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I hear the Administration has delivered the Nuclear Strategy Follow-On White Paper a/k/a How I learned to stop worrying and love the RRW to the Hill in time for the FY 2009 budget process.

Of, course, the NSFOWP is classified. But rumors that neither endanger national security nor risk fine and/or imprisonment are encouraged. For example:

• Did the “myths” section make it?

• Is there a (coherent) explanation of how we size our forces today?

• Does it refer to the RRW as “super awesome-tastic”?

In December, I noted a story by Michael Isikoff in Newsweek that Condoleeza Rice would name Paul Wolfowitz to chair the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board.

Well, it is official. (Bloomberg News has a nice exposition with a money quote from Joe Cirincione.)

Although much of the attention is understandably focused on the chair, I am most concerned at how one-sided the overall composition of the board has become, especially since Amy Sands departed in the wake of that awful report they issued on space.

A little housekeeping. The ISAB removed the link to the terms of reference for their forthcoming China study. I have posted the TOR here.

Michael Isikoff in Newsweek reports that Paul Wolfowitz will replace Fred Thompson as Chair of the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the Iraq War, a position as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, a prestigious State Department panel, according to two department sources who declined to be identified discussing personnel matters. The 18-member panel, which has access to highly classified intelligence, advises Rice on disarmament, nuclear proliferation, WMD issues and other matters. “We think he is well suited and will do an excellent job,” said one senior official.

Andrew Sullivan has a better line than I can muster: “He’s advising Condi on WMDs. Curveball wasn’t available?”

I note that Amy Sands left the ISAB in June 2007 — right after that execrable report on outer space policy. She didn’t make a fuss, which was classy.

Still, her departure leaves the board listing ever-rightward. I notice that the ISAB is currently conducting a Study on Chinese Strategic Modernization Plans.

Yikes.

What is the President talking about? Seriously, I am not even making fun. I have no idea:

And, finally, we talked about how we can enhance mutual security issues. And there’s no better symbol of our desire to work for peace and security than working on a missile defense system—a missile defense system that would provide security for Europe from single or dual-launched regimes that may emanate from parts of the world where leaders don’t particularly care for our way of life, and/or in the process of trying to develop serious weapons of mass destruction.

(Hat tip: You know who you are.)

I also appreciate his admonition to defend against those leaders developing “serious weapons of mass destruction”—serious WMD are, presumably, distinguished from the frivolous ones that Saddam was acquiring. (Now I am making fun.)

So, that’s the challenge to you dear readers: Submit your Top 10 “Frivolous” Weapons of Mass Destruction.

I’ll start you off: The Paris Hilton album.

Wasn’t it conservative PJ O’Rourke who said “age and guile beat youth, innocence and bad haircut”?

I missed this, but a couple of weeks ago Al Kamen danced on the grave of the nomination of John Rood, aka the poor man’s Bob Joseph, to be Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security:

Rood Awakening?

When John Rood was nominated to be assistant secretary of state for international security last year, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) reportedly noted that Rood appeared to have a great future but seemed a little too young and inexperienced for the job. But he was a staunch neocon, and with the Republicans in charge, the Senate approved the nomination.

But now Rood, 38, has been nominated to move up to be undersecretary for arms control and international security, and Biden is running the Foreign Relations Committee. The nomination is said to be dead because of Rood’s youth and inexperience.

Given the administration’s policy changes on Iran and North Korea, changes bitterly contested by leading neocons, perhaps it’s just as well. Administration folks are calling around asking for other names for the job. Maybe Robert Einhorn, President Bill Clinton’s assistant secretary for nonproliferation, is available?

I can feel a recess appointment coming on. Brace for more evil from the tiki doll.

So, of all the people left in the Bush Administration, who do think has the coolest record collection?

And, oh, by the way, Mr. Prime Minister, the United States is looking forward to eating Indian mangos.”

President Bush, quipping about the trade deal during the March 2006 press conference with Indian PM Singh annoucning additional measures in the “strategic partnership” formed around the civil nuclear partnership.

***

Well, that day is here!

The Washington Post has a nice fluff piece on “Our Chance To Savor India’s Favored Fruit” that read likes the “American Voices” feature in The Onion.

“People are phoning all day long, asking when we will have them,” the owner of an Indian market in Langley Park told reporter Walter Nicholls. “At home we always eat them. They are the top of the line.”

Hey, who can worry about the spread of nuclear weapons when you have such awesome mangoes?!

“India and the United States began talking about shipping mangoes 17 years ago,” said Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, “Irradiating Indian mangoes safeguards American agriculture while providing additional choices for U.S. consumers in today’s global marketplace.”

Well, damn. You didn’t tell me these were nukular mangoes!

“But this is all in an experimental phase and very new to us,” an importer and distributor told Nicholls, “We expect a shipment within 10 days but can’t say yet where they will go or how much they will cost.”

