As the international community focuses on climate change as the great challenge of our era, it is ignoring another looming problem — the global crisis in land use. With agricultural practices already causing massive ecological impact, the world must now find new ways to feed its burgeoning population and launch a "Greener" Revolution.

As the world warms, how different societies fare in dealing with rising seas and changing weather patterns will have as much to do with political, social, and economic factors as with a changing climate.

Prime Minister Mahoman Singh has called them "the single biggest security challenge ever faced by our country". Fourteen Indian states are struggling to battle the insurgency waged by their 20,000 fighters. Over the last three years some 2,600 people have died by their hands.

These are the Naxalites, the source of India's scariest security challenge.

Naxalism. It is a topic few in the West are aware of. The international media lends little attention to India's Maoist insurgents, choosing instead to focus its attention on the more dramatic attacks of groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba. It is hard to blame them: writing about Islamic terrorism has become too easy. There is no need to perform substantive reporting or analysis on the cause of events; pundits simply need to boil down Muslim gunmen and bombers to the level of caricature and the news has been written. Naxalism, in contrast, does not lend itself to such easy stereotypes. Not surprisingly, most media outlets have been conspicuously quiet about the movement.

This silence is not sustainable. Indeed, last month an attack staged by the Naxalites was so spectacular that even the New York Times could not ignore it. On the eighth of October 200 Naxalites ambushed a large contingent of Maharashtri police commandos, killing 17 of them in a gunfight staged in broad daylight. As the Indian government begins a major nation-wide paramilitary offensive against the Naxalites, the ambush on the eighth shall surely be but the first of many battles. I suspect that as this conflict enlarges in scope and drags through time the word "Naxalite" shall lose its alien sound. The day will come when Beltway analysts will pronounce the fate of Chhattisgarh in the same steady voice as they prophesize of Xinjiang; soon the pundit class will talk as freely of the Naxalites as they do the P.K.K.

However, this is all in the future -- the post below is for those of you who want a head start.

The term "Naxalite" is derived from Naxalbari, the name of the West-Bengal town where India's Maoist movement began. During the late 1960s the Communist Party of India was sharply divided on how to bring about India's communist revolution. The party broke into two camps: those in favor of a attaining power by election, whereby the party would have the influence to provide momentum for a great urban uprising, and those in favor of utilizing the country's vast peasant class to bring about a government-toppling armed insurrection. In 1967 Charu Mazumdar, a member of this second camp, grew tired with the Communist Party's dithering and debates and set out to begin the revolution himself. The Naxalbari revolts were the result of his efforts.

Mazumdar called his new movement the "All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries", but most Indians  knew the group by their place of origin, and began to call all Maoist-style guerrillas "Naxalites."  The movement was supported by two very different groups: leftist college students (mostly from Kolkotta), and poor delits and peasants who had just barely survived India's worst famine in a century. A steady flow of aid from China further strengthened the movement, allowing it to spread beyond the Naxalbari region itself, taking root in Andrah Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand. 

From this point on events turned against the Naxalites. Chinese aid was cut off in the early 70s when the Chinese Comunist Party ended their long standing policy of funding Asian Maoist groups. A brutal counterterror campaign was began by Bengal's police, and it decimated the ranks of the Naxilite faithful. To top things off, Mazumdar himself was captured by state police, and he stayed in their custody until his death in 1972.

Absent a study source of funding, a base of operations, and a leader, the Naxalite movement fell apart. What had been one organization splintered into 30; divided and prone to factional infighting, Mazumdar's mass movement was forced to the precipice of Indian society. Only in rural areas far removed from government power did Naxalism retain a vestige of popular support.

This state of affairs was the status quo well into the 1990s. By this time Naxalism had been reduced to irrelevancy, prompting national and state governments to focus on more pressing problems. Given breathing space the Naxalites were able to to rebound and then expand. By 2004 the two largest Naxalite factions joined together to form a new organization, the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist). The creation of CPI-Maoist was a watershed event, ending the era of interfactional  violence among the Naxalbari and paving the way for a Naxalite resurgence.


