A Cannonball Press report, August 26, 2020:

New York (CBP): Russian TU-95 Bear bombers yesterday were intercepted and identified over three northern cities, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal, by F-16 fighters of the US Air National Guard responding under the American Aerospace Defense Command [more here].

A Pentagon statement said the interceptions were a routine indentification of Russian aircraft approaching US airspace that posed no threat to American southern sovereignty.

In response to questions at her daily news conference Pentagon spokesperson Amelia Earhart said that the interceptions were performed by F-16s instead of F-35s since the primary role of the stealthy 300 Joint Strike Fighters now with the US Air Force was initial attack on ground targets against adversaries with heavy and effective air defences.

Ms Earhart responded, upon further questioning, that it would be some time before sufficient of the problem-plagued F-35s [more here and here] could replace F-16s and F-15s in the role of continental air defense.

In the country formerly known as Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Alberta issued a statement saying that if only Canada had bought F-35s–and only F-35s–the Russians would have been deterred from creating such an annoyance for his American allies.

When asked why the Alberta’s 24 AF-18s based at Cold Lake had not been used to intercept and identify Russian Bears, Mr Harper replied that Alberta’s sovereignty was “non-negotiable“.

While F-35s might have deterred the Russians, the prime minister added, his AF-18 Hornets were perfectly capable of dealing with any real threat.  As would be the 24 Super Hornets Alberta has recently contracted to buy from Boeing.

Mr Harper also noted that Alberta was very interested in Gazprom’s offer to increase its stake in the oil sands to 68%.

Earlier in Toronto, Ontario Prime Minister Dalton McGuinty in a statement said his government was pleased that the United States was capable of dealing with issues that might affect its own airspace.

Quebec President Gilles Duceppe, replying to a question in the National Assembly, said his country’s 12 QF-18s, based at Bagotville, had not been scrambled since “One does not want to break eggs when there is no need for an omelette.”

President Duceppe went on to reiterate his government’s intent to replace the QF-18s with Joint Strike Fighters if an agreement, now under negotiation, could be reached to assemble the aircraft in his country.

Professor Michael Ignatieff of the University of California at Berkeley, in a Tweet to the Cannonball Press, said:

bearish antecedents time real canadians debate if better off as Americans Canucks need my help

Much more here.

Update: From the current government:

Conservative MP Laurie Hawn, a former CF-18 fighter pilot, just twitted (or is it tweeted!) this, laughing off a question about why Canada is buying 65 Joint Strike Fighters. Here is what he writes:

“NDP MP Jack Harris asks why Canada is buying 65 F-35s while “similar” country Norway is only buying 48. It’s a good question. Canada is 26 times area, 7 times population and 3 times GDP. Jack’s math would demand between 144 and 1248 F-35s for Canada.

I guess we’re being pretty prudent with only 65, eh?

Ya gotta laugh.”

Not quite, Mr Hawn. Norway has, like Canada, selected the F-35; but, also like Canada, no contract has been signed yet. And there are tough negotiations going on with Lockheed Martin–one wishes our ministers would speak as cogently as this Norwegian one.  It should also be pointed out that Norway had a competition for its new fighter and that the planned purchase was approved by its parliament.  Both unlike Canada.

Mark (“Cannonball“)
Ottawa

…that there’s no claim to any serious part of our land to defend against, nor likely to be any.  The major current and future disputes are all maritime, and should (Northwest Passage aside) not be that hard to deal with by diplomatic and international legal measures.  A simple reality that the government, which has loved hyping “Arctic sovereignty” hysteria to a gullible and generally uninformed public and punditocracy, is effectively now acknowledging:

The Harper government is cooling its Arctic rhetoric with a new policy that focuses on thawing frosty border relations.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon released “Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy” today, saying one of the top priorities is finding solutions to boundary disputes.

He said the goal is to settle the many jurisdictional disputes and establish a “stable, rules-based region.”