Uncertain costs and hazy benefits? SIGN ME UP!

Ok, I am annoyed.

I am writing a paper about the Conventional Trident Modification (CTM) program—an effort to replace the nuclear warheads on two Trident D5 missiles on each of the nation’s 12 SSBNs with a conventional payload.

I think this is a mildly pointless idea. I admire General Cartwright’s determination to equip his command with nonnuclear forces as part of an inevitable reduction of our reliance on nuclear weapons and a sincere desire to do something useful. It just isn’t clear to me that CTM is the way toward that future.

But, hey, the program is cheap—around 500 million bucks. As mildly pointless programs go, this is a bargain. (By comparison, the Air Force’s Conventional Strike Missile screams “schedule delays” and “cost overruns.”)

I do worry that the Russians might misinterpret a CTM launch, but General Cartwright has made lots of noise about improving data exchange with the Russians to manage the risk. If Cartwright can get the Joint Data Exchange Center up-and-running, I’d be willing to have the Treasury cut the man a check for $500 million directly. He can spend the cash on CTM, hookers, blow, Sands of Iwo Jima DVDs, whatever. Hell, every dollar that Cartwright spends is one that DARPA can’t waste on chembots, hafnium bombs or the other crazy ideas they come up with while high.

Anyway, the point. I wanted to check in on the cost estimates and program of work for CTM in the 2008 President’s Budget Request (PBR) to illustrate that the program has the twin virtues of being inexpensive and relatively easy to implement.

Last year (FY2007 PBR), the President asked for $127 million for the Conventional Trident Modification (CTM) program. Congress put the program on hold and cut the budget, pending a National Academies Study.

The Descriptive Summary for PE 0604327N Hard and Deeply Buried Defeat Systems, in the FY07 President’s Budget Request, contained the best factual information about the CTM program. The descriptive summary, also known as an R2, included the handy little chart (above) showing program milestones and the future funding breakdowns (below).

Source: PE 0604327N Hard and Deeply Buried Defeat Systems

Helpful, huh? You can see they thought they could crank this puppy out in two years. So, I decided to get the most recent budget data for FY2008.

DOD didn’t release a descriptive summary for PE 0604327N Hard and Deeply Buried Defeat Systems this year. The information isn’t classified—the R1 clearly requests $126.4 million for PE 0604327N Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat System. Moreover, the Chief of Naval Operations stated that ”$175 million is included in the FY 2008 request” for CTM. (Subtracting the $100 million in the two procurement accounts, that leaves about $75 million in PE 0604327N is for Conventional Trident.)

So, why refuse to release the descriptive summary? There must be a story here.

Late Update Okay, the PE was released here but not here. I could swear I looked in both places. Weird. Thanks, Robot Economist.

Al Kamen include a funny little blurb in this week’s “In The Loop”:

Are you opposed to nuclear proliferation? Are you a current or maybe former civil servant eligible for the Interagency Career Transition Assistance Program? Then hurry up and apply for the great job of “Special Envoy for Nuclear Nonproliferation.”

[snip]

You’d be working in the office that was headed by former Pentagon civil servant and recent political appointee Robert G. Joseph, who just left the undersecretary job at State suggesting publicly that the North Korea nuke deal was immoral.

He’s now a senior scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy.
Its Web site says “he also serves as U.S. Special Envoy for Nuclear Nonproliferation.”

Oh. Guess it’s already filled. Never mind.

On the same front, David Sanger pens a long valentine to one of his favorite sources, where he also mentions Joseph’s role as a “part-time presidential envoy on proliferation issues.”

Jofi Joseph—now foreign relations adviser for Senator Bob Casey, Jr. (D-Penn.)—pens an fanatistic article in Democracy Journal that—to my mind—nails why the Bush Administration “can’t disarm Iran.”

States make the “strategic decision” over a period of years, not—as many senior Bush Administration officials seem to believe—overnight. This mistake—perhaps impatience—leads many Bush Administration officials to a hasty pessimism and blinds them to the virtues of sustained diplomacy:

It is unrealistic to expect a state to reach an overnight realization that nuclear weapons are not in its national interest. Instead, any such decision can only emerge in the aftermath of sustained engagement demonstrating the tradeoffs inherent in defyingthe will of the international community, a point demonstrated by the years of negotiation preceding Libya’s decision and, more recently, the agreement forged in the Six Party Talks on North Korea. In fact, demanding a permanent strategic decision may inadvertently discourage rogue regimes from taking intermediate steps that make the world more secure, including “half-loaf” compromises that fail to resolve a state’s underlying proliferation desires but effectively constrain its arsenal for a period of time. Although messy, these steps can buy the necessary time to allow a permanent solution to emerge while securing our national interests in the interim. Conversely, the strategic-decision approach allows the United States to sit back while countries move down the road of weapons development. After all, if a nation refuses to change, the United States won’t talk with them, and absent a credible threat of force, there is not much else the United States can do.