Naxalism thrives in the regions of India devoid of state control and subject to endemic poverty. Naxalites are often welcomed with open arms in such circumstances;  those leading lives of toil in India's isolated jungle villages eagerly grasp opportunities to escape the system of oppression and impoverishment that dominates rural India. Once welcomed in, CPI-Maoists construct a shadow-state, complete with taxes, regulations, and courts, all ostensibly for the betterment of disenfranchised delit peasants and tribal groups.

Yet for these oppressed groups seeking recourse by way of Naxalite is an inevitable Faustian bargain. As it becomes clear that a Naxal shadow state has supplanted the authority of state government, police forces are sent to drive the Naxalites out. In the violence that follows it is the delits and tribals who suffer most.

That Naxalite groups find continued support in rural areas despite the ills that accompany their presence marks another aspect of the regions Naxalites favor: the absence of an educated citizenry. The states with a significant Naxal presence all have literacy rates below the national average; the gap in literacy found between Bihar (54%) and Kerala (91% ) mirrors the extant of Naxalite control in the two states.

The area of India where support for the Naxalism runs highest has been called "the red corridor", a long stretch of territory reaching from southern tip of Andhra Pradesh to the eastern regions of West Bengal. The intensity of Naxalite insurgency varies across this stretch; in most places Naxalites rule unopposed only in remote pockets and patches of the region's countryside.

In the past opposition from the rural population of Eastern India has kept Naxalism from growing past these remote pockets. The response to CPI-Maoists's expansion was violent; many rural landowners would not tolerate a Naxalite shadow state and founded anti-Maoist militias in an attempt at armed resistance. The pattern was set by the Salwa Judum, a grass roots resistance movement in Chhattisgarh that was co-opted by the state government soon after its founding. Eager to find a quick fix to the Naxalite problem, the government of Chhattisgarh paid members of the Salwa Judum as "Special Police Officers" and ordered them to clear the jungle of Naxalite influence. The battles that followed this command resulted in thousands of internal refugees across the state. The heavy handed tactics of the Salwa Judum and their government patrons alienated many of the state's rural poor, and early this year the last vestiges of the movement disappeared.

The same cannot be said for the Naxalites. Every bit of lost legitimacy for the Indian government was a gain for the Naxalite's shadow state; by the end of this summer the Naxalites had enough popular authority to  set up road blocks on national highways and frisk employees of the Chhattisgarh government.

The surge in Naxalite power is not limited to Chhattisgarh. Multiple states, some outside the red corridor, have seen a troubling growth in Naxalite related violence. Part of the reason the October 8th ambush made headlines is because it did not occur in Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, or Orissa, the four states traditionally subject to Naxal violence.

The scope this violence has ensured action on the part of India's central government. Last month the Central Reserve Police Force reported that it had lost six times the number of men to Naxalites this year than it has to all other groups in all other combat zones, including Kashmir.  This month the CRPF announced that it was launching a nation-wide operation to counter the Naxal threat. Titled "Operation Green Hunt", the campaign is expected to last two years.

We will see. As this blog has noted in the past, counterinsurgency campaigns  do not operate on a small time scale. This is but the beginning of another long war.



OTHER RESOURCES

Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist)
South Asian Terrorism Portal. 2008.

An invaluable resource for those concerned with Indian security issues, the South Asian Terrorism Portalt has in depth intelligence reports on most of India's terrorist organizations. This particular report provides a summary of CPI-Maoist's history, ideology, structure, and current activities. This is easily the best summary of CPI-Maoist that I have seen online.

Communist Party of India (Maoist): Documents, Statements, and Interviews of Leaders
Banned Thought. Last updated November 13 2009.

A collection of CPI-Moist documents and propaganda materials. As the title of the site indicates, all of these materials have been censored in India.

Charu Mazumdar: Reference Archive.
Marxists.org. 2003.

A collection of Charu Mazumdar's manifestos.

India's Forgotten War

An exhaustive aggregator and analyzer on all news items related to Naxalism.

Revolution in South Asia

A comprehensive blog that covers Maoist movements across South and Southeastern Asia... from the perspective of the Maoists.

