Author: michael_krepon

I contend, as readers of these posts know, that being a Red Sox fan is helpful training for the profession of arms control. So, too, is gardening.

At the ripe old age of 68, Thomas Jefferson wrote,

I have often thought that if heaven had given me a choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spit of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is as delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. Such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another… But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.

Arms control, like gardening, is a deeply imperfect enterprise, riddled with false hopes, less-than-anticipated results, and endless frustration. Success, when it occurs, can be fleeting; real triumphs build up over time, and are greatly cherished. Positive outcomes are balm for the soul. But one can’t be in this line of work for the percentages.

Spring evokes great possibilities for the garden. The weeding comes later. Optimism and perseverance are keys to the twin enterprises of arms control and gardening; when mulched with pragmatism and experience, the results become more rewarding. Cynicism and defeatism do not improve soil quality, nor do they reduce nuclear dangers.

I am beholden to Janet Lembke for introducing me to Jefferson’s quote. Her book, Touching Earth, ends with the following lines:

Touching earth is a potent metaphor for renewing strength in all endeavors… It is also an act capable of restoring vitality, of healing … What Jefferson says is gospel. The body ages, but the spirit retains a youthful resilience. Touching earth is more effective than any fountain of youth or cucumber poultice for keeping the senses vigorous and encouraging the sweet rage of imagination. As he says, perfection is ever imminent, and success does repair failure. Best of all, hope springs ever green, ever seductive in the gardener’s heart.

I am living proof of the restorative powers of touching earth, here at the base of Tom Mountain in the Blue Ridge. We have cows for neighbors across the road.

To oversell or underplay — that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer slings and arrows by acknowledging modest gains, or to claim immodest accomplishments in search of 67 votes in the Senate.

Since treaty foes will never be shy about predicting dreadful consequences, the case can be made to fight threat inflation by projecting outsized gains. The Nixon administration barreled down this slippery slope after signing the SALT I accords. Immediately after returning from the hoopla of the Moscow summit, President Nixon addressed a joint session of Congress where he encouraged prompt action on the accords to “forestall a major spiraling of the arms race.” National security adviser Henry Kissinger characterized the accords as being “without precedent in the nuclear age; indeed in all relevant modern history.” During the hearings on SALT, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird who, like Nixon and Kissinger, surely knew better, testified that the Interim Agreement “stops the momentum of the Soviet Union in the strategic offensive weapon area.” Nixon’s International Economic Report sent to the Congress in 1973 characterized the administration’s dealings with the Kremlin as “a giant step toward a lasting peace.”

By claiming immodest gains and misrepresenting accomplishments, the Nixon administration handed cudgels to critics of arms control when a very different story unfolded in the next few years. The task of capping the arsenals that were free to grow under the Interim Agreement fell to the Ford and Carter administrations. It took five long years for SALT II to establish ceilings from which strategic arms reductions could subsequently occur. But Senate support waned during the drawn-out, dispiriting process of negotiating the treaty. The best that could be said of SALT II – aptly characterized by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General David Jones, as “a modest but useful step” – was insufficient balm at a time of deteriorating U.S. national confidence and growing Soviet adventurism.

The George W. Bush administration certainly did not feel compelled to make immodest claims on behalf of the 2002 Moscow Treaty. Russia was no longer a strategic competitor and key members of Team Bush were no fans of treaties. SORT barely qualified as such; its constraints were as flimsy as tissue paper. The Moscow Treaty had no verification measures integral to its reductions, which would come into effect for one second of one minute of the very day that the Treaty’s obligations would lapse. Nonetheless, Senate Democrats, then thankful for small favors, voted en masse to consent to ratify the Treaty, as did Senate Republicans previously counted as irreconcilable treaty foes.

The final Senate tally on SORT was 95-0. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, like SORT, offers the benefits of flexibility. But unlike SORT, its reductions can be monitored by intrusive, cooperative measures as well as by NTM. These verification provisions are essential for states that don’t entirely trust each other. They are also a necessary foundation for more encompassing and deeper reductions, for which stronger monitoring arrangements will be needed.

