Why U.N Peacekeepers Are a Good Deal For America

It appears from the Trump "Skinny Budget" that the U.S. financial contribution to United Nations peacekeeping forces will take a big hit.  As Heather Peterson explains in a U.S. News post, this is a bad decision.  U.N. Peacekeeping is both effective a good deal for America.  The U.N. peacekeeping forces mean U.S. military forces don't have to intervene:

The answer is that U.N. peacekeeping operations are generally successful and much more cost effective than using U.S. forces. Research by RAND found that U.N. peacekeeping operations have a pretty good track record and can be "an effective means of terminating conflicts, insuring against their reoccurrence, and promoting democracy." This conclusion is supported by research by Nicholas Sambanis who found U.N. peacekeeping operations have a "robust positive effect on peacebuilding outcomes … (which is) stronger when peacekeepers remain." In other words, U.N. peacekeepers are good at their jobs, especially if they stick around.

But, what about the cost to the U.S.? It turns out that U.N. peacekeepers are an incredibly good deal when compared to U.S. forces. Let's take a historical example. In 2004, a coup in Haiti created a potential refugee crisis as Haitians attempted to flee the violence in boats bound for U.S. shores. The George W. Bush administration decided to deploy U.S. military forces to Haiti to stop the violence and prevent a potential influx of refugees. After the initial intervention, Haiti was far from stable. In order to maintain stability, a long-term military presence was needed. The U.S. didn't want to keep forces in Haiti and was able to convince the other members of the U.N. Security Council to authorize a peacekeeping mission.

The Government Accountability Office put together a report comparing the actual costs of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti to a hypothetical U.S. force (over a 14 month time period). The GAO determined that if U.S. forces stayed in Haiti, it would have cost the U.S. $876 million. The cost to the U.S. of the actual U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti was $116 million.

In other words, the deployment of U.N. peacekeeping forces saved the U.S. approximately $760 million in just over a year.

Read it all here. My friend Colonel Dave DesRoches (West Point graduate with a PhD) points out thst even these savings estimates are too low.  It doesn't include the lifetime medical costs of sending soldiers and Marines in a Malaria infested area.

Facilitating Lone Wolf Terrorists: ISIS's "Virtual Entrepreneurs"

As is apparent in the recent terrorist attacks in both Europe and the U.S., the biggest threat now are "lone wolf" attacks by radicalized Americans and Europeans.  It is therefore imperative that we better understand the radicalization process so we can effectively intervene. Seamus Hughes and Alexander Melagrou-Hitchens of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, have done some very interesting work that could help us stop these attacks.  They have focused their attention on ISIS's use of English speakers on social media to recruit and facilitate these attacks.  They have found that these "virtual entrepreneurs" were involved in at least 21% of all terror plots in the U.S. and more than half the plots in Europe:

Virtual entrepreneurs represent a natural progression of the IS threat to the West. As military pressure has squeezed the group in its bases in Iraq and Syria, and governments have largely staunched the flow of foreign fighters from their shores, the group has sought to exploit its online reach to maintain a presence in the countries of its enemies.

Junaid Hussain’s presence on social media platforms like Twitter, for example, allowed him to gain an almost cult-like following among Western sympathizers. Hussain, a former hacker who had frequent run-ins with law enforcement, travelled to Syria while awaiting trial for a charge of violent disorder. Here was a man who practiced what he preached; he talked the talk and walked the walk. Not only did he support jihad on his Twitter feed, he joined and fought for the group in its heartland. Hussain’s actions gave him a level of credibility that he quickly leveraged into a following, allowing him to further the terrorist aims of IS in the West. Hussain was revered by American and British jihadists, who looked to him for religious advice and practical answers on everything from how to travel to join IS to religious rulings on fighting Jihad.

