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Argos Media

Zakaria: Has Pakistan's Army Changed Its Stripes? | Newsweek Voices - Fareed Zakaria | ... - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/...195786

Pakistan US Husain Haqqani Fareed Zakaria Taliban

shared by Argos Media on 04 May 09 - Cached
  • It was only a few years ago that Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani diplomat who recently became ambassador to Washington, wrote a brilliant book arguing that the Pakistani government—despite public and private claims to the contrary—continued "to make a distinction between 'terrorists' … and 'freedom fighters' (the officially preferred label … for Kashmiri militants)." He added: "The Musharraf government also remains tolerant of remnants of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, hoping to use them in resuscitating Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan." The Pakistani military's world view—that it is surrounded by dangers and needs to be active in destabilizing its neighbors— remains central to Pakistan's basic strategy.
  • While President Musharraf broke with the overt and large-scale support that the military provides to the militant groups, and there have continued to be some moves against some jihadists, there is no evidence of a campaign to rid Pakistan of these groups. The leaders of the Afghan Taliban, headed up by Mullah Mohammed Omar, still work actively out of Quetta. The Army has never launched serious campaigns against the main Taliban-allied groups led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or Jalaluddin Haqqani, both of whose networks are active in Pakistan. The group responsible for the Mumbai attacks, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has evaded any punishment, morphing in name and form but still operating in plain sight in Lahore. Even now, after allowing the Taliban to get within 60 miles of the capital, the Pakistani military has deployed only a few thousand troops to confront them, leaving the bulk of its million-man Army in the east, presumably in case India suddenly invades.
  • The rise of Islamic militants in Pakistan is not, Ambassador Haqqani writes, "the inadvertent outcome of some governments." It is "rooted in history and [is] a consistent policy of the Pakistani state." The author describes how, from its early years, the Pakistani military developed "a strategic commitment to jihadi ideology." It used Islam to mobilize the country and Army in every conflict with India. A textbook case was the 1965 war, when Pakistan's state-controlled media "generated a frenzy of jihad," complete with stories of heroic suicide missions, martyrdom and divine help.
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  • The Pakistani military has lost the wars it has fought via traditional means. But running guerrilla operations—against the Soviets, the Indians and the Afghans—has proved an extremely cost-effective way to keep its neighbors off balance.
  • The ambassador's book, "Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military," marshals strong evidence that, at least until recently, the Pakistani military made the pretense of arresting militants in order to get funds from Washington. But it never shut down the networks. "From the point of view of Pakistan's Islamists and their backers in the ISI [Pakistan's military intelligence]," Haqqani writes, "jihad is on hold but not yet over. Pakistan still has an unfinished agenda in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
  • The book concludes by telling how Pakistan's military has used the threat from these militant groups to maintain power, delegitimize the civilian government and—most crucial of all—keep aid flowing from the United States. And the book's author has now joined in this great game. Last week Ambassador Haqqani wrote an op-ed claiming that Pakistan was fighting these militant groups vigorously. The only problem, he explained, was that Washington was reluctant to provide the weapons, training and funds Pakistan needs. He has become a character out of the pages of his own book.
Argos Media

U.S. Questions Pakistan's Will to Stop Taliban - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...24pstan.html

Pakistan Taliban Swat Valley Buner North West Frontier Province Shangla Swabi Mardan Maulana Fazlur Rahman

shared by Argos Media on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • As the Taliban tightened their hold over newly won territory, Pakistani politicians and American officials on Thursday sharply questioned the government’s willingness to deal with the insurgents and the Pakistani military’s decision to remain on the sidelines.
  • Some 400 to 500 insurgents consolidated control of their new prize, a strategic district called Buner, just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, setting up checkpoints and negotiating a truce similar to the one that allowed the Taliban to impose Islamic law in the neighboring Swat Valley.
  • As they did, Taliban contingents were seen Thursday in at least two other districts and areas still closer to the capital, according to Pakistani government officials and residents.
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  • Yet Pakistani authorities deployed just several hundred poorly paid and equipped constabulary forces to Buner, who were repelled in a clash with the insurgents, leaving one police officer dead
  • The limited response set off fresh scrutiny of Pakistan’s military, a force with 500,000 soldiers and a similar number of reservists. The army receives $1 billion in American military aid each year but has repeatedly declined to confront the Taliban-led insurgency, even as it has bled out of Pakistan’s self-governed tribal areas into Pakistan proper in recent months.
  • The military remains fixated on training and deploying its soldiers to fight the country’s archenemy, India. It remains ill equipped for counterinsurgency, analysts say, and top officers are deeply reluctant to be pressed into action against insurgents who enjoy family, ethnic and religious ties with many Pakistanis.
  • In the limited engagements in which regular army troops have fought the Taliban in the tribal areas and sections of the Swat Valley, they not only failed to dislodge the Taliban, but also convinced many Pakistanis that their own military was as much of a menace as the Islamic radicals it sought to repel, residents and analysts say.
  • In Washington, a Defense Department official who is monitoring Pakistan closely said that the poorly trained constabulary force was sent Thursday because Pakistani Army troops were not available, and Pakistani generals were reluctant to pull reinforcements off the border with India — something American officials have encouraged them to do.
  • Instead, the military, which is stretched thin in the areas along the Afghan border, has favored negotiations, and the civilian government has acquiesced. “The government is too worried about its own political survival to take on the militants,” the Defense Department official said.
  • Where it has engaged the insurgents, the Pakistani Army, untrained in counterinsurgency, has become reviled by the civilian population for its heavy-handed tactics, which have cost many lives while failing to stop the Taliban. At the same time, the police and paramilitary forces have proved too weak to stand up to the militants. In Buner, desperate residents had resorted to forming their own militias, as much to keep out the military as the Taliban. That effort, too, has now failed.
  • On Capitol Hill, legislators preparing to introduce a bill to provide Pakistan with $7.5 billion in nonmilitary aid over five years may face a steep challenge.
  • In a sign of the urgency of the crisis, the special envoy for the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, is sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton memos several times a day with his latest reading of the situation in Pakistan, an American official said. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefly visited Pakistan on Wednesday night and Thursday from Afghanistan, to meet with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani Army chief of staff. An American official briefed on discussions said the Pakistani leadership was “very concerned.”
  • Buner (pronounced boo-NAIR), home to about one million people, lies in the heart of North-West Frontier Province, bordering seven other districts. Its capture not only advances the Taliban closer to the capital, but also gives the Taliban a vital hub to extend their reach.
  • More than 30 armed militants entered the Shangla district, east of the main Swat Valley and north of Buner, and were seen patrolling an area around Loch Bazaar, the independent channel Geo TV reported Thursday, quoting witnesses.Government officials also confirmed that militants have been seen in Totali, far south in Buner and close to the boundary with the Swabi district, which lies close to the main highways into the capital.
  • Armed militants have also been seen visiting mosques and patrolling in Rustam, a town on the boundary between Buner and the adjoining district of Mardan, said Riaz Khan, a lawyer living in Mardan, the second largest town in North-West Frontier Province. “People are anxious and in a state of fear,” he said.
  • The Taliban were making a concerted push into areas that overlook the capital, lawmakers and government officials in North-West Frontier Province said.
  • A powerful religious party leader, Fazlur Rehman, who is allied with the government, warned that militants had reached into the Mansehra district, close to the Tarbela Dam, a vital source of electricity to the center of the country.
  • “If the Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the door of Islamabad,” he told Parliament on Wednesday, adding that Margalla Hills, north of the capital, seem to be the only hurdle to the Taliban advance.
  • The Pakistani Taliban, who number in the thousands across the tribal areas and the Swat region, have declared their aim of establishing Shariah rule throughout Pakistan. But for now, their expansion may be opportunistic and their strength sufficient only to establish local fiefdoms, or “micro-emirates of Shariah,” said Christine Fair, a senior research associate at the RAND Corporation.“I don’t know what the Taliban’s game plan is, but what seems apparent is the state has no game plan,” she said. “The Pakistani state is not able to stop them and they expand where they can.”
Pedro Gonçalves

