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| ISSUE #7 | August 28,1997 |
| ISSUE #7 | August 28,1997 |
Show Me the Medals: "...and this one is for remembering to breathe."
by David Isenberg, Senior Research Analyst, disenber@cdi.org
A proliferation threat is re-emerging, one that hasn't been seen since the mid-1980s.
According to an article in the September 1 issue of Army Times, various proposals now circulating in Congress would mandate the creation of military medals for millions of U.S. armed forces personnel, possibly even for those who never leave their home base.
One especially ludicrous Senate proposal by Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) would create a "Cold War Service Medal" for all who served between August 15, 1974 and December 21, 1991 if they reenlisted or, as officers, stayed in uniform beyond their initial service obligation. Enlisted people who became commissioned or warrant officers also would be eligible.
One might legitimately wonder why people who served in the military during the first 27 years of the Cold War are not considered eligible.
Another proposal would award the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal to those who participated in Operations Joint Endeavor or Joint Guard in Bosnia, even if all they did was provide support from outside of Bosnia. Historically, this medal has been reserved for those participating in operations in which they were in immediate danger from or encountered actual armed opposition.
Yet another proposed decoration would go for injuries of death suffered in noncombat situations, including peacetime training or travel to a contingency operation.
Those with long memories will remember other times that the military awards systems has been debased. In the aftermath of the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada, the Defense Department awarded 8, 612 medals even though there were no more than seven thousand U.S. troops on the island at any one time.
When everyone starts getting awards, the awards become meaningless. Armed forces personnel increasingly look like an egomaniac out of a Gilbert & Sullivan opera or cartoon figure from the New Yorker magazine.
Credit the men and women in the U.S. military with some intelligence. They know the job is tough and that injury and death is always a possibility, in or out of combat. Instead of wasting time and effort designing new medals, we would do better by them if we stopped putting them "in harm's way" so often.
NATO in the Crimea?
by David Johnson, Director of Research, djohnson@cdi.org
A NATO-Ukrainian naval exercise, codename Sea Breeze '97, has been taking place over the past few days. Involved are two U.S. Navy medium landing craft, a Turkish frigate and submarine, a Bulgarian anti-submarine ship, and eight Ukrainian warships. The wargames are being held in the Black Sea in the vicinity of the Crimea peninsula, a part of the Ukraine largely populated by Russian-speakers and the scene of much political turmoil.
The Crimea's Russian population has protested against the exercises and the Russian government has expressed considerable anxiety about this movement closer to Russia of NATO military activities. The original scenario for the exercise envisaged support for Ukraine in putting down a local rebellion by separatists. But after Russian protests, a less provocative scenario was substituted: rescuing local residents from an earthquake. But nobody seems to be mollified by this cosmetic change.
It has been observed that this is the first time since the siege of Sevastopol (during the reign of Nicholas I) that so many foreign ships have appeared in the Black Sea off the coast of Crimea.
Sea Breeze '97 seems almost deliberately calculated to reinforce Russian fears of NATO's intentions. The expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe is already a dangerous step. To add fuel to the fire by engaging in seemingly anti-Russian military exercises on Russia's doorstep is carelessness in the extreme. One has to wonder who in the U.S. government conceived of this scheme, and to what purpose.
Half of U.S. Nuclear Arsenal in New Mexico, Georgia
by Chris Hellman, Senior Research Analyst, chellman@cdi.org
Although the exact size and location of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is classified, nuclear weapons specialists Stan Norris and William Arkin have used public records and information associated with security at nuclear storage facilities to determine just where our nation's nuclear warheads are stored. Their conclusion: while America's nuclear arsenal is spread out over 15 states, almost half of the warheads are located in New Mexico and Georgia.
The information was compiled for a report to be published by the Natural Resources Defense Council. It will present the details not only of the U.S. nuclear arsenal but also those of Russia, Britain, France and China. While the report is not yet complete, the portion dealing with the U.S. nuclear arsenal is now available electronically.
