Republicans in Congress came out swinging against what they label as the Obama administration’s cuts to military spending in its new budget, specifically citing the threat North Korea’s missiles pose as a reason to preserve missile defense spending. A close read of the Pentagon’s weapon procurement plans, however, show an increase in spending to the missile defense programs most closely related to countering North Korea.

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) made headlines on Thursday when he inadvertently revealed a still secret Defense Intelligence Agency asessment of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. In one segment of the DIA’s assessment, which was mistakenly labeled as unclassified in the copy provided to Congress, the Pentagon spy agency determined North Korea “has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles; however, the reliability will be low.”

Lamborn defended the disclosure after the meeting, as he was worried that the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to fund missile defense:

“My whole goal in bringing this to light was to make sure we don’t cut missile defense spending,” the congressman said. “At the worst possible time, the President’s budget does exactly that.”

Republicans like Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) also seized on the North Korean crisis to attack the Obama administration’s proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget on Friday — despite the fact that baseline spending is actually up by $1 billion. And while missile defense spending is cut $550 million in the President’s proposal, those cuts are primarily due to cancelling the Medium Extended Air Defense System, which the Pentagon has said it doesn’t want. In fact, Lamborn’s specific worry so far as it relates to North Korea is concerned is demonstrably false.

Read more

CNN reported Thursday morning that intercepted communications indicate that North Korea may be planning to launch ballistic missiles “within days,” in yet another potential escalation. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin also told a government panel on Thursday that North Korea has moved a medium-range missile to its eastern coast, possibly in preparation for either a test or military demonstration.

North Korea’s threat comes from three factors: the unpredictability of its leader, Kim Jong Un; its ongoing nuclear weapons program; and its large amount of conventional weapons. Despite the difficulty it has seen in testing and its lack of large stockpiles of fissile material, North Korea’s nuclear program remains a major concern. North Korea appears to have jump-started the process of getting its plutonium reactor at Yongbon back online, but it will possibly take years to produce enough material for new weapons. At present, North Korea is estimated to have enough plutonium for 10 nuclear warheads, but Pyongyang’s ability to shrink down a nuclear warhead to the size where it would fit on a missile has advanced significantly and the country theoretically maintains rudimentary delivery methods within the region. There is also concern that North Korea could sell its weapons and/or weapons technology to third parties.

Even in light of Pyongyang’s nuclear capacity, North Korea’s large array of missiles and rockets remain a considerable threat to the peace and stability of the region. Of those conventional weapons, North Korea’s short-range Scud and Rodong missiles pose the greatest risk to U.S. assets in the area, given their high number and accuracy. With an estimated 1,800-mile range, the Musudan medium-range missile — which is mostly likely the type moved to the North Korean cost on Thursday — also may pose a significant threat, but its effectiveness has been questioned given the missile’s lack of prominent testing.

North Korea’s longer range missiles — the Taepodong-2 and Uhna rocket — are less reliable, both in accuracy and in performance. In 2006, a test of the Taepodong-2 completely failed, as did its use in an attempt to place a satellite in orbit in 2009. In Dec. 2012, North Korea did successfully test the Unha rocket, claiming to use it to a satellite in orbit. Estimates of the range for the Unha places it at approximately 4,500 miles — able to reach the U.S. West Coast — although experts have said that it is highly unlikely that North Korean missiles can hit the U.S. mainland and the Unha’s accuracy is completely unknown.

In any case, it is more likely that the launch of North Korean missiles would be a threat to U.S. allies and assets in the region, including South Korea and Japan. South Korea is well-within range of the shortest range missiles, with Seoul being only 35 miles from the Demilitarized Zone. That short distance also lends itself to the possibility that North Korea could drop a nuclear bomb on the country, rather than launch a nuclear warhead. Japan, while not particularly caught in this current spiral, has also been on the receiving end of North Korea’s threats. The two countries are home to a combined 64,000 U.S. forces, stationed in bases at Okinawa, the DMZ, and other locations.
Read more

Since Mitt Romney is not taking on any of the difficult situations the U.S. finds itself in around the world — he’s not visiting Afghanistan, for instance — his tour of European countries and Israel is instead focusing on promoting longstanding U.S. alliances. Though he’s already stumbled on his first stop in London, the theme was designed to go something like this: Mitt Romney will restore U.S. alliances spurned by the Obama administration.

