Friday News Roundup — February 26, 2021
500,000+ COVID deaths; Polish War Game Wake Up; Stepping Up at Int’l Orgs.; Defense Budget Details; Judiciary Expansion & Reform; and Modernizing America’s ICBM Fleet
Good morning to you from Washington, where following the tumultuous events of January and the early February impeachment, a cautious sense of normalcy has gradually returned. While the impact of the pandemic, a host of myriad other challenges, and our current politics provide unique and historically weighty context, heated discussions about an administration’s policy priorities and personnel are part of every administration’s early days in office. As the Biden administration moves ahead with its agenda, we are paying close attention to Wednesday’s Executive Order addressing U.S. supply chain vulnerabilities. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling that the $15 minimum wage could not be included with the relief measures under reconciliation has progressives disappointed, and, while House leadership could still move ahead with including the measure, speculation about a stand-alone measure also looms. Ahead, the House looks to Committee work, while the Senate will try to meet the mid-March goal for passing the massive relief package.
Beyond Washington, many politicos will look to Orlando this weekend, as former President Trump speaks to CPAC while his bond with the GOP grassroots remains strong. Many aspirations for 2022 and 2024 may run through Mar-a-Lago.
Finally, while Dan reflects on the grim milestone of 500,000 Covid deaths, the nation still looks towards the light at the end of this long tunnel. While debates continue about resuming normal life — especially the vital step of fully reopening schools — we can take solace in positive news on the vaccine front, awaiting approval for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine requiring only one dose and regular refrigeration.
This week, Reps. Glenn Nye and Mike Rogers called on Congress to recognize current strategic threats and the importance of their role in arms control measures. Chairman Rogers also warned of our vulnerabilities to cyber attack. Joshua reviewed “Adaptation Under Fire: How Militaries Change in Wartime” by Lt. Gen. David Barno (U.S. Army, ret.) and Dr. Nora Bensahel, who is also a CSPC counselor.
In this roundup, as noted, Dan looks at how we’ll remember the impact of this pandemic. Joshua covers how war games in Poland not only tell us about Russian power, but also the importance of war gaming. Michael argues for the U.S. return to the UN Human Rights Commission, while Ethan does a breakdown the latest Pentagon budget. We have two interns making their inaugural contributions this week: Jaqueline Ruiz, joining us from the University of California — Irvine, argues that the Biden administration should take this opportunity to reform the Federal courts, and Miles Esters, from The George Washington University, argues that modernization, rather than replacement, is best for U.S. ICBMs and a triad nuclear deterrent. As always, we wrap with news you may have missed.
Remembering Deadly Days
Dan Mahaffee
Last weekend, the nation passed a grim milestone, with over half-a-million Americans losing their lives in the Covid-19 pandemic. Looking back at the start of this, just over a year ago, the early projections of hundreds of thousands of deaths were derided as alarmist. Even the modelers acknowledged that such totals were worst case scenarios, models where few precautions were taken. Yet, here we are, one year later, with 500,000 Americans dead from this pandemic.
More Americans have died from Covid than have been killed in combat by foreign enemies — in the entire history of our nation. In the worst peaks of the pandemic, days with deaths in the thousands saw more Americans dying than on September 11th or December 7th.
For those of us who study the lessons of history, who seek to keep America safe and prosperous, those historical examples of Pearl Harbor and the attacks on New York, Pentagon, and United 93 serve as the ultimate examples of intelligence and security failures — yet those have unfolded nearly daily. Unlike those dark days of history, there are no clouds of smoke rising over symbols of American power. Rather than a sudden “bolt from the blue,” Covid has followed the course set by nature. The worst coups de main of our historical foes have proven no match for a pathogen’s exponential path.
While it first appeared in small clusters, then cities, then regions, the pandemic is a nationwide tragedy. There are the countless families and friends who have experienced loss. Healthcare workers, first responders, and many others are on the front lines. All of us are living through the pages of future history books, but for now, some of the first memories are final ones — recorded farewell video calls from ICUs. The tired faces of the troops bear not the scars of war, but the bruises and chafing of masks and face shields.