Firepower bristles in South China Sea as rivalries harden | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...chinasea-idUKBRE85D04T20120614

US China Military South China Sea South East Asia

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 14 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • In the early years of China's rise to economic and military prowess, the guiding principle for its government was Deng Xiaoping's maxim: "Hide Your Strength, Bide Your Time." Now, more than three decades after paramount leader Deng launched his reforms, that policy has seemingly lapsed or simply become unworkable as China's military muscle becomes too expansive to conceal and its ambitions too pressing to postpone.
  • The current row with Southeast Asian nations over territorial claims in the energy-rich South China Sea is a prime manifestation of this change, especially the standoff with the Philippines over Scarborough Shoal.
  • In what is widely interpreted as a counter to China's growing influence, the United States is pushing ahead with a muscular realignment of its forces towards the Asia-Pacific region, despite Washington's fatigue with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Pentagon's steep budget cuts.And regional nations, including those with a history of adversarial or distant relations with the United States, are embracing Washington's so-called strategic pivot to Asia.
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  • As part of the strategic pivot unveiled in January, the United States will deploy 60 per cent of its warships in the Asia-Pacific, up from 50 per cent now. They will include six aircraft carriers and a majority of the U.S. navy's cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and submarines.
  • "Make no mistake, in a steady, deliberate and sustainable way, the United States military is rebalancing and bringing an enhanced capability development to this vital region," Panetta told the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security conference in Singapore attended by civilian and military leaders from Asia-Pacific and Western nations.
  • reports last week in China's state-controlled media and online military websites suggested that the first of a new class of a stealthy littoral combat frigate, the type 056, had been launched at Shanghai's Hudong shipyard with three others under construction.Naval analysts said the new 1,700-tonne ship, armed with a 76mm main gun, missiles and anti-submarine torpedoes, would be ideal for patrolling the South China Sea.These new warships would easily outgun the warships of rival claimants, they said.
  • As part of his swing through Asia last week, Panetta also visited India and Vietnam in a bid to enhance security ties with two key regional powers that have not been traditional U.S. allies but are increasingly apprehensive about China's rise.At Vietnam's deep water port of Cam Ranh Bay, a key U.S. base during the Vietnam War, Panetta said the use of this harbour would be important to the Pentagon as it moved more ships to Asia.
Pedro Gonçalves

