Congress’ Nuclear Budget Sleight of Hand

Sleight of hand - “There are many problems with how the military spending plan for 2016 is shaping up, including budget gimmickry, political chicanery and a refusal to make the right choices,” writes The New York Times editorial board.

--On the plan to shift funding for a new fleet of nuclear submarines from the Navy’s budget to the defense-wide account: “Not only is that bad budgeting practice, but it avoids the hard choices that the military should be making about what military equipment is needed and what is not. The plan to build 12 more Ohio-class subs is excessive; the number could be cut by at least two.”

--“Under the House bill, the overinvestment in modernizing the country’s nuclear weapons, which is expected to cost $348 billion over the next decade, would continue. That would make it harder to pay for the conventional weapons that America actually uses.” Read the Times’ full catalogue of budget tricks and wasteful spending here. http://nyti.ms/1LD0hPk

Europe and the Iran Deal - Missed today’s Atlantic Council event with the Ambassadors of Britain, France and Germany on the Iran nuclear deal? Watch the video here: http://bit.ly/1HIupem

Budget tradeoffs - “Instead of selectively ignoring spending caps and providing the Pentagon with more taxpayer money, Congress should listen to military experts and stop overinvesting in programs that will do little to keep the United States safe and, even worse, could lead to a hollowed-out force backed by weapons it can’t or won’t ever use on today’s battlefields.” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), co-sponsor of a bill that would cut $100 billion from the bloated nuclear budget, writes in a Washington Post LTE. http://wapo.st/1GvBkpu

Where the money goes - “Iranians will demand their government spend a windfall from the lifting of economic sanctions on improving the quality of life at home, limiting the degree to which a future nuclear deal could fund Tehran's allies on Middle East battlefields,” Lesley Wroughton and Sam Wilkin report for Reuters. http://reut.rs/1HIjMrU

Tweet - @cirincione: EU ambassadors are clear: if #IranDeal collapses because of US Congress, sanctions regime likely to collapse as well. #ACIran

NPT track record - Looking at the data, the success of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is clear, writes Graham Allison in The Atlantic.

--“As of today, 185 states have signed up to the NPT and voluntarily renounced nuclear weapons… Members of the treaty include many countries that set out on the road to nuclear weapons and had the technical capability to complete the journey, but reversed course… In contrast to the 15 or 25 nuclear-weapons states JFK envisaged, today just nine have nukes.” More NPT facts (and a cool chart) here. http://theatln.tc/1es7Yxt

Missed opportunity - The recent NPT review conference ended without agreement, in part because the participants were unable to call for convening a conference on a Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone.

--This was a lost opportunity, notes Paul Pillar, especially because the nuclear agreement being negotiated with Iran is expected to be a major accomplishment for nonproliferation and keeping nuclear weapons out of the Middle East.

--The Iran agreement “provides a very useful model for extending the cause of nuclear nonproliferation throughout the Middle East, while embodying the NPT's principle of reconciling the widespread peaceful use of nuclear energy with stringent safeguards to stop the spread of nuclear weapons,” writes Pillar. However, the potential for this model to bolster the cause of the NPT and a MENWFZ was lost due largely to the messy international politics around Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Full story at The National Interest. http://bit.ly/1duVqoZ

Tweet - @ForeignAffairs: Today in history: The U.S. and U.S.S.R. sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. http://t.co/lejy1SdUL4

Practical steps - Dealing with North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal poses a challenge for the U.S. and allies. Terence Roehrig offers two recommendations: “Renewed efforts to improve the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) that monitors and interdicts North Korean attempts to export any portion of its nuclear capability are paramount… the imposition of increased, targeted economic sanctions can help impede North Korean efforts to acquire more nuclear weapons by making this process as difficult and expensive as possible.”

--“Last and perhaps most difficult, Seoul and Washington need to continue to reach out to the North Korean regime to establish some type of ongoing dialogue… Seoul and Washington must remain firm in the goal of denuclearization, though that should not be a precondition that prevents meetings and dialogues between the two parties.” Full op-ed in The National Interest. http://bit.ly/1GAKD7C

Quick Hits:

--“U.N. nuclear conference collapses over WMD-free zone in the Middle East,” by Dan Zak for The Washington Post. http://wapo.st/1BhGjUF

--“Negotiator: Iran agrees 'managed access' to military sites,” by Ali Akbar Dareini for the AP. http://yhoo.it/1JUg3Ha

--“Is America Fulfilling Its NPT Commitment?” by Graham Allison in The National Interest. http://bit.ly/1cgiyWy

Dessert:

Nuclear test videos - Nuclear explosions are big. Really big. You won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big they are. Vincze Miklos at io9 collected a few videos of nuclear tests to remind you just how destructive nuclear weapons really are. http://bit.ly/1erYCSv