Hussain was always happy to advise potential jihadis on matters large and small. In one case, he provided an Ohio man, Munir Abdulkader, with the address of a U.S. military officer, and suggested that he be killed. Abdulkader relied on Hussain to provide material details. “Make sure the soldier was in Iraq or Afghanistan,” one text stated. “Do you know his work schedule? When he home etc?” said another. Abdulkader went further in his requests: “How do you make Molotov? You have a link? And what’s the knife to use? Sharpest?” He gave Hussain a play-by-play of his surveillance of targets and the supposed ease of purchasing a AK-47. At each step, Hussain was online and encouraging. Abdulkader was arrested shortly after that, having plotted part of his attack with an accomplice who was an FBI informant.

Read their Lawfare post here.  They elaborate on their work in West Point's Combating Terrorism Center's Sentinel.

Trump is Wrong: America's Allies Are A Critical Strategic Advantage

If you listen to much of the rhetoric coming from Donald Trump during the campaign, you would think that America's allies are a bunch of useless leeches that drain American strength.  Indeed, he all but implied that Making America Great Again and America First meant that we needed to rethink our alliance relationships.  Fortunately, at least some of this rhetoric has been tempered after the Inauguration, but it raises the question:  was candidate Trump right that our alliances sap our strength?  To me, the answer is an emphatic NO.

The U.S. alliance network comes in four forms.  First, we are members of multilateral security alliances.  This includes NATO (Europe, Iceland and North America) and ANZUS (US, Australia and New Zealand).  Second, we have formal bilateral agreements with several countries, including South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines.  Third, we have informal, but quite strong security understandings with some countries, most notably Israel and Taiwan.  Finally, we have lots of security arrangements that make limited formal commitments, including agreements with many Middle Eastern nations.

The scope of this alliance network is huge: over 60 nations that produce 75% of the world's economic network have have a total population of $2 billion  people.  This is in marked contrast to our major peer competitors.  Neither China nor Russia have more than a handful of small allies, and these alliances are, by and large, usually momentary alliances of convenience or exist on paper only.

Given this extensive U.S. alliance network, there are two possibilities: either these alliances are entangling arrangements that drain us economically (Candidate Trump's view) or they are a core strategic advantage for the U.S. (my view).

In my experience, our alliance network is a huge strategic advantage for several reasons.  First, in both Europe and Asia, our alliances have kept the regions secure and peaceful, which is no small thing considering that NATO includes two nations that are often at odds (Turkey and Greece) and two of our Asian bilateral partners (South Korea and Japan) have a rocky relationship even in the best times.  Our economic prosperity is a direct result of this peace and stability.

Second, our alliance network allows us a global reach.  We have bases around the world that allow us to respond quickly to national security threats anywhere in the world.  Our bases in Europe and the Middle East, for example, were critical to our rapid response to the September 11 attacks.  Moreover, our allies have come to our aid.  NATO helped us after September 11th (including flying AWACS planes in the U.S.), and our NATO allies fought with us in Afghanistan.

Third, it is hard to overstate the simple relationship advantages that come from our alliances.  I knew well and worked with the top Defence Ministry lawyers in several countries (especially the UK and Australia) and that relationship was critical in working on common problems (or disputes).  Most senior U.S. military officers have known their alliance nation counterparts for years since we train and exercise with our allies.  And our diplomats similarly know their counterparts very well.  These relationships, built over years, are critical when we face cries or difficult problems.

Finally, to a remarkable degree, our allies are good at getting us not to do stupid stuff.  And we have prevented our allies from doing the same.  I wish we had listened to the French before we invaded Iraq, but there are actually other examples where we listened to our allies and wisely stepped back from military action, as Tufts Professor Michael Beckley explains:

Against this limited evidence of entanglement are numerous cases in which alliances restrained the United States. Allies dissuaded the United States from escalating the Korean War and crises in Laos and Berlin, and struggled in vain to prevent the United States from entering or escalating other conflicts, the 2003 Iraq War being only the latest major example. Indeed, instances of alliance-induced restraint are evident even within the ªve cases of entanglement discussed above: in the 1954–55 Taiwan Strait crisis, concerns about European alliances discouraged U.S. policymakers from bombing the Chinese mainland and publicly committing to defend Jinmen and Mazu; in the Vietnam War, allies impeded U.S. entry into the war and then repeatedly implored the United States to get out; and in Bosnia and Kosovo, U.S. allies initially restrained the United States from lashing out violently and then provided all of the NATO ground forces and most of the postconflict peacekeepers for the eventual operations.

