Missile "Diplomacy"U.S. Not Connecting the Dots
by Peter Huessy
July 18, 2014 at 5:00 am
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4458/missile-diplomacy

There is presently concern that programs to prevent short- and medium-range
ballistic missiles from reaching Europe will be delayed under pressure to
make concessions to both Russia and Iran, to secure a deal on Iran's nuclear
program,

Once deployed, an adversary's long-range missiles could be used for
coercion, terror or blackmail. It would seem more prudent to anticipate such
threats before they become a reality.

Countries stretching from North Korea through South Asia and into the Middle
East are apparently trying to bolster their military capability by building
long range rockets capable of coercing, terrorizing or blackmailing their
neighbors.[1]

In the past month, for example, we have seen Hamas try a new kind of
diplomacy, while launching over 1000 rockets at Israel.

In Iraq, the terrorist army ISIS, now controlling large swaths of territory
in Iraq and Syria, paraded a Syrian Scud missile through the streets of
Al-Raqqah, in an attempt to demonstrate its power.

In Ukraine, rebels used Russian missiles to shoot down a Ukraine troop
transport, killing thirty soldiers.

In Syria, rockets launched by Damascus have forced Turkey, a NATO member, to
deploy missile defenses to protect its civilian population.

And in Iran, Tehran's leaders have not only dismissed any attempts to
curtail their ballistic missile capability as part of the negotiations on
their nuclear program, they continue to produce more missiles than any other
nation except China.[2]

An Iranian "Khalij Fars" mobile ballistic missile on parade in Iran. (Image
source: Wikimedia Commons)

Missiles are indeed becoming the weapon of choice of both terror groups and
rogue states.

A reasonable question, of course, is whether America should care.

Former Congressman Ron Paul wrote that Americans have little reason to care
what particular flag was planted in some piece of geography "thousands of
miles" from the United States. He further argued that Russia's annexation of
Crimea was therefore of no consequence.

Today's missiles, however, make such assertions by Mr. Paul highly
questionable. No longer would a nation need to deploy missiles in Cuba, just
a few miles away from Florida, for example, as the Soviet Union did in
October 1962, to threaten the interests of the United States.

Missiles launched by Iran, Syria or Hamas, for example, could turn Middle
East oil fields into a highly dangerous environment, driving the price of a
barrel of oil beyond $148, reached on the July 4, 2008, which precipitated
the financial crisis that lost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars.

Missile threats from Russia to Ukraine also threaten to undo the progress
made since the end of the Cold War to integrate Eastern Europe economically
into the free economies of the West.

Missile threats can have consequences: not only must you watch your
neighbor, you also have to watch nations on the other side of the globe.

So despite former Congressman Ron Paul's quick dismissal of "flags" deployed
thousands of miles away, it does matter whose flag flies where.

North Korea, for example, according to former CIA top analyst Dr. Peter Pry,
has become a major supplier of missile technology to Iran. It has
demonstrated an ability to launch what is known as a "space launch
vehicle" -- rockets that put satellites into orbit. The Defense Intelligence
Agency has also concluded that North Korea "has probably been able to fit a
nuclear warhead on a missile."

North Korean missile threats are no longer limited to the Republic of Korea
or Japan. And no longer are Iranian missile threats limited to its Middle
Eastern neighbors and American allies such as Jordan, Egypt and Israel.

Those threats are indeed both serious and worrisome.

The news gets worse.

Dr. Pry explains that the nuclear tests by North Korea have apparently been
of a low yield weapon: "Certain types of relatively low-yield nuclear
weapons can be employed to generate potentially catastrophic
electro-magnetic pulse [EMP] effects over wide geographic areas, and designs
for variants of such weapons may have been illicitly trafficked for a
quarter-century."

Dr. Pry further explains in a joint op-ed essay with the former Director of
Central Intelligence, Ambassador R. James Woolsey, that the trajectory of
North Korea's KSM-3 satellite launch (2013) had the characteristics for
delivery of a nuclear EMP attack against the United States. The satellite
was launched to the south, away from the U.S., transited the South Pole, and
approached the U.S. from its southern blindside -- at the optimum altitude
for placing an EMP field over all 48 contiguous United States.