Nuclear Posture Review - Council on Foreign Relations - 0 views

www.cfr.org/...nuclear_posture_review.html

US NPR

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Apr 10 - Cached
  • this was the third NPR since the end of the Cold War
  • There is not a classified version of the NPR. There was not a classified version of the QDR or the Ballistic Missile Defense Review
  • we seek, as these -- as states like North Korea and Iran seek to increase their reliance on nuclear weapons, we aren't going to increase our reliance on nuclear weapons. We'd like to increase our reliance on supplementary tools of extended deterrence. But so long as nuclear threats remain for which nuclear weapons are relevant, there will be a nuclear component to this umbrella.
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  • the NPT review conference, which is going to be one of these agonizing, multilateral events
  • we don't say anything about U.S. forward-deployed systems in Europe, and we don't do that because we don't want to act unilaterally. This is an alliance issue and should be dealt with and we should achieve consensus within the alliance.
  • We have opportunities in NATO over the next year, in looking at the alliance's strategic concept, to talk about U.S. forward-deployed nuclear weapons, and we'll do that. It will begin very soon and continue throughout the year, looking at the Lisbon summit meeting in November.
  • Whether we'll have a multilateral negotiation, the NPR doesn't deal with that. We haven't addressed it as a government. I'll express my personal view on that: I don't think we're going to have a multilateral negotiation. (Chuckles.) When we were talking about INF systems in Europe, that wasn't a multilateral negotiation. I don't see it here. And it's not even clear whether the problem of Russian non-strategic weapons is amenable to arms-control kinds of solutions.
  • Connoisseurs of NPRs will not find the word reliance in this NPR. The last NPR said it was an objective of policy to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, and the services took the message, as did lots of other actors. We've said we're trying to reduce the roles and numbers. But where roles remain, deterrence has to be not only maintained but strengthened in the manner of broadening and diversifying
  • the Russians right now are in their modernization phase. They're well into it and working their way through what their next 30 years of delivery vehicles and weapons is going to look like. We haven't really entered it. We're just now starting to get into that side of the equation.
  • how do you keep the balance -- not from a weapons standpoint, but from a stability standpoint -- with China, Russia and the United States, with China getting at the cutting edge of technology and moving as quickly as they can? Maybe they don't have the number of warheads today, but you still have to pay attention. And how do you take then the Russian side of this equation, which is a drastic demographic reduction, yet looking at kind of the reverse of the Fulda Gap? They're worried about divisions to their south, divisions to their west. Weapons have a very different meaning to them today than they did in the Cold War.
  • The Chinese are trying to understand what their threat is and how they're going to handle deterrence, and we're trying to straddle and make sure that we don't unseat this balance.
  • That's why, for me, it's been so important to think beyond nuclear when you're thinking deterrence. Because I just don't think nuclear is enough, in the broad spectrum of threat that we'll face.
  • the president has come out and said as long as we have a need for our nuclear stockpiles, as long as other nations have them, he is committed to maintaining them. He is committed to revitalizing the infrastructure, the experimental capabilities, the buildings where these people work. Much of the infrastructure I've got, particularly the uranium/plutonium infrastructure, literally dates back to the early 1950s. They were designed in the '40s, built and started operating in 1952. So it's going to take us 10 years to get this up. So it takes a sustained effort, and that's what it's going to take.
  • Obviously, our forward-deployed systems in Europe are -- it's a political-military issue. And I understand that the NPR did not want to prejudice the discussions underway at NATO. But if I can just separate the military for a moment, is there a military mission performed by these aircraft-delivered weapons that cannot be performed by either U.S. strategic forces or U.S. conventional forces? CARTWRIGHT: No. (Scattered laughter.)
  • It doesn't anywhere say we're committed to reducing reliance on. We're committed to reducing the roles and reducing the salience of, internationally
  • On the NATO topic, I wish it were as simple. I would put a question back: what targets do NATO's weapons have? Not nuclear. Any weapon in NATO. An alliance that doesn't have an enemy -- (scattered laughter) -- so the argument about where nuclear weapons might be pointed is only a part of the argument.
  • The theme we carry in the NPR and that we're going to carry forward to Tolline (ph) and beyond is that nuclear sharing is what has been essential to NATO, in terms of the credibility of deterrence and assurance. And the choices NATO makes are interpreted by its members as being reflective of how committed those members are to their Article V obligations. And there are plenty of NATO's members who are worried that NATO would make a choice to abandon nuclear weapons and thus put at risk their ability to do Article V actions. And so when we've said in our policy goal we are interested in strengthening regional deterrence and reassurance of allies, these are two sides of the same coin
  • Where we try and lead NATO -- the president said about NATO, he was there a year ago, to listen and learn and we'll come back to lead. As we come back to lead on this NATO nuclear topic, we're going to bring the messages of burden and risk sharing, because these are essential to the -- uniquely to this alliance. The NPR talks about extended deterrence in Europe, East Asia and the Middle East. Uniquely to the European landscape is this risk and burden-sharing dimension. And it's a different way of think about the capabilities question.
  • as General Cartwright observed, the technical possibilities of breakthrough and breakout capabilities are there, but the ones that Russia and China most worry about are our possible breakout capabilities. And if we're serious about meeting their requirements for strategic stability, we need to do a better job than we have of putting all of this together in a comprehensive role and getting off of defensive mode and saying, oh, don't worry, missile defenses aren't pointed at you, and strategic stability is untroubled by our capabilities, and get on to a more solid foundation.
  • we've tried to engage Russia on missile defense. We have proposals for extensive cooperation in the area of missile defense. The Russians haven't been interested, so far, in engaging on that. And not to mention the difficulties of engaging with them on non-strategic forces.
  • We need to reassure our allies for -- because we're committed to do that, but also because for a nonproliferation reason, we don't want them to develop a -- to feel they have incentives to acquire their own deterrent capabilities.
  • I think this is a balanced report; this is not a revolutionary report. Some were hoping for more on declaratory policy. Some were hoping that we'd go for a no-first-use approach, say that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack. We weren't prepared to go there.
  • We believe there remains a narrow range of contingencies in which nuclear weapons continue to play a role in deterring non-nuclear attack. We're prepared to state that as an objective, but not to say we're ready yet.
  • I think going farther faster would have been unsettling to some of our friends around the world. I think it would be unsettling to domestic audiences as well. And we -- to be frank, the administration had its sights set on gaining two-thirds of the U.S. Senate for ratification of START and the CTBT. And I think this document will move us toward the goals enunciated by the president without kind of upsetting the apple cart and making this difficult to have further progress.
  • it does seem to me that in this document, the U.S. is saying we withhold the right to use nuclear weapons against an Iran that has no nuclear weapons. And in making this particular threat, we're basically just extending the continuity from the Bush administration that keeps all military options on the table and, whether explicitly or implicitly, also had threatened Iran to use nuclear weapons against Iran that did not have nuclear weapons. So I guess the way I would end this question is, is this the right message for the Green movement in Iran, for the Brazils and the Turkeys of the world that this U.S., which says it's reducing the role of nuclear weapons, reserves the right to use this weapon of mass destruction against an Iran that does not yet have nuclear weapons? EINHORN: This negative security assurance was about assuring non-nuclear weapon states, party to the NPT in good standing with the NPT. It was not about threatening -- (chuckles) -- those that are not in good standing. I know -- the Iranians will try to capitalize, there'll be a lot of Iranian propaganda that this whole thing is about an implicit threat to Iran. It's not about an implicit threat to Iran.
  • we made clear in the NPR that countries that are not -- we're not increasing the likelihood of using nuclear weapons against countries that are not eligible to receive this pledge. The countries that are not covered by the pledge are simply not affected by it. It's not as if we've increased the threat to France or Russia or the U.K. or something like that. And neither have we increased the threat to North Korea or Iran. The situation is simply unaffected.
  • Or we're as serious about NPT membership as we are compliance, because the pledge is also not offered to Israel, India and Pakistan. But it seems like those three countries are in much better shape than Iran, even though Iran is partially in compliance with its IAEA safeguards agreement.
Argos Media