It’s a different tone from a government that has previously highlighted the importance of strengthening the military presence in the North to bolster Canada’s sovereignty…

Aside from the military focus in the Arctic, Defence Minister Peter MacKay has enthusiastically engaged in sabre-rattling with Russia over flights by Russian bombers in the region [see below]. Canada has scrambled military jets to the Arctic several times to make sure the Russians don’t enter Canadian airspace…

The U.S. and Canada currently disagree over the border in the Beaufort Sea, while Canada and Denmark are in conflict over control of Hans Island, off Greenland. All states bordering the Arctic are preparing their cases for ownership of its seabed.

The Foreign Affairs paper says the federal government will meet the 2013 deadline for presenting Canada’s claims to the ocean floor [since we have not even made a formal claim yet one can hardly maintain any Canadian sovereignty is currently threatened].

More:

…
The federal government has also told the United States and Denmark that it wants to resolve its northern border disputes with them. Until recent months, this country ignored other nations’ requests to settle…

Earlier:

So Labrador is now Arctic? That’s why we need F-35s?/UK, Blackjack Update

What stinkin’ Arctic sovereignty probem?

Update: One pundit exception–from Paul Wells at his Maclean’s blog:

…The problem, as I wrote a year ago, is that across the vast majority of its territory the Arctic is already a stable, rules-based region; that its jurisdictional conflicts are so few in nature and trivial in stakes as to produce only a lukewarm hotbed at best; and that on the only really hard issue, navigation rights through the Northwest Passage (which is the only point of dispute in that waterway; Canada’s control of lands and resources is uncontested) we’d probably lose any legal dispute…

The real news here is subtler and confirmed by other recent events. It’s that the Harper government is, at least operationally, climbing down from some of the silly bellicose rhetoric that has characterized the prime minister’s bizarre need to look tough in a region where Canada has neither the means nor the need…

Another pundit exception–Andrew Coyne, also of Maclean’s (a message that?):

Harper’s patriot games

Upperdate: An excerpt from the Foreign Affairs “Statement on Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy”; see any serious theats to sovereignty?

…
On the first priority, Canada will seek to resolve boundary issues in the Arctic region, in accordance with international law. Our sovereignty over Canadian Arctic lands, including islands, is undisputed—with the single exception of Hans Island [emphasis added], a 1.3-square-kilometre Canadian island which Denmark claims.

With regard to Arctic waters, Canada controls all maritime navigation in its waters. Nevertheless, disagreements exist between the United States and Canada regarding the maritime boundary in the Beaufort Sea (approximately 6,250 square nautical miles) and between Canada and Denmark over a small part of the maritime boundary in the Lincoln Sea. All disagreements are well managed, neither posing defence challenges for Canada nor diminishing Canada’s ability to collaborate and cooperate with its Arctic neighbours. Canada will continue to manage these discrete boundary issues and will also, as a priority, seek to work with our neighbours to explore the possibility of resolving them in accordance with international law…

One wonders if the prime minister has bothered to read the paper; he’s still loudly defending our sovereignty–defending against…?

…
“We are always seeking to work with our partners,” he said. “But let me be absolutely clear: While we are giving more detail than we have in the past, and while we will continue to be making announcements in a wide range of areas, all of these things serve our No. 1 and quite frankly non-negotiable priority in Northern sovereignty and that is the protection and promotion of Canada’s sovereignty over what is our North.”..

Uppestdate: More news flashes for the prime minister, from a lengthy article in Foreign Policy magazine:

…Anarchy does not reign at the top of the world; in fact, it’s governed in a manner not unlike the rest of the planet. The region’s land borders — shared by Canada, Denmark (which controls Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States — are all set and uncontested [emphasis added]. Several maritime boundaries do remain under dispute, most notably those between Canada and the United States in the Beaufort Sea and between Canada and Denmark in Baffin Bay. But progress has been made recently in resolving even the thorniest disagreements: In April, after 40 years of negotiating, Norway and Russia were able to forge an equitable deal for a new boundary in the Barents Sea, a continental-shelf area rich in fisheries and oil and gas reserves [Big bad Bear, eh?].

