “long-range” (but-really-medium-range) missiles. Bloggers get points for debunking media imprecision generally, but it’s not clear to me that the arsenal of democracy is best served by adhering to technical ground rules established to facilitate US-Soviet arms control and intragovernment discussions.

It seems to me more useful to focus on straightforward ways to deflate hysteria and misinformation. Pointing out the difference between the “intermediate” and “intercontinental” ranges isn’t likely to change the significance of a breakthrough in Iranian capabilities. Every time Iran tests a new missile, reporters might just want to point out that Iran has been at this for a while. That while its missiles threaten Israel, they’ve also done that for some time now.

Explicitly challenging the presumed novelty of political developments and pointing out how they’ve been a long time coming is a good way to introduce some much needed sobriety into the general political debate on foreign policy. But to the extent that media report “news” and have a structural bias toward novelty, I’m not holding my breath.

Brian

Filed under: Arms Control , Iran, Journalism

Seeing the whole board on the Iranian program.

(Photo from the New York Times)

This week has seen a whirlwind of actions pertaining to Iran’s nuclear program, moving so quickly that they’re difficult to keep up with. Two days ago I wrote a post arguing that the what had happened up to that point didn’t at up: something was missing; now we know what. It’s all a little dizzying, though, so let’s step back and take a look at what we know of the whole board.

(Rather than cite as I go, I hope it will be enough to say that the following was sourced from here: NYT, NYT; NYT; Post.)

• On 17 Sept., President Obama announced that he would revise the Bush administrations plans for theater missile defense in Europe predicated on stationing an x-band radar in the Czech Republic and an interceptor battery in Poland. This disposed of a longstanding dispute between Russia and the United States, which was fought over Russia’s concerns that the system was directed at them (surreal), and on intruding upon their sphere of influence (likely).

• On 22 Sept., Tuesday, American officials were informed that Iran had sent a brief letter to the IAEA declaring the Qom facility. Administration officials held discussions Tuesday and Wednesday to determine how to respond to the revelation.

• On 23 Sept., Wednesday, Presidents Obama and Medvedev meet at the Waldorf-Astoria, they discuss the missile defense shift and Iran, and Medvedev subsequently—and somewhat inexplicably—declares his support for a new round of Iranian sanctions.

• On 24 Sept., Thursday, President Obama chaired a special session of the United Nations Security Council which passed UNSC Resolution 1887. The resolution agreed to some principles that would underwrite discussions at the 2010 NPT Review Conference. No weaponizing state was mentioned by name, either in the content of the resolution, nor in Obama’s introductory speech.

• On the evening of 24 Sept., Thursday, word leaks to the press that Obama will announce from the G-20 conference in Pittsburgh that Iran has pursued a covert facility at Qom.

• On the morning of 25 Sept., Friday, Obama, Sarkozy, and Brown hold a press conference that presses for stronger sanctions. Both Medvedev and Chinese officials offer support.

Here’s what we don’t know:

First, we don’t know the conditions for Iran’s admission in the first place. It would be a neat story if Obama had done the deal on the missile defense system, held tight to pass the resolution unopposed, while both set up the reveal of the Qom facility on Friday and the levy of new pressure on Iran in preparation for their October 1st talks. This would answer the previous questions about just what the multilateral talks were supposed to accomplish, with Iran refusing to discuss its nuclear program. Now, it is almost a certainty that the nuclear program will be on the table in one form or another; maintaining its refusal would heap new opprobrium on the Islamic Republic and guarantee tough new sanctions and possibly worse. Major pressure is being brought to bear over Qom and the most powerful states will demand an explanation.

At least two factors mitigate this story: for one, Iran declared the Qom facility; it was not revealed by the United States. For another, if reports of an apparent scramble to formulate a strategy in response to Iran’s letter are accurate, it seems to militate against a coherent American play. Lastly, Iran has apparently been aware of the United States’ knowledge of the facility since late spring, so why release the information now?

My hunch is that Iran was provoked to declare the Qom facility through back channels. They were made to understand that the play was in progress, and Iran’s options were to a) declare the facility, maintaining a patina of compliance with its safeguards agreements (see Brian’s excellent post just below) or b) have it revealed. Faced with these options, Iran naturally selected the former option. If this was not the case, it is difficult to make sense of the missile defense deal occurring when it did. (1887 is not a strong enough resolution that Obama would trade away the Eastern European sites for a Russian yea vote.) Obama forced the issue to put Iran’s covert facilities on the table at the upcoming talks and levy additional pressure on the Iranians.