Norris and Arkin found that there are about 2,850 nuclear weapons in New Mexico, the vast majority of which are reserves or are awaiting dismantlement. They also believe that there are 2,000 warheads stored in Georgia, location of the King's Bay nuclear submarine base. Washington state, home of the Bangor submarine base, ranks third among the states with a total of 1,600 nuclear warheads.
There were 24,000 warheads in the U.S. nuclear stockpile as recently as the 1980s. That number has been gradually declining, however, and since 1992 nuclear weapons have been withdrawn from 10 states: Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and South Carolina. Arkin and Norris estimate that the U.S. currently has approximately 8,750 warheads deployed. The total arsenal is significantly larger, however, if warheads being held in reserve or awaiting destruction are counted. In this case, the total U.S. stockpile reaches 12,500 weapons.
According to the study, the other states still holding nuclear weapons are: Nevada with 1,450, North Dakota with 965, Wyoming with 592 warheads, Missouri 550, Texas 520, Louisiana 455, Montana 455, Nebraska 255, California 175, Virginia 175, South Dakota 138, and Colorado 138.
The United States also has about 150 tactical nuclear bombs in Europe. They are the only American nuclear weapons positioned outside the United States.
[Excerpts of the Natural Resources Defense Council report, "Taking Stock: Worldwide Nuclear Deployments, 1997" dealing with the U.S. arsenal are available on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists webpage at: http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/nukenotes/so97nukenote.html]
The March of Peace--One Step Forward--Maybe
by Daniel Smith, Associate Director dsmith@cdi.org
Washington in August: Congress and the President are on holiday and the Supreme Court is in recess. But while life is placid here, in the world at large there is little peace.
Take Cambodia. In spite of a $3 billion effort, that nation has plunged back into civil war. Within days of the coup by Hun Sen, forces of co-premier Prince Ranariddh have been pushed against the Thai-Cambodia border. Refugees have again streamed into Thailand, but the Thai government says it will not allow them to remain for long.
In Bosnia, British and American troops in the Stabilization Force (SFOR) have cracked down on "special police" organizations which are little more than private militias of suspected or indicted war criminals. Such groups, whose existence violates the Dayton Accords, may have up to three thousand members. In confronting them, SFOR has sided with Bosnian Serb President Plavsic against Radovan Karadzic, himself an indicted war criminal. But going after him may produce the one thing NATO dreads most: battle casualties.
Africa seems to be literally ablaze. The 20 year dictatorship of Kenya's Daniel arap Moi is under siege. Major Johnny Koromah, leader of a military junta in Sierra Leone, continues to defy the international community. The Organization of African Unity has asked the U.N. to intervene in the new civil war in Republic of Congo (Brazzaville). Angola hangs on the cusp of a renewal of its long and bitter civil war.
Peace, of a sort, has emerged in Albania where an Italian led, UN sanctioned force successfully stabilized that country while it held elections. In Africa, Liberia has elected a new leader (a former warlord) after seven years of war, and in the former Zaire most of the killing seems over and refugees are returning home.
But the most important boost for peace occurred far from these battlefields. Earlier this month, at the UN, international legal experts reached broad consensus on the structure and authority of a new, permanent international court. This new court's focus would center on genocide, war crimes, and "crimes against humanity" committed by individuals. Currently, special courts must be established to conduct trials involving such incidents, as in the case of Bosnia.
There are still unresolved points, however. For example, the new court will have jurisdiction only if the legal system in the country in which the alleged crime occurred is incapable of handling the case. Who decides that a country's legal system is dysfunctional? Other unresolved questions are: who can refer a charge for investigation; who will be subject to the court's jurisdiction (e.g., paramilitaries, regular soldiers, civilian officials); can a permanent UN Security Council member veto a judicial proceeding; can a prosecution go forward if the country in which the incident occurred refuses to cooperate?
These are all potentially serious obstacles to final agreement, and in the end the court's authority may be as circumscribed as that of the current International Court whose decisions can be rejected by a sovereign state. As is so often the case in international affairs, however, the first step is the hardest. It's time to start on this international judicial journey to peace.