How we learn from the lessons of this pandemic and our national loss will be as important, if not more important, than these past historical lessons. Despite all of our knowledge of pandemics and past preparation for natural or terrorist bio threats, why did our institutions fail at this challenge? How did coordination within the government, between the levels of government, and between the government and the private sector work or fail?
Approaching the anniversary of what many of us remember as the “start of the pandemic,” how we begin to account for the failures, and successes, is tempered by the ongoing magnitude of the challenge. Getting shots into arms takes precedent at this time, but we can lay the groundwork for accountability and lessons learned. There are many stark contrasts in leaders’ approaches, especially at the presidential level. Lessons on presidential leadership — and the important roles of crisis manager and “consoler-in-chief” — will abound.
Yet, while various leaders’ stock may rise and fall, the lessons of how our partisanship and tribal politics colored the response may be some of the most important — not just for understanding the pandemic response, but also for addressing future challenges. How might our adversaries feel knowing that Americans divided themselves when fighting an illness that cared not about the political, economic, or social differences about which our pundits spill ink and fill airwaves?
Let us also remember what worked, and how we can build on those examples. The stories of healthcare workers and first responders are ones of heroism, often in the face of institutional failure. How can we make sure that the institutions and systems are worth the grit and heroism the American people have displayed? The successes in public health and science also deserve recognition, with the unprecedentedly rapid development and deployment of vaccines. Even if this requires yearly Covid shots or boosters, like the flu shot, it still marks an amazing triumph. Even the less complicated public health measures, e.g. masking and hand washing, make a difference as the positive impact on this year’s flu numbers demonstrate.
As we mark this tragedy, solemnly remember those lost, and steel ourselves for the remaining struggles until this pandemic is brought to heel, let those lessons forged in loss strengthen ourselves, our communities, and our nation.
Poland’s “Winter-20” Exercise & the Value of Wargaming
Joshua C. Huminski
A recent military staff exercise held at Poland’s Military Academy resulted in what could mildly be called an unmitigated disaster. “Winter-20” allegedly saw enemy forces from an “potential enemy from the east” — i.e. Russia — reach Warsaw in four days, with key strategic ports blocked or destroyed, and Russian forces on the Vistula River by the fifth. The Polish forces were expected to hold out for at least 22 days. Front-line units suffered upwards of 80% casualties and commanders allegedly refused to follow orders in the resulting chaos and confusion according to some reports.
The exercise is notable as it included new weapons systems ordered by Poland, but not yet delivered such as the Patriot anti-aircraft systems, HIMARS artillery and the F-35 multi-purpose fighter. NATO and American forces were also apparently available during the exercise, but did not prove decisive.
Of particular concern was the Suwalki Corridor, territory between Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. In a wartime scenario, Russian and Belarusian forces could enter Poland through this corridor. A 2018 paper prepared by the Ministry of Defense noted that having a permanent U.S. armored presence there would “significantly reduce security vulnerabilities in the region, particularly in the Suwalki Gap [along the Polish-Lithuanian border].” This is not an idle concern. In the fall of 2020, the Kremlin established a Russian-Belarusian combat battalion for the first time during the Slavic Brotherhood exercise.
While the exercise has received some coverage in the Polish media, the government has not formally responded. In response to questions, the Ministry of National Defense replied: “We would like to inform you that the Winter exercise itself, its course and conclusions constitute classified information. Any answer to your question — negative or negative is therefore impossible”. A spokesperson for the president said, “Due to the nature of this type of exercise, for obvious reasons covered by the confidentiality clause, no information on their assumptions, course or results can be made available. Please accept it with understanding.”