Naxalite Rage

Shlok Vaidya's blog on India's security environment, guerrilla warfare, and "the far-flung implications" of a globally connected Naxalite insurgency.

ARTICLES OF INTEREST

Pragati.
Volume 31. October 2009.

Pragati released a special edition devoted to Naxalism and how the Indian government how to best over come it. 

While the entire volume is top-notch, I recommend Raj Cherubal's "Hope is the Antidote to Naxalism", Ankur Kumar's "Money and Friends", and Sushant K Singh & Nitin Pai's "Winning the Counterinsurgency Endgame" for those pressed for time.


A Spectre Haunting India
The Economist. 17 August 2006.

A good introduction to the conditions in which Naxalism arises.

Naxal Movement in India: A Profile.
Kujur, Rajat. Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. 2008.

An in depth history of the Naxal movement, with an emphasis on the movement post-Mazumdar.

On War Footing.
Datta, Sakait. Outlook India. 13 October 2009.

A short but detailed overview of what Operation Green Hunt will look like.

Operation Green Hunt launched. But where are the Naxals?
The Times of India. 7 November 2009.

The Times points out the prime difficulty in waging war against the Naxalites.

India: Draconian Response to Naxalite Violence.
Human Rights Watch. 6 April 2006.

Being Neutral is our Biggest Crime: Government, Vigilante, and Naxalite Abuses in India's Chhattisgarh State
Human Rights Watch. 14 June 2008.

Dangerous Duty: Children and the Chhattisgarh Conflict
Human Rights Watch. 5 September 2008.

Human Rights Watch has recorded a plethora of human rights violations surrounding this conflict. I do not expect things to get better any time soon.

I have long held that the greatest challenge posed by industrial carbon emissions is not anthropogenic global warming but ocean acidification.* Geoengineering and adaptation schemes offer policy makers answers to the problem posed by climate change; these options do diddly squat to reduce ocean acidification. If slowing acidification is indeed a noble goal, then emissions mitigation in the only possible option.

It is an option the world shall always forsake. The short term costs of issuing serious restrictions on carbon emissions are simply too high for any sane actor in international politics. Bar a major technological shift in energy production, I suspect this statement to hold true throughout the course of my lifetime.

The world should thus prepare for a future of acidic oceans. To this end I offer two recommendations, one for researchers and the other for activists.

Research concerning maritime resiliency is desperately needed. As ocean acidification has only been on scientist's radar for the last few years, the literature on this subject is sparse. This needs to change. Environments are not static; maritime environments have experienced tumultuous disruptions in the past, and it is unreasonable to think that the carbon emitted over the last two centuries has not had an effect on ocean ecology. Investigating the rate at which ocean species are able to adapt to acidification would be particularly valuable. Like the mosquito born resistant to DDT, there will be species that adapt to - and even thrive in - the acidic oceans of the future. The question is how long the process of adaptation will take.

This is assuming that the adaptation is allowed to take place. Acidification will put coastal ecosystems on the brink. Overexploitation shall push these ecosystems over the precipice. It is my advise for activists focus their efforts on the second of these threats. Overexploitation** is the single greatest threat to reef environments. It is also preventable. If activists wish efforts to preserve ref and coastal ecosystems,they must focus with laser like intensity on limiting direct human disruptions. Jumping into the carbon wars will simply sink activists in a policy morass inhabited by ideologues and deep pockets. While idealists may try to break the system, attempting to strip mankind of its largest and most efficient source of power is - and always will be - a fool's errand. There is only so much political capital to go around; investing all of it in carbon emissions schemes sounds the death knell of our reefs.


*For those unfamiliar with the topic I recommend this short 5 minute 'micromentary.' The gist is this: the ocean absorbs approximately one fourth of all carbon emissions; by 2050 this should cause the pH of level of the ocean to drop from 8.0 to 7.8. While it does not sound like much of a difference, it is worth keeping in mind that a similar shift in the pH level of the human bloodstream would likely result in death.This change in pH level will have a similar affect on marine populations, with delicate reef ecosystems being hurt the most.

**I am including anthropogenic habitation destruction under this label.


OTHER RESOURCES

Reefs at Risk: A Map-Based Indicator of Threats to the World's Coral Reefs
Dirk Bryant, et. al. World Resources Institute. 1999.