Pakistan Claims to Retake Town From Taliban - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...30pstan.html

Pakistan US Buner Daggar Dir Swat Valley Maulana Fazlullah

shared by Argos Media on 29 Apr 09 - Cached
  • After a week of strong criticism here and abroad over its inaction, the Pakistani military claimed on Wednesday to have reasserted control of a key town just 60 miles from the capital in the strategic district of Buner which was overrun by hundreds of Taliban militants last week.
  • Pakistan also agreed to move 6,000 troops from its Indian border to fight militants on its western border with Afghanistan, according to a Pakistani official who did not want to be identified discussing troop movements in advance.
  • But American officials, who welcomed the redeployment, said Pakistan was still not doing enough to fight the insurgents, who are tightening their hold on the country. The Americans expressed frustration that Pakistan was still rebuffing their offers to train more Pakistanis to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
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  • The Taliban advance into Buner has brought heavy pressure on the military from the United States and other Western countries. It has also fortified a growing consensus among Pakistani politicians and the public that the Taliban have gone too far and that the military should act to contain the spread of the insurgency.
  • At a news conference, he played three tapes of what were described as telephone intercepts of the main Taliban leader, Mullah Fazlullah, talking to one of his commanders about making a show withdrawal for the news media while telling the fighters to put away their weapons and lie low.
  • Several events contributed to the shift among politicians and the public. Video of the flogging of a 17-year-old woman in Swat by the Taliban several weeks ago shocked many in the country. A radical cleric who helped negotiate the peace deal in Swat, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, said recently that Pakistani institutions like Parliament and the high courts were un-Islamic, a comment that angered politicians from all parties. Finally, the militants’ move into new districts last week impelled the Pakistani Army to move against the Taliban.
  • The 6,000 troops to be shifted had originally been on Pakistan’s western border but were sent to the Indian border in December, after the terrorists’ attack in Mumbai in which 163 people were killed the previous month. India had responded to the attack, which Indian and American officials concluded was planned in Pakistan and carried out by Pakistanis, by massing troops on the Pakistani border.
  • The promised redeployment, which will essentially return Pakistan’s military presence in the northwest to pre-Mumbai levels, comes as American and Pakistani officials are preparing for what are likely to be tense meetings in Washington next week between President Obama, President Zardari and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.
  • “Neither the Taliban nor the government forces seem to care about the well-being of the residents of Lower Dir,” Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director, said in a statement.
Pedro Gonçalves

SPIEGEL Interview with Pervez Musharraf: Obama 'Is Aiming at the Right Things' - SPIEGE... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,628960-2,00.html

Pakistan US India Afghanistan Taliban Pervez Musharraf Mullah Omar Military bin Laden

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 08 Jun 09 - Cached
  • SPIEGEL: Is Pakistan now paying for its earlier failures? Why didn't you eliminate the Taliban leadership when they came to Pakistan at the end of 2001 -- above all the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban's highest decision-making council, in the Pakistani city Quetta? Musharraf: The Quetta Shura never existed. Do you really think there is an assembly in a kind of a house where they come and discuss things in something like a regular consultation? Mullah Omar never was in Pakistan and he would be mad if he appeared there. He is much safer in Afghanistan.
  • SPIEGEL: Over the last eight years, Pakistan has received about $10 billion in military aid from the US. Apparently you didn't spend all that money on the war on terror -- some went to secure your eastern border with India. Is that true? Musharraf: Half of it, $5 billion, was reimbursed to us for services we had already rendered to the US. You have to understand how the Pakistan army operates: The divisions keep moving. If we buy new tanks for $250 million, then they will be deployed in Peshawar as part of the war on terror, but they will also go to the eastern border. But why do you care about that? Why, for heaven's sake, should I tell you how we spent the money? SPIEGEL: The American government would surely be interested in knowing. Musharraf: I also told the Americans that it has nothing to do with them. We are not obligated to give out any details. Maybe I should have said at the time: Ok, you want us to support you, give us $20 billion a year and don't ask what we are doing with it.
  • Musharraf: I do agree, they do not accept this war as their war. This has something to do with history. Please understand the reason, and you should blame the US for it. From 1979 to 1989, we fought a war with the US in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. And we won mainly because of ISI. Otherwise, the Soviet Union could not have been defeated in Afghanistan. But then the US left us all alone with 30,000 mujahedeen brought by them. Even Osama bin Laden was brought by the US, who else? They all came to fight the Soviet Union. So, did anybody in Washington develop a strategy for what to do with these people after 1989? No, nobody helped Pakistan for the next 12 years until 2001. We were left high and dry, with 30,000 mujahedeen holed up, no rehabilitation, no resettlement for them. No assistance was given to Pakistan -- instead sanctions were imposed against us. Fourty F-16s, for which we had paid money, were denied to us. Four million Afghan refugees had also come to Pakistan. The mujahedeed coalesced into al-Qaida and our social fabric was being completely destroyed. This is why the people of Pakistan felt used by the Americans, and this is why Pakistanis dislike the US and this war.
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  • SPIEGEL: A few weeks ago, you visited New Delhi and said India and Pakistan have done enough damage to each other and that it is time to find a solution. Do you view yourself as as a future ambassador for peace between the two countries? Musharraf: If the Pakistan government wants me and if the Indians also trust me, then I can be of some use.
Pedro Gonçalves

