Yesterday on Heritage’s Blog, Baker Spring argued that a better way to eliminate nuclear weapons is to build a super awesome full proof missile defense system that makes it pointless for other countries to have nuclear weapons. He argues that instead of the multilateral arms-control approach pursued by the Obama administration, the US should:

pursue more fundamentally defensive strategic postures for the U.S. and other nations. This is the best option for keeping the world as far from the nuclear precipice as possible until it is clear that a world without nuclear weapons can be achieved.

As Kingston Reif and Travis Sharp point out Spring and others on the right:

recycle(s) a snake oil sales pitch that first emerged at the dawn of the Atomic Age. The illusion is that the awesome destructiveness of nuclear weapons can somehow be neutralized by a panacea—in this case impenetrable missile defenses.

This is pure and total fantasy.

First, back in the real world, despite two decades of massive amounts of investment, long range ballistic missile defense still doesn’t work as planned. The much flaunted successful “tests” of the ground based system in the US are largely staged. These are open book tests, where one knows the answers before hand – we know exactly where the missile will be and when and yet we can therefore sometimes hit it. Kingston Rief and Travis Sharp explain that “the technology required to intercept a large number of long-range missiles equipped with decoys and countermeasures does not exist and may never exist.” Technical problems are endemic. The head of the Missile Defense Agency even publicly vented his frustration this week. A New York Times editorial today notes:

Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, the program’s chief, told a conference on Monday that some contractors continue to produce poor quality components for missile interceptors… General O’Reilly said he is withholding a portion of the profits from contractors responsible for the shoddy work… If contractors know profits will be reduced if a missile test is unsuccessful, experts say this could create a strong incentive for them to ensure the tests are (falsely) successful by conducting more scripted, less realistic tests.

Second, the missile defense system that Baker Spring envisions would only lead to a destabilizing nuclear arms race. Even if technical problems were resolved in the ground based system, they still wouldn’t be able to protect against large number of missiles and would only serve to create incentives for countries to increase their nuclear stockpiles. In a remarkable article three Air Force scholars, one of whom heads the Strategic Plans and Policy Division, recently explained in reference to Asia that “nuclear defenses are a bad idea,” since it will only prompt China to build more nuclear weapons, something that it is not seeking to do. Any defensive system we develop will only spawn others to build new weapons to overcome it that is the history of warfare’s technological innovations.

Finally, Baker Spring simply cannot seem to understand why the Russians would not see US missile defense as in their interests. According to Spring, US missile defense is actually in Russia’s interests:

a U.S. strategic policy that pursues missile defenses may reflect a better understanding of Russia’s strategic interests than the Russian government itself appreciates.

His logical gumby is hard to follow. But Spring is essentially saying that the Russian state, like the Soviet Union before it, is seeking confrontation with the US, and so when we build our Jedi force field of freedom around the US, it will finally make those pesky Russians – who still have nukes threatening us (nevermind that we still threaten them with out nuclear arsenal) – realize that we are invincible and that they should simply bow down and kiss the ring of the United States and eliminate their nuclear weapons. Got that? One wonders how they have the gall to call Obama’s plan naïve, after writing such nonsense.

Unfortunately, bad ideas have consequences. Pursuing right wing missile defense plans, while at the very least would flush tens of billions of dollars down the toilet, would also serve to upset nuclear stability. Countries like Russia and China would rapidly expand their nuclear forces and the threat of nuclear terrorism – something no missile shield can protect against – would only worsen as proliferation dangers grow. While there is definitely a role for more proven short-range theater based missile defense, the notion of an impenetrable long range missile defense shield is not only exceptionally naive and fanciful, it is also destabilizing and dangerous.

The Arizona legislature is only a few steps away from passing a bill, HB 2632, that would allow police to arrest anyone who is in this country illegally and charge them with trespass. The bill, which was approved by the state House yesterday, would also require police to attempt to determine the immigration status of anyone they encounter as part of any “lawful contact,” outlaw the hiring of day laborers off the street, and prohibit anyone from knowingly transporting an undocumented immigrant for any reason. A nearly identical version of the bill was already approved by the Arizona Senate and is awaiting reconciliation with the House version.