An honest and intelligent introduction to the human impact on coral reef ecosystems. This report is also notable for recognizing that the number of reefs that have been monitored is not large enough to support any universal claims on the state of reef ecosystems. (An updated version of the report is still in the works. See more about that here.)

WARSAW — The United States will deploy ground-to-air Patriot missiles in Poland in 2010 and is discussing its plans for a new anti-missile system with Warsaw, a US defence official said Friday.

"We presented some detailed information on how the rotations of our Patriot batteries would be conducted over the next few years under the August 2008 agreement" with Poland, US Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Alexander Vershbow said in Warsaw.

"We look forward to the commencement of those rotations next year," Vershbow said following talks with Poland's Deputy Defence Minister Stanislaw Komorowski Friday ahead of next week's visit by Vice President Joe Biden.

The Patriot missile battery "will be armed and possess elements permitting it to be integrated with the Polish defence system," Komorowski added.

Instead of 10 interceptors whose functionality and reliability are questionable, [the Russians] are now going to face an unknown number of ground-to-air Patriot missiles whose accuracy and reliability are known.

This video was first brought to my attention by a post over at War News Updates. The editor of that site linked favorably to the summary of the video over at Danger Room, where Noah Shactman states, "It’s best televised look I’ve seen yet at how these marines live and fight. And it really should be required viewing for everyone trying to figure out America’s next steps in Afghanistan."

I could not agree any more. Americans don't think much about Afghanistan, and when they do it is as a parlor discussion, alien to our own expeirences. This video changes that.

The full episode of Frontline will not be available until the 13th. However, the first 24 minutes can be seen in the video embedded above. Frontline has also published interviews with Andrew Exum, John Nagl, and Stanley McChrystal that are worth looking over.

The security blogosphere is buzzing with talk of the Obama administration's decision to scrap planned missile defense architecture in Eastern Europe. The majority of commentators have been content to play the role of cheerleader, offering no substantial analysis of the reasoning behind this decision or the diplomatic consequences of its implementation. As I read the debates raging across the internet concerning this decision it quickly became apparent that an outline of the "whys" of this decision is sorely needed. This post is an attempt to provide such a resource.

In early 2007 negotiations between Washington, Warsaw, and Prague over a proposed Eastern European "missile shield" began in earnest. The stated purpose of the missile shield was to defend the United States and Western Europe from long range Iranian missile barrages. (If the longest ranged missile in the the Iranian arsenal, the Sajjil-2, were launched from missile installations in Semnan it would reach no farther than the Balkans.) The proposed missile defense system was to consist of one large radar station in the Czech Republic and 10 missile interceptor sites in Poland.

Support for the missile shield came from three sources: contractors and congressmen with a vested interest in constructing expensive defense architecture, White House officials looking to place pressure on Russia, and the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic, eager to gain long-term security commitments from the United States.

While military-financial types are enthusiastic about most of the Pentagon's new acquisitions, several aspects of the "missile shield" made it an unusually sound investment. The missile interceptors planned for Poland are best classified as "weapons yet to be developed"; ground based interceptors (GBIs) capable of destroying ICBMs simply do not yet exist. The allure for contractors is easy to see: twenty years and several billion dollars after Ronald Regan authorized the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System was fully operational. Few investments can provide steady returns on a timeline as long as this. Corporations able to get in on the development of a successful GBI-based missile shield would stay in the black for at least a decade's time.

Corporate support for the missile shield was strengthened by the political nature of missile architecture. International politics, not military utility, became the main source of momentum for the project. The greater the number of statesmen and diplomats with a personal stake in the completion the missile shield, the more secure of an investment missile architecture became.

Perhaps the statesmen who put the most political capital in the missile shield are the officials of the Bush Administration. Administration officials were quick to see the value of large interceptor bases in Russia's backyard. In 2007, when American diplomats were desperately trying to find ways to cajole the Russians into playing rough with Iran, and again in late 2008, during the conflict over South Ossetia, the missile shield was used as leverage over the Russians. The missile shield was the ideal tool to show that American power remained strong in Russia's backyard.