…an Arctic Ocean crossing, while theoretically possible, might be too difficult and costly to be worth the effort. The more ice along an Arctic navigation route, the slower the ship’s speed, a factor that could easily negate the shorter distance gained by sailing across the top of the world. Expensive polar-class ships — ice-breaking cargo carriers — would still be required for most operations. And many other economic details have yet to be filled in. Last year’s definitive Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment found significant challenges and unanswered questions regarding the endeavor: Can it be economically viable as a global trade route if not conducted year-round? What are the risks assumed in Arctic navigation, and how will the marine insurance industry respond to them?

So, while modest volumes of cargo might be carried during the summers ahead, a majority of the Arctic voyages in the coming decades will be destinational: A ship sails north, performs an activity in the Arctic, and goes home. In other words, don’t expect a new Panama or Suez Canal [emphasis added]…

Mark
Ottawa

Earlier:

“Canadian tragedy in Afghanistan”/Pak Update

Now yet more conflict in Pakistan you may not be aware of; the country does face challenges:

Karachi’s Melting Pot Boils Over

The desperate plight of over 20 million Pakistani citizens displaced and dispossessed by the most ferocious flooding in the history of the young state is heartbreaking.  Nature is extracting a cruel price on a population already racked by debilitating poverty and a brutal insurgency.

But at the same time, too little attention is being paid to the violent drama being played out in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi.  The crippling violence of political party gangsterism between Karachi’s two dominant parties – the Awami National Party (ANP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) – is alarming, especially as the parties align with organized criminal groups and become increasingly indistinguishable from them. Unlike the flooding, this crisis was avoidable and man-made…

…it is mindboggling that at this juncture of extreme humanitarian tragedy throughout Pakistan and grave strategic consequence in Afghanistan, rival political parties in Pakistan are engaged in blood-curdling street warfare that has virtually shut down a city.  Targeted political and sectarian assassinations in Karachi have already taken the lives of over 100 citizens in recent weeks, and the terror continues…

Karachi is dominated by two ethnically based political parties who are also currently part of Pakistan’s governing coalition — the Awami National Party (ANP), a secular Pashtun based party; and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), consisting of Urdu-speaking descendents of the émigrés from India at the time of partition in 1947 [the Muhajirs, the only Pakistanis for whom Urdu is their mother tongue].  Intensified Taliban violence in Pashtun areas of the north has accelerated the movement of Pashtuns into Karachi, placing Karachi’s longer-term resident MQM Urdu speakers in pitched competition with the wave of Pashtun newcomers.

The relationship between these two dominant groups is bound to turn even more toxic with the next round of local elections, postponed by Pakistan’s flood crisis. Political party rivalry defined by ethnically based gang warfare is no basis for a stable cohesive national identity…

One might well say that. And for some Great Gaming:

USA welcomes Russia’s cooperation with Afghanistan, Pakistan

Romania shows its support for the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan

While BruceR. at Flit looks to Hollywood for, er, guidance:

I wouldn’t agree that The Magnificent Seven is a perfect allegory for Afghanistan…

It’s also fair to say if the West had viewed the Taliban with a mental model something like Calveras’ bandidos in mind, as opposed to seeing them as foot soldiers in SPECTRE/KAOS/whatever-International-Terror-Conspiracy-you-care-to-name (a model that is arguably less close to the truth, but makes them seem much more threatening to us personally) we might have approached this whole situation differently much earlier.

Update:  “Bandidos” maybe, but of a particularly gruesome and often fanatical sort; at least the bandidos current, also very gruesome indeed, are not trying to take over the state…yet?  Terry Glavin on the moral vacuity of worrying about “the militarization of humanitarian aid” since “The Taliban will kill you anyway”. Worth a very good read, from a very good writer:

A Warning To The War-Weary World: Just Watch What Your ‘Peace’ Will Bring You.

If we (the West) had approached the situation differently, if the US had done more after 2001, if many more NATO members had been willing actually to fight and to send truly large numbers of troops after 2004, things would very likely not have come to this pass.