Pakistan relying too much on China against U.S. | Reuters - 0 views

in.reuters.com/...idINIndia-58581920110802

China Pakistan US India

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Islamabad makes no secret of its preference for China over the United States as a military patron, calling Beijing an "all-weather" ally in contrast to Washington's supposedly fickle friendship.
  • China is a major investor in predominantly Muslim Pakistan in areas such as telecommunications, ports and infrastructure. The countries are linked by a Chinese-built road pushed through Pakistan's northern mountains. Trade with Pakistan is worth almost $9 billion a year for Pakistan, and China is its top arms supplier.
  • China, like the United States, wanted Pakistan to help it control Islamist militancy. But it is frustrated by the chaotic nature of Pakistani governance, and its inability to control militants or militant-friendly elements in its security agencies.
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  • Pakistan's usefulness to China is only in South Asia, where it competes with India. But China has global ambitions; it is unlikely to sacrifice them for an ally that has proved a headache to the United States, which has its own deep relationship with China.
  • Being seen to take a provocative stand alongside Pakistan comes at a substantial cost, but provides little strategic benefit,
  • China, he wrote, does not want to push India deeper into the American orbit.
  • An escalation in Chinese aid to Pakistan would surely antagonise India, creating a new point of friction in the triangular relationship between Beijing, New Delhi, and Washington
  • China has also shown no sign that it is willing to shoulder some of the financial burden of propping up Pakistan that the United States has so far been willing to bear.
  • In 2008, when Pakistan was suffering a balance of payments crisis and sought China's support to avoid turning to the International Monetary Fund and its restrictive terms on a $7.5 billion loan, China provided only $500 million.
  • China may share concerns over Pakistan's stability, Venugopalan writes, "but it has preferred to let Americans bear the costs of improving the country's security".
  • "It is our misunderstanding if we think that we will team up with China if we are pressed by the United States," Rizvi said. "China and the United States have their own relations and they cannot compromise them for the sake of Pakistan."
Argos Media

Obama to meet Afghan, Pakistani leaders on strategy | Politics | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSTRE5430RV20090505

Pakistan US Obama Michelle Flournoy

shared by Argos Media on 05 May 09 - Cached
  • The White House meetings with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai are likely to be cagey affairs -- both visitors have been heavily criticized by Obama's administration and are also wary of each other. Equally, Obama's new strategy for defeating al Qaeda and Taliban militants operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan has not been universally welcomed in either country.
  • As it seeks reliable allies in the region, the United States, which has funneled $10 billion in aid to Islamabad over the past eight years, can sometimes give conflicting signals. At times it has praised Pakistan's military and at others accused it and its powerful spy agency of helping al Qaeda.
  • "Some have raised concern that elements within the Pakistani military and intelligence services may be sympathetic to militant groups, leading to caution on our part," Obama's undersecretary of defense for policy, Michele Flournoy, told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee last week.
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  • Obama is calling for additional $1.5 billion in spending annually for five years to boost civilian development in Pakistan as part of his strategy for the region.
  • U.S. Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar introduced a bill on Monday to authorize the funds, primarily for projects like roads, schools and hospitals. Kerry said while the funding was mainly intended for civilian projects, the administration could submit a plan directing some of it to military uses. Congress is considering an additional $2.3 billion in aid for Pakistan, including $400 million for counterinsurgency.
  • Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accused Islamabad of abdicating to the Taliban by agreeing to impose Islamic law in the Swat valley and Obama has expressed concern the government is "very fragile" and unable to deliver basic services.
  • Hawks in the Pakistani establishment fear Karzai's government is too close to arch-rival India and see support for the Taliban as a way of maintaining influence in Afghanistan.
Argos Media

Pakistan nuclear projects raise US fears | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...pakistan-nuclear-security

Pakistan Nuclear Weapons US John Bolton

shared by Argos Media on 04 May 09 - Cached
  • Pakistan is continuing to expand its nuclear bomb-making facilities despite growing international concern that advancing Islamist extremists could overrun one or more of its atomic weapons plants or seize sufficient radioactive material to make a dirty bomb, US nuclear experts and former officials say.
  • David Albright, previously a senior weapons inspector for the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency in Iraq, said commercial satellite photos showed two plutonium-producing reactors were nearing completion at Khushab, about 160 miles south-west of the capital, Islamabad.
  • Albright warned that the continuing development of Pakistan's atomic weapons programme could trigger a renewed nuclear arms race with India. But he suggested a more immediate threat to nuclear security arose from recent territorial advances in north-west Pakistan by indigenous Taliban and foreign jihadi forces opposed to the Pakistani government and its American and British allies.
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  • The Khushab reactors are situated on the border of Punjab and North-West Frontier province, the scene of heavy fighting between Taliban and government forces. Another allegedly vulnerable facility is the Gadwal uranium enrichment plant, less than 60 miles south of Buner district, where some of the fiercest clashes have taken place in recent days.
  • Uncertainty has long surrounded Pakistan's nuclear stockpile. The country is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or the comprehensive test ban treaty. Nor has it submitted its nuclear facilities to international inspection since joining the nuclear club in 1998, when it detonated five nuclear devices. Pakistan is currently estimated to have about 200 atomic bombs.
  • Although Pakistan maintains a special 10,000-strong army force to guard its nuclear warheads and facilities, western officials are also said to be increasingly concerned that military insiders with Islamist sympathies may obtain radioactive material that could be used to make a so-called dirty bomb, for possible use in terrorist attacks on western cities.
  • Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, told Congress recently that Pakistan had dispersed its nuclear warheads to different locations across the country in order to improve their security. But John Bolton, a hawkish former senior official in the Bush administration, said this weekend that this move could have the opposite effect to that intended."There is a tangible risk that several weapons could slip out of military control. Such weapons could then find their way to al-Qaida or other terrorists, with obvious global implications," Bolton said.
  • Bolton threw doubt on President Barack Obama's assurance last week that while he was "gravely concerned" about the stability of Pakistan's government, he was "confident that the nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands". Since there was a real risk of governmental collapse, Bolton said the US must be prepared for direct military intervention inside Pakistan to seize control of its nuclear stockpile and safeguard western interests.
  • Senior British officials have also poured cold water on some of the more sensational statements emanating from Washington. "There is obvious concern but it is not at the same level as the state department. We are not concerned Pakistan is about to collapse. The Taliban are not going to take Islamabad. There is a lot of resilience in the Pakistani state," one official said.
Pedro Gonçalves

SPIEGEL Interview with Pervez Musharraf: Obama 'Is Aiming at the Right Things' - SPIEGE... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,628960,00.html

