WarTimes – Wk of Nov 17

On Thursday, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — who will likely become Senate Majority Leader when the new Congress enters in January — said he feels a “deep responsibility” to stop the power plant regulations, and that his top priority will be “to try to do whatever I can to get the EPA reined in.”

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled regulations cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new and existing power plants, respectively. President Obama has laid out a plan to honor the United States’ international commitment to reduce its GHG emissions 17 percent below their 2005 levels by 2020, and those two regulations form the core of that effort.

The Republicans will have several options for going after the regulations. The first is the Congressional Review Act which, as the Center for American Progress noted, gives Congress the tools to shutdown major rulemakings in the interim time period between their announcement and finalization. This would require a majority vote of disapproval in both chambers of Congress, and in the Senate the Democrats would not be able to use the filibuster. Thanks to Tuesday’s midterm election, the Republicans now have the numbers to do this, and the rule for existing power plants won’t be finalized until mid-2015.

The second, which wouldn’t stop the rules but could slow them down, would be for Republicans to use their new command of various Senate committees to launch a new round of investigations into EPA’s regulations.

The final option, as the GOP aide mentioned, is to attach laws defunding EPA’s power plant rules to the next bill Congress puts together to fund the federal government. These appropriations bills have to be passed at regular intervals to keep the government operating, but they must also make it past President Obama’s veto power. So this would essentially set up a game of chicken between the President and the Republicans, with the EPA regulation as the stakes and a government shutdown as the consequence if neither side caves.

Powerful, well-financed rightwing think tanks and lobbying groups lie behind much of the information circulated by climate denialists. There is not much reasonable doubt as to the findings of science on the subject. As a result of human activities, large-scale climate change is under way and, if it goes on unchecked, it will fundamentally alter the world humans will have in the future. — John Gray on Naomi Klein

• “Redux,” which is Latin for “lead back,” as in “lead back into the past.” That’s what Russia’s government is doing in two respects: it’s negating and reversing the reforms of the recent past—the late 1980s and ’90s—while reinstating key attributes of the preceding old regime as defining features of an atavistic new regime.
• Had Yeltsin and his fellow post-Soviet leaders set off an irredentist free-for-all in the post-Soviet space, stretching across 11 times zones with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in the mix, it would have been a world-threatening catastrophe. On a more specific and less apocalyptic level, it would have been impossible to persuade Ukraine to turn over its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal to Russia, especially if Yeltsin’s opponents had succeeded in their demand that Ukraine turn over Crimea as well.
• Russia’s—and Yeltsin’s—relations with the West were still stressed almost to the breaking point by the mayhem in the Balkans, particularly during its Kosovo phase in 1999. That was for multiple reasons: NATO went to war for the first time; it did so in disregard of Russia’s opposition; its principal target was the capital of a nation with a Slavic Orthodox majority and, therefore, with strong historical and cultural ties to Russia; and the operation’s beneficiaries were Muslim secessionists inside Serbia. That led many Russians at the time to analogize Kosovo to Chechnya. They felt they were impotent bystanders watching a preview of what NATO would someday do to dismember Russia itself.
• I asked for an urgent meeting with Yeltsin. I was told he was “indisposed.” We knew what that meant. We settled for a meeting with his national security advisor, Putin. It was, at the time, a creepy encounter—and all the more so in retrospect. His manner was superficially cool, professional, and courteous, but iciness and controlled contempt were just under the surface. What really struck us was the aplomb, smugness, and brazenness with which he lied.It was spectacular—and, I’d add, reckless.
• Eight weeks later, Yeltsin stunned the world by promoting Putin to prime minister and designated successor, thus setting him up to be Bill Clinton’s Kremlin counterpart. During the interregnum, Putin did everything he could to burnish his law-and-order image, including identifying himself with Moscow’s scorched earth conduct of the war in Chechnya (“Russia’s Kosovo,” as we kept hearing).
• However, with regard to relations with the outside world, Putin stuck with the soothing partnyorstvo line. I saw him just before Christmas, nine days before Yeltsin resigned. Russia, Putin said, “belongs in the West.” He wanted to show, and I quote, “our own people and the world that on the really big issues, we’re on the same side,” and he added that he had “no use” for those in his country who thought—again, his words—“isolation, retrenchment, and confrontation were an option for Russia.” While he made no reference to Yeltsin, at least he was affirming Yeltsin’s basic orientation. That was, no doubt, the message he wanted me to pass to Washington. While I did so, I remembered that this was the same guy who had assured our delegation a few months before that there was nothing to the reports we were hearing about the Russian army breaking bad over Kosovo. So that’s the backstory. Here we are 15 years later, living through the unfolding big story in which Putin is the protagonist and, to an increasing degree, our antagonist…
• He has made himself—particularly in his third term—the champion of precisely those in his country who have for a quarter of a century favored retrenchment in its domestic order. He’s rolled back democratization and enfranchisement of the regions. He’s muzzled and monopolized the media on behalf of propaganda and disinformation. He’s come up with his own highly revised vocabulary for what are essentially reinstatements of the pillars of Soviet rule: “managed democracy” and “the vertical of power.” In foreign policy, he’s replaced partnership with competition. He’s scorned Russia’s European vocation and embraced the Eurasian option.
• Putin’s policies reflect, to a degree, a widespread public mood that includes nostalgia for Russia’s geopolitical heyday and disillusionment over the downside of reform. Taking all that into account, it’s understandable that many commentators believe Putinism will be with us for a long time, perhaps longer than Putin himself.
• Putinism is, as our topic puts it, redux—that is, a conscious attempt at bringing back from the past a model for Russia’s future—it’s doomed.
• I’ll end by putting that point more positively. Russia—thanks in no small measure to the surviving legacies of Gorbachev and Yeltsin—is not the Soviet Union. It’s not monolithic. It’s bigger than Putinism—much bigger. It’s also, despite the retrograde policies of its current leadership, more modern and more normal. I’d submit that the prescriptive challenge for us in the coming days is to brainstorm on how to punish, isolate, and contain Putinism while maintaining engagement with Russia as a whole.