We should obviously continue to evaluate whether our current security agreements make sense, and a little jaw-boning to urge our allies to pay more for the common defense makes sense.  But we also need to remember that the alliance network created since Wold War II has served us well, and is a key element of our national power.

Blaming Islam

There is an assumption in many conservative circles, and some unease even in liberal circles, about whether there is something unique in Islam that results in the terrorism we see today.  Both point to some passages in the Quran that seem to advocate violence.  David Shariatmadari has a well-reasoned post in the Guardian explaining why it is geopolitics, and not religion, that best explains Jihadist violence:

Let’s assume for a moment, then, that Islam is especially predisposed towards violence. If that’s your view, then you’ll need to show why the history of jihadi terrorism is so very short: this is emphatically a late 20th and early 21st century phenomenon, yet Islam has been around since the seventh century.

What about its wars of conquest? Well they definitely happened, but not in a way that marks Islam out from other cultures. The subsequent wave of imperial expansionism came via the sky-worshipping Mongols, before they settled down to become Muslims. Not only that, the dominant military powers since the 17th century have been Christian – and they often regarded themselves as having an explicitly religious mission.

Aspects of Islamic teaching do indeed justify some kinds of violence. Islam isn’t a pacifist religion. But again, it has this in common with Christianity, Judaism and other world faiths. Since that’s the case, and since we know that violence in the name of Islam has waxed and waned, it follows that we cannot look simply to theology to explain recent Islam-inspired terrorism.

.  .  .

It’s here that the question of politics – geopolitics – becomes inescapable. The Qur’an and the hadith, the sources of Islam, didn’t get rewritten in the last few decades. But they were taken up and used by certain political actors to justify horrific violence. Why?

The answer must lie among the political, economic, military and social changes in the Middle East in our times, and how they have ramified in the wider world. It’s only by looking beyond the texts that we can hope to understand why certain interpretations of them have gained currency among a tiny minority – but a minority willing to indiscriminately kill civilians.

Read it all here. The point here is that politics and economics are driving the terrorism and Islam and the Quaran are largely being used as a post hoc justification for the violence, instead of being the ideology that drives the violence.

Is the Trump Administration About to Escalate the War in Yemen?

The Washington Post is reporting that Defense Secretary Mattis has asked President Trump to lift restrictions on U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia, UAE and other Persian Gulf states engaged in a civil war in Yemen against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.  The obvious question is whether this request makes sense.  I, for one, am deeply skeptical.

Yemen is a complicated mess, and for most of its history it has been a complicated mess.  I can hardly do justice to explaining the current conflict, and don't pretend to be an expert.  I am also firmly convinced that few in the U.S. Government understand Yemen as well (which may well be our biggest problem).  Nonetheless, I will do my best to provide some context for what is going on.

There are multiple conflicts going on now within Yemen, but there are two main conflicts that get the most attention.  First, the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen has been challenging the central government for years.  In addition, this group has global  aspirations to conduct terrorist operations in Europe and the United States.  For this reason, the United States has been engaged in armed conflict with this al Qaeda affiliate, including several air strikes.   Even this conflict is itself complicated.  While al Qaeda in Yemen clearly wants to strike the West, it is allied with local tribal groups that have a more locally focused desire to challenge the central government.

