Pentagon Cuts: Personnel or Nuclear Weapons?

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Tuesday, August 16, 2011.

For Cuts, Pentagon Must Choose Among Weapons, Personnel - Reuters [link]

• A decision to cut $350 billion in security spending over the next decade will force the Pentagon to make difficult trade-offs that could lead to layoffs, canceled weapons systems or a smaller nuclear arsenal.
• The U.S. government could make substantial savings by reducing the size of its nuclear arsenal.
• Analysts say the United States could save huge amounts of money by reducing the nuclear arsenal even further and eliminating one leg of the so-called triad of delivery systems -- missiles, bombers and submarines.
• The Sustainable Defense Task Force recommended cutting deployed nuclear warheads to 1,000 on seven nuclear submarines and 160 Minuteman missiles while eliminating the nuclear bomber force. It estimated savings of $113.5 billion through 2020.

Partisanship in Tehran Could Slow Nuclear Program - Patrick Disney in The Atlantic [link]

• Ahmadinejad [is experiencing] near-total political impotence back home in Iran … [and] has become more like a foreign minister than a president, able to go on trips and give speeches, but not much more.
• This could be good news … Ahmadinejad is the leading voice within Iran's inner circle pushing to develop nuclear weapons … [and] is unlikely to convince his colleagues to develop a nuclear arsenal because he is opposed by Iran's clerics who are far more powerful.
• Therefore, absent some unforeseen change, it is reasonable to assume that Iran will not move forward with building a nuclear bomb at least until Ahmadinejad leaves office in 2013 … [but] although the next two years may be uniquely uneventful, policymakers in Washington don't have the luxury of taking a vacation.

Iran Welcomes Russian Proposal to Restart Nuclear Talks - Voice of America [link]

• Iran's nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, told [Iranian] state media Tuesday the Russian plan could be a “basis” for restarting talks on nuclear activities.
• Jalili had met with Russia's National Security Council secretary, Nikolai Patrushev, earlier in the day.
• Last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov presented a proposal calling for Iran to address the U.N. nuclear agency's concerns about the Iranian nuclear program and be rewarded with a gradual easing of sanctions.

Bolton and DeSutter on INF - Jeffrey Lewis in Arms Control Wonk [link]

• John Bolton and Paula DeSutter have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “A Cold War Missile Treaty That’s Doing Us Harm” that calls for the US to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
• I found it perplexing that an article subtitled “The U.S.-Soviet INF pact doesn’t address the Iranian threat” contained absolutely no discussion of how, you know, building intermediate range nuclear forces would address the Iranian threat.
• I realized that my error was in trying to understand the op-ed as a form of persuasion or policy analysis … The meaning of the op-ed becomes clear only if we do not mistake the words for an exercise in persuasion.

Nuclear Weapons Budget and the Budget Control Act - Stephen Young in All Things Nuclear [link]

• How will the administration’s nuclear weapons budget fare under the recent budget agreement? The bottom line seems to be that it will face around a 10% cut below the administration’s request. Where those cuts will fall, however, is an open question.
• The House called for $10.6 billion in [National Nuclear Security Administration] funding, $1.2 billion less than the [Obama administration] request and roughly equal to FY2011.
• ... the overall cuts the House has made to NNSA programs are not likely to be restored, but where the cuts are applied may shift.