Without knowing the full scope of the exercise, how it was run, or what its objectives were, it is difficult to validate the outcomes. It is, however, important to note that these types of exercises are only valuable if the yield actionable outcomes or conclusions, which, in turn, drive organization adaptation and change. In fact, losing an exercise — however badly — is as informative if not more so than having a positive outcome or winning. If an exercise is designed to merely confirm existing tactics, techniques, or procedures, or validate doctrine, there is little gained. Why? The adversary is unlikely to play by the rules or by the conditions defined by the exercise.
Here the Millennium Challenge of 2002 is instructive. A nearly $250 million-dollar exercise involving over 13,500 troops saw a red team (a fictitious Persian Gulf country) led by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper taking on the blue team of the United States. The 14-day exercise was intended to validate the military’s “transformation” to network-centric warfare — then the latest buzzword meaning the integration of systems, sensors, and personnel. The problem lay in that Lt. Gen. Van Riper did not play to the blue team’s strengths, adopting asymmetric tactics such as missile barrages and small-boat suicide attack swarms that took out 19 Navy assets, motorcycles and off-grid communications to prevent signals intelligence collection.
The white cell — or controllers — of the exercise halted the wargame, refloated the sunk Navy vessels, and imposed considerable restrictions on Lt. Gen. Van Riper that led to a virtually scripted victory for the blue forces. At the time an argument was made that changing the rule set to allow for 13 more days of activity was more valuable than merely conceding defeat. Others suggested at the time that the wargame was not in fact rigged, but the concluding report by Joint Forces Command actually found the opposite noting that: “As the exercise progressed, the OPFOR free-play was eventually constrained to the point where the end state was scripted. This scripting ensured a blue team operational victory and established conditions in the exercise for transition operations.”
Any exercise or wargame needs to have constraints in space and time to create a space in which value can be generated. If it is entirely a free-for-all, however realistic that may be, it ultimately limits the efficacy of the exercise. Yet, imposing artificial constraints, simply changing the outcomes after the fact, or stacking the deck in favor of the “blue” team to validate assumptions severely limits the value of a wargame.
Ultimately, it is what is taken away from any exercise or wargame that matters. With the Millennium Challenge in mind, one can look at the broad outlines of Winter-20 and see potential areas of success, not defeat. If the inclusion of these new assets did not turn the tide against the Russians or failed to slow their assault, that could well mean that the way in which they are used needs to be changed or re-thought, or, equally, that they are insufficient alone and need to be integrated or augmented into operational planning in a different way. The resulting confusion amongst the commanders could well necessitate better interoperability and a change in doctrine, allowing for greater flexibility for the battlefield commander.
What should matter most for the Polish public is not that the Winter-20 exercise resulted in defeat, damning and concerning though that is, but what follows next. What changes does the Ministry of National Defense and the government undertake to address the lessons of the exercise? What investments are necessary to correct the deficiencies to ensure better performance not just in the exercise space, but on the potential future battlefields? How do Polish and NATO forces need to integrate more closely to defend against or deter a potential Russian invasion?
The maxim attributed to Eisenhower is exceptionally appropriate here: plans are worthless, but planning is everything.
Getting Back into the UN Human Rights Council Tent
Michael Stecher
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced that the United States would pursue election for a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council for the 2022–2025 term. This follows on the announcement earlier in February that the United States would reengage with the Council as an observer, a reversal of the Trump administration’s decision to suspend all working relationships in 2018. The Human Rights Council is frequently an embarrassment that shows off the absolute worst of the United Nations system, and the Biden administration’s abilities to reform its worst practices will be limited, even if it manages to win election to the body. That does not mean, however, that the prior policy of determined ignorance of its existence was the correct one: the United States needs to operate in all kinds of multilateral bodies to promote the kind of world we want to live in, even the ones that are unappealing; our hard work does make a difference and the alternative is worse.
Like so much in the UN system, the high-minded rhetoric and grubby reality of the Human Rights Council stand in remarkable opposition. The General Assembly resolution that established the Council said that members should uphold the “highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights”, but the current membership includes serial human rights abusers like Eritrea, Venezuela, and the Philippines — though fortunately China, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba were left the Council last year.