Pakistan US India Pervez Musharraf Research and Analysis Wing ISI Lashkar-e-Taiba Kashmir Swat Siraj Haqqani Baitullah Mehsud

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 08 Jun 09 - Cached
  • PIEGEL: Pakistan is in a major state of crisis. Close to 2.5 million people have fled the areas of fighting in the northwest and the Swat Valley. There are attacks almost daily. Is Pakistan on the verge of collapse? Musharraf: This is wrong. Nothing can happen to Pakistan as long as the armed forces are intact and strong. Anyone who wants to weaken and destabilize Pakistan just has to weaken the army and our intelligence service, ISI, and this is what is happening these days. Lots of articles have been written claiming that Pakistan will be divided, that it will fall apart or become Balkanized. I personally feel there is some kind of conspiracy going on with the goal of weakening our nation.
  • Musharraf: I won't tell you exactly because then you will ask me for evidence. I can only tell you that India, for example, has 16 insurgencies going on and nobody is making a big thing out of it. But the West always focuses on Pakistan as the problem.
  • Musharraf: I am totally against the term AfPak. I do not support the word itself for two reasons: First, the strategy puts Pakistan on the same level as Afghanistan. We are not. Afghanistan has no government and the country is completely destabilized. Pakistan is not. Second, and this is much more important, is that there is an Indian element in the whole game. We have the Kashmir struggle, without which extremist elements like Lashkar-e-Taiba would not exist.
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  • Musharraf: There are many Indian extremists who have links with extremists in Pakistan. So if the world is serious about combating terrorism, then don't leave India out. Originally, Richard Holbrooke was supposed to be the US special representative for all three countries, but the strong Indian lobby in America prevented that.
  • Musharraf: No, he is aiming at the right things. He is showing intentions of improving the dialogue with the Muslim world, which is good. He is right when he says that more forces must be deployed in Afghanistan. There is an intention of increasing funding for Pakistan, which is also good. But he also has to understand the reality in Pakistan and I am not sure he does.
  • Musharraf: One of the realities is that the Indian intelligence service RAW is interfering in our country. For example in Balochistan, our largest province bordering Iran and Afghanistan. One of the most brutal insurgents against our forces, Brahamdagh Bugti ...
  • Musharraf: ... he is sitting in Kabul, protected by the Afghan government and provided with weapons and money by the Indian intelligence agency RAW. He has his own training camps and sends his fighters to Balochistan where they terrorize people and damage the civil infrastructure. RAW is also interfering in the Swat Valley, I know that. Where do all these Taliban fighters in Swat get their arms and money from? From Afghanistan. The Indian consulates in Jallalabad and Kandahar only exist to be a thorn in the side of Pakistan.
  • SPIEGEL: Let us talk about the role of the ISI. A short time ago, US newspapers reported that ISI has systematically supported Taliban groups. Is that true? Musharraf: Intelligence always has access to other networks -- this is what Americans did with KGB, this is what ISI also does. You should understand that the army is on board to fight the Taliban and al-Qaida. I have always been against the Taliban. Don't try to lecture us about how we should handle this tactically. I will give you an example: Siraj Haqqani ... SPIEGEL: ... a powerful Taliban commander who is allegedly secretly allied with the ISI. Musharraf: He is the man who has influence over Baitullah Mehsud, a dangerous terrorist, the fiercest commander in South Waiziristan and the murderer of Benazir Bhutto as we know today. Mehsud kidnapped our ambassador in Kabul and our intelligence used Haqqani's influence to get him released. Now, that does not mean that Haqqani is supported by us. The intelligence service is using certain enemies against other enemies. And it is better to tackle them one by one than making them all enemies.
  • Musharraf: The Americans are hated in the country today. The US drone attacks, which we have been living with for months now, are most unpopular -- there is no doubt about it. Regardless whether they are killing terrorists, Taliban or Al-Qaida-figures or not, there are too many civilian victims. The deployment of drones has to be stopped.
  • SPIEGEL: The US military eliminated several high-ranking al-Qaida figures through drone attacks. What would be a possible alternative? Musharraf: We have to find a way or method with which the Pakistani army could conduct these attacks itself. There would immediately be much better acceptance amongst the populice and we would cause less collateral damage and there would be fewer civilian victims.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - Obama's ambitious nuclear security summit - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8613810.stm

US Nuclear Proliferation

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Fresh from his success in signing a new strategic arms reduction treaty with the Russians in Prague, US President Barack Obama is hosting a nuclear security summit in Washington DC.With some 47 countries in attendance it will be one of the largest gatherings of its kind in the US capital since the late 1940s. This will be the third element in a nuclear season that began with this month's unveiling of the Obama administration's nuclear strategy, the Nuclear Posture Review. This identified nuclear proliferation - the spread of nuclear weapons and the danger that they might fall into the hands of terrorist groups - as now the key nuclear threat to America's security. That was step one. Step two was the meeting between Mr Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, in Prague that got the strategic arms reduction process back on track. Step three will be this week's Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. All three events are aimed at strengthening Mr Obama's hand as he heads into step four: the review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) scheduled for next month in New York.
  • The threat here is not only from governments with a desire to own nuclear bombs or nuclear-tipped missiles. A far more pressing concern comes from the potential nuclear ambitions of non-state actors or terrorist groups. Their goal may be to obtain a small nuclear device but equally they may just want to get hold of radioactive material to build a so-called "dirty bomb". This uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material over a wide-area.
  • So the goal of this summit is to batten down the hatches on nuclear materials - especially the fissile materials that might be used in bomb-making, plutonium and highly-enriched uranium - but also the more widespread sources of radioactive substances that could be used for a "dirty bomb". President Obama's goal is to obtain agreement upon a plan to secure all such vulnerable nuclear material within four years. Much will depend upon the detail.
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  • The presence of Israel, India and Pakistan at this summit is fascinating. All three are believed to have nuclear weapons and none of them have signed the NPT. Israel's arsenal clearly has wider ramifications in the Middle East. India and Pakistan's nuclear rivalry is seen by experts as a serious concern given the huge conventional military imbalance between them. And Pakistan is also a major worry in terms of the security of its nuclear installations and materials. Having all three on board is an attempt by the Obama administration to extend the circle of nuclear security in new directions.
Argos Media