Despite claims to the contrary, New START does not inhibit the growth of U.S. conventional power projection capabilities that, unlike nuclear weapons, are militarily useful on battlefields. Nor will New START impede ballistic missile defense programs that, with or without the Treaty’s entry into force, will continue to be constrained by balky Democrats in Congress as well as by limitations imposed by technology, cost, and cost-effectiveness.

New START does not lend itself to extravagant claims, but it is an essential step on a long journey to reduce wretched excess and nuclear dangers. New START reconfirms the stubborn, post-Cold War fact that nuclear weapons have declining utility for major powers. Constituencies in both countries chafe against this trend line, and they will do their best to block entry into force. But dispassionate observers will understand that overheated arguments against the Treaty are baseless. The Senate vote on New START will therefore be yet another indicator of how well – or how poorly – the most powerful nation in the world projects itself internationally.

The first strategic arms control talks between Washington and Moscow were handled poorly by the Nixon White House. President Richard Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger didn’t trust their bureaucracy or U.S. negotiators, which they sent off on wild goose chases while they engaged in backchannel deals with the Kremlin. Many of the harshest critics of the resulting SALT I accords were individuals who were involved in the process and embarrassed or enraged by the process and its results.

Some U.S. officials, including SALT I negotiator Gerard Smith, proposed a freeze on new construction at the outset of negotiations. This was rejected by the Nixon White House, and may well have been unacceptable to the Kremlin, as well, which was building new ICBM silos and modernizing its forces at a far more rapid rate than the Pentagon. U.S. negotiators were unable to place tough restrictions on ICBM modernization so, recognizing the linkages between strategic missile defenses which were seriously constrained by the ABM Treaty, and strategic offenses which were barely constrained, the Nixon administration resorted to a “unilateral statement” in an effort to leverage Moscow. Here’s the text of unilateral statement D on “heavy” ICBMs, issued by the U.S. delegation on May 26, 1972:

“The U.S. Delegation regrets that the Soviet Delegation has not been willing to agree on a common definition of a heavy missile. Under these circumstances, the U.S. Delegation believes it necessary to state the following: The United States would consider any ICBM having a volume significantly greater than that of the largest light ICBM now operational on either side to be a heavy ICBM. The United States proceeds on the premise that the Soviet side will give due account to this consideration.”

The Kremlin proceeded to modernize its “light” SS-11 ICBMs into far more capable, MIRVed SS-19 missiles, notwithstanding the toothless U.S. unilateral statement. Soviet actions and the U.S. unilateral statement subsequently became the basis for heated assertions of Soviet noncompliance or, at a minimum, bad faith, with the SALT I Interim Agreement.

Here’s what Ambassador Smith had to say about this controversy in his book, Doubletalk:

“It is true that the Soviets have not conformed to the U.S. unilateral definition of a heavy missile. But the Soviet Union has not violated the agreement. Ungrounded U.S. expectations are responsible for this particular delusion. The Soviet delegation had repeatedly refused to accept our proposed definition. They told us informally that they would be deploying new MIRVed missiles of a larger volume in their SS-11 silo launchers. After signing the SALT agreements, Brezhnev advised President Nixon that the Soviet Union would proceed with its missile modernization program as permitted by the agreement. In view of this record, the Soviet ICBM replacement activities under the freeze are not as surprising as the White House’s assurances in June 1972 that there were adequate safeguards in its agreement against substitution of heavy missiles (presumably as we had defined them) for light ones.”

In the recently concluded New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the shoe is on the other foot: The United States is proceeding with purposeful, necessary upgrades of theater missile defenses oriented toward the Iranian and North Korean missile programs. Moscow feels uncomfortable with U.S. BMD programs, and seeks to constrain them. The Obama administration has clarified in numerous exchanges with Russian leaders and negotiators, as well as in a unilateral statement that is reportedly attached to the agreement, that these activities are outside the scope of treaty limitations. The Kremlin has repeatedly expressed its reservations, along with a reaffirmation of its right to withdraw from the treaty, in a parallel unilateral statement.

Enter Senators Kyl, McCain and Ensign, who have written a letter to national security advisor James Jones dated February 17, 2010, with the following warning:

“It would be very troubling, for example, if the treaty included a provision that would allow Russia to withdraw from the treaty if it felt threatened by U.S. missile defense capabilities, for example, if it felt that ‘strategic stability’ was upset by a deployment by the United States. Even as a unilateral declaration, a provision like this would put pressure on the United States to limit its systems or their deployment because of Russian threats of withdrawal from the treaty.