Mr Glavin quotes from Steve Coll’s excellent book on Afstan, Ghost Wars; I would also highly recomment Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos for an excellent continuation of the…Choose your word.

Upperdate: We return to BruceR. for more Afghan realities:

One of the better uses of the Wikileaks data to date, here [Uppestdate: Watch the video here, please--more superb visualisation here, Napoleon's troops in Russia]. For those who still haven’t figured out that this has been a war of the Afghan south and east, and much less so the north and west, hopefully this could be illuminating.

PS: Happy Afghan Independence Day!

Mark
Ottawa

George Will on simple, if inconventient, truths:

When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years…

Any Israeli self-defense anywhere is automatically judged “disproportionate.” Israel knows this as it watches Iran. [See the first part of this post by Terry Glavin on "fashionable demonization of Israel".]

Last year was Barack Obama’s wasted year of “engaging” Iran. This led to sanctions that are unlikely to ever become sufficiently potent. With Russia, China and Turkey being uncooperative, Iran is hardly “isolated.” The Iranian democracy movement probably cannot quickly achieve regime change…

…[Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu] says that CIA Director Leon Panetta is “about right” in saying Iran can be a nuclear power in two years. He says that 1948 meant this: “For the first time in 2,000 years, a sovereign Jewish people could defend itself against attack.” And he says: “The tragic history of the powerlessness of our people explains why the Jewish people need a sovereign power of self-defense.” If Israel strikes Iran, the world will not be able to say it was not warned.

Somewhat related:

How the CIA Got It Wrong on Iran’s Nukes
In 2007, U.S. intelligence said Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. Analyst policy bias and disinformation from Iranian double agents may explain the mistake.

Mark
Ottawa

The capital however is under new management:

India’s Tripartite Plan for Afghanistan
Delhi is drawing closer to Iran and Russia in anticipation of a U.S. troop drawdown.

The American game is being played on a ever-wider field:

As Afghan Allies Reposition, U.S. Role Evolves

Amid the continuing violence in Afghanistan, the shape of the NATO alliance is changing.

At the beginning of August, Dutch troops left the restive province of Uruzgan, and Canadian soldiers appear set to depart next year. At the same time, the U.S. forces surging into Afghanistan are finding new ways to work with their NATO counterparts.

In Kunduz [north of the Hindu Kush], German soldiers are notionally in command of the incoming American surge…

…Speaking informally, U.S. military officers can be harshly critical of many of the NATO partners in Afghanistan — for example, in the north, where the Taliban presence has grown rapidly over the past five years. American soldiers in that area are officially under German command, but the difference in resources is stark — the Americans bring many more helicopters and mine-resistant vehicles to the fight.

Still, the cooperation has its lighter moments. In a recent nighttime engagement in Kunduz, a German officer ordered his cannons to shoot illumination rounds over the heads of American troops to light their way. The Americans joked afterward that it was the first time a German had fired artillery in their direction since World War II.

While Eric Morse ain’t happy about our end game:

We’re dooming our Afghan helpers

…more hypocritical yet: our immigration regulations may thwart sanctuary, but our refugee system welcomes. If those people can find a coastline in land-locked Afghanistan, if they can then find a ship, if the ship does not sink and if they do not starve, they can find refuge in Canada [see here and here] and never mind comparative levels of “extraordinary risk.” What does that say about the whole process? What, in Heaven’s name, does it say about us?

We have created a class of people in Afghanistan to whom we are beholden. Set aside hypocrisy, open the gates and let them come in.

Eric Morse is a former Canadian diplomat and is now vice-chair of the Security Studies Committee at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto.

More from Milnews.ca:

Weasel Wording = Dooming Afghan Interpreters

Update: Terry Glavin on threatened Afghans, Great Gaming (Team Iran in particular), and Orwell on refugees.