The resolution says that the Council “shall be guided by the principles of universality, impartiality, objectivity, and non-selectivity,” but in practice the Council has only one standing agenda item for all meetings on a single issue: Israel and the Palestinian territories. Even when there are no reports to discuss, as in the last session in October, the body still allocates most of a morning’s work to talking about Israel. As the right-wing advocacy group UNWatch points out, since its foundation in 2006, nearly half of the Council’s condemnations have been of Israel, while, for example, China has merited a grand total of zero, despite its campaign of genocide in Xinjiang and its extinguishing of political rights in Hong Kong.
There is a persistent thread in U.S. foreign policy thinking that says that the United States should not participate in international organizations that do not explicitly prioritize American preferences. This “take my ball and go home” theory was very common during the Trump administration, but it is not a new phenomenon. When the International Criminal Court announced inquiries into actions in Afghanistan that could include investigations into U.S. military and intelligence personnel, they placed sanctions on the court’s prosecutors. When the COVID-19 outbreak raged out of control and the Trump administration looked for someone to blame, it singled out the World Health Organization for not holding China to account.
The problem with this theory is that when the United States is not involved in these bodies, they do worse and everyone suffers as a result. Without the United States being actively involved, China has more influence at the World Health Organization, which proceeded to lend credibility to insincere attempts by the Chinese government to divert blame for the outbreak. The same goes for INTERPOL, where authoritarian governments abuse the Red Notice system to harass perceived enemies. It is even true at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, where a lack of interest from the United States allowed a former Chinese government official to be elected Director-General. The lack of active participation from the United States government does not push these organizations to reform, it merely creates space for bad actors to entrench their interests.
During the Obama administration, when U.S. participation in the work of the Human Rights Council was at its peak, the body did … not well, but better. The United States used its membership to get the Council to actually condemn human rights abuses by countries whose names do not rhyme with “Fisrael,” most notably leading the push to investigate war crimes in Syria. U.S. leadership made the Human Rights Council a robust voice in calling out North Korea, highlighting that the conflict across the Korean demilitarized zone is not one of moral equivalents, but between a free, open society to the south and an authoritarian nightmare to the north. The United States also pushed the Council to adopt a resolution in support of LGBT rights, over the counter-organizing from the likes Russia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
One of the important underlying problems with the Human Rights Council is that membership is allocated among the various regional groups — the Group of African States gets thirteen seats, the Group of Eastern European States gets six, and so on. These regional groups often log-roll within themselves, meaning that the elections are generally not competitive. In the last election cycle, the African Group and the Western European and Others Group (WEOG) did not put up competitive slates at all: WEOG had two seats available and only Germany and the Netherlands ran. No regional group had more than one extra candidate; in Eastern Europe, for example, Armenia and Poland were elected, while Moldova was left out.
This system means that most members are beholden to their regional groups, since going against a regional group member means that you will not be able to count on them to quid the next time you want to pro quo, rather than an abstract commitment to human dignity. The same also goes for cross-cutting groupings like the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. The United States, however, can cut across these interest groups because for many countries the United States is their most important bilateral relationship. When it marries its influence to its better angels, the United States can accomplish more than any other country.
That is not a birthright, however. China is pursuing a strategy to try and make itself an indispensable nation to more countries through investment projects like the Belt and Road Initiative and leadership in grant-making international organizations like the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization. If the United States were to sit out of every organization that we dislike sometimes, they would not take that admonishment as impetus to reform themselves; instead, they would cement authoritarian, anti-American sentiments into a new international structure. The Biden administration should use its participation in the Council to advocate for it to do better — and it can and must do much better — but our relationship with it should take a lesson from Lyndon Johnson’s with J. Edgar Hoover: “better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.”
DoD Budget 2022 — No squeeze…yet
Ethan Brown
Last Year’s Defense Budget Request (Image Credit: Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller))
Much to my dismay, nothing definitive came out of last week’s NATO summit regarding the pending Afghanistan decision, where my last roundup entry called for finally ending the Afghan war in favor of more important international threats and challenges.