Pakistan Strife Raises U.S. Doubts on Nuclear Arms - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...04nuke.html

Pakistan Nuclear Weapons US

shared by Argos Media on 04 May 09 - Cached
  • As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.
  • The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.
  • Pakistani officials have continued to deflect American requests for more details about the location and security of the country’s nuclear sites, the officials said. Some of the Pakistani reluctance, they said, stemmed from longstanding concern that the United States might be tempted to seize or destroy Pakistan’s arsenal if the insurgency appeared about to engulf areas near Pakistan’s nuclear sites.
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  • The Obama administration inherited from President Bush a multiyear, $100 million secret American program to help Pakistan build stronger physical protections around some of those facilities, and to train Pakistanis in nuclear security. But much of that effort has now petered out, and American officials have never been permitted to see how much of the money was spent, the facilities where the weapons are kept or even a tally of how many Pakistan has produced. The facility Pakistan was supposed to build to conduct its own training exercises is running years behind schedule.
  • Mr. Zardari heads the country’s National Command Authority, the mix of political, military and intelligence leaders responsible for its arsenal of 60 to 100 nuclear weapons. But in reality, his command and control over the weapons are considered tenuous at best; that power lies primarily in the hands of the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the former director of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s intelligence agency.
  • Several current officials said that they were worried that insurgents could try to provoke an incident that would prompt Pakistan to move the weapons, and perhaps use an insider with knowledge of the transportation schedule for weapons or materials to tip them off. That concern appeared to be what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was hinting at in testimony 10 days ago before the House Appropriations Committee. Pakistan’s weapons, she noted, “are widely dispersed in the country.”
  • “There’s not a central location, as you know,” she added. “They’ve adopted a policy of dispersing their nuclear weapons and facilities.” She went on to describe a potential situation in which a confrontation with India could prompt a Pakistani response, though she did not go as far as saying that such a response could include moving weapons toward India — which American officials believed happened in 2002. Other experts note that even as Pakistan faces instability, it is producing more plutonium for new weapons, and building more production reactors.
Pedro Gonçalves

Iran threatens U.S. Navy as sanctions hit economy | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...-carrier-idUKTRE80206P20120104

Iran Economy

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 04 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Army chief Ataollah Salehi said the United States had moved an aircraft carrier out of the Gulf because of Iran's naval exercises, and Iran would take action if the ship returned."Iran will not repeat its warning ... the enemy's carrier has been moved to the Sea of Oman because of our drill. I recommend and emphasise to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf....we are not in the habit of warning more than once," he said.
  • After years of measures that had little impact, the new sanctions are the first that could have a serious effect on Iran's oil trade, which is 60 percent of its economy.Sanctions signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama on New Year's Eve would cut financial institutions that work with Iran's central bank off from the U.S. financial system, blocking the main path for Iran to receive payments for its crude.
  • The EU is expected to impose new sanctions by the end of this month, possibly including a ban on oil imports and a freeze of central bank assets.
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  • Even Iran's top trading partner China - which has refused to back new global sanctions against Iran - is demanding discounts to buy Iranian oil as Tehran's options narrow. Beijing has cut its imports of Iranian crude by more than half for January.
  • Experts still say they do not expect Tehran to charge headlong into an act of war - the U.S. Navy is overwhelmingly more powerful than Iran's sea forces - but Iran is running out of diplomatic room to avert a confrontation.
  • "I think we should be very worried because the diplomacy that should accompany this rise in tension seems to be lacking on both sides," said Richard Dalton, former British ambassador to Iran and now an associate fellow at Chatham House think tank.
  • "I don't believe either side wants a war to start. I think the Iranians will be aware that if they block the Strait or attack a U.S. ship, they will be the losers. Nor do I think that the U.S. wants to use its military might other than as a means of pressure. However, in a state of heightened emotion on both sides, we are in a dangerous situation."
  • The new U.S. sanctions law, if implemented fully, would make it impossible for many refineries to pay Iran for crude. It takes effect gradually and lets Obama grant waivers to prevent an oil price shock, so its precise impact is hard to gauge.
  • The European Union is expected to consider new measures by the end of this month. The sanctions would halt purchase of Iranian oil by EU members such as crisis-hit Greece, which has relied on easy financing terms offered by Tehran to buy crude.
  • Although China, India and other countries are unlikely to sign up to any oil embargo, tighter Western sanctions mean such customers will be able to insist on deeper discounts for Iranian oil, reducing Tehran's income.
  • Beijing has already been driving a hard bargain. China, which bought 11 percent of its oil from Iran during the first 11 months of last year, has cut its January purchase by about 285,000 barrels per day, more than half of the close to 550,000 bpd that it bought through a 2011 contract.The impact of falling government income from oil sales can be felt on the streets in Iran in soaring prices for state subsidised goods and a collapse of the rial currency.
  • "The rate is changing every second ... We are not taking in any rials to change to dollars or any other foreign currency," said Hamid Bakshi at an exchange office in central Tehran.
  • The economic impact is being felt ahead of a nationwide parliamentary election on March 2, the first vote since a disputed 2009 presidential election that brought tens of thousands of Iranian demonstrators into the streets.
  • In a sign of political tension among Iran's elite, a court jailed the daughter of powerful former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Tuesday for "anti-state propaganda."Rafsanjani sided with reformists during the 2009 protests. Daughter Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani went on trial last month on charges of "campaigning against the Islamic establishment."
Pedro Gonçalves

Whatever euro's fate, Europe's reputation savaged | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...putation-idUKBRE85F03P20120616

