Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America (27 page)

As this book goes to press, the Iranians appear to be approaching from “breakout capacity,” or the ability to enrich sufficient uranium for a bomb and to do it quickly enough to avoid detection or preventive action.
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A recent military-intelligence report concludes that Iran will have a missile capable of hitting the United States by 2015. “We should consider that Iran has a capability within the next few years of flight testing ICBM capable technologies,” says General Charles H. Jacoby, commander of the Colorado-based U.S. Northern Command. “The Iranians are intent on developing an ICBM.”
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There seems little short of military action that can stop the progress of the Iranian nuclear program at this point. The end of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime offered short-term hope that some course correction might be possible, but those hopes have borne little fruit. Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, sent early signals that he looked for a better relationship with the U.S., but his attitude toward Israel seems no different from his predecessor’s. In dismissing Netanyahu’s threat of a military strike in July 2013, Rouhani said: “Who are the Zionists to threaten us?” And he called Israel’s threats “laughable.”
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Even under a best-case political scenario—which we don’t have—the Iranian program has progressed so far that only drastic steps can stop it. “In the end, Iran’s nuclear program is advancing much more rapidly than any domestic political changes taking place inside Iran, and we will therefore be forced to decisively address the Iranian nuclear threat well before any new government comes to power,” writes Matthew Kroenig, a former adviser on Iran policy in the Pentagon.
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We discussed in the “Rogue Regimes” chapter the intensive cooperation the Iranians have received from Russia on their nuclear program. Iranian scientists have also benefitted from the nexus of nuclear collaboration between Pakistan and North Korea, which effectively ran a joint program during the 1990s facilitated by Beijing. Iranian centrifuges are barely altered versions of Pakistani ones from the mid-1990s, and evidence indicates that Iran obtained these designs directly from Islamabad.
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It’s worth considering the role played here by our erstwhile ally in the War on Terror, Pakistan.

Pakistan

Pakistan—and by implication, China—is far and away the most dangerous and persistent proliferator of nuclear technology and arms in the world. Beijing seems intent on keeping Pakistan supplied with
the latest in nuclear technology, and it is currently at work modernizing the country’s arsenal, which is estimated to contain as many as 100 warheads. China is also helping Pakistan develop a new warhead for its missile arsenal and providing expertise in reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.
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Islamabad’s Chinese partnership traces back to the 1970s, when Beijing—eager to buttress Pakistan against their mutual enemy, India—helped Pakistan develop an atomic weapon. Gordon Chang and others have argued that Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan sold China’s nuclear technology to rogue states—including Iran and North Korea—and that Beijing was almost certainly aware of this.
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In 1995, a group of North Korean engineers and Iranian scientists visited Khan’s lab. They were returning from Beijing, which strongly suggests the Chinese were directly involved in facilitating personal contacts and technology transfers between Pakistan and its customers.
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With help from Chinese companies, moreover, Pakistan developed the P2 centrifuge, the core mechanism of Iran and North Korea’s enrichment technology. Within a year of this assistance—in the mid-1990s—Iran had obtained P2 designs and North Korea had actual P2 centrifuges.
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The cooperation has persisted: The Chinese and Pakistanis signed a secret agreement in February 2013 to build an additional nuclear reactor in Chashma, in Punjab Province, Pakistan’s most populous. CNNC, the state-owned Chinese company also responsible for producing nuclear weapons, will build the reactor.
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CNNC had previous links with Pakistan’s nuclear program. Chinese firms have violated international law to supply Pakistan’s program; two Chinese companies were fined in U.S. courts for exporting nuclear material used to construct a Pakistani nuclear plant in 2006 and 2007.
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It’s unlikely that constructive signs will be coming from Islamabad anytime soon: The election of Nawaz Sharif as prime minister in 2013 was a highly discouraging development for the West. Sharif
was prime minister during periods in the 1990s when Pakistan was actively cooperating with China and disseminating nuclear technology abroad.
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Pakistani relations with the West have only worsened since he took office; Sharif seems determined to use the leverage that the nuclear program gives him.

And that leverage will be directed not only against India but also against the United States. Islamabad increasingly views the United States as a potential threat to its regional ambitions, and it is beefing up its capacities accordingly, especially by pursuing the nuclearization of its submarine fleet. Some reports suggest that the first Pakistani nuclear submarine will be operational within five to eight years.
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The instability of the regime in Pakistan—and the possibility of a terrorist organization getting hold of a nuclear device—remains the real stuff of Western nightmares.
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So far, Sharif, like Pervez Musharraf before him, has been able to keep the nuclear arsenal secure, but Pakistan is so politically volatile that we can take nothing for granted. The country’s political future is impossible to predict. Keeping their nukes contained, while blocking their international proliferation efforts as much as possible, might be the best the West can hope for in the short term.

North Korea

No other nation in the world has revealed the inadequacy of the Obama administration’s policies more starkly than North Korea. Consider some recent developments:

       
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In February 2013, the North Koreans conducted their third nuclear test, exploding what Pyongyang called a “miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously,” though it was not as big as the Hiroshima bomb.
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Previous tests took place in 2006 and 2009.

