The Unaccountable Nuclear Budget

On the radar: Waste and opacity in nuclear budgets; Diplomatic deficiency; WSJ’s logic on military strikes; Panetta on the consequences of strikes; War advocates overlook consequences of strikes; Ending nuclear programs; Pakistan better without the bomb; U.S.-Iran tensions, and When we used nukes as shovels.

November 11, 2011 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Mary Kaszynski

Waste in the nuke weapons budget - “Whether or not you think we should have more or less nuclear weapons, you need to know how much we spend. Resources are always part of strategy, and you can’t figure out your strategy without knowing how much you spend and where,” writes Taxpayers for Common Sense.

--What makes this difficult is that there is no unified, comprehensive nuclear weapons budget. Taxpayers for Common Sense notes two known examples of waste: the Chemistry Metallurgy Reseach Replacement facility, projected to cost more than ten times the original estimate, and the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication facility, a $5 billion project to produce a fuel that no one wants to buy. http://owl.li/7qvrc

Diplomacy and American interests with Iran - “By treating diplomacy with Iran as a reward to be earned rather than the vital national security tool that it is, American politicians have been administering a self-inflicted wound,” writes Reza Marashi in The New York Times.

--”The 30-year freeze in diplomatic relations with Iran has produced a U.S. government that knows precious little about a country that is integral to stabilizing American national security interests in nonproliferation, terrorism, Afghanistan, Iraq, energy security and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.” http://owl.li/7qvpU

WSJ tilts toward strikes - The question for the world, and especially for the Obama Administration, is whether those dire consequences [of a nuclear-armed Iran] are worse than the risks of a pre-emptive strike,” writes The Wall Street Journal.

--The Journal rattles off the regular assumptions that Iran’s retaliation to strikes would sow chaos across the Middle East, that containment and deterrence are bad, and that possession of nukes would lead to greater Iranian adventurism. http://owl.li/7qvsW

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Panetta on the military option - Panetta weighed in on the Iran debate yesterday. Besides “not really deterring Iran from what they want to do,” an airstrike would have “unintended consequences,” he said. “It could have a serious impact in the region and it could have a serious impact on U.S. forces in the region.” http://owl.li/7qvws

The war argument - “The closer Iran gets to acquiring nuclear weapons, the fewer options will be available to stop its progress. At the same time, Iran's incentives to back down will only decrease as it approaches the nuclear threshold. Given these trends, the United States faces the difficult decision of using military force soon to prevent Iran from going nuclear, or living with a nuclear Iran and the regional fallout,” write Edelman, Krepinevich and Montgomery in Foreign Affairs. http://owl.li/7qvyV

What ends nuclear weapons programs? - It’s not military strikes, contrary to what hawks are saying. Paul Pillar deconstructs the historical argument. http://owl.li/7qvA6

Pakistan’s nuclear burdens - “But maybe it's time for Pakistanis to start questioning the conventional wisdom that nukes are among the country's greatest assets. Simply put, without the burden of nuclear weapons, Pakistan would almost certainly be richer, more democratic and better regarded in the community of nations,” writes Sadanand Dhume in the WSJ. http://owl.li/7qvBH

Romney in perspective - “Even Romney’s op-ed piece doesn’t propose an actual attack. He doesn’t propose anything different from what we’re already doing, except for a couple of things that would make things worse or simply waste scarce resources,” writes Fred Kaplan in Slate.

--”Some Republican should tell him that George W. Bush looked into this when he was president. Dick Cheney was pushing hard for an air strike (U.S., Israeli, or both) on the Iranian facilities. The Joint Chiefs war-gamed the scenarios. In some of them, the first couple of days looked good, then all hell broke loose, and finally the Iranians restored and repaired the damage in a couple years, with more support from other nations and their own people. Bush looked at these results and decided not to do it.” http://owl.li/7qvH7

U.S.-Iran Tension - ”The breadth of issues on which the United States and Iran are fundamentally at odds suggests that, even if the nuclear question were resolved tomorrow, U.S.-Iran ties would be unlikely to change for the better,” writes Patrick Disney in The Atlantic.

--”If we recognize Iran not as an existential threat but rather a strategic competitor whose behavior can be constrained, then there is no reason this conflict cannot be managed effectively.”http://owl.li/7qvE9

Why Obama won’t bomb Iran - The international community, particularly Russia and China, are opposed. War is expensive. And it would damage the fragile US and global economies. From Greg Scoblete at RealClearWorld. http://owl.li/7phcy

Why Obama might bomb Iran - Preventative counterproliferation. Iran might not be deterrable. Israeli security concerns. And Iran’s ties to terrorists. Greg Scoblete plays the long odds with 5 reasons he thinks the US might use the military option. http://owl.li/7phdQ

Davey Crockett and Atomic Excavation - “US government scientists have been dreaming up unusual applications for nuclear weapons since the earliest days of the atomic age. Here are a few schemes that developed new uses for the world's most destructive technology.” From Adam Weinstein and Dave Gilson in Mother Jones. http://owl.li/7qvnv