EU Europe US China

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 17 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Whether the euro lives or dies, the chaotic way Europe has tackled the crisis could undermine the region's geopolitical clout for years to come and leave it at a distinct disadvantage in a rapidly changing world.
  • "The Europeans are completely consumed with a battle to save the euro zone," says Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. "It's a deep and ongoing crisis bigger than any they've experienced in decades... it's an environment where European leaders could hardly be expected to prioritise anything else."That could leave the continent being increasingly sidelined as emerging powers - not just the BRIC powers of Brazil, Russia, India and China but other states such as Turkey, Indonesia and South Africa - grow in importance.At the very least, it could undermine the ability of the continent's leaders to persuade the rest of the world to take them seriously on a range of issues, from trade to the importance of democracy and human rights."Europe probably isn't going to stop preaching to the rest of the world," says Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the US Naval War College. "But it's much less likely that others are going to be inclined to listen."
  • At the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, European states suffered the indignity of being outside the room when the final deal was struck between the United States and emerging powers. In the aftermath of the euro zone crisis, it's a position European leaders may simply have to get used to.
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  • for the rest of the world, it's not just the continent itself that is rapidly losing its shine. The whole European political model - generous welfare systems, democratic decision-making, closer regional integration and the idea of a currency union as a stabilising factor - no longer seems nearly as appealing to other, still growing regions.
  • "If the euro dies, it will mark the end of the European experiment in forging closer financial and political integration. But it will also have wider international implications."
  • Chellaney argues the demise of the euro might help secure the primacy of the dollar - and therefore perhaps of the United States itself - for years to come.But others believe a European collapse would be a sign of things to come for the US as well.
  • "The health of the euro or the EU, for that matter, will have a marginal impact on gold and power that is tending any way towards Asia, especially China,"
  • Washington takes the potential threat of Europe's unravelling very seriously. In the short-term, the Obama administration is clearly concerned over the electoral fallout should the crisis in Europe cross the Atlantic before November's presidential election.But in the longer term, whether the euro survives or not US planners are beginning to face up to the fact that the continent will likely be poorer and rather more self-centred than Washington had hoped.
  • While Britain and France took the political lead in Libya last year, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates complained European NATO forces were in fact almost entirely dependent on US munitions, logistics and other backup.
  • But the change in European thinking and the additional defence spending Washington called for now looks all but impossible in this time of austerity.
  • "It's doubtful any future US Defence Secretary is even going to bother to make that kind of pitch," says Gvosdev at the US Naval War College. "We'd hoped Europe could take the lead in some parts of North Africa as well as the Balkans and Eastern Europe. That now looks very unlikely."
  • Washington's military "pivot " towards Asia, he said, had been based in part on the assumption that Europe would remain stable and wealthy and the US now had little or nothing to worry about on its North Atlantic flank. A weakened Europe could make US planners much less confident of that, particularly if China extends its influence.
  • Beijing has upped its investments in Europe in recent years, including major port projects in Greece and Italy.
  • Some waning of Europe's international influence was always likely, experts say, with an ageing population chewing up ever more resources and emerging economies inevitably growing faster. But the current crisis could supercharge its decline. Whether the continent's leaders realise that, however, is another matter.
  • "Europe's main source of influence (should) be the success of its political and economic model in providing high living standards and democratic freedoms," says Jack Goldstone, professor of international affairs at George Mason University near Washington DC "If the current crisis undermines both of those as well, Europe will look like a rather weak, badly run system of ageing and economically stagnant states. Irrelevance awaits."
Pedro Gonçalves

Obama's Nuclear Plans Face Daunting Obstacles - Council on Foreign Relations - 0 views

www.cfr.org/...s_face_daunting_obstacles.html

US Nuclear Proliferation Nuclear Weapons

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 06 Apr 10 - Cached
  • In the case of the CTBT, he needs the consent of countries like India, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, Egypt, Brazil, Mexico, and any number of other countries who, historically, have lots of questions and concerns that make ratification less than a sure thing. I would guess it would be a long, long time, even if the United States got these agreements ratified--and in the case of Fissile Material Cutoff treaty, drafted--before they would ever come into force. And some people think never.
  • The Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty is supposed to be negotiated in Geneva at the Comprehensive Disarmament Talks. The Pakistanis are refusing to allow the matter to be brought up. And in the case of the Comprehensive Test Ban, you certainly have countries like Egypt that say, "We will approve but only if Israel joins the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a non-weapon state."
  • Critics of the CTBT claim that the Russians have a more liberal view as to what the ban prohibits. These critics fear that Russia thinks that you can have low-level nuclear tests and still be compliant with the CTBT. Well, the Congressional Commission report that was produced by former Defense secretaries James R. Schlesinger and William J. Perry said that this in fact was a serious enough concern that the five recognized states that have nuclear weapons--the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China--needed to reach an agreement not only on what was allowed but what was clearly prohibited under the treaty
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  • In the FMCT you have another oddity. It only bans the production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for military weapons. That means that you could still make those materials if you claimed they were for civil purposes.
  • It [the Fissile Material Treaty] only bans states that are non-weapons states from continuing to make materials. The problem is that if you are Iran and you're a non-weapons state, and you see weapons states being able to continue to make nuclear fuel for civil purposes under loose inspection procedures, you've got to raise your voice and say, "I don't even have weapons, why can't I make enriched uranium for civil purposes like the weapons states under the loose inspection procedures that they are obligated to? Why are you picking on me?"
  • There are three concerns raised by critics, and those are the three concerns that Republicans are going to focus on. The first is that the law currently requires the administration to lay out a ten-year plan with budget estimates about how they intend to keep our nuclear weapons reliable, safe, and up to date. The administration has not yet done this, as I understand it. So the Senate is going to ask for that almost certainly. Second, the numbers permitted are lower than what some people wanted them to be. The critics of this agreement are not happy that the numbers went a little bit lower than were forecast initially.
  • what you see in the press is that the number of warheads should be no more than 1,550, but they should be on delivery systems that when deployed are no more than seven hundred. You can have another hundred that are not operationally deployed. But we're told the counting rules for what constitutes a weapon are a little complex. A bomber, for example, carrying many bombs would only count as one weapon
  • both sides can engage in "limited missile defenses." The words "limited missile defenses" would be consistent with this treaty, and if one goes beyond limited missile defenses, [the other] would have the right to leave. So, first question is, "What is a limited defense program consistent with this treaty?"
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