       
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North Korea has launched satellites into space, which suggests that with a few adjustments, they could develop an ICBM capable of hitting the United States in a relatively short period of time.
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The North Koreans—courtesy of China—now possess KN-08 intermediate-range ballistic missiles, weapons that could be used to target American cities. As we explained in the “Rogue Regimes” chapter, the KN-08 has a shorter range than some other North Korean missiles, but it can be mounted on mobile vehicles and is thus not only more difficult to destroy but also much quicker to prepare for operation.
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The North has the clearly demonstrated ability to enrich weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, and it has enough plutonium stockpiled for four to eight weapons.
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A plutonium-based warhead could be rapidly fitted to one of their short-range missiles with little or no warning.
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The Asan Institute, a Korean policy think tank, reported in September 2013 that North Korea had “advanced its indigenous atomic capabilities so much that it is not realistic to expect international sanctions and export controls to constrain its progress in developing a nuclear weapon.”
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And yet in response to all of this, the Obama administration pledges “strategic patience,” which ought to take its place on a short list of ridiculous policy names. This policy requires the North Korean leadership to show “positive, constructive behavior” in dismantling its nuclear program.
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Unsurprisingly, North Korea has not complied. Worse, the United States’ defense posture against Pyongyang’s potential missile deployments has major holes. Apparently, officials inside the Pentagon believe that “North Korean missiles can already reach Alaska and Hawaii, and will soon be able to deliver nuclear warheads to Seattle and San Diego,” wrote Larry Bell in July 2013.
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That ought to prompt
emergency measures. Instead, we seem to be muddling along, at best, to defend against this threat.

“The United States has missile-defense systems in place to protect us from limited ICBM attacks,” said Defense Secretary Hagel in March 2013, as he announced the addition of the 14 missile interceptors in the Pacific. “But North Korea in particular has recently made advances in its capabilities and has engaged in a series of irresponsible and reckless provocations.”
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No one would dispute Hagel’s description of the North Korean regime’s behavior. But what about those defense systems that would protect us from “
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ICBM attacks”? Why is the world’s only superpower satisfied with partial defense? Herein hangs a tale of how the United States, the missile-defense pioneer, has abandoned this brave vision.

AMERICA’S ABDICATION OF MISSILE DEFENSE

What would Ronald Reagan have thought? The political father of Star Wars—what he called the Strategic Defense Initiative, a plan for national missile defense—would have been dismayed if he were watching at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. There, in July 2013, a U.S. advanced missile interceptor failed to hit its target over the Pacific Ocean—the third straight failure of its kind. After 30 years of research and $250 billion of investment, the ground-based defense system has undergone 16 tests; only eight have been successful, the last one in 2008.”
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The system’s track record “has not improved over time,” said Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, wondering how the Pentagon can continue to assure the White House that the system will work when its tests are continual failures.
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The system “is something the U.S. military, and the American people, cannot depend on,” said Phillip E. Coyle, who once ran the Pentagon’s weapons-testing program and is now with the Center for Arms Control.
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Perhaps it is unfair to note that the program’s last successful test was in 2008, before President Obama took office. Whether or not that’s a coincidence, the fact remains that the Obama administration has conducted a pullback on missile defense that matches its retreat on nuclear weaponry generally. And some Republicans, in particular, do blame the president for the flimsy state of America’s current missile defenses. For them, the administration has simply taken its eye off the ball—as its decisions show.

Representative Mike Rogers, whom we’ve cited throughout this chapter, is explicit in blaming the administration’s funding cutbacks for missile-defense failures. He points out that the 2013 test was the first since 2008—an eternity for any high-priority program. “Has anyone in this room ever kept a car in the garage for five years and then pulled it out one day and expected to go for a cross-country drive?” he asked. “Of course not. Unfortunately, that’s what we’ve done with our only homeland defense system.”
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Rogers notes that the administration has cut $6 billion from our missile-defense programs—a 16 percent cut from the Bush years—at a time when missile threats are growing. “This is not the time to stand still or regress as we have done in some respects lately: We continue to be challenged by increasing threats, budget scarcity, and the resulting test failures,” Rogers said. “With regard to the nation’s only national missile-defense program, it’s been cut in half in almost ten years.”
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And yet that’s nothing compared with the way the U.S. is leaving its allies high and dry on missile defense.

Deserting Europe

Long before Obama took office, the American plan to install a Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system in Eastern Europe had created severe tension with Russia. It was a major source of dispute between President
Bush and Vladimir Putin. The missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic would, according to the Bush administration, protect against missiles launched by Iran. As we’ve noted, Moscow viewed it as a cover for Washington’s intentions to strengthen its influence in the former Soviet satellites and alter the balance of nuclear power. The Russians made their displeasure clear.

“What can we do?” asked General Yuri Baluyevsky, then chief of the Russian military’s general staff. “Go ahead and build that shield. You have to think, though, what will fall on your heads afterward. I do not foresee a nuclear conflict between Russia and the West. We do not have such plans. However, it is understandable that countries that are part of such a shield increase their risk.”
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Over the years, unconfirmed reports have suggested that Russia periodically moves tactical nukes into its Kaliningrad Oblast (a small Russian exclave located between Lithuania and Poland); or Russia threatens to move these nukes whenever it wants to exert political pressure on its neighbors.
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In 2007, General Vladimir Zaritsky, chief of artillery and rocketry for Russia’s ground forces, suggested moving state-of-the-art Iskander missile platforms armed with nuclear weapons into Kaliningrad in response to the American missile shield. He said, “Any action meets a counter-action, and this is the case with elements of the U.S. missile defence in Poland and the Czech Republic.”
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In December 2013, Lithuania and Poland issued statements of concern that Russia had carried through on its rhetoric and stationed Iskanders in Kaliningrad—well within striking distance of much of NATO.
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Putin denied the claims, saying, “We haven’t made the decision yet” about the Iskanders.
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