One example Romney constantly holds up is the Obama administration’s decision to cancel land-based missile defense systems in Europe and instead focus on ship-borne systems and interceptor radars placed directly in the Middle East. Obama’s spurning “began with the sudden abandonment of friends in Poland and the Czech Republic,” Romney said at his VFW speech this week. “They had courageously agreed to provide sites for our anti-missile systems, only to be told, at the last hour, that the agreement was off.”

But it turns out that the Eastern European allies themselves don’t feel so spurned by President Obama’s decision, and some even support the new plan put in place. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal in Washington on Thursday, Slovakian foreign minister Miroslav Lajcak, who is also a deputy prime minister, said changing missile defense plans was a non-issue for his government:

People have moved on. We are in a different situation now. We are discussing a different project. I see no reason to revisit discussions from three years back.

In fact, this has been a non-issue for quite sometime. The Polish foreign minister said at the time of the new missile defense configuration announcement: “When President Obama announced the new configuration of the system, we did say that we liked the new configuration better, but I think you didn’t believe us.”

Lajcak went on to give the Journal an explicit endorsement of the Obama missile defense plan, lauding its NATO auspices rather than the abandoned Bush administration’s bi-lateral approach with host countries. While Romney said in his speech that Obama was bowing to Russia — whom he considers the U.S.’s “number one geopolitical foe” — Lajcak, in the Journal’s words, said “the U.S. and its European allies must continue to try and explain the defense plan to Russia, which remains skeptical.”

Romney’s tour theme may be falling flat so far, but at least he didn’t — like his adviser making the same attack — refer to Czechoslovakia in his speech. (HT: Blake Hounshell)

This afternoon in a Pentagon press conference, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey chastised House Republicans for passing a measure to provide funding for an East Coast missile defense system. In what seems to be an attempt to reclaim the mantle of the party of national security this election season, House Republicans included the provision in a bill passed today aimed at boosting military spending at the expense of needed social programs for the poor.

During the DOD presser today, Dempsey said he doesn’t “see a need” for the East Coast missile defense:

Q: The House has added $100 million for missile defense into the budget. Do you think that the East Coast needs a missile defense system. Do they need to do this survey that will cost $100 million that the Pentagon didn’t request or is this politically motivated? [...]

DEMPSEY: On ballistic missile defense, as you know we went through a strategic review in the fall and we mapped our budget to it and what I can tell you Jennifer is in my military judgement the program of record for ballistic missile defense for the homeland as we’ve submitted it is adequate and sufficient to the task and that’s a suite of ground based and sea based interceptors. So I don’t see a need beyond what we’ve submitted in the last budget.

Watch it:

Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH,) who supported the East Coast missile defense measure, claims it’s needed “to lessen the threats from both Iran and North Korea.” But the AP reports that Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O’Reilly, the head of the U.S. missile defense program, told Congress recently that North Korea lacks the testing for a capable system and has made little progress in its spaceflight program. And former CIA Mideast analyst Paul Pillar has noted that “the intelligence community does not believe [the Iranians] are anywhere close to having an ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile].”

Moreover, as Dempsey hinted at in the press conference, Danger Room notes that existing systems already have the eastern sea board covered from ICBM threats.

“This is a political move,” said Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) referring to the GOP’s missile defense scheme. “Every time the election comes around, the Republicans run out a national security agenda.”

GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney said this week that President Obama’s comment to Russian president Dimitry Medvedev that he would be more “flexible” on issues such as missile defense until after the election was “a cave to Russia.” Romney went on to attack the President’s plan in 2009 to scrap and replace President Bush’s European missile defense program. “The decision to withdrawal our missile defense sites from Poland put us in greater jeopardy in my view,” he said.

Except that’s not what happened. There weren’t any missile defense sites in Poland at that time. “The proposed interceptors for Poland have not even been built, much less tested. The Obama administration is killing an idea, not a program, and replacing it with a more technologically-promising system,” said chairman of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Lt. Gen. Robert Gard back in 2009.

And the Wall Street Journal reports today that European and NATO officials aren’t too concerned with Obama’s comments to Medvedev:

But broadly, officials and diplomats from across the region said they were inclined to take Mr. Obama’s remarks at face value. The U.S. and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have pledged to cooperate with Russia on the system, which is initially aimed at defending against missiles from Iran.

