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| April 1, 1999 |
| April 1, 1999 |
Bombing Can't Halt Serb Violence
Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll Jr., USN (Ret.), Deputy Director, ecarroll@cdi.org
[Editor's note: This article appeared in Newsday, on March 26, 1999, pg. A55]
MOST AMERICANS agree that Slobodan Milosevic is an inhumane despot who has brought misery and devastation to the former Yugoslavia. Nowhere are the consequences of his misbegotten drive for personal power more evident than in the tragedy he has wrought in Kosovo.
Even though this is true, one question must still be asked -- Why has NATO, led by the United States, resorted to a destructive bombing campaign against Serbia when military action cannot resolve the issues that underlie the violence in Kosovo? There simply is no military solution to the complex historic, ethnic and religious issues motivating the conflict there. And, even if there were one, it could not be accomplished from the air alone. Missiles and bombs, no matter how smart they may be, are blunt, brutal instruments of destruction that intensify and deepen wounds-rather than healing them. They will not change the political reality of Serbian control in Kosovo.
President Bill Clinton blandly assures Americans that our bombing will deter and degrade Milosevic's ability to make war against ethnic Albanian Kosovars.
While the bombing clearly imposes a price for such actions, it not only cannot stop violence in Kosovo but will bring additional violence and destruction against the very people we profess to be protecting. Raising violence to a new level in order to end violence seems to be a serious contradiction in objectives.
Furthermore, there is a very real possibility that NATO bombing will actually enable Milosevic to tighten his authoritarian grip in Serbia -- first by justifying complete elimination of all opposition political factions and, second, by playing into the tendency of citizens to rally around their government in response to external attacks. The history of aerial bombardment consistently confirms this effect and, according to press reports from Belgrade is already evident there. If Milosevic remains firmly in control and refuses to withdraw his forces from Kosovo, what does NATO do then? How long will the NATO alliance support a pointless aerial-warfare campaign that perpetuates and intensifies suffering in Kosovo? Or, almost as bad, consider what happens if Milosevic cunningly accedes to NATO demands and permits the introduction of the planned 28,000-strong NATO occupation force into Kosovo. How long will the Allies bear the costs and dangers of standing between Serbs and Kosovars, neither of whom really want peace? The United States alone has already spent about $20 billion to bring a tenuous form of peace to Bosnia, a delicate condition maintained by separating the Serbs from Croats and Bosnian Muslims with a three-kilometer demilitarized zone.
No such barrier (or partition) is possible in Kosovo, and sustained violence between the Kosovar majority and the disarmed Serb minority is certain.
It must be noted that NATO attacks directly serve the interests of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Even though we cannot eliminate Serbian forces, we will at certain times and places create opportunities for the KLA to exploit Serbian losses through attacks on vulnerable Serb units. If this process continues long enough, it could develop that the KLA will become the aggressors and engage in their own ethnic cleansing actions against Serbian civilians. Then what does NATO do, attack the people it is ostensibly protecting? Or what does NATO do if the KLA declares Kosovo an independent state? Thus the resort to bombing has put NATO into a lose-lose situation, where no probable outcome satisfies the need for a stable, peaceful relationship between Serbia and Kosovo. This no-win strategy clearly must be revised and a means found to resume pursuit of a more constructive, less confrontational political resolution of the Kosovo problem. It is obvious NATO is not going to generate any such initiative, nor would Milosevic deal with NATO negotiators at this point.
Fortunately, there is one European power with clean hands and a long term supportive relationship with Serbia that could enter into substantive negotiations -- Russia. The United Nations Security Council (with U.S. agreement) could call for a cease-fire and direct Russia to act as a mediator to broker a deal between NATO and Serbia.
This mission for Russia would have the great benefit of restoring Russia to a meaningful role in European security affairs after it was ignored, even humiliated, when NATO decided to attack Serbia. Russia seemingly could engineer face-saving concessions from both parties to end the violence in Kosovo.
One important condition would be the use of a large team of suitably empowered monitors in Kosovo to be provided by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe-not 28,000 NATO troops. This team would supervise and enforce the new security arrangements and oversee repatriation and resettlement programs for returning Kosovars. This would be far more effective in creating long-term security than the present futile effort.
Copyright 1999, Newsday Inc.
Services Facing Shortage of Cruise Missiles
Chris Hellman, Senior Research Analyst, chellman@cdi.org
As the air war in Kosovo enters its second week, questions have arisen about the numbers of cruise missiles in the U.S. inventory, and whether sufficient numbers of the weapon remain in the services' arsenals to sustain protracted heavy air operations.
