More fireworks over Waikiki than from North Korea

Post Date July 05, 2009
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Looks like the network reporter got a nice trip to Hawai’i to cover…well, nothing. I hope she at least got to see some fireworks and enjoy the south swell.  Sen. Inouye got to talk tough and to shake his fist at Kim Jong-il – “he is asking for trouble.” Meanwhile the U.S. prepares to launch a Minuteman III ICBM from Vandenberg on August 23.  Should we run for cover?

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North Korea Fires Seven Ballistic Missles

Written by Teri Okita, CBS News, Honolulu.

July 04, 2009 04:30 PM

North Korea chose America’s July 4th holiday weekend to fire off its largest barrage of ballistic missiles in three years.

The test-firings came amid recent threats that Pyongyang would aim a missile towards Hawaii. It’s a picture-perfect July 4th in Hawaii. Few are worried about North Korea’s threat to fire a long-range missile here over the holiday weekend. The head of the US Pacific Command says there’s no cause for alarm.

“We’re well prepared to defend American citizens and defend American property,” said Commander Keating, U.S. Pacific Command.

Forty-Four-hundred miles away from the islands, North Korea fired off seven ballistic missiles from its eastern shore Saturday, in violation of a United Nations Security council resolution. Some of the weapons appear to be short-range Scuds, which, along with medium and long-range missiles, the North is banned from using. Experts don’t believe Pyongyang has the capability to hit Hawaii with a long-range missile, yet.

There’s no reason for us to be alarmed about the demonstrations of firepower North Korea’s using, but there is reason for concern for their blatant disregard for normal, accepted standards of behavior,” said Commander Keating, U.S. Pacific Command.

Over the last week, the U.S. has responded to North Korea’s threat by beefing up anti-missile defenses here in Hawaii, at sea, and on the U.S. mainland.

South Korea and Japan condemned the symbolic July 4th launches as a “provocative” act. Some say this was President Kim Jong-il’s way of flaunting his country’s military might while protesting recent U-N sanctions. But Hawaii’s senior Senator says it takes more than flexing muscle.

“I hope that Kim Jong-il realizes that because if he fires a long-range one, then he is asking for trouble,” said Senator Daniel Inouye.

Some reports say North Korea is winding down its launch activities for now, but there’s no indication they’ll re-engage in diplomatic discussions.

Source: http://kgmb9.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18878&Itemid=40

Looking Back: The National Missile Defense Act of 1999

Post Date July 03, 2009
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Category Military Appropriations, Earmarks, Military-industrial-academic complex, The Military in Hawai'i (All Islands)

The National Missile Defense Act of 1999 (the Cochran-Inouye Bill), also nicknamed the missile defense “blank check act” by anti-nuclear activists, was a turning point in the expansion of U.S. missile defense programs and the escalation of a new arms race. This bill committed the U.S. to deploy a national missile defense system “as soon as technologically feasible” and led to the undoing of both the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, two cornerstones of nuclear arms control and reduction.

In 1998, Hawai’i Senators Inouye and Akaka, were two of only four Senate Democrats who supported Cochran’s bill.  But opposition from the Democrats in Congress fell apart following the 1998 Republican sweep of Congress.

The National Missile Defense Act of 1999 opened the floodgates for research, development and testing of new, exotic missile defense technologies.  Inouye had been preparing for this opportunity, quietly earmarking funds for the refurbishment of the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kaua’i.   The controversial Navy University Affiliated Research Center (UARC), also known as the Applied Research Laboratory – University of Hawai’i, and its corrupt origins, were enabled by the National Missile Defense Act of 1999.

The following article posted on the Arms Control Association website gives good analysis of the circumstances and consequences of the Act.

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The National Missile Defense Act of 1999

Greg Thielmann

The National Missile Defense Act of 1999 was described by its chief sponsor, Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), as “the necessary first step to protecting the United States from long-range ballistic missile attack.”[1] Indeed, the act constituted an important milestone on the road to U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, a step that the sponsors of the act advocated. Although the act itself neither authorized any programs nor appropriated any funds, it was misrepresented then and has been misrepresented since as proof of strong congressional support for the urgent and unqualified pursuit of strategic missile defenses.

The National Missile Defense Act gave the United States a clearly stated policy goal: to “deploy as soon as is technologically possible an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate)….” These simple words essentially became executive branch policy following the election of 2000. They were adopted as a charter for the Missile Defense Agency, appearing prominently today on the home page of the agency’s Web site. Although the meaning of “effective” has been subject to debate and the elections of 2006 and 2008 have affected the implementation of that policy, the act represents an enduring symbol of the potent backing strategic missile defense has received from Congress during the last 10 years.

Ironically, the threat assessments on which the act was based have proven unrealistic with regard to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. None of these countries and no other proliferant states have deployed long-range ballistic missiles in the decade following the act.

The sponsors of the act also identified growing Chinese missile deployments as a source of concern, “perhaps [the] most troubling”[2] in the words of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Yet, the U.S. strategic ballistic missile defenses deployed after passage of the act were never intended to defend against a deliberate Chinese attack.

Those missile defense deployments were also not directed at a deliberate Russian attack, although the act prepared the way for the U.S. decision in 2001 to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, which had been a keystone in the management of the U.S.-Russian strategic relationship. The Russians abandoned START II on the day after U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. In ratifying START II, the Russian Duma had conditioned its approval on continuing U.S. adherence to the ABM Treaty.

The Russian abandonment of START II, which the United States had never ratified, removed any chance of reducing Russian strategic offensive forces under the stabilizing terms of that treaty. Although Russian missile and warhead numbers continued to decline even without START II, the Russians were able to retain “heavy ICBMs” and other land-based ballistic missiles with multiple, independently targetable re-entry vehicles.

In short, China and Russia have increased the quality and, in the case of China, the quantity, of their strategic ballistic missile forces in response to U.S. missile defense programs. However, there is no evidence that the U.S. programs have dissuaded the states of proliferation concern from developing or deploying ballistic missiles.

Cold War Origins

The United States and the Soviet Union deployed limited numbers of strategic missile defense interceptors and radars in the middle years of the Cold War. These defenses were designed to cope with the intercontinental-range (greater than 5,500 kilometers) and intermediate-range (3,000-5,500 kilometers) ballistic missiles, with which the two sides could threaten each other’s homeland. The U.S.S.R. went first, deploying nearly 100 nuclear-armed ABM interceptors around Moscow in the 1960s. The United States began deploying a comparable number of nuclear-armed ABM interceptors at Grand Forks, North Dakota, in 1974. The 1972 ABM Treaty had banned the United States and U.S.S.R. from developing nationwide defenses as well as systems or components for sea-based, air-based, space-based, or mobile land-based ABM deployments. The treaty permitted each side to build ABM systems at two fixed locations for defense of each national capital area and a land-based missile base, with up to 100 interceptors at each site. A 1974 protocol to the treaty reduced that allowance, limiting each side to only one site. The Soviets opted to maintain their system around Moscow while the United States elected to protect a missile field in North Dakota, until Congress cut off funding in 1975. A 1997 agreement on confidence-building measures, negotiated in the ABM Treaty’s Special Consultative Commission, precisely demarcated strategic missile defense interceptors from those that were designed to intercept tactical and theater ballistic missiles. The latter systems were deemed incapable of overcoming the technical challenge of coping with the much faster re-entry of ICBM and sea-launched ballistic missile warheads.

Although the Soviets sought to be able to defend their capital and national leadership against the new U.S. missile threat that emerged in the 1960s, they never succeeded. U.S. warheads and the options for countermeasures were too numerous and the radars on which the Moscow system relied too vulnerable. Yet, bureaucratic inertia, vested interests, and the psychological desire to have some defense, however inadequate, have allowed vestiges of the Soviet/Russian system to survive even to the present day.