Westernizing Central Europe's Military Complex
by Tomas Valasek, Research Analyst, tvalasek@cdi.org
The demise of the Warsaw Pact also brought changes to defense acquisition processes in Central and East Europe. Newly democratic governments are now choosing equipment based on their national needs instead of on instructions from above. It is only natural that such profound change requires training, and Polish, Hungarian, and Czech officials recently took part in a free seminar on defense acquisition procedures.
One might expect the U.S. government or NATO to sponsor such events. However, as reported in Defense Week, such an event recently was sponsored by Lockheed Martin, the same company that is bidding to sell over 100 F-16 fighter aircraft to governments in this region. As for a potential conflict of interest issue, Lockheed states that "... these are not marketing operations. We were not handing out pamphlets explaining why the F-16 is the best fighter in the world."
But Lockheed did not hurt its bid either. Part of the training involved defining "threats" to NATO-hopefuls and the means of countering them. Not surprisingly, for Poland, Lockheed analysts arrived at a potential threat estimate of "860 fighter and ground-attack aircraft; 11,000 combat vehicles, 1,700 surface-to-air missiles, 120 submarines", and much more. Such a massive threat will surely require many F-16s to counter.
The price of most U.S.-made military equipment is still beyond the reach of these potential NATO members. Central and Eastern European countries still rely on their domestic military production, which has undergone major changes in the 1990s (as documented in new book by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), The Defence Industry in East Central Europe: Restructuring and Conversion).
For example, military production in the Czech Republic dropped drastically in the early 1990s. The change mirrored the new leadership's moral opposition to arms production and sales. In 1990 President Vaclav Havel banned tank production and arms trading. But his resolution did not last long. Unemployment, lost income, and continued exports by other countries soon forced the Czechs to resume production and export their weapons.
For his part, President Havel explained later that he had been opposed only to "the production of outdated military technology and its export to dangerous areas." But the statement best capturing Czech considerations in reversing their policy came from Vaclav Dlouhy, then Minister of Trade and Industry. Dlouhy called the previous arms trade policy "naive" and asserted it had been imposed on the country by Western powers "who preached to us to drink water while they were drinking wine."
America's Defense Monitor: "Modern American Patriot: Senator Mark Hatfield."
The career in public service of recently retired Senator Mark O. Hatfield--World War II veteran, professor, Governor, Vietnam War resister, champion of arms control, and the "conscience of the Senate"--is the subject of this week's episode of America's Defense Monitor, CDI's weekly television series on PBS.
A voice of restraint in military spending and arms proliferation, a proponent of federal investment in education, environmental protection, and other areas, Sen. Hatfield was viewed as something of an anomaly by his fellow Republicans. But as revealed in one-on-one discussions with CDI's David Isenberg, Sen. Hatfield's political philosophy has deep roots not only in progressive populism but in the national security vision advanced by another Republican, Dwight Eisenhower--that in addition to a strong military, a well-educated, healthy, and productive citizenry is vital to our security.
In the Washington, DC area, America's Defense Monitor is broadcast on WHMM Channel 32 at 12:30 PM on Sundays. Outside the DC area, check local listings for America's Defense Monitor or go to http://www.cdi.org/adm/station/ on the Worldwide Web.
A transcript of this episode is available at: http://www.cdi.org/adm/transcripts/1027/
CDI CALENDAR & SCHEDULER for the Week of September 1st
| SEPT 1 | Negotiations in Oslo, Norway ("The Ottawa Process") on a treaty banning antipersonnel landmines (through September 19) |
| SEPT 2 | Army Aviation Association of America's Second Annual Simulation Symposium at the Crystal Gateway Marriott, Arlington, Virginia (through September 4) |
| SEPT 3 | Congress returns from summer recess: House and Senate conferees to resolve differences in House ($248.3 Billion)and Senate ($247.2 Billion) defense bills |
| SEPT 4 | "Delusions of Grandeur: The U.N. and Global Intervention," a forum at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC |
| SEPT 6 | Commissioning of the U.S.S. Louisiana, the 18th and last Trident submarine, at King's Bay, Georgia |
| Joint Task Force Exercise 97-3, the first demonstration of the Joint Countermine Advanced Concept Technology Project, conducted near Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina is completed (began August 18) |