Nuclear Cuts and the Sequester

August 7, 2012 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Leah Fae Cochran

Nuking the sequester - In a House Armed Services Committee hearing on budget sequestration, Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) called for rational defense cuts. Among his suggestions: “I think that a nuclear arsenal that can blow up the world 24 times is quite sufficient and could be modernized and reduced in cost.” His comments align with the opinion of military leaders who agree the US can reduce its nuclear arsenal and its costs, writes Mary Kaszynski for the American Security Project.

--“To avert budget sequester – the automatic, across-the-board budget cuts that threaten all areas of defense spending – Congress is looking to make strategic cuts to unnecessary programs. Military leaders and the American public have the answer to their budget dilemma: eliminating unnecessary nuclear programs will save billions of dollars, relieving the pressure on more important defense programs.” http://bit.ly/TcBaZo

Incredible - “The agency responsible for the nation’s nuclear weapons cannot ensure its own budget is credible, which may result in overspending, according to a federal investigative office,” writes Mia Steinle for POGO. http://bit.ly/TcBhUK

Tweet - @wellerstein: New addition for the plutonium inventory lists: Mars: 4.8 kg

Fresh leadership - DOD has selected a new chief for the Missile Defense Agency, Navy Rear Adm. James Syring, pending Senate confirmation. Former leader Lt. Gen. O'Reilly was relieved of his post after an inspector general’s report found his leadership style to be harsh and unethical. http://bit.ly/N0cKDh

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CubanMissileCrisis.org - The Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center launched a new website - www.cubanmissilecrisis.org - designed to teach new students about the history of the crisis, its most important lessons, and about the nuclear threats the world now faces. http://bit.ly/NaHJuL

Tweet - @UCSUSA: Our #nuclear blog http://allthingsnuclear.org got a facelift. What do you think? The new RSS available at http://bit.ly/OIYU4i

Red lines - During his trip to Israel last week, Secretary of Defense Panetta worked to reaffirm what the U.S. considers a “red line” for Iran: an Iranian nuclear weapon. This is different from Israel’s declared (yet ill-defined) red line: an Iranian capability to build a bomb.

--Jasmin Ramsey reviews why this matters amid signs that some Israeli leaders, particularly Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, are increasingly frustrated with the difference in policy. Lobe Log has the post. http://bit.ly/O1EKDD

Missed opportunity - In 2003, Iran suspended uranium enrichment and agreed to implement the Additional Protocol. That agreement collapsed, and Iran ceased implementation in 2006. Former UK Ambassador to the IAEA Peter Jenkins at Asia Times goes through the history and asks why it played out the way it did.

--Lesson for today: ”The one and only proof of a peaceful program that the non-proliferation community cannot contest are the assurances that can result from the IAEA's Protocol investigations: ‘no undeclared nuclear activities or material’. Those words are the key to demonstrating to the world that there is no nuclear proliferation justification for sanctioning Iran or threatening it with devastation.“ http://bit.ly/Nh2nax

Twilight War - David Crist outlines the failings of U.S. policy toward Iran in the early 2000s in The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran: “The Bush administration had thrown away diplomatic openings made by Iran...Alarmed by the al-Qaeda attacks and fearful of America’s response, Iran had extended its hand to cooperate in areas where the two nations’ interests overlapped. Instead, the American government failed to develop any cohesive response or Iran strategy other than a policy that paid lip service to regime change in Tehran.”

--Barbara Slavin reviewed the book at Al Monitor. http://bit.ly/Rx6NhT

Report - “Pakistan’s Nuclear Programme: A Net Assessment” by Bruno Tertrais for the Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique. (pdf) http://bit.ly/MKGEXV

Signal-to-noise - Dan Drezner at Foreign Policy analyzes the recent rhetoric of Israeli leaders on Iran’s nuclear ambitions and concludes that “Israel does itself no favors with this gambit. Constantly warning that a window is closing and not having it close degrades the signal-to-noise ratio of the warnings. This is particularly problematic if the Iranian threat actually is getting worse.” http://bit.ly/OMDDqB

Chuck Norris - Chuck Norris penned an election-year roundhouse op-ed on Iran for the Green Valley News and Sun. The text is much less interesting than the fact that Chuck Norris bent an opinion editor to his will. http://bit.ly/N0bwrQ

--We couldn’t resist: “They say nuclear weapons were discovered after a failed attempt to harness the power of Chuck Norris.”