The United States was susceptible to the no-less-potent illusion that it could use technology to replace the defensive shield two oceans had historically provided for keeping enemies at bay. Nurtured by an almost unlimited faith in technological solutions and feeling the same natural reluctance as the Soviets to accept vulnerability, Washington plowed ahead until the inevitable logic of cost effectiveness caught up with strategic defenses in the mid-1970s when the Safeguard ABM system was canceled and dismantled. Although a new vision of a defensive umbrella that would render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete” was articulated by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, the Strategic Defense Initiative he launched two years later eventually fell victim to the “cost effectiveness at the margin” criterion advocated by his own special adviser, Paul Nitze. Strategic missile defense planning changed direction successively under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, but research and development funding remained robust throughout both presidencies, and neither administration made any decision to deploy strategic defenses.

Three events were key in creating the political environment for passage of the National Missile Defense Act. First was the 1994 U.S. congressional elections, which gave the Republicans a majority in the House and Senate. The new speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), included “a renewed commitment to a National Missile Defense” in his “Contract With America.”[3] Republicans in both houses consistently and relentlessly pursued this goal as part of the GOP’s political agenda, culminating in passage of the 1999 act.

Report Spurs Action

The second and most important substantive development was the July 1998 release of the Report of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, chaired by Donald Rumsfeld, who had been President Gerald Ford’s secretary of defense. The report’s executive summary warned that North Korea and Iran would be able to inflict major destruction on the United States within about five years of a decision to acquire such a capability and that both placed “a high priority on threatening U.S. territory” and were even then “pursuing advanced ballistic missile capabilities to pose a direct threat to U.S. territory.”[4] The report claimed that any other nation with a well-developed, Scud-based ballistic missile infrastructure could be within five years of an ICBM capability. Finally, the report warned that the United States “might have little or no warning before operational deployment” of these systems.[5]

The dire warnings of the Rumsfeld Commission were subject to considerable criticism and controversy among experts. Senate Democrats were still confident going into the August recess that year that they could sustain efforts by the Clinton administration to avoid congressional passage of an unqualified endorsement of strategic missile defense in reaction to the report. The public, however, which had already been spooked by Rumsfeld’s depiction of a potential near-term threat from “rogue state” ballistic missiles, was about to receive a further jolt. North Korea surprised the world with its August 31, 1998, attempt to place a satellite in space using a three-stage Taepo Dong-1 rocket. Although the attempt was unsuccessful, no missile re-entry vehicle was tested, and the system’s throw weight was inadequate to deliver a nuclear-sized payload to the United States, the political impact of the event was enormous. Proponents of strategic missile defenses skillfully used the North Korean launch as vindication of the Rumsfeld Commission’s warnings and accompanying allegations that previous U.S. intelligence assessments had been overly sanguine.

Most Democratic senators became unwilling to stand behind White House threats to veto the strategic missile defense resolution being pushed by the Republican majority. The alternative strategy the Democrats chose was to make the issue go away by adding language to make the bill uncontroversial. Amendments to the policy bill provided reminders that any national missile defense program funding would have to be subject to annual authorization and appropriation measures and that it was still U.S. policy to seek negotiated reductions in Russian strategic forces. Clinton stressed that the amendments made clear that no deployment decision had been made, but the simple language of the bill implied strongly that Congress recognized U.S. technological obstacles as the only acceptable justification for delay. The Senate bill passed 97-3 on March 17, 1999. The House bill passed the next day, 317-105.

Clinton announced in 2000 that strategic missile defenses, then under the rubric of the National Missile Defense program, were sufficiently promising and affordable to justify continued development and testing but that there was not sufficient information about the technical and operational effectiveness of the entire system to move forward with deployment. He noted that critical elements, such as the booster rocket for the interceptor, had not been tested and that there were questions about the system’s ability to deal with countermeasures.[6]

At the outset of the Bush administration in 2001, the programmatic course of strategic ballistic missile defense and the future of the ABM Treaty were still up in the air. That summer, a bipartisan majority of the Senate Armed Services Committee even voted to reduce missile defense funding.

The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon created an entirely different atmosphere for continuing the debate. In the fearful wake of those attacks, President George W. Bush was successful in supercharging strategic missile defense procurement and deployment. In spite of virtually unanimous international opposition, he announced U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty in late 2001 and a commitment to deploy strategic defense interceptors by 2004. The U.S.-based deployments and their “operational” designation were accomplished only after Rumsfeld, whom Bush had appointed secretary of defense, suspended traditional acquisition rules and operational testing criteria, introducing an unconventional and controversial “spiral” development process. By the end of two terms, the Bush administration was able to deploy a set of 20 ground-based missile defense (GMD) interceptors at sites in Alaska and California and to plan for deploying another 24 there and 10 more in Poland.

The ABM Treaty constituted a tacit acknowledgment by both sides that unlimited strategic defenses constituted a threat to the stability of the balance in offensive forces. Each side further demonstrated by its subsequent actions, albeit at different times, that offenses and defenses were inextricably connected. In 1988 the United States demanded that the Soviet Union dismantle the large phased-array radar Moscow was constructing at Krasnoyarsk before Washington would agree to any new offensive arms control limits.[7]

In response to U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty on June 13, 2002, Russia announced one day later that it would no longer consider itself bound by START II, consistent with the Duma’s ratification terms in 2000, which were contingent on continuation of the ABM Treaty. Thus, not for the first or last time, U.S. determination to escape from strategic missile defense strictures led to the loss of an opportunity to secure lower limits and stabilizing measures in strategic offensive forces.

In 2004 the Bush administration began talks with eastern European states to explore the potential use of their territory for deployment of U.S. GMD interceptors and a sophisticated midcourse X-band radar. By the end of his administration, Bush had secured agreements with the Czech Republic for hosting the radar and Poland for hosting the missile interceptors, but the agreements remain to be ratified by the host governments. Meanwhile, on the U.S. side, the pendulum again seems to be swinging away from the urgent priority assigned to strategic missile defense by the Bush administration. President Barack Obama said in his April 5, 2009, Prague speech that he would only go forward with a missile defense system in Europe that was “cost effective and proven.” His revised request for the Missile Defense Agency in the fiscal year 2010 budget was $7.8 billion, a $1.2 billion funding cut in missile defense.[8]

Conclusion

In this tenth anniversary year of the National Missile Defense Act, it is worth noting that the North Korean ICBM seen as imminent when the act was passed has still not been successfully flight-tested. Deployment is down the road, “probably another three to five years minimum,” according to Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. [9] Helms worried during the 1999 debate over the act that “Iran may very well be able to deploy an ICBM before America has a missile defense to counter it, even if the United States breaks ground on construction tomorrow morning.”[10] In fact, neither Iran nor any of the other emerging ballistic missile states the Rumsfeld Commission said could have ICBMs by 2003 has them today.

The sponsors of the National Missile Defense Act were correct in predicting that the pursuit of strategic missile defenses outside the ABM Treaty would not necessarily forestall additional reductions in the number of Russian strategic missiles given the state of Russia’s economy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That pursuit did, however, derail START II, the next step of negotiated reductions in U.S. and Russian strategic forces. In order to satisfy the requirements of START II, Moscow would have had to deploy only single-warhead ICBMs, leading to a force structure with greater crisis stability and possibly with fewer overall warheads than it currently has. U.S. strategic missile defense deployments also provided additional incentives for the modernization of Chinese strategic forces that so troubled Helms at the time the act was debated. Using formulas familiar to U.S. and Russian strategic planners countering strategic defenses in the past, the Chinese have increased the mobility and number of their deterrent forces while improving the survivability of their re-entry vehicles.