Therefore, this week’s roundup column will pivot to financial considerations on the defense enterprise’s future. The RUMINT (rumor intelligence, as we used to chide during my cool-guy days) indicates that the Biden administration’s first DoD budget proposal will not keep up with inflation, a second year in a row that the defense budget entered appropriation discussions under this paradigm.
May 3rd is when this proposed budget will be rolled out to the congressional floor for debate, and the early indicators are that traditional partisan camps on the defense spending issue are ready to drag the issue into typical haggling; the progressive surge in the Democratic party certainly wants to cut spending with a chainsaw, while the Republicans and more conservative D’s are of a mind to continue the defense spending expansion, sending messages of resilience and determined opposition against increased Chinese and Russian military growth. After all, defense spending is how the U.S. defeated communism right?
Setting the table for later analysis, the Pentagons 2022 budget is expected to hover right around $700 billion, barely creeping past the $694 billion mark of last year’s proposed budget. While the ‘small’ increase seems confounding as we discuss inflation, experts with comptroller experience point to the value of maintaining a stable, if not growing, allocation for defense spending. When new administrations roll in, the sudden surge or slash can have exponentially detrimental effects and be extremely challenging for program managers and service planners who build budget requests into ten year plans, if not longer (recall that the F-22 program was a three-decade budgetary ordeal, and those year-to-year swings can wreak havoc that lengthy acquisitions process).
2022 looks to be status quo for defense budgeters, but that doesn’t mean that key program managers aren’t feeling the pressure to legitimize themselves and their projects ahead of this calm before a budding storm in DoD financial spheres. There is plenty of give and take to consider with this flat budget, while some swelling is likely to occur once Nuclear system maintenance is factored in, other cost cutting measures from the proposal (like trimming personnel and the hold-over Trump admins proposal to eliminate the Overseas Contingency Operations account) will keep things level. New programs that found life under the Trump reign could be among those facing the most intense scrutiny and will need to survive next year’s inevitable bloodletting, and all branches will be affected at least to some degree.
The Navy, at least, still has some leeway in securing an increasing share of a future budget, with the Chief of Naval Operations Mike Gilday still offering last year’s projections on budget requirements, “chiefly” an FY 2022 boost to shipbuilding to the tune of $27 Billion. Secretary Austin and Defense Undersecretary Kathleen Hicks have inferred new ships, shipyards, and a China-focused Naval strategy as the new direction for defense spending under President Biden’s team. The Marines and their China/artificial island hopping/Littoral Regiment are a coin-flip…Navy money will [maybe] go there, but line items on a budget for the Marines have traditionally gotten scrubbed before the fancier tech programs across the DoD in years of fat trimming.
The Army and Air Force are far more convoluted and make for some of those difficult future decisions. A few weeks ago I argued for keeping the JADC2/All-Domain Operations program structurally intact as it faced a review by General Milley before going to Secretary Austin. The Army, as this space has covered before, uses more of the beyond-line-of-sight (satellite) bandwidth than any other player in the defense enterprise, vastly more so than the intelligence community combined. As the Army is still figuring out how it will not only fit into ADO/JADC2, but contribute to its massive bandwidth usage, it’s going to take more to justify an increasing share of the crunched budget of tomorrow than simply claiming that “we’ve got speed and range”. The Army isn’t a shock-troop/lightning strike offensive force, that is not the doctrinal mission of the biggest brother in the DoD. Certainly, the Army has its own shock troops that specialize in speed, surprise, and violence of action (#RLTW), but those Special Operators and similar special mission units will have their own line item allotments on the budget proposal. So the Army is going to feel the hurt come on when the contraction begins.