Diplomats haven’t expected advances on those talks in a U.S. election year.

Stefan Niesiolowski, a Polish lawmaker and chairman of the defense committee in the lower house of Parliament, blew off the hysteria over Obama’s remarks. “This is not surprising or new, and there’s no outrage in Poland,” he said, adding, “There’s no military threat, and we haven’t had a situation as secure as this in 300 years. The level of U.S. military engagement in Poland therefore isn’t of top importance.”

As for Romney’s attacks on Obama’s missile defense posture, experts hailed Obama’s shift from the Bush plan. “The decision to revamp the missile defense plan in Europe is based on technological reality rather than rigid ideology,” said John Isaacs, executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “The Obama administration’s proposal is a better choice for U.S. and European security.”

Even the Polish foreign minister said at the time of the announcement: “When President Obama announced the new configuration of the system, we did say that we liked the new configuration better, but I think you didn’t believe us.”

And as then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, Obama’s missile defense plan has “unanimous support” of the U.S. military’s senior leadership.

So what does Obama mean when he says he will be more “flexible”? The Journal reported that Ian Kearns, chief executive of the London-based European Leadership Network, “said allies could agree to provide more transparency about the system and address Russian worries that when the system ramps up at the end of this decade, it could be big enough to blunt Moscow’s nuclear deterrent.”

Mitt Romney has been attacking President Obama for a comment he made to Russian President Dimitry Medvedev that he’d be more “flexible” on issues like missile defense after this year’s presidential election. Romney called the comments “very, very troubling,” because Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe.” While some of Obama’s political opponents are piling on, House Speaker John Boehner tried to rein in the attacks. “While the president is overseas I think it’s appropriate that people not be critical of him or our country,” he said.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — who attacked then-senator Obama for political gain while he was abroad during the 2008 presidential campaign — is choosing to ignore the Republican House Speaker on national security grounds. “I respectfully disagree with Speaker Boehner,” McCain said on Fox News this morning, because, he said, “this is a very serious issue.” And when asked if he thinks, as Romney does, that Russia is America’s “number one foe,” the Arizona senator wouldn’t go that far: “I think in many respects”:

MCCAIN: I understand John Boehner’s point and I respect that but this is a very serious issue. No matter where the president is, if he makes a statement that I think could endanger the United States national security interests, I have to respond no matter where the president of the United States is. [...] All I can say is I respectfully disagree with Speaker Boehner. [...]

KILMEADE: Do you think they [Russia] are our geopolitical foe?

MCCAIN: I think in many respects, look at what they’re doing in Syria right now, they’re supplying arms and equipment to Bashar Assad while he slaughters and massacres his own people. Look at — they continue to prop up North Korea…and obviously now there is a president for life.

Watch the clip:

This isn’t the first time McCain has differed with Romney on a foreign policy issue. The former Massachusetts governor said that under no condition should the United States negotiate with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan. However, McCain recently disagreed. “I think it’s important to have talks wherever you can,” he said.

Medvedev also criticized Romney yesterday. “I always get very cautious when I see a country resort to phrasings such as ‘No. 1 enemy.’ It is very reminiscent of Hollywood in a certain period of history,” the Russian president said, adding, “My other advice is to check their clocks from time to time. It is 2012, not the mid-1970s.”

McCain saw Medvedev’s comment as meaning that Russia is in the tank for Obama. “They obviously want president Obama reelected, that’s pretty clear,” McCain told the Hill newspaper.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is trying to make hay about a comment President Obama made to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev this week that he needs some “space” on the missile defense issue until after the election this year. Russia “is without question our number one geopolitical foe,” Romney said, calling Obama’s comment “very, very troubling.”

Politico reports that Medvedev shot back at Romney today at a press conference in Seoul, South Korea:

“I always get very cautious when I see a country resort to phrasings such as ‘No. 1 enemy.’ It is very reminiscent of Hollywood in a certain period of history,” Medvedev said, through a translator, at the nuclear security summit in Seoul, South Korea. [...]

“My other advice is to check their clocks from time to time,” Medvedev said Tuesday. “It is 2012, not the mid-1970s. No matter what party a candidate represents, he has to take the current state of affairs into account.”