Actual threat history aside, the National Missile Defense Act became an important argument in the continuing policy debate over the direction and pace of the strategic missile defense program. After 1999, whenever skeptics of missile defense raised programmatic issues, the act was cited as proof that an overwhelming and bipartisan majority in Congress had already established a policy of rapid deployment, relegating other issues to a subordinate position. The act prodded the executive branch to move forward with little consideration of the full repercussions. Following the superficial logic of the act, the United States discarded the ABM Treaty even though most of the U.S. missile defense activities that have taken place between then and now could have been accommodated under the broad conceptual framework of the treaty. Moreover, the United States rushed to deploy defenses against the rogue-state ICBM missile threat before that threat materialized and before U.S. defensive systems had been adequately tested. These actions cost the United States dearly in terms of treasure spent and opportunities lost to reduce the threat from its potential adversaries with the most lethal capabilities, against which U.S. strategic forces are still principally directed.

Greg Thielmann is a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association, where he directs the Realistic Threat Assessments and Responses Project. He previously served as a senior professional staffer on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for 25 years.

ENDNOTES

1. “Senate Backs Missile Defense System,” CNN.com, March 17, 1999, www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/17/missile.defense/.

2. Congressional Record, March 15, 1999, p. S2632.

3. Republican Contract with America, http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/CONTRACT.html.

4. Greg Thielmann, “Rumsfeld Reprise? The Missile Report That Foretold the Iraq Intelligence Controversy,” Arms Control Today, July/August 2003, p. 3.

5. Ibid.

6. Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, “White House Fact Sheet on National Missile Defense,” September 1, 2000.

7. Paul Lewis, “U.S. Ties Arms Deal to a Soviet Radar,” New York Times, September 1, 1988, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/01/world/us-ties-arms-deal-to-a-soviet-radar.html.

8.”David Morgan, “Pentagon Seeks $1.2 Billion Cut for Missile Defense,” Reuters, May 7, 2009, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE5465CJ20090507.

9. Gen. James Cartwright, Testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, June 16, 2009.

10. Congressional Record, March 15, 1999, p. S2632.

Source: http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2009_07-08/lookingback

Defense authorization bill resurrects missile defense field at Fort Greely

Post Date June 28, 2009
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Category Military Appropriations, Earmarks, The Military in Hawai'i (All Islands)

Looks like Senator Begich (D-AK), who defeated the disgraced Stevens, is following in his predecessor’s footsteps, wrangling military pork to his state when the administration is trying to cut back the missile defense program.  The article also mentions Sen. Inouye’s influence.  Inouye’s support of missile defense led to the wasteful and dangerously provocative deployment of the missile defense system, despite the fact that it doesn’t actually work.   Nevermind that small detail, we are told, the improvements will keep Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrup Grumman and other defense contractors feeding at the trough for decades.  Indeed, this is the same kind of pork barrel legislation that brought a storm of corruption to the University of Hawai’i and the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kaua’i.

Bill resurrects missile defense field at Fort Greely

DEFENSE SPENDING: Senate approves bill that would reverse administration’s plans.

By RICHARD MAUER
rmauer@adn.com

Published: June 27th, 2009 02:57 PM
Last Modified: June 27th, 2009 11:29 PM

Plans by the Defense Department to abandon construction of a third field of 14 missile silos at Fort Greely would be reversed under a bill approved last week by the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to U.S. Sen. Mark Begich.

The bill is the first sign that Alaska’s elected officials have been able to alter at least a part of the administration’s efforts to scale back some missile defense programs while boosting others.

Putting the partially built Missile Field 2 in mothballs was one piece of the Obama administration’s efforts to redirect more than $1 billion in missile defense spending from plans left over from the Bush administration.

Fort Greely, near Delta Junction, is home of most of the Ground Based Interceptor missiles that could be launched, with uncertain success, against a ballistic warhead streaking toward the United States from North Korea or Iran.

The 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, the mammoth annual military programs bill, will direct the administration to finish the first half of the new missile field, according to Lindsay Young, Begich’s military legislative assistant. In return for completing seven of the 14 proposed silos in Missile Field 2, the bill would authorize shutting down the existing six silos of the original missile field there, Young said.

Begich, a Democrat, and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, had been urging the administration to make fully operational all 40 silos originally planned for Fort Greely.

Problems like mold and water leaks are now showing up in Missile Field 1 because of its hasty construction in 2004, Young said. While that field is operational, it will grow increasingly expensive to maintain, she said.

A newer field, designated Missile Field 3 and containing 20 operational silos, is in better shape, she said. Four silos are also located at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The Senate Armed Services Committee, of which Begich is a member, completed a closed-door markup of the defense bill Thursday. It won’t be publicly filed until Congress returns from the Fourth of July recess.

But with missile defense a hot subject now — North Korea is threatening another test of its long-range Taepodong 2 missile, perhaps over the July 4 weekend — Begich issued a statement Friday containing information about the bill. He also authorized his aide to talk about its effects in Alaska and particularly on Fort Greely.

“The agreement we reached will ensure that Alaska continues to serve as America’s front lines of defense against rogue nations,” Begich said. “This will allow the (Defense) Department to build a more modernized and sophisticated capability than currently exists there today.”

Young said the $680 billion defense bill doesn’t suggest how much money the Missile Defense Agency would need for the new silos, but Begich will likely propose $82 million when the bill comes before the full Senate. The money can’t be spent until it’s appropriated in a separate bill, but Alaska has some muscle in the Senate Appropriations Committee: Murkowski is a member and its chairman, Sen. Dan Inouye, D-Hawaii, is a longtime Alaska friend and a missile-defense proponent.

The defense bill also ratifies the administration’s proposal to complete the 44-interceptor fleet even if there won’t be silos for all of them, Young said. The Missile Defense Agency wants a full complement of missiles so it can continue to test the system and to replace older interceptors.

According to Ralph Scott, the spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency in Alaska, 16 missiles are currently in silos at Fort Greely and are ready to be launched. Seven more have been returned to the Lower 48 for maintenance or upgrades. One has been pulled as a backup for future tests. And “several” — presumably two, based on publicly disclosed inventories — have exhibited problems and have been removed for “unscheduled maintenance.”

Four other interceptors are based at Vandenberg.

Young said the defense bill proposes a rigorous missile defense test program. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has long been a critic of the deployment of the Fort Greely system before it was adequately tested. As a result, Levin has said, missiles have had to undergo expensive refurbishing as problems were discovered, and it still hasn’t undergone real-world tests.

Young said Begich joined with Levin and other members of the committee to urge the Missile Defense Agency to run at least two tests a year and to give a full report on its long-range testing and deployment plans.

There have only been three tests of operational missiles, the first in September 2006, the most recent in December 2008. In each one, the interceptor hit its target, a dummy warhead launched from Kodiak. But the attacking missiles lacked the sophistication a real attacker might display, such as assaulting at night or using decoys.

North Korea’s Taepodong 2 missile is theoretically capable of striking Alaska or Hawaii, though its tests have all been flops. Top U.S. defense and intelligence officials say there is little urgency in completing Fort Greely now because North Korea is at least three years away from a successful launch.

But with the possibility of a North Korean test in the direction of Hawaii on July 4, defenses on the island have been beefed up, primarily with detection equipment and interceptors designed to knock down warheads in their last minutes of flight.

The Alaska-based missiles are known as mid-course interceptors because they’re designed to crash into warheads above the atmosphere in the mid-range of their flight. They use three stages of solid-fueled rockets to reach altitude.