“We ask your assurance that the Administration will not agree to any such provisions, even a unilateral Russian declaration, in the treaty text or otherwise that could limit U.S. missile defenses in any way.”

Throwing mud against the wall and seeing what sticks is a time-honored approach to messing up treaty ratification. As noted in this space previously, no-one did this more effectively against the SALT I accords than Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson.

If the mud sticks in this instance, Senators will be sending a very unfortunate message abroad – that the United States of America can be spooked by unilateral statements that have no legal or practical effect. They will also be giving unintended credence to the canard that Moscow has veto rights over U.S. ballistic missile defense programs.

The United States can and will continue to improve BMD capabilities on the basis of threat perceptions, technical, cost and cost-effectiveness grounds. The legislative branch will continue to be a very active participant and the final arbiter of these decisions, courtesy of its powers of the purse.

The Russian unilateral statement in New START will no doubt be accorded the same “due account” as the Kremlin gave to the Nixon administration’s statement on heavy missiles in 1972.

Some organizations are purposefully designed to require a high degree of consensus before acting in deference to minority rights. The obvious example is the UN Security Council, where all five permanent members have veto privileges when dealing with threats to international peace and security. Collective security by means of the UN is, as D’Artagnan said, “All for one and one for all.”

I’m no expert about climate change, although my back is still sore from shoveling a 100-year record snowfall this winter in Central Virginia. Trying to reach agreement at the climate change conference in Copenhagen was like convening 200 die-hard Red Sox fans to determine, by consensus, which relief pitcher Tito Francona should send to mound. (Note to non-U.S. readers of ACW: feel free to substitute your favorite team and sport.)

Then there’s the U.S. Senate, where a super-majority of 60 votes (out of 100) on procedural matters is required to pass a substantive piece of legislation by a simple majority – if the minority insists on doing so. Don’t ask me how, but the word “filibuster” which used to refer to an American military adventurer fomenting insurrection in Latin America, now describes bloviation and other obstructionist tactics on Capitol Hill.

The more power and responsibility the United States has gained in world affairs, the more the filibuster has turned the Senate into a dysfunctional body. The Senate voted 24 times to invoke cloture to stop filibusters between World Wars I and II. By comparison, between 1945 and 1980, the Senate invoked cloture 145 times. Matters got worse during Ronald Reagan’s two terms, with cloture being invoked 115 times; add 71 cloture votes in the four years of the George H.W. Bush administration.

The “unilateral moment” heralded by Charles Krauthammer after the demise of the Soviet Union coincided with a period of even more intense partisanship. There were 207 cloture votes during Bill Clinton’s presidency, followed by 276 during George W. Bush’s two terms, with a record 112 cloture votes in the 110th Congress alone. But records were made to be broken, and the Senate has become a graveyard for bipartisanship during the Obama administration.

As readers of ACW are well aware, the Senate’s rules for consent to treaty ratification are even more daunting, requiring a two-third’s vote.

The Conference on Disarmament in Geneva now makes the US Senate look like the Daytona Speedway. Consensus is required at the CD, and consensus these days is very hard to come by. Pakistan is now fronting efforts to block a work program whose centerpiece is a fissile material cutoff treaty. Consider this payback for the U.S.-India civil nuclear deal and a reflection of Pakistani security concerns about India’s growing conventional military capabilities.

The CD, which began (under a different name) with ten nations, now has 65 that can veto forward progress. When procedural rules favor dysfunction and when the stakes are high, more creative methods of accomplishment become imperative. A small vanguard of states can get the ball rolling on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty with verification experiments laying the groundwork for a necessary precursor to the FMCT – a global moratorium on fissile material production for weapon purposes. Once this ad hoc body – a coalition of the willing, if you will – begins to gain traction, recalcitrant states at the CD will become interested in reviving the CD so as to retard its progress. Which is why coalitions of the willing must be willing to continue their work in parallel with the CD.

More creative approaches to negotiate space security – another CD agenda item – are also imperative. As discussed in this space earlier, an unverifiable treaty banning ill-defined space weapons is not in the cards. But a code of conduct for responsible space-faring nations, including a ban on the use of space objects for target practice, is now possible. The sooner major space powers get this ball rolling outside the CD, the better.