Second, an Iranian-backed Shi'a group, the Houthi rebels, have been engaged in a civil war with the central government.  With the backing of Iran, they control significant territory in Yemen--including Sanaa, the capital.  This conflict has effectively become a proxy war between the Sunni Persian Gulf states, and Iran, with the Saudi Air Force engaged in a highly controversial air war against Houthi held territory.  This conflict is also complicated,  with the former President of Yemen allied with the Houthis.

And to make matters even more complicated from time to time al Qaeda and the Houthis attack each other.  Given that the Houthis' focus on been local, and have shown no desire to attack the U.S., we have largely stayed out of this conflict (other than the uncomfortable fact that much of the weaponry used by Saudi Arabia was made by U.S. companies).

So the current situation is a mess, which raises the critical question: why on Earth would Mattis think intervening to support the Persian Gulf states was in our national interest?  These Gulf states are clearly our major allies in this reason, and the stated purpose of the request to the U.S. is to open a port for humanitarian aid.  All true, but it still begs the issue of why the U.S. should join a proxy war against Iran.  My only guess is that elements in the Administration are eager to join any fight against Iran.

My own view is that we need to be cautious, and avoid escalating this already tragic conflict.  While the Houthis have not shown any desire to strike the West, our involvement could cause them to expand their aims.  More fundamentally, as we have learned even in our conflict with al Qaeda, Yemen is complicated, and the ally of our enemy is not necessarily our enemy as well.

Some Thoughts on the Civilian Casualties in Mosul

The press reports and images are horrific--over 100 Iraqi civilians killed in an apparent U.S. airstrike in Mosul last week.  The U.S. military has confirmed that they engaged targets in this part of the city while providing close air support to Iraqi ground forces that were in  a firefight with ISIS, and has announced an investigation.

I thought that this might be a good opportunity to discuss the Laws of Armed Conflict, Rules of Engagement, and the reality of modern warfare.  Given that the investigation is just underway, I won't have much to opine about what occurred here.  I am confident, however, based on what I know about how the U.S. manages air war, that this was a horrific mistake and not the result of intentional targeting of civilians.

So first a brief primer on the Law of Armed Conflict.  As a result of several international agreements (to which the U.S. has been an active participant), there are rules that govern the conduct of warfare.  These rules are not at all alien to the U.S.  During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln issued the so-called Lieber Code that ordered the Union Army to comply with the same basic principles found in these international agreements.

The thrust of the Law of Armed Conflict (or "LOAC" if you want to be cool) is to protect civilians in armed conflict.  The basic rules are these.  First, you can only target military targets, and not civilian targets.  Second, you must take reasonable steps to prevent civilian casualties even as you target legitimate military targets.  Third, if civilian casualties are likely even after you take reasonable steps to prevent casualties, the value of the military target must be proportional to the likely loss of civilian casualties.  This last point deserves some emphasis: LOAC reflects the reality that there may be civilian casualties in war, but insists that large numbers of casualties only come when targeting very important military targets.  (If you want to see the U.S. view of the obligations under LOAC, the best place to look is the DoD Manual on LOAC.)

In the Combined Air Operation Centers that run the Navy and Air Force air war (for both U.S> forces and our allies), there are always lawyers present to make sure that the rules of LOAC are followed.   In the current wars we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, the Commanders demand more than compliance with LOAC.  They issue "Rules of Engagement" that impose far stricter rules for when force will be used in an effort to avoid civilian casualties altogether.  This is not done out of humanitarian concern alone.  The Commanders recognize that civilian casualties greatly hurt our effort to defeat the enemy.  For example, General Stanley McChrystal  did not hesitate to use lethal force against the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he imposed a near zero tolerance for civilian casualties in his Rule of Engagement.  As you can see from the picture to the left, there are lots of intelligence analysts, lawyers, and weapons experts advising the commander on every target.