If launched from Greely, the spent first stage would likely fall over land in Alaska, though trajectories are designed to keep them away from populated areas, spokesman Scott said. The spent boosters weigh about 3,200 pounds, roughly the weight of a Chevy Impala.

Aside from the improvements at Fort Greely, the defense bill approved by the committee also grants a 3.4 percent pay increase to military service members, up from the 2.9 percent recommended by the administration. It also expands health care to service members and their dependents, according to Begich.

Source: http://www.adn.com/news/military/story/845822.html

"Hawai'i is a pawn in a chess game"

Post Date June 23, 2009
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Category The Military in Hawai'i (All Islands)

June 23, 2009

Hawaiians Shrug Off Missile Threat

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

HONOLULU – Hawaii has long lived with the threat of wipeout, whether by tsunami, volcano or foreign invader.

Now the Obama administration says North Korea could launch a ballistic missile in the state’s direction – possibly around the Fourth of July, according to the Japanese news media – prompting the United States military to strengthen defenses here.

Antimissile interceptors are in place, the Defense Department said, and Hawaiians watched the other day as a giant, towering radar commonly known as the golf ball set out to sea from the base where it is normally moored.

But if lifelong residents like Gerald Aikau are on any state of alert, it would be the one telling him that his octopus, caught in the waters here with a spear and his bare hands, is overcooked.

“What are you going to do?” Mr. Aikau, 34, a commercial painter, said as he proudly grilled his catch at a beachfront park. “You are going to go sometime, whether it’s on a wave, or a missile, or your buddy knocking you down and you hit your head.”

Vulnerability, and a certain fatalism about it, are part of the fabric of life in this archipelago, 2,500 miles from the mainland and, as many residents seem to have memorized since the Obama administration raised the alarm last week, 4,500 miles from North Korea.

People took comfort in the heavy, year-round military presence provided by several bases here but also wondered if it made the state more of a target.

In an interview Monday on CBS’s “Early Show,” President Obama, who was born and spent much of his youth here, said, “Our military is fully prepared for any contingencies” regarding North Korea.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced Thursday that the military had deployed ground-based interceptors and sea-based radar to help deflect any long-range missile from North Korea. Calls to Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, were referred to Maj. Gen. Robert G. F. Lee, the director of the State Department of Defense, who suggested that the threat was more saber-rattling from North Korea. He questioned whether its missiles had the technological capacity to go very far, but just the same, he said, the state was ready for hostile action.

“Our military assets should be able to protect us,” said General Lee, whose duties include civil defense. “We, like all states, are prepared for natural disasters down to terrorism.”

He said the state’s disaster sirens were working, and residents, as always, were advised to keep a three-day supply of food, water, medicine and other essentials in stock.

“Out here by ourselves, we have to be a little more prepared, just in case help does not get here quickly from the mainland,” he said.

Of course, the specter of Pearl Harbor still figures prominently here, as well as the cat-and-mouse of cold war maneuverings off the coast, including the mysterious loss of a Soviet ballistic-missile submarine 750 miles northwest of Oahu in 1968.

“We are first strike from Asia,” said State Representative Joseph M. Souki, 76, a Democrat, who still remembers the wave of anxiety that swept his neighborhood on Maui as Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. “It’s not like we are in Iowa.”

Still, he said, “more than likely nothing is going to happen.”

“Hawaii is like a pawn in a chess game,” he added.

The state can ill afford anything approximating a calamity.

The recession has been blamed for a nearly 11 percent drop in the number of visitors here last year compared with the year before. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in May reached 7.4 percent, up from 6.9 percent in April and the highest in three decades.

The tourists that did come carried on as usual, taking surfing lessons, strolling Waikiki Beach and reflecting at the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, where a park includes a display of old Polaris submarine-launched missiles.

“Send one of these babies up,” Clifton Wannaker, 45, an accountant from South Dakota, said when told of the North Korean threat. He knocked on the missile’s skin for good measure.

Standing at the shoreline in view of the memorial, Steve Brecheen, 54, a pharmacist from Oklahoma City, seemed a bit more unnerved.

“North Korea seems the most unstable government as far as a threat to the U.S. is concerned,” Mr. Brecheen said.

He motioned to the memorial, which sits over the remains of the battleship sunk by the Japanese in the Pearl Harbor attack.

“In 1941, some of these people didn’t think the Japanese were an extreme threat, and they got their minds changed pretty quickly,” he said.

But among Hawaiians, skepticism is mixed with annoyance and even anger that their state, hypothetically at least, could be a testing ground.

“I think they would be stupid to do that test,” said Misioka Tauiliili, 39, a delivery truck driver, taking in the placid scene at a city beach near Waikiki. “The U.S. should go out there and shake them.”

By that he meant the United States perhaps firing its own rockets in North Korea’s direction, “to test them.”

Mark N. Brown, 49, an artist painting nearby, was less bellicose. He said he took comfort in the steps the military had taken and remained concerned that an act of aggression by North Korea would lead to war.

But, with a wry smile, he added that a neighboring island, far less populated but a bit closer to North Korea, would probably take the hit.

“It would hit Kauai,” he said. “We are on Oahu.”

Mele Connor, 55, a lifelong Hawaiian shopping with visitors from the mainland at a clothing store in Waikiki, laughed off the threat.

“After North Korea, it will be somebody else,” she said. “They know Obama is from here, so they want something. Everybody wants something from our pretty little islands.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/us/23hawaii.html?pagewanted=print

U.S. fortifies Hawaii to meet threat from N. Korea? What about threat from U.S.?

Post Date June 20, 2009
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Category The Military in Hawai'i (All Islands)

JUNE 19, 2009

U.S. Fortifies Hawaii to Meet Threat From Korea

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN

WASHINGTON — The U.S. is moving ground-to-air missile defenses to Hawaii as tensions escalate between Washington and Pyongyang over North Korea’s recent moves to restart its nuclear-weapon program and resume test-firing long-range missiles.

xband-radar-ap-photo-p1-aq358_gates__g_20090618182629
In anticipation of a North Korean missile test, the U.S. is positioning off Hawaii a floating radar, like this one shown in a 2005 Boeing photo.
Associated Press
Mr. Gates told reporters that the U.S. is positioning a sophisticated floating radar array in the ocean around Hawaii to track an incoming missile. The U.S. is also deploying missile-defense weapons to Hawaii that would theoretically be capable of shooting down a North Korean missile, should such an order be given, he said.

“We do have some concerns if they were to launch a missile…in the direction of Hawaii,” Mr. Gates said. “We are in a good position, should it become necessary, to protect American territory.”

In another sign of America’s mounting concern about North Korea, a senior defense official said the U.S. is tracking a North Korean vessel, the Kang Nam, suspected of carrying weapons banned by a recent United Nations resolution.

The U.S. moves come as strains intensify between the U.S. and North Korea. Earlier this year, Pyongyang test-fired a missile that flew over Japan before crashing into the Pacific Ocean. On May 25, Pyongyang detonated a nuclear device at a test site near its border with China, drawing rare rebukes from Moscow and Beijing.

President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak met earlier this week at the White House and agreed to launch a new effort to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal. In a joint statement, the Obama administration also agreed to maintain the longstanding U.S. vow to defend South Korea from a North Korean attack.

Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper reported Thursday that North Korea would launch a long-range Taepodong-2 missile at Hawaii from the Dongchang-ni site on the country’s northwestern coast on or close to July 4. In his comments to reporters, Mr. Gates didn’t directly address the Japanese report or say whether the U.S. had evidence that North Korea was preparing for a launch.

Some U.S. officials have said satellite imagery shows activity at a North Korea testing facility that has been used in the past to launch long-range missiles. On a trip to Manila earlier this month, Mr. Gates said the U.S. had “seen some signs” that North Korea was preparing to launch a long-range missile. But he cautioned, that “at this point, its not clear what they’re going to do.”