Many have tried to define a space weapon, myself included. None of us have come up with a satisfactory definition, which is one on many reasons why a treaty banning space weapons is not in the cards.

After the Bush administration disposed of the ABM Treaty, the Chinese and Russian governments dipped into the old Soviet playbook and tabled a draft “Treaty on the Prevention of the Deployment of Weapons in Outer Space.” Here’s their language defining space weapons:

The term ‘weapon in outer space’ means any device placed in outer space, based on any physical principle, which has been specially produced or converted to destroy, damage or disrupt the normal functioning of objects in outer space, on the Earth or in the Earth’s atmosphere, or to eliminate a population or components of the biosphere which are important to human existence or inflict damage on them;

A weapon shall be considered to have been ‘placed’ in outer space if it orbits the Earth at least once, or follows a section of such an orbit before leaving this orbit, or is permanently located somewhere in outer space.

Please note that this definition does not capture ground-based ASATs. The Russian and Chinese draft treaty is problematic in many other respects, as well. For example, unless there are common understandings on whether a multi-purpose device has been “specially produced or converted” so as to qualify as a space weapon, the proposed ban has no practical effect.

Philip Baines, a Canadian diplomat with uncommon technical expertise has proposed another definition of a space weapon:

a device based on any physical principle, specially designed or modified, to injure or to kill a person, irreparably damage or destroy an object, or render any place unusable.

In Phil’s view, form follows function. For example, “a satellite that is designed to be a weapon will also look like a weapon, and a satellite that is designed to be benign will look benign.” But satellite payload inspections, first proposed back in the Eisenhower administration, remain beyond the pale. And it may be far-fetched to assume common understandings on the form and function of non-inspected space-spaced objects. Nor can states rely on externally observable differences to distinguish satisfactorily between, say, a missile defense interceptor and a ground-based ASAT. As with the draft Russian and Chinese treaty text, Phil’s definition lends itself to disagreements over what “specially designed or modified” really means.

Theresa Hitchens, long a stalwart promoter of space security, now at UNIDIR, has defined space weapons this way:

destructive systems that operate in outer space after having been launched directly from Earth or parked in orbit.

Theresa’s definition has the benefit of concreteness, but it may still be too limiting: Is a “system” that doesn’t destroy a satellite but renders it nonfunctional a space weapon or not? And how do we deal with a device or weapon system with multiple potential purposes, such as an interceptor missile that can be used for ballistic missile defense as well as for ASAT purposes? An inclusive definition of a space weapon would foreclose essential military capabilities, while a limiting definition would allow many kinds of latent ASAT systems to run free.

In my view, we’re barking up the wrong tree in trying to define space weapons. How nations act in space matters far more than how they define space weapons. A treaty banning space weapons remains a distant goal. There are other ways, far more realizable, to strengthen norms for responsible space-faring nations – including the norm of not using satellites for target practice.

Over the past two decades, Iraq, Iran and Libya have tried to interfere with satellites. Is this a practice that responsible space-faring nations wish to emulate? The European Union has endorsed the Stimson Center’s proposed norm of “no harmful interference” against space objects. Yes, this invites a debate over the definition of “no harmful interference.” But reaching a reasonable conclusion on this subject is far easier than trying to define a space weapon.

The Obama administration has still not cleared its throat on this or related subjects. It took almost sixteen months for the Reagan administration to come up with a negotiating proposal for strategic arms reductions. It is taking even longer for Team Obama to propose a space diplomacy initiative.

Update | 11:27 am Jeffrey adds: Such definitional difficulties are precisely why I have argued for a “ban [on] the testing deployment and use of kinetic energy ASATs (KE ASAT ban), which destroy their target satellite by slamming into it, creating significant amounts of space debris.” I will be making the same pitch again in Geneva this month.

We’d all be better off if Richard Betts wrote more often about proliferation. But he seems intent on pursuing high-quality, book-length projects on a wide range of topics, including surprise attack, war & peace, intelligence, and the Cold War.

My favorite Richard Betts article on proliferation appeared in Foreign Policy (Spring 1977) on paranoids, pygmies and pariahs, which he updated in a 1993 issue of Security Studies. Nations seek the Bomb, according to Richard, for two essential reasons: fear or ambition, or if you prefer, security or status.