Valued for their accuracy, range, and because they permit U.S. forces to attack targets protected by surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) without putting pilots at risk, cruise missiles have increasingly become the Pentagon's weapon of choice. First used during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, they have been used seven times since then prior to Operation "Allied Force," in Kosovo, most recently in Operation "Desert Fox" last December in Iraq, and in U.S. attacks against suspected terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan last August.
Currently the Navy is operating Block III and Block IV models of the Tomahawk, which are advanced versions of the original missile. The Navy is also in the process of developing an even more advanced version known as the Tactical Tomahawk. Like the current Block IIIs and IVs, the Tactical Tomahawk will include a navigational system that uses the Global Positioning System (GPS). However, it will also have an onboard camera and be capable of loitering in the combat theater. These capabilities will allow attack planners to do real-time bomb damage assessment and reprogram the missile's targets if necessary. The Air Force currently operates the Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM), a conventional version of the original nuclear Air Launched Cruise Missile, which also uses a GPS navigational system.
The Navy recognized the potential of conventional cruise missiles early during their development, particularly in attacking other ships, and currently has an estimated 3,500 Tomahawks of all types in their arsenal. Since the Gulf War, however, 95% of all cruise missiles used by the Navy have been Block III or IV, and it is the supply of these particular missiles that are causing concerns. In the mid-1990s the Navy decided that it would halt new production of Block IIIs, preferring to save money by upgrading older models until the Tactical Tomahawk went in to production in 2003.
Unlike the Navy, the Air Force did not develop a conventional cruise missile, focusing instead on those capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Given the very different nature of the nuclear mission the Air Force's requirement for cruise missiles was relatively low. The Air Force is currently in the process of converting its cruise missiles for conventional use, but had only an estimated 150 available when air operations in Kosovo began.
As part of their planned modernization program, the Navy is requesting $50.9 million in Fiscal Year 2000 for the upgrade of 148 missiles to Block III, and a further $59.6 million in FY'01 to upgrade 176 missiles. In addition, the Navy is seeking $113 million in supplemental funds in the current fiscal year for upgrades to 324 missiles, to replace those used during December's operation "Desert Fox" against Iraq. The Navy has also included funds in the FY'00 budget to push up the production date of the Tactical Tomahawk to 2002.
According to press reports, the Air Force this Tuesday received permission from the Office of Management and Budget to request funding for the conversion of an additional 92 nuclear ALCMs to conventional weapons. The estimated cost is $51 million, which will require congressional approval.
From an operational standpoint in Kosovo, the shrinking supply of cruise missiles is unlikely to limit planned strikes. The current arsenal appears sufficient to support continued operations. And as the emphasis shifts from large, fixed targets such as military installations, fixed SAM batteries, communications centers, and infrastructure towards smaller mobile targets such as armor and infantry units, cruise missiles become less effective. And the Navy still has well over a thousand Tomahawks, albeit less capable ones, in their inventory. Yet if the military's reliance on cruise missiles continues to grow, as is likely the case, additional military actions in the near future will place further stress the limited supply of top of the line cruise missiles.
For further background, see "Cruise Missiles: The Preferred Face of Warfare?" Weekly Defense Monitor, Volume 2, Issue #34, August 20, 1998.
National Missile Defense and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty: Risks
and Strategies
Rachel Dubin, Associate Researcher
In July, 1998 the congressionally-mandated Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, or "Rumsfeld Commission," released a report concluding that there was "a growing threat to the United States" from "rogue nations" such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea who were developing ballistic missiles that could be tipped with nuclear or biological warheads. Seizing on this, a number of members of Congress and others favoring a National Missile Defense (NMD) have been applying pressure for rapidly fielding NMD. This pressure culminated in mid-March in the passage of Senate bill S257, the National Missile Defense Act of 1999.
A major obstacle to deployment is the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, which limits the U.S. and the Soviet Union/Russia to one ABM site each and forbids research and development, let alone deployment, of further ABM systems. Efforts to amend the Treaty, the preferred U.S. goal, increasingly are being overshadowed by a more drastic alternative represented by Secretary of Defense William Cohen's early February, 1999 statement to Congress that the U.S. would withdraw from the treaty if U.S.-proposed changes were not accepted.
Both options -- amendment or abrogation -- entail significant risks.