The governments of Poland and the Czech Republic supported the missile shield for a different reason: the construction of radar arrays and interceptor silos was a tangible sign of U.S. commitment to their defense. Building an interceptor silo is not an easy task. Interceptor silos in Fort Greely, Alaska, are built to withstand a nuclear barrage, constructed deep under layers of earth and concrete, protected by hundreds of soldiers and serviced by dozens of engineers. Given the amount of money and time it takes to build such an installation, interceptor and radar sites would not be a short term investment. The governments of Poland and the Czech Republic, who have always been worried that the United States might drop them when politically convenient to do so, were quick to jump on any chance to guarantee Washington's favor and gain more influence within NATO.

Despite the enthusiastic support of the Prime Ministers of both Poland and the Czech Republic, negotiations bogged down soon after they began. The problem was threefold: Russian diplomats lobbied vigorously against the arrangement, angered by American entrenchment in the Russian near abroad, the majority of Eastern Europeans did not favor the project, fearing that America was taking advantage of her smaller allies, and Polish diplomats were insistent that the United States foot the entire bill for the missile shield, and requested a major Polish-U.S. military aid program to boot.

The negotiations stayed in stasis until the summer of 2008, when Russian belligerence finally broke the diplomatic impasse. In July Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg signed an agreement to install radar stations in the Czech Republic; an agreement to station ballistic missile interceptors in Poland was signed by Rice and the Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski in August.

Both agreements were non-binding (not having been ratified by the U.S. Senate or the Polish and Czech Parliaments), but included both a general timeline for the installation of the missile shield, detailed how (and by whom) it would be operated, and provided the military aid and training the Poles had been pushing so hard for. Significantly, the agreements were long term contracts whose obligations would not be fully met until after the signers were out of office.


Problems with the project surfaced soon after the agreements were signed. Bush administration officials had miscalculated; far from moderating the Kremlin, the formal adoption of the missile shield only hardened the Moscow's rhetoric. The agreements struck the raw nerve of Russia's paranoia, and the missile shield became the excuse the Kremlin used to dodge anything proposed in Washington. From the minute the agreements were signed the Russians made it clear that they were not going to back down, and they stuck to this position well through the ascendancy of the new administration in Washington.*

For his part, President Obama signaled early on that he was open to canceling or altering the planned missile architecture. Obama questioned the track record of GBI interceptors several times on the campaign trail, noting their poor performance in Pentagon tests. In 2005, 2006, and 2007 the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation stated in its annual report, "Ground-based Midcourse Defense flight testing to date will not support a high level of confidence in its limited capabilities…additional test data under realistic test conditions is necessary to validate models and simulations and to increase confidence in the ability of these models and simulations to accurately predict system capability."In 2008 and 2009 the system lacked a level of improvement high enough to even warrant testing.

While the sheer uselessness of current GBI systems was enough to prompt skepticism of the missile shield, the Obama administration's slow defamation of the program was aimed towards political ends. Attempts to pressure Russia into toeing the United State's line had failed; a new tactic was needed. The administration set out to "reset" U.S.-Russian relations


Central to this new policy of reconciliation was the growing recognition that the United States faced several threats both more pressing and potent than a Russian resurgence. The old horror of a nuclear Iran reared its head as the Iranians began testing the Sajjil-2; Russian responses to developments in Iran were muted, as always. Worse still were Russian attempts to take advantage of NATO's miserable state in Afghanistan. The greatest challenge faced by the Obama administration's foreign policy team was putting this region back together; Russian enmity would make this a challenge near insurmountable.

The central problem was one of logistics. A secure supply chain is the first rule of expeditionary campaigns; NATO's supply chain was nothing of the sort. Landlocked, underdeveloped, difficult to traverse, and containing few safe points of entry, Afghanistan is the nightmare of every man in the Quartermaster Corps. Deteriorating regional dynamics made this situation even worse. Ammunition, supplies, and fuel could not enter Afghanistan through the West as long as the Americans remained opposed to Iranian nuclear ambitions, while new found tensions between Islamabad and Washington, as well as the collapse of state control in many parts of Western Pakistan, closed the East to large scale logistics operations. The only way to sustain NATO's forces was to build a supply chain in the North, straight through Russia and her satellite states.