Here’s a sampler:

Trying to coerce or buy off a power-happy state might well backfire; the desire for prestige is the desire not to be in a position of either victim or supplicant… Security-motivated candidates are the ones we should spend the most time worrying about. But here the problem is less what we can do than what we want to do.

There are no simple solutions that are feasible, no feasible solutions that are simple, and no solutions at all that are applicable across the board… There is no free lunch in nonproliferation policy; every effective measure has economic, political, or moral price tags.

Proliferation does not have a life of its own; it is a political problem as much as a technical one. Technological mystery, coinciding with international bipolarity, simply gave the United States a long period of grace in which it could afford to pay less attention to the political dimension.

With the disappearance of “technological mystery” and bipolarity, is there any wonder why new concerns about proliferation have arisen?

In a subsequent piece on proliferation (in Vic Utgoff, The Coming Crisis: Nuclear Proliferation, U.S. Interests, and World Order, 2000), Richard labels proliferation optimists like Kenneth Waltz as “utopian realists” who argue that,

… nuclear weapons can produce the permanent peace that liberals have always believed in and realists have always said is impossible… Any theory that predicts, say, 90 percent of outcomes on some important matter is an amazingly good theory. The Waltz argument may be in that category… [but] one exception to the rule may be too many… The United States should act as if the utopian realists are wrong, but hope that they are right.

As for U.S. nonproliferation policy, Richard argues that,

For most of the nuclear era the priority that the United States placed on nonproliferation was high in principle but low in practice. Washington was always willing to promote nonproliferation when it did not have to short-change some other objective, but seldom did it prove willing to sacrifice other interests for the cause.

Greetings from Pakistan where, when it comes to nuclear strategy, people say little but act expeditiously. In India, on the other hand, people write much and act slowly.

India now has a coterie of first-rate thinkers on nuclear issues besides K. Subrahmanyam, including Raja Mohan, Rear Adm. (ret.) Raja Menon, Rajesh Basrur, Gurmeet Kanwal, and Bharat Karnad (who had a class with Bernard Brodie but thinks more like Herman Kahn).

In my view, one of the best and most overlooked Indian strategic analysts is Vice Adm. (ret.) Verghese Koithara. His book, Crafting Peace in Kashmir, Through a Realist Lens (2004), has a chapter on “Nuclear Danger” that is well worth reading. Here’s a sampler:

“Till it acquired nuclear weapons, Pakistan had been protecting its highly vulnerable nuclear facilities in Kahuta and elsewhere through conventional deterrence, not defence. Its high card had been the vulnerability of a big concentration of Indian nuclear assets, close to the economically central city of Mumbai, to Pakistan F-16s coming over the sea.”

“The requirement to keep warheads and delivery systems (and perhaps even the fissile and non-fissile sections of the warhead) separate for reasons of security and survival could add to design and maintenance problems relating to safety. The relatively small number (six at best) of explosive tests carried out by each country, and that too in a time-constrained manner, raises worries about design safety, as well.”

“As far as continuous real-time monitoring of the opponent’s nuclear delivery systems is concerned, both sides are effectively blind.”

“Pakistan’s strategy is aimed at deterring a conventional threat from India, while India’s is aimed at deterring a nuclear one from Pakistan. Since a conventional confrontation is easier to develop and must almost invariably precede a nuclear one, Pakistan’s deterrence has to function much more actively than India’s.”

“As the conventional military balance continues to shift in India’s favor, Pakistan’s reliance on its nuclear capability will increase and so will its effort to lower the nuclear threshold. Thus Pakistan’s strategy is likely to emphasize not just ‘first use’ but ‘early first use’ in the coming years.”

“Pakistan’s effort would be to maximize nuclear uncertainty in times of crisis while India’s would be to minimize it… Pakistan would like to establish that nuclear risk-taking and its consequences in South Asia resemble Russian roulette with the outcome relying on chance, while India would want to prove that it would resemble a game of chess with the outcome determined by rational logic and relative superiority.”

Verghese writes that further Indian nuclear testing of thermonuclear weapons would depend on confidence levels from prior tests. Indian strategic analysts are divided on whether such testing is necessary. Raja Mohan is satisfied with boosted fission-type yields; Bharat Karnad is not.

