Left Flank

Heather Hurlburt and Daniel W. Drezner agree on how to increase funding for the State Department. Yet, it's a little too expansive.

Hopefully, a Democratic Congress can fund Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's transformational diplomacy without just giving State what Defense gets now, and still giving Defense more. It's all a matter of priorities, and, in the short-term, the priority should be funding State.

As for giving more money to Drezner's employer, I like the idea of competition. But, let Tufts find its own private benefactors.

This diavlog is an example of how to arrive at a bipartisan foreign policy.

Katie Mounts tips her hand plugging Catherine Collins' op-ed about the 2008 US presidential candidates' views on nuclear non-proliferation. Speaking of the horserace, the GOP candidates are divided, but Democrats are united on the issue.

The Democrats are generally in sync. Their responses indicate that all of them would insist that the United States live up to existing international treaties regulating nuclear technology. They are more apt to support broader disarmament and uniformly oppose developing new nuclear weapons, contradicting Bush's policy.

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The Democrats said they are open to direct negotiations with nuclear hot spots like Iran and North Korea. They all promised to pressure Pakistan to allow outsiders to interrogate A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who has been under house arrest for four years after confessing to selling nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

For the record, I disagree with the Dems on China and direct negotiation with DPRK. But, Collins herself has convinced me Pakistan is a bigger problem than even Iran.

But, moving from issues to advisors, check out Spencer Ackerman on defense. The quick summary: Clinton is safe for the old guard; Obama flirts with counter-insurgency. Those advisors don't seem too concerned about nukes, either.

Call me a bridge, but I think a viable counter-terrorism strategy has a nuclear non-proliferation policy as one of its legs. Nukes are a big reason why anarchists and governments alike bristle with resentment at American arrogance and hypocrisy.

Here's a simple concept for turning space into a wasteland unfit for satellites running civilian and military technology essential to modern life: just blow up a few satellites in orbit.

One shot China has been practising became clear a year ago, on January 11th 2007. In a nuclear-proof air force command centre, built on giant shock-absorbing springs within Cheyenne Mountain, outside Colorado Springs, officers tracked a missile fired from a mobile launcher deep inside China. It followed what one American official said was a «strange» trajectory, designed neither to land a warhead nor to put a payload into orbit. Instead it intercepted one of China's ageing weather satellites. The impact about 850km (530 miles) above Earth created a huge field of space debris, contributing about 28% of the junk now floating around in space.

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The core fear is that any conflict in space would cause the most injury to America since America has the most to lose. Damaged planes crash to the ground and destroyed ships sink to the bottom of the sea. But the weightlessness of space means that debris keeps spinning around the Earth for years, if not centuries. Each destruction of a satellite creates, in effect, thousands of missiles zipping round randomly; each subsequent impact provides yet more high-speed debris. At some point, given enough litter, there would be a chain reaction of impacts that would render parts of low-Earth orbit—the location of about half the active satellites—unusable.

As matters stand, ground controllers periodically have to shift the position of satellites to avoid other objects. This month, NASA was tracking about 3,100 active and inactive satellites, and some 9,300 bits of junk larger than 5cm, about 2,600 of them from the Chinese ASAT test. Given their speed, even particles as small as 1cm (of which there may be hundreds of thousands) are enough to cripple a satellite.

For America, then, avoiding a space war may be a matter of self-preservation. The air force has adopted a doctrine of «counterspace operations» that envisages either destroying enemy satellites in a future war or temporarily disabling them. But for the most part, America's space security relies on passive measures: sidestepping an attacker by moving out of the way of possible strikes; protecting the vital organs of satellites by «hardening» them against laser or electromagnetic attack; replacing any damaged satellites; or finding alternative means to do the job, for example with blips or unmanned aircraft.

More esoteric space research has ideas such as sending small satellites to act as «guardian angels», detecting possible attacks against the big birds. It also includes plans for breaking up satellites into smaller components that communicate wirelessly, or deploying «space tugs» that would repair and refuel existing satellites.

I dare any Republican to suggest a big wall in space. This is yet another reason why NASA needs a strong dose of privatization, so that it can assume its proper role of defense, not exploration.

Korean national pride doesn't seem to be the only reason both Japan and ROK might build fighter jets independently of the US.

Japanese military officials have been discussing a possible F-22A purchase with the United States for more than two years, and several of the aircraft have made visits to Japanese air bases, but Congressional and other opposition to selling the U.S. Air Force's top-of-the-line stealthy fighter appears to still be enough to block the sale. Despite the fact that Japan is perhaps the number one security partner of the United States in the region, there is still a mindset within the U.S. Government that is hesitant to export the new-age technologies that are the basis for the Raptor's performance and combat effectiveness.

This past August the House Appropriations Committee passed legislation banning the export of the F-22A to any foreign government. DoD officials in Washington said this would derail plans by Israel and Japan to obtain the advanced fighter sometime during the next three years, Middle East Newsline reported.

The F-22A would be a suitable procurement for both American allies, and even without that option, research assistance from American firms would also be beneficial, especially to Seoul. The optimal solution would be to let each ally contribute to the F-35 program. But, Seoul is not the only putative ally bent on feeding its own industrial offspring. «In Japan the main reason for upgrading airplanes is not to provide the armed forces with a higher capability. Instead it is to give money to Japanese aerospace industry and maintain the industrial base.»

But then, there's the DPRK problem. Just how trustworthy is Seoul (and, to a lesser extent, Tokyo), none too secure from North Korean spies and eager to build mutual defense ties with its authoritarian neighbor, with any defense knowledge and technology. The F-22A sits atop the fault line between economic globalization and national defense, between corporations and air forces. Looking at this procurement tangle, Washington could indeed be justified in its paranoia.

The Arsenal of Democracy is no longer in business.

Not that here isn't something awe-inspiring about the concept of spending gazillions for nuke-tipped missiles, only to present a check for yet more missiles to destroy the first batch, but 70% is not a great record.

The $85 million test was a rerun of one that was supposed to have taken place in May but was scrubbed when the target misfired.

The test marked the sixth successful downing of a target in 10 full-fledged intercept tests since October 1999 in which knocking down the target was the primary objective, said Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency.

It's also inspiring, that Washington doesn't feel challenged enough in Iraq to tackle another challenge with the Kim regime that cannot both feed people and deliver a nuclear payload consistently. I feel safe as an American, that Washington can spend so much money to be so diligent about self-fulfilling tests. Being the profligate hyperpower that devices the threat of wasting more money than humanly possible is a big deterrent to a sadist willing to sacrifice his population. It'll certainly be embarrassing if Pyongyang can undermine the US the way the US outspent the former Soviet Union.