Obama also adressed the issue today, saying that what he told Medvedev wasn’t anything new. “I think everybody understands — if they don’t, they haven’t been listening to my speeches — that I want to reduce nuclear stockpiles,” Obama said, adding, “And one of the barriers to doing that is building trust and cooperation around missile defense issues. And so this is not a matter of hiding the ball.”

Nevertheless, it seems Romney — who could use a distraction from his own issues — isn’t going to let the matter die. “I don’t think he can recover from it, to tell you the truth,” he said on a radio show yesterday.

The winner of the next presidential election will face a struggling world economy and a Middle East in the process of dramatic political transition, but GOP presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain appear intent on scaring the public about fanciful dangers of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.

The threat of a rogue state or terrorist launching an EMP attack — the detonation of a nuclear warhead at a high altitude, shutting down electrical power across large portions of the U.S. — has become the nightmare scenario cited by defense hawks as justification for costly missile defense systems. But the likelihood of terrorists acquiring a nuclear weapon, which they would then affix to a ballistic missile, remains remarkably small.

EMP alarmism generally remains on the fringe circles of the Republican party — the Center for Security Policy‘s Frank Gaffney issued a dire warning that an EMP attack could kill “nine out of ten Americans” — but comments from Gingrich and Cain have brought the “pulsers” agenda into the Republican primary race.

Cain’s “Foreign Policy & National Security Pillars” [PDF] includes:

COUNTER URGENT THREATS
• Stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons
• Fix border security – for real
• Shield us against Cyber and
• Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) attacks

And Gingrich, listing the greatest threats to the U.S. at the Nov. 22, CNN National Security Debate, said:

The greatest threat to the United States was the weapon of mass in an American city, probably from a terrorist… [is] one of the three great threats. The second is an electromagnetic pulse attack which would literally destroy the country’s capacity to function.

Gingrich and Cain’s outspoken concern about the threat of a terrorist or rogue state’s EMP attack might appear to be simple paranoia, but the EMP campaign has been a go-to argument for proponents of costly missile defense shields and preventive war against North Korea and Iran.

While EMP rhetoric might be largely overlooked or ridiculed, EMP enthusiasts do little to hide the ulterior motives of pushing for dramatic increases in defense spending and leading the U.S. into preemptive wars with suspected nuclear proliferators.

When news broke of an alleged plot by Iran to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S., the field of Republican contenders were asked how they would respond if they were president. Perhaps the most unusual response came from Herman Cain, who said he would’ve thwarted the plot by stationing ballistic missile defense systems on Aegis naval warships in international waters off Iran’s coast. It’s a plan Cain repeatedly has hawked.

But on Fox News Channel yesterday, neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer pressed Cain on just how exactly missile defense systems would have stopped Iran from launching the alleged assassination plot. Cain admitted that it wouldn’t:

KRAUTHAMMER: How does placing Aegis cruisers affect Iran’s determination to use terrorism against the United States?

CAIN: It won’t deter their intent to use terrorism, but what it would do is it would let them know we are serious if they fire a ballistic missile toward us. … And what I would do also is double our fleet. We could double it and not only put them strategically in that part of the world but also protect our shores to defer them from feeling like they really want to fire a ballistic missile.

KRAUTHAMMER: But the Aegis is a defensive weapon. It intercepts a missile in flight. Iran doesn’t have any they could actually hit the United States now. And moreover, a defensive weapon in no way deters an aggressive action. It could deter a launch of a missile. But it is not going to deter a terrorist campaign.

CAIN: No, it’s not. It wasn’t intended to mean that it’s going to deter a terrorist campaign, not in the least. The point I was trying to make was I’m concerned about their march toward having a nuclear weapon, a march toward having more ballistic weapon capability.

KRAUTHAMMER: I don’t see how Aegis affects even that at all.

Watch the video:

On a separate interview on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox show last night, Cain said that while he did not want to see a military confrontation with Iran, it “would be perfectly alright” if Iran attacked the naval ships bearing the missile defense systems “because [he] believe(s) that we have a superior capability.” He also said placing naval ships in Iran’s neighborhood was not a provocation, and that the real provocation was Iran’s blustering (and unlikely) plan to place ships off the U.S.’s East Coast.