Upperdate: Paul at Celestial Junk (warning: some readers may find language offensive):

…
As if our limp-dish-rag PMO refusing to stand up for our Afghan allies and our troops isn’t insulting enough by its silence, we now have to contend with the fact that our PMO can’t even manage a proper retreat…

Mark
Ottawa

Just a few days ago the government was touting the Russian threat to Canadian airspace as a justification for buying the F-35:

…Russian bomber flights over the Arctic — just two days ago — underscore why our men and women in uniform need modern equipment to do their jobs [actually the flights were off the coast of Labrador; hardly the Arctic but geographical facts are no impediment to the Conservatives' propagandizing]…

Somehow I can’t see the Minister of National Defence drawing attention to Canadian participation in this exercise just announced by NORAD:

NORAD and Russian Air Force plan cooperative air defense exercise

Aug. 2, 2010

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. – The Russian Federation Air Force and the North American Aerospace Defense Command will conduct a first-ever cooperative air defense exercise.

The civilian air control agencies of Russia (Federal Air Navigational Service) and the United States (Federal Aviation Administration) will also be involved in the exercise along with the military air operations centers at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, and Khabarovsk, Russia.

The exercise, named VIGILANT EAGLE, will take place on or about Aug. 8-11 and involves Russian, Canadian and U.S. Air Force personnel operating from command centers in Russia and the United States.

This exercise is authorized under a cooperative military agreement signed by the presidents of the Russian Federation and the United States of America. The agreement tasks NORAD, the bi-national U.S. and Canadian command, and the Russian Federation Air Force to conduct a live-fly exercise for up to five days.

It will consist of two international flights: one originating in Alaska and traveling to the Far East followed by one originating in the Far East and traveling to Alaska. Both flights will follow the same route…

Airborne warning and control aircraft (AWACS E-3B and A-50) from Russia and the United States will be involved along with fighter-interceptor aircraft and refueling aircraft from both countries…

Via Defense Industry Daily: “They’ll see the Big Board!”.  Witty chaps at DID.

Fighter update:  A major Defense Industry Daily article about India’s new fighter, er, competition that may be worth reading in the Canadian context–the F-35 also mentioned:

…
Rather than attempting to predict, DID will simply summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the listed competitors. These aircraft also group into two very different categories: single engine lightweight fighters in the $25-50 million flyaway cost range (F-16 Falcon, JAS-39 Gripen, MiG-35); and larger dual-engine mid-range fighters in the $65-120 million flyaway range (Eurofighter, F/A-18 Super Hornet, Rafale)…

More on the Canadian context:

Canada’s new fighter, the F-35: What the government is and isn’t saying

Upperdate: The Ottawa Citizen throws the same  punch, maybe less context.

Uppestdate: The Citizen has now published a fuller piece.  And the post is in the National Post’s “Full Comment“:

…

Canada’s Defence Minister Peter MacKay gestures while sitting in the cockpit of a really big toy, of which Canada will buy 65 from Lockheed Martin Corp for C$9 billion.
REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Mark
Ottawa

You might well have thought so if you’d read the Globe and Mail piece by Lounge Lizard Larry Martin to which this unpublished letter responded:

Lawrence Martin (On many vital issues, the NDP have been on the mark, Sept. 24 [2009]) highlights President Obama’s decision to kill the American missile defence system that was planned for Poland and the Czech Republic.  He then uses this example to applaud the NDP for their supposedly far-sighted opposition to missile defence in general.

But there’s a problem with this line of reasoning.  The president didn’t actually kill American plans for missile defence involving Europe.  He simply abandoned one system and intends to replace it with another using different types of missiles, initially sea-based but subsequently to be land-based in Europe itself.  So missile defence itself is still alive and well.

It’s also worth noting something about which most Canadians, including Mr. Martin, seem unaware.  NATO itself is fully committed to creating various missile defence systems, one planned to be operational by 2010.  It’s only in Canada that there appears to be a practically fetishistic opposition to the concept.

Mark Collins
…
References:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20gates.html
http://www.nato.int/issues/missile_defence/index.html

Now a Washington Post story; I don’t think these facts will get much coverage up here:

U.S. nears key step in European defense shield against Iranian missiles
…
The concept of a missile shield began with former president Ronald Reagan, who first described his vision of a defense against a Soviet nuclear attack in his “Star Wars” speech in 1983. Its development accelerated during the George W. Bush administration, which saw missile defense as a way to deter emerging nuclear powers in Iran and North Korea.