The Air Force gets to hang its hat on tech and innovation, to say nothing of spearheading that ADO stuff. But the Air Force currently and often historically takes the majority stock in DoD funding, owing largely to the massive flying inventory, command and control architecture, and the nuclear apparatus for which the service is responsible, plus space. Newly minted Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. “CQ” Brown, isn’t concerned about this year’s budget proposal, but feels as if two years from now (FY 2023) is when the real budget inflections will begin to affect the Air Force. Gen. Brown’s concerns (at least as of today) could affect the USAF F-16 fleet, and continuing streamlined innovation against foggy National Defense guidance (a Biden-Austin NDS is certainly a save the date…whenever that might be). The Air Force is chairing a variety of low-tech alternatives to 5th and 6th-gen systems as the counter-extremism fight just won’t die — these include the Air Force Special Operations Command pitching Light-Air Attack platforms for counter-terror missions in austere locales. It is worth noting that these flying systems remain legacy test and development systems, far out-paced by what the Air Force is doing to develop the Next-Generation Air Dominance systems: achieved through much cheaper digital engineering and better platform functionality in shorter project timelines. But those developmental processes are not yet refined enough to start cranking out nth generation aircraft…will that be online/enough when that FY2023 budget proposal rolls around?
These programs add up to many billions of dollars, but the Net Present Value of those billions is worth exponentially more today than an even greater number three years from now, that’s how depreciation works. So at what point will some of these programs become such a cash cow against a seemingly-China focused defense strategy that they won’t survive the proposal? That of course, remains to be seen on May 3rd, and congress will have plenty to debate on what is worth keeping. I recall force-shaping (personnel cuts) back in 2013–2015 under the Obama admin, and the dearth of personnel suddenly created a massive promotion surge in the ensuing two promotion cycles. Sometimes that can be a good method of upending stagnation in the ranks, but the cost of personnel pales in comparison to many of these programs…ones that may or may not fit into the Biden defense agenda going forward.
Democracy Reform Through the Courts
Jaqueline Ruiz
Court reform was a subject of fierce debate during the recent presidential election, especially after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the quick confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The Republican Party adopted a strategy of obstruction during the Obama years, confirming very few federal judges overall once they retook the Senate in the 2014 midterms and famously stonewalling the nomination process for Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. During the Trump years, the GOP capitalized by filling dozens of extra federal court seats. This has diminished the legitimacy of the courts within the eyes of the public. Republicans and Democrats have spent decades engaging in political gamesmanship that has left the courts vulnerable to the same bitter partisanship that affects Congress. If the Biden administration wants the Supreme Court to be trusted as an impartial institution, it needs to commit towards implementing a structural reform of the federal judiciary through term limits and court expansions. Term limits will allow for the cooling down of the judicial appointment process and court expansion will restore balance to the bench and allow for a more responsive system.
Senate Democrats have only a narrow majority. Any Senate Democrat that opposes a piece of legislation can effectively torpedo it, even before considering the Republicans use of the filibuster. That razor-thin margin has apparently lowered the Biden administration’s appetite for spending its political capital fighting for democracy reform. At a time where more than a third of all federal court of appeals judges are eligible for retirement or to transition to senior status, it seems like a mistake to not prioritize it. There are already a significant number of seat vacancies that the Biden administration can use to begin laying the groundwork for proactively preventing another abuse of power while spending minimal political capital.
One important reform available is the implementation of term limits on federal judges. In modern times, we have seen that life appointment essentially allows justices to strategically choose a retirement time that benefits the political party they most closely align with and also be above accountability. Without the need to be reelected, the Framers hoped that federal judges would be less swayed by the political current of the time and instead rely on their own jurisprudence. Instead, life appointments have hugely raised the stakes of the nomination and confirmation process. That leaves numerous lower courts without judges and unnecessarily stretches their burden. Term limits address these shortcomings by allowing the President to get a set number of appointments during his or her term and weakening the strength a single justice has on the law over time. Partisans in the Senate would have less incentive to obstruct nominees because they would have an opportunity in the next election to win seats.