Over the years, I’ve experienced great satisfaction watching former students, RAs, and interns sprout wings and assume responsible positions working on nuclear threat reduction. My career counseling often involves answering familiar questions, over and over again. I suspect some ACW readers about to enter the job market are asking the same questions: How do I get a job working at…? Or, how do I become a … ?

My advice, freely offered, is: Don’t make your job search harder than it needs to be. You’re putting too much pressure on yourself.

Instead, try to ask a different set of questions about the job market. What skills do you want to develop? Which opportunities will help you develop one or more of those skills? By opening the aperture and by focusing on skills rather than outcomes, more opportunities are likely present themselves.

Aspiring Wonks: Believe it or not, every job has some value when you are getting started. Your workplace will teach you what you are good at, and will help you hone these skills. Or it will teach you what want you don’t want to do or aren’t good at. Both kinds of learning experiences will help you on your way.

A few years ago, I wrote down some of my life lessons. Most of these axioms are about dealing with serious illness, but a few of them distilled what I’ve learned about the world of work. Here’s one:

The best careers are growth experiences, and growth usually starts with chores. As you grow further, you will discover what you are good at doing, and what you would prefer that others do. As your capabilities become more evident, you can slough off chores. Later on, you can choose to shed responsibilities that you can perform well, but not enjoyably, to focus on what you excel at and which makes your heart sing.

Put another way, as Mark Twain said, “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

After succeeding spectacularly by landing astronauts on the lunar surface and welcoming them home, what do you do for an encore? This question has vexed Washington ever since 1969. Subsequent national choices in the form of the space shuttle and the international space station absorbed large sums and turned out to be confining – not exactly what Americans expect or deserve from their space ventures. Next comes the long wait, until China produces similar headlines to the ones on yellowing newspapers that I treasure in my attic.

Momentum is to geopolitics as possession is to the law. A rare commodity for the United States at present, in space as on terra firma. It’s hard to pursue bold new visions when cleaning up big messes from the previous ones.

I’m eagerly anticipating John Logsdon’s book on JFK’s space policies. Here, for old times’ sake, are a few key passages from President Kennedy’s famous man on the moon speech before Congress, May 25, 1961:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish… In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the Moon—if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there….

Let it be clear—and this is a judgment which the Members of the Congress must finally make—let it be clear that I am asking the Congress and the country to accept a firm commitment to a new course of action—a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs… If we are to go only half way, of reduce our sights in the face of difficulty, in my judgment it would be better not to go at all.

One speech does not a space policy make. Kennedy’s encore (view it here), at Rice University on September 12, 1962, was perfectly pitched):

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it—we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world’s leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people… But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? …

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win… “

Fast forward to NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr., as reported by Space News, January 11, 2010:

We cannot do big things very much any more.

Moritz Bleibtreu and Martina Gedeck as Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof in the 2009 film, The Baader Meinhof Complex.

Jeffrey’s posts and videos of the walkabout at the NATO nuclear weapon storage site in Belgium reminded me of a story with a much sharper edge that I retold in Better Safe than Sorry. ACW readers can file this one, along with last week’s account of the U.S. Navy’s encounter with the Foxtrot-class B-59 during the Cuban missile crisis, in the folder labeled “how-did-we-manage-(so-far)-to-avoid-an-epically-bad-headline?”

Politics were stretched to the breaking point in the late sixties and 1970s, when the culture wars took root in the United States, the Cultural Revolution crippled China, and disaffected middle class youth in West Germany gave terrorism a new face. They were called the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

In January 1977, gang members stormed a nuclear weapon storage facility in Giessen, West Germany. They planned to penetrate the base’s storage vaults by creating a diversion, blowing up a fuel tank outside the base perimeter. But they misread the fuel tank gauge, believing the tank to be almost full, when it was almost empty. Their shaped charge penetrated the tank above the fuel line, with no resulting special effects. Gang members then managed to penetrate the base perimeter, but after an exchange of gunfire, they were stopped short of the nuclear weapons storage area.

The base commander, then an Army Captain, told me this story. He later went on to become the Director of ACDA and helped jump start efforts to lock down dangerous weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union – Bill Burns.