So that is the law, but it is imposed in the realities of the battlefield.  While military leaders work hard to comply with LOAC and the Rules of Engagement, there is much that can go wrong.  Intelligence can be wrong, human beings can transpose numbers in a targeting location, equipment can fail, and human emotions can result in incorrect information.  By and large the U.S. military has a great record for planned attacks (targets chosen days in advance) because it has time to assess likely civilian casualties and double check intelligence.  Most of the civilian casualties, therefore come not from planned attacks, but instead calls for assistance from ground troops in a firefight with the enemy.

It appears that the Mosul airstrike was the result of the U.S. providing air support to Iraqi forces that were under attack from ISIS.  What we don't know is why so many civilians were killed.  Did the Iraqi forces not know that the civilians were in the building (press reports suggest that were hiding in the basement)?  Did Iraqi forces instead fail to tell the U.S. about the presence of civilians?   Were the civilians present because ISIS itself violated LOAC by using the civilians as human shields?  These are all questions for the investigation.

So what are the "take aways" here?  First, to a remarkable degree war is fought subject to clear legal principles recognized by the entire international community and strongly endorsed by the U.S. government for well over a century.  Second, the U.S. takes these legal requirements quite seriously, and in recent Rules of Engagement, the U.S. has been even more protective of civilians than the law requires.

But third, war is a messy business, and errors in information and human mistakes can cause large civilian casualties, which is why we need to not be cavalier about suggesting the use of military force.

It Costs Too Darn Much: Fixing How the Defense Department Buys Stuff

Even the the casual observer of the Department Defense knows that something is broken in the Department of Defense's acquisition of major weapon systems.   Newspapers are full of headlines about these problems: the F-35 program has suffered huge cost overruns and significant delays due to development problems, and the KC-41 tanker may be delayed as well.  Many programs are facing similar problems.  Whether you want to reduce or increase the size the military, it makes sense to see if we can do a better job.

Of course, it is not as if we have not been trying to reduce cost of acquiring new weapon systems.  Indeed we have had some success. Ash Cater's Better Buying Power seems to have been a success, and the Air Force dramatically reduced the number of cost overruns when Secretary Donley was Secretary of the Air Force.  But the problems remains.  What needs to be done?

When I was Air Force General Counsel, I ran across the writings of a maverick Air Force officer, Lt. Colonel Dan Ward, who seemed to me to have the right prescription for what ails the Defense acquisition system.  He examined programs that failed and programs that worked, and concluded that a focus on making things faster and simpler makes for a more successful  acquisition.  But, as you can see from the above chart, Congress and DoD have created a monster of a system that is neither fast nor simple.

As Dan points out, when we ignore the usual process, and focus on a fast and simple solution, we get great results for the war fighter:

The US Air Force needed more Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance capability and so launched the Project Liberty program. The result was the low-cost MC-12W aircraft, which flew its first combat mission in June 2009, just eight months after receiving funds. It has since flown thousands of successful missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

.  .  .

The US Navy began the Virginia class submarine program after terminating the unaffordable Seawolf program. The USS New Hampshire, first of the Block II Virginias, came in eight months early and $54M under budget, and that’s on top of the $300M cost savings already achieved on the Block II design. You read that right – a nuclear-powered submarine, early and under budget. The USS New Mexico also delivered four months early… you get the picture.

As dan points out, the Virginia submarine program illustrates that this faster and simpler approach even works for very complicated weapon systems.

While I was Air Force General Counsel, I saw the amazing work that the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office ("RCO") was able to accomplish using faster and simpler acquisition methods.  Despite deploying some of the most cutting age technology available, the RCO gave important capabilities to the warfighter on schedule and below costs.  (And I also saw serious efforts by some at DoD to kill the RCO model altogether.

I think Dan Ward (sadly, now retired) was on the right track.    Read the entire article here. You can find an entire collection of Dan's thinking here.