The stakes would be high for both North Korea and the U.S. in the event of a missile launch.

North Korea would be attempting to demonstrate that it was capable of striking the U.S., but many U.S. defense officials are highly skeptical that North Korea has a missile capable of reaching Hawaii, which is more than 4,500 miles away from North Korea.

North Korean long-range missiles have failed three previous tests in the past 11 years. In the most notable North Korean misfire, a Taepodong-2 missile that Pyongyang launched on July 4, 2006, imploded less than 35 seconds after taking off.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, would have to choose whether to attempt to shoot down the missile, a technically complicated procedure with no guarantee of success. An American failure would embarrass Washington, embolden Pyongyang and potentially encourage Asian allies like Japan to take stronger measures of their own against North Korea.

Maj. Gen. Robert G.F. Lee, who as Hawaii’s adjutant general directs the state’s Army and Air National Guard, said the military “certainly has enough assets to protect the state of Hawaii.”

Last week, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution expanding sanctions and inspections against North Korea in response to the nuclear test. The resolution bars North Korea from exporting a wide range of weaponry, and “calls upon” all U.N. states to search North Korean vessels, with their consent, for nuclear-related material and other contraband.

The senior defense official said the U.S. would seek to have the North Korean ship suspected of carrying banned arms searched before it reaches its final destination, believed to be Singapore. The ship left North Korea on Wednesday. The official said U.S. or allied personnel wouldn’t board the ship by force and would search the ship only with the permission of its crew.

North Korea has said it would view any efforts at interdiction as an act of war, and some U.S. officials worry North Korean vessels would use force to prevent U.S., Japanese or South Korean personnel from searching their ships, potentially sparking an armed confrontation.

More broadly, the Obama administration has recently begun re-evaluating the entire premise of American diplomatic outreach to North Korea. Successive U.S. administrations dating back to the Clinton White House have struck deals with North Korea that traded financial assistance, food and power generators for North Korean promises to shut down its nuclear program. Each time, North Korea eventually backed out of the deals.

Pyongyang’s refusal to honor its agreements has persuaded the Obama administration that North Korea was unlikely to ever voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons. That has led the administration to reject the idea of offering North Korea additional aid in exchange for new North Korean vows to abide by agreements it has repeatedly abrogated.

Many Obama administration officials are also skeptical of reopening the so-called six-party talks with North Korea, which also involve China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

Instead, the administration is trying to persuade China to take a stronger line with North Korea, a putative ally that is deeply dependent on China. U.S. officials hope China will help search and potentially board suspicious North Korean vessels, but China has been noncommittal.

Asked if China had finally accepted U.S. assessments of the threat posed by North Korea, Mr. Gates demurred. “I think that remains to be seen,” he said.
-Stu Woo contributed to this article.

Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124535285705228571-lMyQjAxMDI5NDE1OTMxNTkyWj.html

More hysteria about North Korea

Post Date June 19, 2009
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Category The Military in Hawai'i (All Islands)

This is just a commercial for Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and the rest of the military contractors at the trough…

Line of defense

Pacific forces are ready to react should North Korea fire a missile

By Gregg K. Kakesako

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jun 19, 2009

Hawaii’s Pacific Command, closely monitoring events in North Korea, says it is “in good position” to respond if called upon by the Pentagon.

The U.S. military is moving more missile defense systems to Hawaii due to new fears North Korea may try to fire missiles toward our islands around the Fourth of July.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered the deployment yesterday of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles to Hawaii and deployed the Sea-Based X-Band Radar to provide support from an undisclosed location off the Hawaiian Island chain.

Gates’ comments came in response to a report out of Japan that said North Korea might fire its most advanced ballistic missile toward Hawaii about July 4. North Korea test-fired a long-range missile on July 4 three years ago, but it failed seconds after liftoff and fell into the ocean.

The impact of the report on Hawaii tourism is expected to be slight, said state tourism liaison Marsha Wienert. “With such a large military presence in Hawaii, we don’t believe that it’s a concern,” Wienert said.

Asian visitors, especially those that live near North Korea, are unlikely to view travel to Hawaii as risky, said Dave Erdman, president and chief executive of PacRim Marketing Group.

THAAD is one of two ground-based Army mobile missile interceptor systems, according to the Missile Defense Agency. The other is the Patriot Advanced Capability 3. THAAD has been tested several times at Kauai’s Barking Sands Pacific Missile Range Facility.

Lt. Cmdr. Chuck Bell, Pacific Command spokesman, said that the THAAD mobile missile interceptor system has been at Barking Sands since 2007. Eight missile launchers are mounted on a flatbed truck. The interceptor missiles have no warheads and rely on “hit to kill” technology where kinetic energy destroys the incoming missile during the final or terminal phase of flight.

On June 25, a battery of THAAD soldiers from Fort Bliss, Texas, fired an interceptor missile from a mobile THAAD launcher at Barking Sands, knocking out a drone missile inside the Earth’s atmosphere. The soldiers were members of the 6th Air Defense Artillery Brigade’s 1st THAAD Battery.

The Pentagon’s ballistic missile defense system also includes the Navy’s sea-based Aegis surveillance warships, 16 of which are based in the Pacific Fleet.

A key component of the missile defense system is the $900 million high-rise Sea-Based X-Band Radar, housed in a white dome that has become a familiar visitor to the islands since 2006.

The 28-story radar, mounted on a modified semisubmersible oil-drilling platform, left Ford Island on Wednesday for sea trials, according to a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency in Virginia. The SBX floating radar platform, which is five stories taller than the Ala Moana Building, was in Hawaii for several weeks undergoing maintenance at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard.

Bell said the floating radar platform, which is said to be able to detect an object the size of a baseball a continent away, will be available to be placed into service if needed. “It is ready and available,” Bell added.

However, he declined to say where the radar platform is headed and how long it will be at sea.

The Missile Defense Agency in the past has said information gathered by the floating radar is transmitted to ground-based missile interceptor bases at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

In September 2007, a target missile was successfully tracked by the floating radar platform and the Pearl Harbor-based destroyer USS Russell. The target missile was launched from Kodiak, Alaska. The ground-based interceptor missile was fired from Vandenberg, near Los Angeles, 17 minutes after the target missile was launched. During that missile intercept, the SBX radar was located in the northern Pacific between Alaska and California.

Six of the Navy’s 18 cruisers and destroyers equipped with the Aegis long-range surveillance, tracking and missile intercept capabilities are home-ported at Pearl Harbor. They are the cruisers USS Lake Erie and Port Royal and destroyers USS Russell, O’Kane, Paul Hamilton and Hopper.

Star-Bulletin reporter Allison Schaefers and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Missile defense

Terminal High Altitude Area Defense

Purpose: Shoot down short- and medium-range ballistic missiles

Platform: Truck with eight launchers

Capability: Intercept and destroy missiles inside or outside the atmosphere

Technology: Uses “hit to kill” tactic where kinetic energy destroys the incoming warhead

Sea-based X-band Radar

It is a combination of an advanced X-band radar and an oceangoing submersible platform:

Cost: $900 million

Craft: Twin-hulled and self-propelled

Crew: 75 to 80

Length: 398 feet

Width: 240 feet

Height: 282 feet

Sea-Based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense

Capability: Intercept short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles

Testing: 18 intercepts in 22 tests

Deployment: 18 warships — 16 in the Pacific Fleet

Interceptors: Standard Missile-3, Standard Missile-2

Key component: AN/SPY-1, a multi-function phased-array radar

Help! North Koreans want to nuke Hawai'i, and they eat babies!