If approved, HB 2632 will be the first bill of its type. The East Valley Tribune points out that “federal courts elsewhere have rejected similar laws from other states, saying only Congress can approve laws allowing the arrest of those who entered the country illegally.” However, the bill’s mastermind, state Sen. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) seems confident that HB 2632 and its Senate counterpart, SB 1070, will be upheld if challenged.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona disagrees. According to them, SB 1070 is downright unconstitutional. The ACLU recently released an analysis that goes through the bill and points out its constitutional flaws, section by section. In a nutshell:

This bill unconstitutionally allows the state of Arizona to regulate immigration by making any non-citizen who has entered the United States without permission guilty of the additional state crime of trespassing. It gives local police officers authority to investigate, detain and arrest people for perceived immigration violations without the benefit of proper training, exacerbating the problem of racial profiling and raising concerns about the prolonged detention of citizens and legal residents.

The ACLU also points out that the provision of the bill which grants police officers authority to conduct warrantless arrests of undocumented immigrants has already been deemed invalid by a decision involving a similar situation in the Ninth Circuit Court. The ACLU warns that the bill “subjects local governments to unreasonable and potentially frivolous litigation by private citizens with an anti-immigrant agenda” who don’t think local officials are complying with the bill.

Coconino County Sheriff Bill Pribil and others law enforcement officials have also slammed the bill. “At this point, I see it interesting on the one hand counties are being eviscerated by the state Legislature when it comes to budget … and yet they continue to find ways for us to spend our precious resources on programs we can’t support,” Pribil told the Arizona Daily Sun. “We’re going to continue to see these types of bills introduced throughout the country until the federal government can get its act together,” Pribil said. “It’s frustrating.”

The Arizona Republic reports that “lawmakers didn’t debate the bill’s merits before endorsing the measure.”

I’m in Tripoli, Libya for the next couple days to attend a conference on the terrorist deradicalization program run by the foundation of the heir apparent to Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi, Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi. This conference is one part of a wider effort by Libya to come in from the cold that has been ongoing since late 2003, when Qaddafi agreed to end his nuclear and chemical weapons programs and abandon his support for terrorism.

Since then, the United States and Libya have slowly and fitfully normalized relations after decades of tension that included Libyan-sponsored terrorism (including the 1988 Lockerbie bombing) and repeated U.S. military action, especially in the 1980s. In fact, the Libya normalization represents one of the few genuine foreign policy successes of the Bush administration – a case of critical engagement with an adversary that cut against its ideological grain and paid off.

Libya’s rehabilitation over the past several years hasn’t stopped Qaddafi from continuing his erratic international behavior, including declaring a jihad against Switzerland, calling for a so-called ‘one-state solution’ to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and calling for a sectarian partition of Nigeria. This list of purely interstate imbroglios doesn’t include public relations disasters like Qaddafi’s bizarre, rambling speech at last year’s UN General Assembly, nor the disgusting hero’s welcome given to convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi last August.

And despite the recent diplomatic opening to the West, Libya’s human rights record remains appalling, as documented in a recent Human Rights Watch report. The latest State Department country report on human rights states that the “government’s human rights record remains poor” and includes “disappearances; torture; arbitrary arrest… new restrictions on media freedom and continued to restrict freedom of expression.”

Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi, whose foundation has conducted the de-radicalization program at the center of this conference, has cultivated an image of a reform-minded heir apparent. And while his foundation is one of the few entities in Libya able to challenge government repression, any proof of reform will have to be in the pudding – either as far as his father will let him push or as far as he wants to push should he succeed him.

The Libyan government obviously wants to cultivate the image of an opening Libya that has overcome its sordid past behavior. While its foreign policy has certainly changed, it remains to be seen whether or not its domestic policy can change or whether, as long-time regional observer Fred Halliday has argued, it will remain “a state of robbers, in formal terms a kleptocracy.”

I’ll post more updates as the conference continues.