On April 16, 2013, the KSM-3 satellite was over the Washington, D.C.-New
York City corridor -- also the optimum location and altitude for placing a
peak EMP field over the area most likely to blackout the Eastern Grid. The
Eastern Grid generates 75% of U.S. electricity and is indispensable to
national survival.

Pry and Woolsey further explain that the peak EMP field would also maximize
damage to Washington and New York, the nation's political and economic
centers. Such an EMP attack would plunge our electricity-powered
civilization into a blackout lasting months or years. What is to stop North
Korea from providing Iran the means to "take down" the Great Satan?

Missiles are shortening the distance and time between our nation and those
"thousands of miles away," as well as providing less powerful rogue nations
the power with which seriously to harm our country.

A number of worrisome connections run through these missile threats.

First is the role of Russia. It is the largest supplier of weapons to Iran
and Syria, both rogue states that sponsor terrorism.

Both Iran and Syria have also exported thousands of rockets to Hamas and
Hezbollah over the past few years.

Keeping the Iranian and Syrian regimes in power is what keeps Hamas and
Hezbollah in business. And their business is to threaten, and if possible to
attack, Israel and American allies in the region.

As for Russia, planting its flag in eastern Ukraine or the Crimea in
contravention of the Budapest Treaty of 1994, gives Moscow a foothold in
newly freed Eastern Europe, from which to wreak more mischief, the least of
which was to fracture NATO and render suspect U.S. and NATO security
guarantees for such countries as the Baltic republics and Poland.[3]

In Egypt, to use Congressman Paul's terms, "planting the Muslim Brotherhood
flag" in Cairo -- as was done two years ago -- allowed Iran and Syria to
funnel rockets by the many hundreds through the Red Sea, to Sinai, and then
to Gaza, from where they could be fired into Israel. The Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood did not just look the other way; they facilitated the transfer
of such weapons.

The new Egyptian government, conversely, may have facilitated Israel's
capture on the high seas of a major shipment of long range rockets as well
as mortars and cluster bombs from Iran destined for Gaza in March 2014.
These smuggled rockets, had they reached Gaza, would have been the
longest-ranged of any held by Hamas at the time.

Therefore it is important whose flag is planted in, say, Egypt, the largest
and most populous country in the Arab world, or in Ukraine, one of the
largest of the former Soviet republics, independent since 1991.

In addition, these conflicts, while indeed "thousands of miles away," could
be used, in a nuclear agreement with Iran, as leverage to induce America to
make concessions that would strengthen Iran but weaken American security. If
the U.S., for instance, had taken forceful action against Moscow to stop its
aggression in Ukraine, Russia's resident, Vladimir Putin, could have made
life difficult for the U.S. during negotiations on Tehran's nuclear
programs.

Similarly, if the U.S. made life difficult for Iran for smuggling missiles
to Hamas, Iran might become even more difficult to cajole into an agreement
to sideline its nuclear program -- assuming such an agreement is even in the
cards at all, which it almost certainly is not.

As is available in reports from the U.S. intelligence community, Iran is
continuing work on a long-range ballistic missile that could be
flight-tested by next year. This despite a January 2014 Pentagon report to
Congress on Tehran's military, which puzzlingly omitted earlier references
to this looming ICBM threat. As Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), chairman of the
House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, warned earlier this
month, "The 2014 Iran Military Power report confirms that Iran could have an
ICBM capability by 2015."

The assumption is that the only warhead worth placing on a long-range
intercontinental ballistic missile is a nuclear device.

Iran's ballistic missile threat combined with its clandestine nuclear
program gives the Free World a problem.