Post Date June 19, 2009
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Category International politics & law, The Military in Hawai'i (All Islands)

Well, not really. But if you took to heart the headlines and the fear mongering press about North Korea’s announced missile launch, you might have concluded that North Koreans were  just monsters bent on obliterating Hawai’i.   The recent announcement by Sec. of Defense Gates that missile defense systems would be deployed to Hawai’i to protect against a North Korean missile launch is more propaganda to demonize and isolate North Korea while inciting fear to generate support for the extremely expensive and ineffective missile defense programs.

Hawaii anti-missile directive a safeguard

By Associated Press

POSTED: 11:07 a.m. HST, Jun 19, 2009

WASHINGTON >> A new anti-missile system ordered for Hawaii is partly a strategy to deter North Korea from test-firing a long-range missile across the Pacific and partly a precaution against the unpredictable regime, military officials said today.

The United States has no indication that North Korean missile technology has improved markedly since past failed launches, and military and other assessments suggest the communist nation probably could not hit the westernmost U.S. state if it tried, officials said.

The North’s Taepodong-2 could travel that far in theory, if it works as designed. But three test launches have either failed or do not demonstrate anything close to that range.

Nonetheless, past failure should not be considered a predictor, one military official said, and the seaborne radar and land-based interceptors were added this week as a prudent backstop.

Military and other U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity t o discuss the U.S. response a day after Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he is concerned about the potential for a North Korean missile launch toward Hawaii.

A senior defense official would not discuss details of range estimates for North Koreans missiles, but said the same principle of caution for Hawaii would apply if the North appeared to threaten U.S. territories in the Pacific.

Japanese media have reported the North Koreans appear to be preparing for a long-range test near July 4. The Daily Yomiuri reported that Japan’s Defense Ministry believes a long-range missile was delivered to the new Dongchang-ni launch site on North Korea’s west coast on May 30.

U.S. analysts say that after the last test fizzled, the North wants to prove its missile capability both as proof of military strength and as a sales tool for its lucrative overseas weapons deals.

A U.S. counterproliferation official said the U.S. government is not currently seeing preparations for launch of a long-range Taepodong-2 missile, sometimes short-handed as a TD-2. The official said a launch sometime in the future could not be ruled out but it is too soon to be seeing ground preparations for a launch around July 4.

“I don’t see any evidence that Hawaii is in more danger now than before the last TD-2 launch,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation.

It took North Korea about 12 days to complete ground preparations before the April launch of a Taepodong-2, roughly equivalent to a U.S. Titan missile.

If North Korea does launch a long-range missile from its new Dongchang-ni site on the west coast, it could be placed on a southeast trajectory toward Hawaii.

However, the only three long-range missiles fired by North Korea so far have fallen well short of the 4,500 miles required to reach the chain of islands.

The North Korea missile launched in Apr il traveled just under 2,000 miles before falling into the Pacific. That was about double the distance traveled by a similar missile launched in 1998. North Korea also launched a missile in 2006 but it fizzled shortly after take off.

WASHINGTON >> A new anti-missile system ordered for Hawaii is partly a strategy to deter North Korea from test-firing a long-range missile across the Pacific and partly a precaution against the unpredictable regime, military officials said today.

The United States has no indication that North Korean missile technology has improved markedly since past failed launches, and military and other assessments suggest the communist nation probably could not hit the westernmost U.S. state if it tried, officials said.

The North’s Taepodong-2 could travel that far in theory, if it works as designed. But three test launches have either failed or do not demonstrate anything close to that range.

Nonetheless, past failure should not be considered a predictor, one military official said, and the seaborne radar and land-based interceptors were added this week as a prudent backstop.

Military and other U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity t o discuss the U.S. response a day after Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he is concerned about the potential for a North Korean missile launch toward Hawaii.

A senior defense official would not discuss details of range estimates for North Koreans missiles, but said the same principle of caution for Hawaii would apply if the North appeared to threaten U.S. territories in the Pacific.

Japanese media have reported the North Koreans appear to be preparing for a long-range test near July 4. The Daily Yomiuri reported that Japan’s Defense Ministry believes a long-range missile was delivered to the new Dongchang-ni launch site on North Korea’s west coast on May 30.

U.S. analysts say that after the last test fizzled, the North wants to prove its missile capability both as proof of military strength and as a sales tool for its lucrative overseas weapons deals.

A U.S. counterproliferation official said the U.S. government is not currently seeing preparations for launch of a long-range Taepodong-2 missile, sometimes short-handed as a TD-2. The official said a launch sometime in the future could not be ruled out but it is too soon to be seeing ground preparations for a launch around July 4.

“I don’t see any evidence that Hawaii is in more danger now than before the last TD-2 launch,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation.

It took North Korea about 12 days to complete ground preparations before the April launch of a Taepodong-2, roughly equivalent to a U.S. Titan missile.

If North Korea does launch a long-range missile from its new Dongchang-ni site on the west coast, it could be placed on a southeast trajectory toward Hawaii.

However, the only three long-range missiles fired by North Korea so far have fallen well short of the 4,500 miles required to reach the chain of islands.

The North Korea missile launched in Apr il traveled just under 2,000 miles before falling into the Pacific. That was about double the distance traveled by a similar missile launched in 1998. North Korea also launched a missile in 2006 but it fizzled shortly after take off.

Source: http://www.starbulletin.com/news/breaking/48630442.html

Report from Seoul conference of the Global Network

Post Date April 23, 2009
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Category Global Justice and Peace Movements

Here is a report by Bruce Gagnon from the 17th annual Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space conference in Seoul, South Korea.  Katy Rose from Kaua’i was the representative from DMZ-Hawai’i / Aloha ‘Aina and AFSC Hawai’i.  It sounded like an amazing conference.  The highlight for Katy was the visit Mugeon-ri, a village resisting eviction to make way for the expansion of a military base.  We look forward to Katy’s reports in the near future.

seoul91

Coordinator Trip Report – South Korea

This trip report covers the period of April 13-20 as I traveled to Seoul, South Korea to attend the Global Network’s (GN) 17th annual space organizing conference. Traveling with me was Mary Beth Sullivan and Tom Sturtevant, a leader from Maine Veterans for Peace.

A Korean Organizing Committee, comprised of 10 groups, organized the GN conference and they collectively did a wonderful job of hosting the large international delegation that came from about 25 countries. In addition to our GN international delegation the conference was also supported and attended by many international activists from the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).

Our first day was a field trip by bus to visit the DMZ along the border between North and South Korea. Our timing for the conference could not have been better as we arrived on the heels of the intense controversy surrounding North Korea’s launch of a rocket into space. The U.S. and Japan used the launch to justify their own deployments of “missile defense” systems in the region, which are ultimately aimed both at China and North Korea. The militarist rhetoric was flying as evidenced by one right-wing commentator from the U.S. who said, “The lesson of North Korea’s rogue launch is that America needs more missile defense not less. Militarily and technologically, our adversaries can catch up with us only if we chose to stand still.”

Our trip to the DMZ was led by well-known photographer Si-Woo Lee who spent two months in a South Korean jail accused of “taking pictures” of the DMZ. He fasted for two months in protest of his arrest. His case generated a great deal of national and international support, and he was ultimately acquitted. At the DMZ, we had a group photo taken with North Korea just behind us, and at one point I watched a bird fly back and forth between the two countries. It reminded me that humans build walls between each other while nature knows nothing about boundaries and lines of separation. The next day the group color photo was published at the top of page one in a leading national newspaper.

One of out of four families in South Korea has relatives in the North. Thus the drive for peaceful reunification of the country is deep in the hearts of the people. Unfortunately, the U.S. is expanding its military presence in South Korea and trying to drive the two nations further apart, while 60% of South Koreans want American bases closed and the troops to leave the country.

