California gubernatorial candidate and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner (R-CA) thinks he’s capable of single-handedly fixing the nation’s broken immigration system. During a debate with challenger and former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman (R-CA), Poizner boldly proclaimed that, if elected, he wants to “end illegal immigration once and for all.” The San Diego News Network reports:

Repeating a point he made during the state party convention over the weekend, Poizner said California needs to “turn off the magnets” of state-funded services such as health care and education that he said draw illegal immigrants.

“We just really differ here. I want to end illegal immigration once and for all. … Meg doesn’t want to go that far,” he said. After the debate, he told reporters he’d support bringing an anti-illegal immigration initiative to voters if reforms aren’t enacted in the Legislature.

He did not specify what that initiative would say, but his remarks echoed the debate over Proposition 187 in 1994, which denied publicly funded social services to illegal immigrants. A federal court later found the law’s provisions unconstitutional.

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Poizner has proposed deploying the California National Guard and California Highway Patrol to secure the border with Mexico if the federal government doesn’t. Poizner has adamantly argued that undocumented immigrants should be denied emergency health care and that public schools should shut their doors in the face of undocumented children.

Meanwhile, Whitman opposes outright amnesty “100%” but she has stated that she favors a “program in which people would go to the end of the line, pay a fine and do things that would allow for a path to legalization.” Whitman is against “penalizing” undocumented children and denying them a public education. Whitman has also slammed Poizner for flip flopping on the immigration issue since 2006, when he came out in support of the Bush Administration’s immigration reform proposal. Given that Prop 187 drove California’s Latinos to register as and support Democrats — who now dominate state politics largely as a result — Whitman will probably have to articulate a clearer position on the issue if and when she makes it past the primaries. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown has indicated that he supports comprehensive immigration reform, but is opposed to giving undocumented immigrants driver licenses.

A study by the University of Southern California found that putting California’s 1.8 million undocumented Latino immigrants on a path to legalization would generate $16 billion annually. The Perryman Group has found that California would lose $164.2 billion in expenditures, $72.9 billion in economic output, and approximately 717,000 jobs if it removed all of its undocumented immigrants.

In an interview with Middle East Progress, former Florida Congressman Robert Wexler, now the president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace and Cooperation, puts the recent U.S.-Israeli tussle over Jewish settlements “in context“:

I take Prime Minister Netanyahu at his word — I think everyone should — that he was as surprised by the announcement as was the vice president. The housing policy is, however, a barometer of the policy of the government that he oversees. The problem is, while the United States is seeking to bring the parties to proximity talks, no party should be creating facts on the ground that complicate the start of negotiations or the ultimate resolution of the final status issues. And the announcement by the Israeli government was a rather striking example of an action that makes creating trust and developing the formula for an end of conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis more difficult.

There are a couple important points in here. The first is that, whatever Netanyahu did or didn’t know about these particular housing starts, the episode is indicative of how deeply the settlement enterprise is entrenched within the Israeli system, and how deeply Israeli officials and politicians of various parties are committed to it, despite repeated requests, warnings, and condemnations from both the U.S. and the international community as to their provocativeness and illegality.

The second is that, while settlements are not the only issue (no one has ever suggested they are), they are nevertheless a significant one, and Israel’s continuing refusal to recognize that indicates to many a striking lack of seriousness about reaching a final peace deal. Whatever claims Netanyahu believes that Israel has on lands occupied in 1967, the fact is that continued settlement building seriously damages the credibility of Palestinian moderates who believe that a deal with Israel is possible, and bolsters the credibility of Palestinian and other Arab hardliners who insist otherwise.

While Wexler recognizes that the Israelis have not agreed to freeze settlements in East Jerusalem, he says “either you take a process of proximity talks and negotiations seriously or you don’t“:

And you can’t effectively enter into a negotiation process with sincerity if one side or both sides are continuously going to poke the other side in the eye. It just unnecessarily complicates things and needlessly enrages sensibilities in an already combustible environment. And what’s the upside or the advantage of the Israeli government in making such an action? If it is to somehow assuage or comfort a particular domestic political audience then I would respectfully suggest that the Israelis need to balance that perceived gain against the added difficulty it creates for the United States and the international outrage that results from those announcements, as well as the additional pressure that President Abbas receives from the Arab League and elsewhere to end his commitment to the proximity talks. In fairness, the Israelis were quick to point out this was simply an announcement — it wasn’t even as if the building in East Jerusalem would begin for possibly years. So what is the point? Ultimately, respect for the United States should be given more weight and attention. I think that’s what bothered the American administration the most. And, quite frankly, it’s the element of disrespect for America that does not sit well with many Americans, particularly those like me who cherish the unbreakable bond between America and Israel.