The growing Iranian missile capability -- abetted by North Korean help -- is
why the U.S. has pushed for the current European Phased Adaptive Approach
[EPAA] to missile defenses, aimed at defending against Iranian short and
medium range missiles.[4]

The Bush administration had sought to build, in addition to such missile
defenses, a long-range intercept capability in Poland and the Czech
Republic. That capability was eliminated by the Obama Administration in
2009.

Russia has long objected to all U.S. missile defenses in Europe, under the
false claim that such defenses would be able to intercept Russian long-range
rockets aimed at the United States (a technical impossibility given the
speed of the U.S. interceptors planned for deployment and their geographic
location).

The Bush administration's proposal to build interceptors in Poland to defeat
Iranian and other Middle East long-range missile capability was jettisoned
in part under the belief that such defenses would no longer be needed, and
as part of a new "reset" foreign policy approach that Washington wished to
have with Moscow.

There is presently concern that phases two and three of the EPAA --
preventing Iranian short- and medium-range ballistic missiles from reaching
Eastern Europe -- will be delayed under pressure to make concessions to both
Russia and Iran to secure a deal on Iran's nuclear program.

Phase four of EPAA -- dealing with anticipated long-range Iranian missile
capabilities -- was cancelled in March 2013. In part as a response to this,
Congress has added funding to begin exploration of a third missile defense
site or more in the eastern United States, the better to deal with what
still appears to be an emerging long-range missile threat from Iran, as well
as an existing North Korean one. The further defense sites would be
developed in addition to two missile defense sites in Alaska and California.

Critics of these plans say it is better to wait for such missile threats
before acting. One former Pentagon official complained that if the U.S.
accelerated the EPAA in European NATO countries, such a development would be
a "threat to Iran."[5]

Once deployed, an adversary's long-range missiles could be used for
coercion, terror or blackmail, while any missile defense deployments in
response would take many years to put into place.

It would seem more prudent to anticipate such threats before they became a
reality.

At the request of Congressman Chris Shays, in June 2000, Richard Clarke of
the National Security Council briefed a House Subcommittee on the terrorist
threats then facing the United States.

Such threats, Mr. Clarke said, were so numerous -- even then, well before
the attacks of 9/11 -- as to make setting counter-terrorism priorities
difficult, but that the Clinton administration would "look into it."

Shays, not at all pleased, described the presentation in a brusquely worded
letter to Clarke as "less than useful."

When asked if his office had prepared an "integrated threat assessment,"
Clarke responded that this would have been "difficult to accomplish because
of all the different threats faced by the United States."

When committee members then asked if Clarke had prepared a "comprehensive
strategy to combat terrorism," Clarke said it would be "silly" to believe
such a strategy could be developed. "If there are no clear requirements or
plan," Shays wrote, "how does the administration prioritize the $12.9
billion it intends to spend" on counter-terrorism and related activities?

Clarke never did send a follow-up to the Congress.

Fifteen months later, on September 11, 2001, we saw how that turned out.

[1] "The Revenge of Geography" by Robert Kaplan (2012) and "Kaplan Elevates
the Place", Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 18, 2012.

[2] Personal communication with Uzi Rubin, President of Rubincon, and former
head of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, and internationally
renowned Middle East missile expert, July 2014, and "Iran Missile Threat",
The English Review, April 2014.

[3] This point was made by Russian expert and American Foreign Policy
Council Fellow, Dr. Steve Blank in remarks at the Congressional Breakfast
Seminar Series, Washington, D.C. on May 23, 2014.

[4] It was initially announced in May 2011 as a new policy on missile
defenses in NATO, "The purposes of EPAA and US policy" discussion here is
based in part on both a presentation by missile defense expert Rebeccah
Heinrichs, who works with the American Enterprise Institute, on these issues
to the Congressional Breakfast Seminar series on July 8, 2014 and personal
communications with Bruce Bechtol, Associate Professor of political science
at Angelo State University, and author of the new book on the subject, The
Last Days of Kim Jong-Il, April 2013.

[5] Remarks of Phil Coyle, Brookings Institution, Missile Defense Panel
Seminar, June 16, 2014.
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