Our April 17 space organizing conference, attended by about 100 people, was without a doubt the most professionally organized event we’ve had during the GN’s 17 years of operation. The meeting facilities at the Seoul Women’s Plaza were first rate, we had simultaneous translation from Korean into English, and the food and sleeping accommodations at this same location were excellent.

Wooksik Cheong from the Korean Peace Network, a key conference organizer, in his speech called U.S. missile defense deployments [Aegis destroyers, PAC-3, and THAAD] in South Korea and Japan the “iron curtain of the 21st century.”

Global Network board member Atsushi Fujioka from Japan, a professor of Economics in Kyoto, told the assembled “Not to trust missile defense. It is like trusting a key of the henhouse to a wolf.” Atsushi, who helped bring 20 fellow Japanese to the conference reported that, “In Japan the U.S. Navy and Marine bases are shifting to Okinawa, the closest point to China. I think the major target of missile defense will not be North Korea, but China and Russia.”

Similarly, Koji Sugihara, representing the Japanese peace group called No to Nukes & Missile Defense Campaign, recently wrote “Under Article 9 of the Constitution, which renounces war and prohibits the maintenance of armed forces, Japan is not supposed to have a war industry….Japan’s cooperation with the U.S. in missile defense development is unusually intense. In fact, Japan’s islands have been turned into a huge missile defense-testing site. North Korea’s missile tests in July 2006, and its nuclear test in October 2006, served as a pretext for the acceleration of the U.S.-Japan missile defense plan.”

Physical evidence of this Asian-Pacific acceleration of U.S. missile defense deployments were witnessed by conference participants when we took a second field trip on April 18 to Pyeongtaek where the U.S. military is dramatically expanding an existing base. There we saw multiple launch vehicles for the PAC-3 – the latest version of the Patriot missile system that is now being deployed in South Korea and throughout Japan.

We were given a tour of the surrounding area, much of it farm land, that is being gobbled up by the U.S. base that will grow from 8,999 to more than 23,000 American soldiers. The U.S. is moving troops away from the DMZ onto this giant Air Force and Army “hub” base where they will be out-of-range of North Korean weapons fire. Farmers and local activists from the Pyeongtaek Peace Center have been vigorously protesting against this expansion for several years but the U.S. will not be denied.

Earlier in the day on April 18 we held the annual membership business meeting of the Global Network where we had a stimulating strategy discussion and approved new board members from South Korea, Japan, Poland, U.S., and the Czech Republic. It was also agreed to pursue the proposal by board member J. Narayana Rao to hold our 2010 GN space conference in Nagpur, India. The U.S. is now dragging India into the space weapons race in an already unstable part of the world.

Our annual Peace in Space Award, for extraordinary work on the issue, was presented during the conference to Sung-Hee Choi (South Korea), Atsushi Fujioka (Japan), and J. Narayana Rao (India). Sung-Hee had been the primary force behind our decision to meet in South Korea this year and showed her dedication to the organization by being a tireless organizer before and all during the event.

Our third and final field trip was on April 19 as we headed north to Mugeon-ri where the U.S. is expanding another military area – this time for tank and Bradley fighting vehicle training. Since 1980 local rice farmers have been organizing to resist the taking of their beautiful lands for warfare preparation. Mugeon-ri is just a short distance from the North Korean border. The U.S. has already taken a huge area and now wants 30 square kilometers of additional land that will displace hundreds more farmers.

In 2002 two 15-year-old local schoolgirls, walking to a friend’s birthday party, were run over and killed on a narrow street in the town by U.S. tanks. To this day no one has been held responsible for their killing.

Because Mugeon-ri is near to the North Korean border, and has similar terrain, the military training that goes on there is viewed by the Korean peace movement as a preparation for an attack by the U.S. So not only do the farmers face losing their lands but they also face the sad reality that their lands are being used to train to kill their relatives in nearby North Korea.

The roads around Mugeon-ri are lined with yellow banners proclaiming their message – “We want to live in our hometown.” The people have lived on this land for more than 400 years.

That evening, after feeding us a fine traditional Korean meal, we joined the struggling farmers for a candlelight vigil under a make-shift shelter where they have been holding nightly vigil for the past year. During that time we shared heartfelt words and sang to each other. The people pleaded with us to share their story when we returned home to our various countries. They urged that people go to Republic of Korea and U.S. embassies and consulates around the world in protest of the taking of their farm lands.

The reality of deadly U.S. militarism has a human face. It is seen today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in places like Pyeongtaek and Mugeon-ri in South Korea.

It is clear that we must all become more focused on preventing war in the Asian-Pacific as the U.S. now doubles its military presence in that part of the world. At a time when we should be dealing with the coming harsh reality of climate change we have a new president and Congress, controlled by the Democrats, who are planning to increase military spending in 2010.

Closing the conference on April 17 Francis Daehoon Lee, from the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy in Seoul, said, “We are not just dealing with bad policies. Security politics is not about the safety of the people but is about the monopolizing of information, decision making, finance, and capitalist economy. Security politics is a closed circuit. In order to stop it we have to cut something inside.”

These are important words. One must ask the question: what would we cut? How do we get out from under the corporate dominated security system that feeds on fear and endless war? I would suggest the first thing we must cut is our allegiance to and faith and trust in the global war machine. Then we must stop giving them our precious tax monies. We must stop being slaves to the global war economy.

We thank our wonderful hosts in South Korea for their kind and warm hospitality. We thank them for their generous and courageous spirits and we vow to them that the Global Network will do all it can to work with groups in the region to roll back U.S. militarism before another deadly war begins.

Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org
globalnet@mindspring.com
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Blog)

Statement of International Conference against the Asia Pacific Missile Defense and for the End of the Arms Race

Post Date April 20, 2009
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Category Global Justice and Peace Movements, Militarization of Society

Statement of International Conference against the Asia Pacific Missile Defense and for the End of the Arms Race

Seoul, South Korea

April 17, 2009

Here we have come together, facing a new decade in the 21st century where the history of war and strife is being repeated. We are witnessing many countries and regions, having learned nothing from the conflict and hostility-ridden Cold War era, still tenaciously pursue arms buildup. Especially the nation with military hegemony and its many followers, rather than seeking to understand the roots of conflict and finding peaceful resolution, search for new threat and enemy as a means to reinforce their military capabilities, and at times even exaggerate the threat in order to justify their arms buildup.

This is shown by the expansion of military networks and countless military bases around the globe and by the space militarization activities. However, we want to make it clear that this militaristic approach is a worn-out strategy obstructing prevention and peaceful settlement of conflict and a losing hand triggering a vicious cycle of global arms race.

We are especially observant of how the US missile defense system triggers not only space militarization but also unnecessary arms race and political and diplomatic strain between nations. Proposed missile defense installations in Czech Republic and Poland are generating massive public dissent in the region and infuriating Russia to the point of a “new Cold War.”

Planned US missile defense system in the Asia Pacific poses a burden to regional attempts to alleviate Cold War tensions, thereby further provoking confrontation between sea powers and land powers. In the Asia Pacific where the US leads the Asia Pacific missile defense efforts, supported strongly by Japan and Australia, Korea is next in line with its cutting-edge weaponry and a new set of roles. As a result, China, Russia, and North Korea all have expressed enormous opposition, fueling an arms race in the Asia Pacific. Such an arms race also risks undermining the war-renouncing Article 9 of Japan’s peace constitution, a key foundation for peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region.