Former Senior Department of Homeland Security Officials Pan Trump's Budget

President Bush's Department of Homeland Security Director (Michael Chertoff), the former Commandant of the Coast Guard (James Loy), Jeh Johnson's former chief of Staff (Christian Marrone) and the former head of TSA (John Pistole) have an article in the Atlantic that makes the case that Trump's DHS budget makes us much less safe.  Why?  Because it is focused on the risks we face:

Indeed, paying for border security and interior enforcement by cutting funds to the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency, and capping investments in agencies like the United States Secret Service and the United States Coast Guard is akin to double-locking your front door, but leaving your side door open—and your windows, and your garage door, and turning off your alarm.

.  .  .

The recently released budget blueprint, which requests a $54 billion increase in defense spending, makes dramatic reductions to vital agency budgets while flatlining others. For one, it calls for TSA to reduce its funding for efforts that include supporting state and local law enforcement officers at airport checkpoints, and conducting visible patrols in mass transit systems using bomb-sniffing dogs, bag searches, and other techniques at train and bus stations, ports, and other transportation hubs. This at a time when TSA just announced enhanced security measures. Just last year, Congress doubled the number of these teams, both in airports and in train stations. What’s more, the blueprint relies on funding 75 percent of TSA’s costs by raising airline passenger fees. We know from firsthand experience that such a budget device has little chance to be approved by Congress and will ultimately widen TSA’s budget hole.

.  .  .

Taken together, these cuts ignore both the actual threats and hazards that the nation has experienced since 9/11, as well as forward-looking homeland security risks. Almost every credible risk assessment points to the continued terrorist threat to aircraft and urban areas, something with which every leadership team at DHS has grappled. The persistent terrorist threat to mass transit is also particularly difficult to address. And an administration that decreases its investment in, and diminishes its focus on, emergency management runs the risk of large-scale calamity when disaster inevitably strikes.

Read it all here.   None of these authors could even remotely be called liberals.  They are instead all true homeland security experts.  We ought to listen to what they have to say.

Questions Raised by Chairman Nunes Disclosure of "Incidental Collection" of Trump Officials

Just when you thought things could not get crazier. the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, said today that some communications from the Trump transition operation were intercepted as "incidental collection" of lawfully authorized foreign intelligence surveillance.

This raises several interesting questions.

First, who were the Trump officials talking to?  "Incidental Collection"  means that the Trump officials were not the target of the surveillance, but were instead talking with someone who was a target.  In other words, this is not the case of Obama spying on Trump--it is simply ordinary spying on foreign agents.  Unless this was the result of a wiretap focused on criminal activity, any surveillance could only be done pursuant to a FISA Court that was persuaded that there was probable cause that the target was a foreign agent.  This means that Trump transition officials were talking to foreign agents.  Quite frankly, I am not surprised that transition officials would be talking to foreign agents (such as Ambassadors), but I am surprised that the Chairman thought this was a helpful thing to disclose.

Second, given that most FISA warrants are highly classified, who authorized the Chairman to disclose classified information to the press?  Did he violate the law or was he authorized by the President?  My money is on the latter.  If so, does Trump understand that the Chairman is disclosing that his team spoke to foreign agents?  And why does he think this was helpful to disclose?

Finally, should the identity of the Trump transition team members have been masked, as part of the FISA mitigation requirements?   Probably not.  As I explain at greater length in this post,  masking is not required when the name  is necessary to understand the foreign intelligence information in the report.  Given that the counter-intelligence import of the incidentally collected material was that foreign agents were talking to members of the Presidential transition team, their identities would not have been (and should not have been) hidden in any reporting.

My sense is that the Trump team somehow thinks this disclosure helps them revive the quite discredited claim that Obama was spying on the Trump team.  Of course, it doesn't come close to doing this.  All this suggests is that the U.S. was spying on certain foreign officials (which it should obviously do) and that Trump's people spoke to these foreign officials.  Rather than vindicate Trump's false claim, it raises new and disturbing questions about who the transition team were talking to--and why.

Planes, Missiles, and Submarines: Do We Really Need a Nuclear Triad?