Second, we don’t know how this knowledge was handled with Israel. The first Times link above notes that Israel was informed about the facility, but we do not know when, and we do not know how this information played into Israel’s decision to refrain from a preventive strike against the nuclear program. In the past they have pushed quite hard for American permission to carry out the strike (President Bush apparently denied Israeli requests to use Iraqi airspace); why wouldn’t knowledge of this facility make that strike more likely, given that they could incapacitate a larger percentage of the program? Just how were the Israelis kept muzzled?

Third, we certainly do not know whether the United States has knowledge of additional undisclosed facilities. It should be noted that the Qom facility was apparently detected using not only satellite imagery (IMINT) but also human intelligence (HUMINT), which is a major coup for American intelligence agencies. As Alex Montgomery and I have argued [pdf], rarely have the American intelligence services performed so well against a covert nuclear program. To catch a covert facility before it becomes operational is no small task, so this whole to do has the further effect of communicating to Iran that our intelligence in this regard is excellent.

I’m sure this is only the half of it. More to come soon.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Arms Control , intelligence, Iran, medvedev, Obama, Qom

Iran is still not compliant.

It was about seven years ago this month that Iran first confessed to secretly developing a uranium enrichment capability near the town of Natanz. Today, we’re hearing Iran is building another enrichment facility in the hills outside of Qom.

Same as it ever was.

Iran announced the existence of the facility to the IAEA on Monday. My hunch is that they suspected the U.S. was going to break the story this week and preempted the big reveal so as to appear to be following the rules. Except Iran has broken the rules by declaring the Qom facility’s existence long after construction started at the facility.

Iran ratified its NPT safeguards agreement (PDF) in 1976. That document outlines the ground rules, so to speak, for Iran’s relationship with the Agency. It provides for “Subsidiary Arrangements”—specific provisions about how the IAEA will apply safeguards on Iranian facilities and what Iran must do to ensure their effective application.

One particular arrangement, known as Code 3.1, stipulates when Iran is supposed to disclose the existence of or plans for a new facility to the IAEA. The original Code 3.1 required Iran to submit information about a new facility 180 days before the introduction of nuclear material. This echoes the safeguards agreement itself, which states that Iran must disclose the existence of a new nuclear facility “as early as possible.”

In 2003, after the disclosure of Natanz, Iran agreed to a modified Code 3.1 that mandates disclosure “as soon as the decision to construct or to authorize construction has been taken, whichever is earlier.” In 2007, Iran unilaterally suspended its application of this modification. Iran isn’t allowed to do this, however, under the terms of its own safeguards agreement, which it ratified. Subsidiary arrangements

may be extended or changed by agreement between the Government of Iran and the Agency without amendment of this Agreement.

If the converse of this is true, then the last time the IAEA and Iran arrived at an agreement on Code 3.1 was in 2003. That version still applies. Iran therefore violated its safeguards agreement by not informing the IAEA of the existence of the Qom facility as soon as it the order was given to start digging, if not earlier. According to the White House, that point occurred a few years ago.

So what happens next? The IAEA Board of Governors found Iran in noncompliance with its safeguards agreement in 2005. From what I can tell, nothing in the IAEA Statute keeps the Board of Governors from issuing another finding of noncompliance to the Security Council (and the General Assembly). But I wouldn’t hold my breath on such an action resulting in anything other than more division and discord on the Board. Iran has already ignored, oh, every UN Security Council resolution relating to its nuclear program.

There are few institutional mechanisms through which to address noncompliance—none of which have worked on Iran so far. Iran has demonstrated time and again that the nonproliferation regime has no teeth. Although we have yet more evidence of Iran’s refusal to follow the rules, the chances are very good that it will just get thrown into the cold storage locker of diplomatic history.

Brian

Filed under: Arms Control, International Organization , Iran

Arms control mysteries.

The events of the past week have been excellent news for arms control internationally: first, President Obama jettison’s Bush’s byzantine missile defense system; then, today, Prime Minister Brown announces that he will consider scaling back Britain’s SSBN force from four Vanguard submarines to three upon their replacement in the next decades. The odd part is this: after decades, the West now seems to have something to offer the progressive causes of the rest of the world, but seems not to be asking for much in return. While climate change talks are mired in excruciating negotiations about the precise valence of reciprocity, apparently huge steps are being taken in arms control without explicit reciprocal agreements.