The most obvious risk is a worsening of U.S.-Russia relations. The ABM Treaty has been the cornerstone of arms control for 27 years. In that time it has become so central to Russia's military strategy and national security that the Russians regard it as sacrosanct. Thus Moscow sees U.S. attempts to change the treaty as a threat to Russia's already precarious geopolitical stability. Deployment by the U.S. of NMD would change the strategic status quo at a time when Russia cannot afford either to rebuild or expand its own ABM capability or to upgrade its Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) force to counter the effects of the proposed U.S. NMD.
Furthermore, regardless of assurances from Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Secretary Cohen that the proposed NMD system will not change the strategic balance because it is a limited defense system, Russian fears, sustained by 45 years of Cold War suspicions that the U.S. would "break out" of any agreement if it could achieve technological superiority, see U.S. suggestions to change (or abrogate) the ABM Treaty as "proof" that the U.S. cannot be trusted. Such perceptions strengthen the hand of Russian nationalists who can portray the U.S. as continually trying to force concessions from a politically and militarily weakened Russia.
A second significant risk of early deployment is that of technological immaturity if not outright failure. President Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or "Star Wars," the 1980s precursor to the current NMD development program, was based on space-based lasers and particle beams, technology that has yet to prove itself for military applications. Even the far less demanding technology for theater missile defense remains unproven. The most advanced program, the Army's Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, has a zero for six record after four years of testing. (The most recent failure occurred just this week.)
Complete failure of the technology of trying to "hit a bullet with a bullet" -- the method envisioned for all planned U.S. missile defenses other than the Air Force's Airborne Laser -- might stop deployment. Technological immaturity might not, thereby imparting a false sense of security while also worsening relations with Russia. Specifically, a limited NMD system would be vulnerable both to ship-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and to offensive weapons equipped with countermeasures. In a November/December, 1998 article in "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists", Richard Garwin, a member of the Rumsfeld Commission, wrote that an NMD system would "not even see" SLBMs and would "have no capability" against incoming missile warheads containing bomblets that could be filled with chemical or biological agents. Other simple countermeasures could effectively conceal actual warheads with multiple dummies. In short, deploying an immature NMD would be a losing proposition from every perspective.
The third risk follows logically from the above: that is, billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money will be wasted on complex, unproven, and unprovable national missile defenses when the money might be used more productively to develop countermeasures for more likely threats such as theater missiles. Between FY1994-FY2005, NMD will consume $13.9 billion, including $6.6 billion set aside for deployment. In June, 2000 the Pentagon will decide whether or not to commit to deploying NMD in 2005 and, if so, will begin construction at the chosen site (Alaska or North Dakota, or both). Yet as recently as last month the Pentagon's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation told Congress that planned testing for NMD will most likely not be completed by that time. Moreover, neither the booster rocket nor the sensor for the operational NMD system will have been tested by the June 2000 date. For those who support responsible use and accountability of defense resources, NMD represents an very bad bargain for taxpayers.
In spite of these flaws, it is not too late for action by the U.S. to minimize these risks.
First, talk about abrogating the ABM Treaty should be avoided. Russia already relies too heavily on its offensive nuclear force to compensate for weakness in its conventional forces. Abrogation threats will only drive them further into nuclear dependency.
Second, the U.S. could undertake more creative confidence building measures with key elements in Russia. For example, Russian scientists could be invited to work on a joint NMD system, as has been suggested by Alexander Pikayev, Director of the Arms Reduction and Nuclear Proliferation Program at the Moscow Carnegie Center. Such professional-to-professional contact would reduce suspicions and serve as a tangible assurance that the U.S. is not trying to gain defensive superiority over Russia. More importantly, such cooperation would provide Russian scientists with sufficient economic support to keep them from selling their nuclear know-how to states trying to gain nuclear weapons capability.
Third, to preclude fielding an immature system, Congress, instead of "rushing to failure," by premature deployment of NMD, should freeze deployment funding if a predetermined negative threshold is reached -- e.g., if three or more of the next five scheduled tests are failures. Money would be restored only after the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) has proven that the actual, integrated elements to be deployed (not the substitutes being tested) have attained a success rate greater than 70 or 75 percent. The threat of lost money and profits would bring added pressure on BMDO and NMD contractors to do "smart" research and development before attempting to deploy any system.
In the end, the U.S. may convince Russia to modify the ABM Treaty and then deploy a limited NMD system as a hedge against missile threats from rogue nations. What would be most unwise is to withdraw from the treaty or use the threat of withdrawal to wring concessions that will be seen as the U.S. running roughshod over Russian interests and sensibilities. While the U.S. might "win" in the short term against a weakened Russia, our long term national interests will be better served by helping Russia recover its balance now so that they will be willing to work with us in the future.