There is an alternative course, one that worked well in the 1990s, and that is the lost art of coercive diplomacy: combining incentives and punishments to coerce recalcitrant regimes into making the right decisions. Such coercive diplomacy—as we might be seeing on the Korean Peninsula, but will not likely see repeated with Iran—blends carrots and sticks to ensure that hostile regimes have a clear choice between economic integration and broad diplomatic acceptance versus isolation and the prospective use of military force. It sees negotiation as a diplomatic tool, not a diplomatic reward. And it recognizes something that President Bush has ignored during his first six years in office: that successful nonproliferation policies are more often marked by shades of gray than black and white.

[Emphasis Mine]

I guess that is a little long for a post-it note, so we won’t be able to staple it to the President’s forehead.

I pick on the Bush Administration, of course, and Jofi is pretty merciless in pointing out how the policies derived from this worldview are screwed up. But the overnight “strategic decision” is a widespread theme in Washington.

But what I most like about Jofi’s article is that it exemplifies what I’d call the “post partisan” outlook. There is nothing about being a D or an R that should influence the empirical judgment on how long states requires to make strategic decisions. Jofi simply notes how one pervasive and false concept can derail a nonproliferation policy.

I wish I’d written this article. I kind of fouled off a couple of pitches with a similar swing in a forthcoming book review.

But Jofi hit this one out of the park.

(On a related note, I recall that we wouldn’t know what disarmament looked like if we intercepted the order.)

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asks SECSTATE and SECDEF about that incredible, shrinking North Korean HEU program including questions about the basis for assessing that a large-scale centrifuge facility was under construction and whether the intelligence community assess that North Korea has such a facility?

As I’ve said the question of the facility is the key question—everyone knew North Korea was playing around with centrifuges, but it was the allegation that North Korea was constructing a large-scale facility ready to churn out bombs in as little as two years that provided cover to ditch the Agreed Framework.

Dear Madam Secretary and Mr. Secretary:

We are writing with regard to testimony by Administration officials before Congress this week and subsequent media reporting regarding the administration’s estimate of North Korea ’s highly enriched uranium program.

The issue of whether North Korea has or had a highly enriched uranium program, and the state of that program, in terms of progress made towards developing nuclear weapons using highly enriched uranium, is of critical significance. We have received briefings and testimony from intelligence and other Administration officials since 2002 regarding North Korea ’s nuclear activities, including a highly enriched uranium program, and this committee has relied upon this information as it pertains to U.S. policy towards North Korea .

The testimony and media reports that appeared this week indicate that the intelligence community may have reassessed the level of confidence it has about whether North Korea has or had a highly enriched uranium program, or to what extent such a program existed or exists. We are writing now to ask you to clarify for us the following:

Has the assessment of the intelligence community regarding North Korea’s highly enriched uranium program, including the confidence level in its assessment, changed since the November 2002 National Intelligence Estimate?

If so, when did it change, why did it change, and how did it change?

In the unclassified November 19, 2002 estimate for Congress, the CIA states, “we recently learned that the North is constructing a plant that could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year when fully operational—which could be as soon as mid-decade.” Has the level of confidence of that assessment changed? Is this still the intelligence community’s assessment? If not, why, and when did the intelligence community revise this assessment? What is the current intelligence community assessment?

What was the basis for the assessment that there was an HEU plant under construction?

Does the intelligence community assess that North Korea has a large-scale centrifuge facility?

What are possible alternative uses for items, such as aluminum tubes, that North Korea may have procured for use in an enriched uranium nuclear program? How likely is it that each of these items was for use in an enriched uranium nuclear program or for another purpose?

Are the assessments of North Korea’s highly enriched uranium program contained in the November 2005 National Intelligence Estimate on North Korea’s nuclear and missile activities, and an intelligence community memorandum of December 2006, still the assessments of the intelligence community?

From 2001 to the present, did the intelligence community provide special assessments on North Korea’s highly enriched uranium program to the State Department, Defense Department, White House, NSC, or the Office of the Vice President? If so, when were such special assessments provided? Please provide copies of those assessments.

Has North Korea provided any information on the highly enriched uranium program to the United States since the initial bilateral meeting in October 2002? If so, what information did North Korea provide?

Please provide an unclassified and classified chronology regarding the changes in the Intelligence Community views on North Korean highly enriched uranium capabilities since 2002.

The committee also looks forward to the latest assessment of North Korea ’s nuclear and missile capabilities, as required by Section 1211 of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which the Director of National Intelligence’s office informs us will be delivered soon. Thank you for your prompt response to this letter.

Sincerely,
Carl Levin
Chairman
Senate Armed Services Committee