Just how tenuous of a situation this was become apparent on February 3rd, when Kurmanbek Bakiyev, President of Kyrgyzstan, announced hat the United States must close down Manas Air Base. Bakiyev made this announcement from a podium in Moscow, a day after securing deals writing off Kyrgyzstan's $180 million debt to Moscow, and the promise of a $2 billion discounted loan and $150 million in financial aid. It was a great coup for the Russians; Manas was a central supply hub for NATO forces, and its loss would strangle the war effort. A few days after President Bakiyev's announcement, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Russia had negotiated a deal with the United States to allow the transportation of non-weapon supplies to Afghanistan. In the course of one week Russian leverage over the United States was magnified to heights unseen since the Afghan war began.

The priorities of the Obama administration were quite clear from this point on. A rapprochement with Russia was of cardinal importance; the process of "resetting" relations between the two countries was about to begin. Old animosities were cleared away bit by bit. Grand overtures were made, state department officials fell upon Moscow in droves, and allies in Eastern Europe were humiliated in an effort to make amends with the Kremlin.

>The efforts of the Obama administration were not wasted. On September 5th, the Pentagon announced that they had reached a deal with the Kremlin. The previous agreement allowing for the transportation of non-lethal supplies to Afghanistan was being supplanted by an agreement that allowed NATO forces to use Russian airspace to transport troops and arms. Six days later President Bakiyev stated in his 9/11 memorial address that Kyrgyzstan would allow the United States to continue using Manas Air Force base for logistical operations in the fight against terror.

On the 17th the cause of Russia's change of heart became apparent. The White House released a press report on American missile architecture in Europe. The press report, followed by an address by the President himself, made clear that land-based missile architecture was to be no more. To continue her Bactrian expedition, America gave up her missile shield.



The consequences of this decision will not be fully understood anytime soon – the stone can rarely see where the ripples of its splash will land. However, a few repercussions have made themselves manifest, while a few more can be guessed with a fair measure of certainty.

The first of these repercussions was the feeling of warmth restored to U.S.-Russian relations almost immediately after Obama's speech had been concluded; in one swoop the Obama administration had removed the largest obstacle to closer ties between Russia and the United States. Dmitry Rozogin, Russian Ambassador to NATO, used a rather vivid analogy to explain the rapprochement: "imagine there is a corpse in your flat and then the mortician comes and takes it away. This means we're getting rid of one of those niggling problems which prevented us from doing the real work"


The "real work" was not long in waiting. NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen delivered an address the day after Obama's announcement. In his speech Rasmussen reestablished the Russia-NATO Council (which had been defunct since the Russo-Georgian conflict of 2008) and called for" President Medvedev was quick to reciprocate, acknowledging for the first time that sanctions against Iran might be necessary.


Partially offsetting the improvement in U.S.-Russian relations is the loss of U.S. influence in Eastern Europe. For those in the Czech and Polish governments this change in policy was a betrayal. Both governments took a large risk when they signed non-binding security agreements with the United States; such agreements were virtual decelerations of hostility towards Russia and her designs for Europe. No Pole or Czech would have dared to adopt such a position were it not for the guarantees of U.S. statesmen that America would protect her allies in Eastern Europe. These guarantees sound quite hollow now. Friendless and scrambling for diplomatic cover, the Poles and Czechs are left wondering why they depended on the U.S. in the first place. While it is too early to say for sure, I suspect that in the future the Poles and Czechs will turn towards the EU, not the U.S., when they wish to blunt Russian animosity.


This reevaluation of the United States will not be restricted to Poland and the Czech Republic; the decision has sparked many an assessment of America' and her commitments to weaker powers across the globe. The simple fact that the United States reneged a promise cannot be ignored. Leaders from across the world will wonder "Am I next?" Drafting non-binding agreements and resolutions will be particularly hard; there are no guarantees that the next administration will not reverse the decisions made by the current negotiating team.