DoD Reviews of Nuclear Weapons Operations Largely “Management Clichés,” Fail to Address Core Problems, Group Charges

Albuquerque – Today’s long-expected internal and external reviews of the Department of Defense (DoD) nuclear operations do not address the root causes of the operational lapses that plague DoD nuclear forces, the Los Alamos Study Group charges.

An article this morning by Robert Burns and Lolita Baldor of the Associated Press explains the basic outlines of today’s announcement by Secretary Hagel.

According to AP, Hagel told his listeners that the good news “is there has been no nuclear exchange in the world.” Likewise Adm. Cecil Haney, Commander in Chief of STRATCOM said, “You don’t see the mushroom cloud or that sort of thing. We must continue that.”

Hagel said, “The root cause [of the persistent problems discovered] has been a lack of sustained focus, attention, and resources, resulting in a pervasive sense that a career in the nuclear enterprise offers too few opportunities for growth and advancement.”

Hagel told reporters the cost of implementing the improvements planned would increase DoD nuclear costs by about 10% per year.

A December 2013 study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tallied the 10-year cost of DoD’s portion of nuclear weapons expenses at $19.2 billion (B) (p. 2; for more detail see p. 5). A 10% increase in these costs thus comes to about $2 B per year or $10 B over the annual 5-year budget Future Years National Security Plan (FYNSP).

Based on past experience, CBO foresaw $30 B in cost escalation over DoD’s budgeted expenditures of $191 B over the coming decade, due to underestimation of acquisition costs. Today’s announcement concerns operational costs and deferred maintenance rather than acquisition, so the 10% increase announced would add about $19 B to CBO’s estimate of overall DoD nuclear weapons costs over the coming decade.

Study Group Director Greg Mello: “In today’s announcement the frightening disconnect between the world of nuclear command and the world of human beings is fully apparent. That, not management, is the “root cause” of the problems.

“If the ‘good news’ is that there has been ‘no nuclear exchange’ and no ‘mushroom cloud,’ to quote Secretary Hagel and the STRATCOM chief today, we know the bar is set too low. There could hardly be more revealing comments. It is the mission, not the management, which is the core of the problem. Dysfunctional management has evolved to fit the dysfunctional mission.

“The way to get rid of problems in the ICBM force is to get rid of ICBMs. They comprise the most absurd leg of the triad. That will save a lot of money as well, though money is secondary to the increased security such retirements would bring.

“These studies had to be done, and I am sure they were done as conscientiously as possible by smart, experienced people. Even so, the final result is riddled with what amount to management clichés and rah-rah boosterism.

“No amount of money or silly made-up medals will ever lead to ‘good morale’ in ICBM officers in particular, who must sit in a deep hole in the ground awaiting orders to end the world. The mental gymnastics of nuclear deterrence theory do not make human sense to those who must live, day and night, in an inhuman environment with world-ending orders locked in a box in front of them…

“Will the additional billions proposed create more national security? No. They will disappear into the same futile and misdirected black hole as the previous billions. Will morale improve? No. Contractors will be enriched, and the generals will have the satisfaction of knowing that ‘something has been done.’ But the problems will persist.

“There is no reason to think today’s ICBM force is any more dangerous than it has been at all times in the past. There is no accumulation of danger. Danger is the object of the exercise, and there have always been severe morale problems, accidents, and so on.

“It is quite possible that upgrades of old command and control systems will introduce new dangers, so DoD must be very careful. The introduction of new dangers during upgrades is commonplace. The biggest cause of problems is often solutions.

“I think any honest person with an ounce of common sense realizes that the only real path to higher morale in the nuclear weapons business lies in gradually shutting it down, starting with the most stupid parts first. The hope that the nuclear sword of Damocles can finally be lifted, reinforced by gradual progress, is what can bring higher morale — and only that…

“No amount of investment in a fundamentally bad idea can make it good. Caliban doesn’t become Prospero with new suit of clothes. The man on a pale horse doesn’t become our friend just because we buy him a shiny new scythe.”

Advisory Opinion of 8 July 1996

The Court handed down its Advisory Opinion on the request made by the General Assembly of the United Nations on the question concerning the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons.

U.S. Ramping up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms

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

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

This expansion comes under a president who campaigned for “a nuclear-free world” and made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy…

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

That suits hawks just fine. They see the investments as putting the United States in a stronger position if a new arms race breaks out.