I speculated earlier that Obama traded away his Eastern European installations in exchange for Russian support for sanctions on Iran or other tough steps. Of course, this might still be the case—but Medvedev’s tepid support today for tougher sanctions appeared to be predicated rather more on diffuse reciprocity than a specific agreement. Of course, there is no way of knowing: even if an explicit agreement had been reached, public events would likely be similar to what we are seeing now, but there is reason to be skeptical. It is not clear why Obama would plan unilaterally to switch the missile defense system: the Russians had made missile defense into a major issue and would have been prepared to offer significant concessions in return for just the step that did occur.

Brown’s move shows no such ambiguity: the prospective reduction was offered to the United Nations as a whole, hoping only for good will.

Now, both of these moves were in their country’s interests—Britain has been considering just this reduction since Blair’s tenure, and before. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be leveraged! What effect will these announcements have on April’s NPT review conference? Are they meant, awkwardly, to spur countries to start softening up the domestic ground for their own cuts?

What’s going on here? Any ideas?

a.j.m.

Filed under: Arms Control , Brown, medvedev, missile defense, Obama, Trident, vanguards

TII greatest hits links.

Education, the gas tax, high speed rail, killing astronauts—it’s the greatest hits here at TII. Same thing we do every night, Pinky.

• Guess what percentage of Americans have graduated college. Go on, guess.

The answer is the second number: 36.2%, 10.5%, 53.3%

Now guess what that number was for all under-30 year olds in 2000 (so, more recently). 16.8%. That’s astounding, right?

• Is there anyone in the world with a higher (%annoying • %right) metric? Tom Friedman says “Real Men Tax Gas.“ We can send thousands of our sons overseas to die but we’re not willing to take a tough political stand at home for a good thing.

• More from Paul Davies on a one-way trip to Mars. The twist at the end is that it could be done with an international consortium of space agencies for the sake of producing an integrating project (like European economic integration). Moreover, as I’ve written before, an international Mars outpost would keep nationality confined to this planet—because what good could come of spreading it throughout the solar system?

• Here’s a report from America 2050 on the potential expansion of the national high speed rail network [pdf]. Cities are ranked by various indicators of their need for high speed rail—GDP, local transportation systems, and so on—to provide a tentative road map for expansion of the network.

• Obama’s FCC moves ahead to formalize net neutrality! A major step in the right direction for protecting consumers and small businesses that will go unnoticed and unheralded.

• Somebody name a cat PAVE PAWS. Do it now.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Various , friedman, gas tax, high speed rail, mars

First cuts on missile defense

Courtesy of Thomas Pickering and those atomic scientists.

Brian

Filed under: Arms Control , missile defense

Bravo on missile defense.

Brian (Don’t miss his post below! He knows much more than I do about this) and I share the opinion that Obama’s decision to do away with Bush’s byzantine missile defense system in Eastern Europe is unquestionably a good decision. (That said, of course it will be questioned. Here’s why those queries are likely to be misplaced.

1. Obama’s scheme is better for missile defense. The Times article above notes that “The Obama team relied heavily on research by a Stanford University physicist, Dean Wilkering, who presented the government with research this year arguing that Poland and the Czech Republic were not the most effective places to station a missile defense system against the most likely Iranian threat. Instead, he said, more optimal places to station missiles and radar systems would be in Turkey or the Balkans.” I assume this is because interceptors launched from the Eastern Mediterranean or the Balkans can intercept any Iranian ballistic missile at the peak of its trajectory into low earth orbit, possibly before some countermeasures are feasibly deployed. (Though I can’t imagine this range is sufficiently close for boost-phase intercept.) About the worst time to intercept a missile is on its way down. The new system would correct this.

2. The other reason why the new scheme is better for missile defense is that it relies on proven American technology that can be deployed now. The SM-3 is the RIM-161 Standard Missile-3, which relies on the AN/SPY-2 radar. Together they comprise the dramatically successful AEGIS missile defense system, which can be deployed on Ticonderoga and Arleigh-Burke class missile destroyers. The system has been deployed successfully for years and is useful in a range of scenarios (we used it this past year to shoot down one of our aging spy satellites). Furthermore, the AEGIS system is undergoing active development: the AN/SPY-3 radar is set to be deployed on the DDG-1000 destroyer (the procurement of which was curtailed to two) and compatible with other missile cruisers, while the SM-6 will allow the AEGIS to intercept small aircraft and agile cruise missiles. Having these capabilities consistently deployed in the Middle East obviously allows for a wider range of missions and defense capabilities. This means: it works, it can get there faster, and it’s better. I don’t want to hear one peep about how this is weakening our security.