Critics argue that term limits would actually have little effect on reversing the politicization of the court. They contend that term limits would not subtract from the individual power a seat holds and so Senators would still have motivation to fight for each seat. Yet, a strong incentive for implementing term limits is that they would make judicial appointments a more standard issue and thereby decrease its overall combativeness. Term limits allow for more judicial confirmations over time which gives Senators more opportunities for mediation resulting in less polarizing debates. The Biden administration should spend the capital now fighting for term limits because it will result in less capital being spent on these fights later on.
The federal judiciary could also be reformed by expanding the number of federal courts and courts of appeal for the first time in 30 years. The appeals courts handle more than 50,000 cases each year compared to the Supreme Court which handles fewer than 100 cases. Litigants can wait years for a legal decision to be reached, which disadvantages those who cannot afford long-term legal fees. During President Trump’s term, Senate Republicans were able to appoint a record-breaking number of judges to lower federal courts. Expanding the federal courts would allow more judges to be added that could balance out the extreme number of Trump-appointed judges. This is also a reform that has shown a rare bipartisan backing. On February 24th, the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Courts held a hearing on the need for new lower court judgeships. Democratic Chair Hank Johnson (D-GA) and Republican Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) agreed that expanding the courts is well overdue.
Critics of court expansion warn Democrats of how this could trigger a cycle in which Republicans add even more judgeships once they return to power. However, Republicans are very likely to expand the size of the court anyways. The past decade has shown that Republicans will shatter long-standing norms to achieve a greater political advantage in the courts. The true threat to the judiciary’s reputation of impartiality is not a Democratic-led expansion, but a continuance of Republican domination. The Biden administration should take advantage of its position, so as to ensure a level playing field in the future.
The Biden administration wants the judiciary to act as a neutral institution that provides credibility towards their agenda of bipartisan unity. These democracy reforms would work to secure that neutrality. Democracy reform is now a prerequisite for maintaining often neglected democratic principles. The Biden administration must take proactive steps to ensure its legislative agenda survives obstructionist partisanship and a partisan majority on the Supreme Court.
The Future of America’s ICBM Force
Miles Esters
The United States is preparing for an expensive replacement program for our Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), but today’s transformed national security environment does not merit it when a better, cheaper option is available. None of the major international threats facing the United States today are capable of posing the threat that the Soviets once did, and so our preparations should be scaled appropriately. The current generation of missiles, the Minuteman III first entered service in 1970 and have been systematically upgraded over the decades to increase their efficiency, distance, reliability, and accuracy. They are currently slated to be replaced in 2029 by the U.S. Air Force’s new $100 billion Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program. Instead of replacing it, the U.S. should prepare another round of life extending upgrades to the missile system. The United States does not need new ICBMs because these missiles do not provide unique capabilities in comparison to other legs of the triad, nuclear deterrence can be upheld with a lower number of missiles overall, and GBSD risks crowding out other more important defense programs during its peak funding years.
Each leg of the triad, which consists of ground-based ICBMs, strategic bombers, and nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, has a series of advantages and disadvantages, but ICBMs have some distinctive capabilities that can lead to an unprecedented miscalculation. In contrast to strategic bombers and submarines, which no longer maintain a 24/7 alert status, almost all ICBMs are on high alert status at all times and can be launched within 10 minutes. They are heavily reliant on early warning space, air, and land-based systems for identifying a preemptive launch of a salvo of missiles.
Unlike submarines that can go undetected in unpredictable locations traversing the world’s oceans, and strategic bombers that can be scrambled in a matter of minutes, ICBMs are fixed targets that lack survivability — meaning they need to launch their weapons in hopes of not being destroyed by a preemptive attack. In a crisis, a president might face a “use-it-or-lose-it” decision with ICBMs, where waiting to see if a situation is a false alarm may result in the missiles being destroyed on the ground. There have been numerous such false alarms in history, such as in 1979 NORAD computer malfunction or the Soviet’s 1983 nuclear false alarm. In the age of cyberwarfare, the threats to America’s command and control systems have exponentially increased. In 2010, the Obama administration ordered an examination of Minuteman III missiles and concluded that they were vulnerable to cyberattacks. What may seem like a pure act of fiction, the 1983 science-fiction film WarGames in which a young Matthew Broderick finds a backdoor into NORAD’s military computers and accidentally sets off a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Soviet Union, is more relevant than ever.