It has expanded further under President Obama, despite the skepticism he expressed during the 2008 campaign about the feasibility and affordability of Bush’s plan for a shield in Europe.

In September, Obama announced that he was changing Bush’s approach. Instead of abandoning the idea, he directed the Pentagon to construct a far more extensive and flexible missile defense system in Europe that will be built in phases between now and 2020…

The Bush plan would have consisted of only 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland and a large radar installation in the Czech Republic. It was designed to shoot down long-range or even intercontinental ballistic missiles fired by Iran against Europe or the United States…

…

Obama announced in September that the Pentagon would scrap Bush’s system for Europe and replace it with what he called a “phased, adaptive approach.” The first phase officially becomes operational next year. Aegis ships, armed with dozens of SM-3 missile interceptors, will patrol the Mediterranean and Black seas and link up with the high-power radar planned for southern Europe.

In 2015, the next phase will begin. Romania has agreed to host a land-based Aegis combat system on its territory.

In 2018, the system will expand further with another land-based Aegis system in Poland, as well as a new generation of SM-3 interceptors and additional sensors. The shield is scheduled to become complete by 2020, with the addition of even more advanced SM-3s…

NATO allies…may eventually plug their own, more limited missile defense systems into the overall shield [Canada excepted from all forms of that horrid idea, of course]…

Mark
Ottawa

Further to the end of this post, more silly and stupid government spin (links added):

…
National Defence officials said the fact that two Russian TU-95 Bears flew into Canada’s “area of interest” – about 250 nautical miles, or 460 kilometres, away from Goose Bay, Nfld…

Read the full set of Tory talking points below:

From: Alerte-Info-Alert <Alerte-Info-Alert@conservative.ca>

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:33:01 -0700

To: Alerte-Info-Alert<Alerte-Info-Alert@conservative.ca>

Subject: Ignatieff Liberals Embarrassed by Russian Bomber Flights Over Arctic

Mere days ago Michael Ignatieff pledged to cancel the new fighter jets the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces urgently need.

Embarrassingly for him, Russian bomber flights over the Arctic — just two days ago — underscore why our men and women in uniform need modern equipment to do their jobs.

On Wednesday two CF-18 Hornet fighter aircraft quickly responded when two Russian TU-95 Bear aircraft entered the Canadian buffer zone in front of our airspace…

This incident demonstrates why it is vitally important for the Canadian Armed Forces to have the best technology and equipment available. This is true whether we are asserting our Arctic sovereignty [the government is simply exploiting ill-informed Canadian nationalism with its "Arctic sovereignty" hoo-hah]…

We don’t in fact need the capabilities of the F-35 to intercept subsonic Bears. Our current Hornets–which will need replacing, lot’s more here–seem to be doing just fine, do they not?  Then there was the CF-101 Voodoo which our Air Force flew for a quarter century:

…F-101B’s based in alert hangars were sent out on air defence missions. These were usually in reply to unknown intrusions into the air defence identification zone by wayward airliners or Soviet reconnaissance aircraft such as the Tu-95 Bear. Aircraft were usually sent out in pairs. One aircraft would do an identification pass on the unknown while the second one stayed behind, ready to employ the AIM-4 if required. With respect to Soviet reconnaissance flights, one Bear would encounter several different pairs of NATO and NORAD interceptors during it’s flight from the western USSR to Cuba…

E.g:

Not that one is suggesting we should have kept the Voodoo (more photos here) in service.

Update:  As for international F-35 sales from which the government claims Canadian industry will benefit greatly, the possible results of the UK’s budget cruch:

…the number of Joint Strike Fighter aircraft is set to be halved…

…The number of Joint Strike Fighters could be cut from from 150 to 75…

Plus some comment at Milnet.ca on the other, more modern, Russian strategic bomber (a few more may be produced) which the comparatively clueless Conservatives forgot (or did not know about) to mention as part of their threat hyping.