Wexler’s point about the difficulties that Israeli intransigence creates for the United States was underscored yesterday by Gen. David Petraeus in his testimony (pdf) before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Petraeus stated that the Israel-Palestinian conflict “foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” and that “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR [CENTCOM's Area Of Responsibility] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world.”

Wexler finishes by saying:

I for one, believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu is in fact capable of both agreeing to and implementing a far-reaching, comprehensive peace agreement. While I am discouraged, at times, like many people are, I still maintain a degree of confidence and optimism and I take the prime minister, as well as President Abbas, at their individual and collective words, that their goals are to end the conflict. Everything we do in America should seek to enable the Israelis and Palestinians to end the conflict, because it is in our national security interests to do so.

With the United States working to end the conflict to the benefit of all sides, it really shouldn’t be asking too much for Netanyahu to attach greater importance to the key regional strategic interests of his country’s most important partner, than to appeasing his right political flank with more and more settlements.

A new article from three Air Force strategists and scholars, including a Colonel who is part of the staff working directly for the head of the Air Force, argues that the US should unilaterally cut its nuclear arsenal by more than 90 percent – going down to 311 nuclear weapons from the current 5000. The bold proposal comes as the Administration is finalizing their Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and a new START Treaty, which hill watchers expect to encounter loud conservative opposition. This new proposal should serve as a major boon to arms control advocates in the coming debates and should embolden the White House to push for a bolder NPR.

The article in Strategic Studies Quarterly is not an isolated ivory tower scholarly piece divorced from the actual strategic thinking taking place inside the Air Force. Two of the authors – James Forsyth and Gary Schaub – are professors at war colleges at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. The Air Force war colleges are not known for their independence and free-thinking, as they are generally seen as much less free wheeling than other services war colleges. But more surprising is the third author, Colonel B. Chance Saltzman, who is the chief of the Strategic Plans and Policy Division at Headquarters Air Force. Saltzman is therefore an integral figure in determining Air Force strategy and works closely with General Norton Schwartz the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. In short, this article is not by some Air Force outsiders, but from very influential insiders.

Noting that during the Cold War “the actual marginal utility of additional forces was quite small,” the authors conclude that a significantly smaller arsenal of nuclear weapons will be more than enough to maintain an effective deterrence and to assure allies without any cost to our security. The article backs the far reaching report from the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, which called for reductions of US forces to 500 nuclear weapons by 2025. Forsyth, Saltzman, and Schaub argue that it is possible to go even further.

This [the commission report] represents a 90-percent reduction in the nuclear arsenal but offers more than enough deterrent capability while providing flexibility to pragmatically implement the force structure cuts. In fact, the United States could address military utility concerns with only 311 nuclear weapons in its nuclear force structure while maintaining a stable deterrence… it does not matter if Russia, who is America’s biggest competitor in this arena, follows suit. The relative advantage the Russians might gain in theory does not exist in reality. Even if one were to assume the worst—a bolt from the blue that took out all of America’s ICBMs—the Russians would leave their cities at risk and therefore remain deterred from undertaking the first move.

In other words, even if we could only obliterate Moscow that would be more than enough of a nuclear capability to deter Russia from starting a nuclear war or from seeking to adopt an aggressive posture that could lead to escalating hostilities. As a result, if we cut our nuclear arsenal nothing would change, especially since, as the authors also note, the US would still maintain a vast conventional capability that would further deter adversaries and assure allies.

This article has not come out of nowhere. It follows a similarly bold report from the Institute for Air Power Studies – an organization closely associated with the Air Force – that surprisingly this past December called for eliminating the nuclear bomber leg of the US nuclear triad. These two reports led Kingston Reif to ask “What’s gotten into the Air Force lately?” It is a good question, one that the Administration, despite being in the final stages of its Nuclear Posture Review, would do well to explore. It would be a shame to put out an NPR that’s behind the strategic curve before it’s even released.