America does not need new ICBMs because nuclear deterrence can be maintained with a lower number of missiles. There are approximately 400 missiles deployed in ominous hardened underground silos across the Great Plains region. The ground-based component of America’s triad only consists of a quarter of the 1,400 U.S. deployed strategic warheads, with more than half deployed on submarines, and the rest located at strategic bomber bases. Submarines and bombers are both able to be moved or redeployed, making them more likely to survive to provide a retaliatory strike. At any given moment, 8 to 10 of America’s 14 Ohio-class nuclear missile submarines are at sea carrying upwards of 700 warheads on their Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which are armed with more powerful warheads and more accurate than ICBMs.
The total nuclear modernization program includes the U.S. Navy’s replacement for the Ohio-Class submarines; nuclear command, control, and communication systems; a new generation of warheads; and air-launched weapons. The ICBM program has received condemnation from top civilian officials, congressional committee chairs, former military commanders and Secretaries of Defense, and arms control experts. But the military is also undertaking other modernization efforts that will also need substantial funding in the coming years. Most notably, it will overlap acquisitions programs such as the B-21 bomber, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and KC-46A aerial refueling tanker, all of which are critical for reorienting the U.S. military to a force capable of great power projection against Russia and China.
I am opposed to eliminating America’s ICBM force and transitioning to a dyad, but there are more responsible and lower-cost options to modernizing the force while maintaining the country’s strategic deterrent. The U.S. has demonstrated the technical capability and political will to extend the life of the Minuteman III missiles years past their intended service life with numerous upgrades and overhauls. Why spend hundreds of billions on new ballistic missiles that are never intended to leave their silos when they do not provide any unique capabilities like strategic bombers and SSBNs, are not necessary for upholding nuclear deterrence, and overlap with more important acquisition programs? America’s ICBMs are critical to upholding strategic stability globally however there are practical solutions available for its aging force to meet the demands of the 21st century all while mitigating the dangers of a nuclear catastrophe.
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New British Visa Program Aids Potential Hong Kong Emigres
Sarah Naiman
Under a new program that would allow many Hong Kong citizens to immigrate to the U.K., over 5,000 residents of the territory have already applied for visas. The British government believes that number could rise to over 300,000 in the coming months as China continues its crackdown on Hong Kong. Before 2019, Hong Kong, which was a British colony until 1997, had enjoyed its autonomy under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration’s promise of “one country, two systems.” When territory residents marched in mass protests to promote peace and democracy in 2019 and 2020, the Chinese government’s “security” crackdowns intensified. As of January 31, 2021, the government banned recognition of the British National Overseas passport, which was created under British rule specifically for Hong Kong residents. Under the British government’s new program, the over five million Hong Kong citizens who hold this passport are now eligible to immigrate to the U.K., where they can live for five years and then apply for “settled status” or citizenship. Given its overwhelmingly negative historical legacy of imperialism, it is refreshing to see the British government engage in reparatory action in the face of China’s actions.
Ghana Becomes First Country to Receive Vaccine from WHO
600,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by AstraZeneca arrived in the African nation of Ghana on Wednesday. The doses were procured through the World Health Organization’s Covax program. This program was set up to help poorer countries get access to the vaccine, which is otherwise being sold in disproportionate amounts to richer countries. This creates a serious public health dilemma: every country wants to maximize the number of shots available to its citizens, since that will protect them from dying; if, however, there are large numbers of people among whom the disease is spreading unimpeded, it increases the likelihood of new variants developing that might not be covered by the existing vaccines. Many countries, including recently the United States, have pledged money to this effort, but the limiting factor appears to be the ability to produce vaccines in sufficient numbers at any price.
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