3. We must have traded the system for something. The trade would almost exactly parallel Kennedy’s famous decision to trade away the obsolete Jupiter medium-range ballistic to the Soviet Union for a favorable resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We lost nothing in the trade and gained a great deal—which hopefully is what happened here. For the same reason as the previous deal, no deal would be disclosed as a quid-pro-quo, but if the Russians take a tougher stance in the next round of Iran negotiations, don’t be so surprised.

4. AEGIS destroyers are removable. Sorry, but permanent assets are expensive, and bad for renegotiating security commitments to even our allies. It means the hegemon can’t be extorted for extra rent or security commitments just because an Eastern European country put another guy in charge who needs to demonstrate his independence from the Americans.

5. The new system does away with this bizarre charade over this old system, in which it wasn’t good for us, and wasn’t really bad for the Russians’ deterrent, but goddamnit we were both going to stick to our guns and drag everything down around us. I disagree with Brian about this (though of course I could stand to be corrected): the Eastern Europe missile defense system posed no threat to Russia’s ability to attack Western Europe because Russia has a) more ballistic missiles than this system ever could have stopped, and b) cruise missiles. The system was an issue because of our security alliances with Eastern European countries (which will continue, but in a less-abrasive fashion).

6. Sorry again, but it’s cheaper, and that matters—not just in this environment, but always.

So those are six good reasons: the new system can—hit ballistic missiles better; hit other stuff better; gain us valuable concessions; assist in offshore balancing; restore sanity to defense discussions; save money. There is a seventh, broader, reason but that requires another post.

Bravo.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Arms Control, Europe, Middle East , missile defense

When “defense” no longer means “huge waste of money”

If you haven’t followed the debate over the “third site” missile defense radar that the Obama administration just killed, or you’re not quite sure why this decision matters, or you want to be reminded just how much of an awful idea this plan was, go read George Lewis and Ted Postol (PDF). Right now. I’m serious.

The Bush administration’s “plan” for missile defense was flawed for a number of reasons. For one, it was minimally tested. There have only been 7 of 14 successful tests for the ground-based mid-course (GMD) interceptors slated for siloing in Poland. Meanwhile, the proposed x-band European Missile Radar (EMR) in the Czech Republic would have had trouble identifying Iranian warheads equipped with even rudimentary countermeasures. Targeting decisions could also affect the system’s identification abilities.

And then there were the political implications. For the U.S.-Russia relationship, for the U.S. relationship with Eastern European countries, and for European security. I find both sides in the debate over Russia policy increasingly exasperating. I’m obviously drawing caricatures here, but it basically divides up between old (and new) Sovietologists keen on resurrecting the “stability” and “predictability” of the Cold War and people afraid of “poking the bear,” lest the Kremlin throw a tantrum and take it out on its Eastern European kid siblings. Both sides underestimate the legitimacy and reality of Russian security concerns and overestimate the kind of criticism and pressure Russia can absorb.

It’s time for Russia to assure its neighbors that Moscow has no designs on its territory, that it’s not going to pull a Frederick II. And if it is unable or unwilling to take responsibility for clarifying its intentions, NATO needs to engage in practices—joint military exercises, security assurances, what have you—that can provide concrete and visible symbols of the Alliance’s (and therefore the United States’) its commitment to stability and its ability to vouchsafe security in Eastern Europe.

But the larger lesson out of this mess, I think, is that it reveals that to the extent that European security is a stable and long-term reality, it’s also one that needs constant reproduction and management. Obsolete nuclear weapons aren’t the stuff NATO is made of. Good-faith consultations and talking are. These things matter vis-a-vis relations with Russia as well. We will only move beyond the intellectual poverty in popular discussions of U.S.-Russian relations by demonstrating that it’s possible to work together on common problems while holding Moscow’s feet to the fire when they turn off the lights in Ukraine or misplace a dozen or so journalists.

UPDATE—Two points on clarification are warrented here. First, I mis-blogged when I appraised Russia’s security concerns as “legimate.” Obviously, neither the U.S. nor Europe pose a threat to Russia’s vital interests. What I meant was that the diplomatic reality is such that Russia’s security concerns have to be tamped down without questioning their validity. Second, while talk of “scrapping” the system provides a useful rhetorical flourish, what the Obama folks have done is replace a, in Adam’s terms, byzantine non-capability with a system that is demonstrably more effective. But while the new system is an improvement, it isn’t ideal. Questions remain about the details, though that’s another post.

Brian

Filed under: Arms Control , Europe, missile defense