During the campaign, President Trump famously displayed that he had no idea what the so-called Nuclear Triad was all about.  He may soon need to make some investment decisions that will determine whether we continue to rely on all three parts of the triad: land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles ("ICBMs"), submarine-based missiles, and nuclear armed missiles.

Ever since the Cold War, we have depended on all three legs of this triad as part of our nuclear deterrence.  Each had advantages and disadvantages.  Submarines could be hidden and could therefore survive a first strike, but until recently they were also the least accurate.  Land-base ICBM's were the most accurate, but they were only useful as a deterrent if we launched on warning (since we would have only 30 minutes or so from the launch of an enemy missile before it hit the silo.  Finally, unlike missiles that could not be stopped once launched, bombers had the advantage that they could be withdrawn before they attack.

The challenge now facing the country is that we will soon need to update and modernize all three legs of the triad, and we are potentially facing a huge trillion bill to maintain the current to maintain the Nuclear Triad.  The current ICBMs were first deployed in the 1970's and will soon need to be replaced by the Ground-based Strategic Deterrent.  The current submarine fleet is also old and will be replaced by the new Columbia-class submarine.  Finally, the nuclear-armed bomber fleet is older than the pilots who fly them, and will be replaced by the B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber.

A trillion dollars is a lot of money so there are some (including former Defense Secretary William Perry) who argue that it is time to retire the land-based ICBM, and rely solely on submarines and bombers for our deterrence once the current ICBMs become obsolete around 2030.  The argument is that submarines and bombers have developed nearly the same accuracy as the ICBM, that because ICBMs must be launched on warning, they are likely to lead to disastrous errors, and that bombers and submarines alone can provide a deterrent.  Here is how Secretary Perry explains why the ICBM should be scrapped:

First and foremost, the United States can safely phase out its land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force, a key facet of Cold War nuclear policy. Retiring the ICBMs would save considerable costs, but it isn’t only budgets that would benefit. These missiles are some of the most dangerous weapons in the world. They could even trigger an accidental nuclear war.

If our sensors indicate that enemy missiles are en route to the United States, the president would have to consider launching ICBMs before the enemy missiles could destroy them; once they are launched, they cannot be recalled. The president would have less than 30 minutes to make that terrible decision. This is not an academic concern.

While the probability of an accidental launch is low, human and machine errors do occur. I experienced a false alarm nearly 40 years ago, when I was under secretary of defense for research and engineering.

 This sounds pretty persuasive. So what is the contrary view?  Supporters of the Nuclear Triad point out that removing ICBMs makes the targeting decision easier for our opponents.  There are only three bases for our bombers and two bases for our submarines, while a challenge to our ICBMs requires an attack on all many silos.  In addition, supporters of the current triad note that ICBMs are no longer as destabilizing as Perry suggest.  Tom Nichols and Dana Struckman of the Naval War College explain:

Perry makes a fair point that the accuracy of both the bomber and submarine force is on par with its land-based counterpart. But this, in turn, means that if America were to “ride out” a strike on the ICBM force, the submarines and bombers—as Perry admits—could do whatever tasks are left once the enemy has emptied its own ICBM force at us. The major virtue of the ICBM force, then, is not what it can do after an attack, but that that the enemy will have to take it into account before an attack, and consider the cost of starting an all-out nuclear exchange between the homelands.

Moreover, if the ICBM force were targeted, the United States would still be able to attack, with great speed and precision, not only the remaining enemy strategic force but important parts of enemy military infrastructure. Russia or China would then be the ones to face the fateful decision to attack cities, a situation they will inevitably bring on themselves the moment they initiate the conflict—which is exactly the realization that should deter them in the first place.

So what is the right answer?   A trillion dollars is still a boat load of money.  As Nichols and Struckman point out, while the ICBM serves a strategic purpose, we don't need as many ICBMs as we do now to deter an attack.  In addition, if we negotiate further cuts in our nuclear arsenal with Russia (and perhaps China), we can further reduce the costs of our nuclear deterrence while still have the strategic parity needed to deter an attack.