The controversy over North Korea’s long-range rocket launch that has become a key factor in the current tension pervading the Korean Peninsula leaves room for discussion. North Korea’s rocket launch should be seen as a byproduct of both a divided Korean peninsula and the arms race in the Asia Pacific. However, this aspect has been ignored. Instead there is exaggerated interpretation of threat and stirring up of security fears, mobilizing the justification for developing a missile defense system in the region. North Korea’s long-range rocket launch, on the contrary, reveals the utmost need and urgency for placing confidence building and normalization of relations among nations, as well as cooperative mutual disarmament, on top of our agenda.

Above all, we are aware that the logic behind “absolute security” through the missile defense system does not differ from other aggressive military thinking. Furthermore, the missile defense system is a risky plan which has yet to prove its effectiveness. As a project requiring astronomical costs, the system is based on the logic of unlimited military spending expansion, solely for the benefit of the military-industrial complex. This, we must not forget, sacrifices many resources to be invested for improving the welfare and the quality of life of the many people suffering from economic, public welfare, and environmental crisis.

Many nations and people throughout the world today are suffering from the economic crisis and the climate change. These crises must be taken as opportunities for each country to stop the wasteful arms race and turn its attention to the daily living of its citizens who are taking heavy blows from the economic crisis and the climate change. The development of unnecessary and offensive weapons, including the missile defense system, must be halted first. National security that neglects the safety of the people and community is meaningless.

We, therefore, resolve to act jointly against the missile defense system and the arms race which impede the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula, East Asia, and the international community. We will inform people about the falsehood of the missile defense and the damage caused by the consequent arms race and military conflict. As a member of the international community, we pledge to develop a new peace mechanism starting from where we stand, in our local communities, to bring about peaceful coexistence and conflict resolution in place of military confrontation. We declare we will do our duty and part to turn the coming decade into a period of transformation for overcoming the worn-out military paradigm.

17 April 2009

The Korea Organizing Committee
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
GPPAC Northeast Asia

Turnabout: Pentagon looks to cut Future Combat Systems, Missile Defense budgets

Post Date April 04, 2009
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Category Military Appropriations, Earmarks

Gates Planning Major Changes In Programs, Defense Budget

Proposal Said to Move Focus To Counterinsurgency Efforts

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 4, 2009; A01

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is expected to announce on Monday the restructuring of several dozen major defense programs as part of the Obama administration’s bid to shift military spending from preparations for large-scale war against traditional rivals to the counterinsurgency programs that Gates and others consider likely to dominate U.S. conflicts in coming decades.

Gates’s aides say his plan would boost spending for some programs and take large whacks at others, including some with powerful constituencies on Capitol Hill and among influential contractors, making his announcement more of an opening bid than a decisive end to weeks of sometimes acrimonious internal Pentagon debate.

Among the programs expected to be heavily cut is the Army’s Future Combat Systems, a network of vehicles linked by high-tech communications that has been plagued by technical troubles and delays; with a price tag exceeding $150 billion, it is now one of the most costly military efforts.

Gates also is considering cutting a new $20 billion communications satellite program and reducing the number of aircraft carriers from 11 to 10, and he plans to eliminate elements of the decades-old missile defense effort that are over budget or considered ineffective, according to industry and administration sources.

They cautioned that not all the details have been decided.

“He is strategically reshaping the budget,” said Gates’s spokesman, Geoff Morrell, who declined to provide details. The secretary is “subjecting every program to harsh scrutiny, especially those which have been over budget and/or behind schedule. . . . The end result, we hope, is a budget that more accurately reflects the strategic priorities of the president.”

Gates has signaled for months that the Pentagon’s resources are misallocated, but his embrace of the budget increase proposed by President Obama represents an abrupt turnaround. Late in the Bush administration, he blessed a military-service-driven budget proposal for 2010 packed with $60 billion in spending beyond what the Pentagon had earlier recommended. Much of the added funds would have accelerated the production of existing ships, airplanes, Army vehicles and missile defenses.

The proposal became known among some analysts as Gordon England’s “fairy dust,” after the deputy defense secretary who helped put it together. The name suggested the magical touch that would be needed to win a proposed 14 percent budget increase amid a global recession.

Even though the Office of Management and Budget last April ordered all Cabinet agencies to avoid presenting plans that might box in the next administration, Gates got permission to present the proposal to Obama’s transition team.

The new president agreed instead to a 4 percent increase in defense spending, which put Gates, whom Obama decided to keep on as defense secretary, in the position of having to reorient military priorities within a smaller spending limit than he had initially supported.

The turnabout has not been easy, according to a senior official involved in the process, because the military services “became vested stakeholders” in last year’s ambitious proposal. Gates has become so consumed by the internal discussions that, after briefing Obama Monday on his thinking, he skipped the celebration of NATO’s 60th anniversary in Europe this weekend.

Several experts said the Pentagon budget plan last year was an effort to force the hand of a new administration and stands as a textbook example of military service pressures that have driven the growth in recent years of the defense budget, which has more than doubled since 2001. The 2009 total of $513 billion — not including special Iraq and Afghanistan war costs — exceeds the combined military budgets of the next 25 highest-spending nations.

The timing and size of the much higher proposal that Gates initially presented to the transition team “are provocative,” said David J. Berteau, a former Pentagon official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

A current Pentagon official who is disenchanted with past allocations of resources said, “It shines a light on the internals of the department: a culture that lives to grow its resources and make that the whole measure of merit.”

That official and several others spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the budget.

The effort to win political support for a much higher spending target began in March 2008 with the first of several appeals to outgoing President George W. Bush by the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen. In meetings with Bush then and in July, he argued that military spending, as a rule, should be at least 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

Mullen’s position grew out of his conviction that the United States spent the right amount on defense in the decades before 1994, when President Bill Clinton let that proportion drop. Mullen sees the 4 percent target as “not an absolute number, but a good minimum starting point,” said his spokesman, Navy Capt. John Kirby.

A group headed by Deputy Secretary England and Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approved details of the service-driven budget plan. Nearly half was meant to pay for what the military calls “persistent presence” overseas, including at least 10 combat brigades with large recurring costs. “Our forces are likely to be deployed around the world for the foreseeable future,” said a Pentagon official who supported this approach.

In addition to urging a budget of $584 billion for next year, the group also charted hundreds of billions of dollars of additional spending over five years. The “fairy dust” notion reflected the fact that even as they pushed the plan, many officials realized that its chances of approval were slim.

While Gates did not lead the effort, he insisted that the results be ready by Election Day — much earlier than was done for previous new administrations — and then explicitly obtained White House permission to brief Obama’s transition team on the results. Morrell said Gates was not attempting “to squeeze or pressure the new administration”; rather, the information was presented as “a conversational piece.”

The team rejected the size of the proposed increase and the recommendation to set aside billions now for permanent stationing of many combat brigades overseas. Gordon Adams, a national security expert who was on Obama’s transition team, said the message from the Pentagon was not subtle. “I saw this very much as an effort to jam the system,” he said. “It didn’t matter who ended up in the White House. If they decided to go below that number, it would be like they were cutting defense.”

Obama addressed the Pentagon budget March 24, saying: “We’ve already identified potentially $40 billion in savings just by some of the procurement reforms. . . . And we are going to continue to find savings in a way that allows us to put the resources where they’re needed, but to make sure that we’re not simply fattening defense contractors.”

Since his reappointment, Gates — who has demonstrated an uncanny ability to work with different presidents — has explained that he supports more belt-tightening because the economy is now much worse. “Everybody must recognize, and frankly all the service chiefs do, the economic climate we find ourselves in,” Morrell said in February. “These guys don’t live, you know, in a cave somewhere or in a vacuum.”

Staff writer Greg Jaffe contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/03/AR2009040304080_pf.html

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