Mark
Ottawa

Don’t get your nukes in knot, says Robert Kagan in the Washington Post:

New START: Too modest to merit partisan bickering

It’s hard to believe that ratification of the New START treaty is turning into a pitched battle between some Republicans and the White House. It’s even harder to believe that advocates for and against the treaty are trying to turn it into a stand-in for some imagined ideological contest over arms control and nonproliferation. It’s not. This treaty is simply too unexceptional to carry such heavy freight.

The proposed cuts in nuclear arsenals are modest. The START I agreement cut deployed strategic nuclear weapons on both sides roughly 50 percent, from between 10,000 and 12,000 down to 6,000. The never-ratified (but generally abided-by) START II Treaty cut forces by another 50 percent, down to between 3,000 and 3,500. The 2002 Moscow Treaty made further deep cuts, bringing each side down to between 1,700 and 2,200. And New START? It would bring the number on both sides down to 1,550.

This is hardly the revolution that either side claims. Take the favorite argument of many New START proponents. They insist the treaty represents a critical commitment by the nuclear superpowers to abide by the grand bargain of the Non-Proliferation Treaty: The nuclear states move toward zero in exchange for the non-nuclear states forgoing the weapons altogether. Ratification is essential, they claim, to gaining greater worldwide support for nuclear nonproliferation efforts.

Really? If this causal logic existed, why wasn’t this the happy result of the massive cuts in superpower arsenals from 1989 to 2002? Instead, throughout those years, Iran and North Korea, as well as Iraq, worked determinedly to build nuclear weapons, and neither India nor Pakistan felt constrained from testing their nuclear devices. It’s hard to see why the smaller cuts proposed in New START should suddenly produce a global commitment to nonproliferation.

But it’s equally hard for the treaty’s critics to argue that these cuts represent a great leap toward zero and the end of the American nuclear deterrent. The three previous arms control treaties, all negotiated by Republican presidents, and two of which were ratified with full Republican Party support, cut deployed nuclear weapons from near 12,000 down to around 2,000 — about 80 percent. If anyone deserves credit, or blame, for moving the United States in the direction of zero, the two Bushes deserve a lot more than President Obama…

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.

Somewhat related:

How the CIA Got It Wrong on Iran’s Nukes
In 2007, U.S. intelligence said Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. Analyst policy bias and disinformation from Iranian double agents may explain the mistake.

Mark
Ottawa

One wonders to what extent Soviet Russian intelligence reads blogs (they might look here and here).  A former Company man is rather aghast at their, er, perspective:

…

We can all laugh at this bad version of Get Smart, but the disturbing side of it is the suggestion that Russian intelligence has not grown up since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 — and that probably means neither has the Kremlin. You only have to consider the detailed “tasking” the Russian operatives were allegedly asked to pursue, like uncovering America’s “secret” policy on Iran. Doesn’t the Kremlin understand that even with the Obama Administration, you can figure that out from the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal or conferences sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute? Or take the tasking on the CIA’s leadership. Wouldn’t it have been a lot cheaper for Moscow to open an Amazon account and start buying up memoirs written by former CIA operatives? Unlike in Russia, the CIA pretty much lets its operatives write what they want about its leadership, including the good and the bad…

…If Russia, still acting as if we’re in the Cold War, thinks it can turn Iran into a permanent thorn in our side in the Middle East, that very well could lead to a catastrophe we would both suffer from. Let’s just hope it is only Russian intelligence that’s out of tune with the times, and not the Kremlin.

If I were President Obama, I would quickly release the suspected operatives, send them back to Moscow with bottles of champagne and follow that up with a visit by the Secretary of State to ask what it is the Kremlin doesn’t know about the U.S. that it wants to know.

Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer, is TIME.com’s intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower.

Guess the Russkies just can’t bring themselves to take OSINT seriously.  Meanwhile, some Cancon here.

Mark
Ottawa