The last foreseeable long-term consequence of the administration's decision surround the missile shield itself. I have little doubt that twenty years and several billion dollars would have resulted in an able GBI system capable of destroying ICMBs. This option is no longer possible; as contractors flock to where the cash flows, GBI research will be abandoned permanently.


As I write, the cash flows to the sea. While the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System is more capable than any other interceptor system built today, it does not yet possess the capacity to consistently destroy ICBMs. More research and money will undoubtedly be needed to transform the Aegis system into a fully functioning missile shield. If this endeavor succeeds the implications are numerous. A seaborne missile shield will be much more flexible than a GBI system, capable of providing ICBM interception in any region of the world. This, combined with the relatively low cost of upgrading a seaborne missile shield, will also make it a more durable instrument of national power than any ground based system could hope to be. This longevity comes at a sharp price: a Ticonderoga class cruiser is more vulnerable to attack than a missile silo buried a hundred feet below the ground. If the United States wishes to move her missile architecture out to the sea then she shall have to find a way to secure ships in the Aegis system from disruption. Thus, out of necessity, the modernization** of the U.S. Navy shall be a top, if not the top, priority for Pentagon planners in coming years.

NOTES:


*President Medvedev ordered Iskander missiles to be deployed in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to "neutralize the anti ballistic missile system in Europe" the day after Obama was elected President of the United States. Some suspect that Iskander missiles can carry nuclear loads, but this capacity remains unproven. In response to Obama's decision to scrap the missile shield, Medvedev cancelled the deployment of missiles in the excalve.



**Of course, the U.S. Navy is a "modern" force. Yet despite being the most  technologically advanced maritime defense force in the world, I fear that the U.S. Navy relies too much on "wasting assets." This will need to change if seaborne missile architecture is to become a reality. For those interested in Naval modernization, I recommended reading New Wars, a tight blog that spills much ink on the subject.





Fact Sheet on U.S. Missile Defense Policy: A "Phased, Adaptive Approach" for Missile Defense in Europe 
White House Office of the Press Secretary. 17 September 2009.
The White House press release detailing U.S. changes in missile archetecture.

NATO and Russia: A New Beginning
Anders Rasmussen. NATO Newsroom. 18 September 2009.

The full text of NATO Secretary General Ander's Rasmussen address.

Missile Defence 101
"Steeljaw Scribe". Steeljaw Scribe. 22 April 2008.
A good introduction to the terminology and major players of missile defense.

Iran's Ballistic Missiles: An Overview
Stephen Hildreth. Congressional Research Service. 4 February 2009.

As the title suggests, Hildreth provides an overview of Iranian ballistic missile capacity. Significantly, this report was completed before the Sajjil-2 had been tested.

President Obama's Revamped European Missile Defense Offers Better Security
Robert G. Gard, John Issacs, et al. Center For Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.17 September 2009.

A short press release from the Arms Control Center on the technical benefits of an Aegis based system.

Fact Check: Technicals of AEGIS BMD.
"Galrahn". Information Dissemination. 23 September 2009.

 Aresenal Ships for Missile Defense;
Mike Burleson. New Wars. 30 September 2009.

Two posts by Navy-hands. Galhran provides a fact sheet and analysis for those "who want to be the smartest person in the room for AEGIS missile defense discussions." Over at New Wars, Burleson wonders if the current Ticonderoga cruisers are the best ships for the job, and provides some recommendations for the make up of an "arsenal ship" interceptor fleet.

CENTCOM Logistics Nightmare 
Sohbet Karhuz. Sohbet Karbuz. 8 February 2009.

Analysis: The Afghan War is Becoming a Logistics Nightmare
David Eshel. Defence Update. March 2009.


Two articles that paint a devastating picture of the logistics of the ISAF. Karhuz focuses on regional dynamics, while Eshel dwells mostly on the supply routes within Afghanistan itself. However, both agree on two facts: Russia has NATO in a stranglehold, and ISAF forces face a "logistics nightmare."


History Matters: Obama's Diplomatic Ineptitude.
"T. Greer". The Scholar's Stage. 17 September 2009.
A post written by myself that is highly critical of the way in which the Obama administration released the news of its decision. (Also see this post at Foreign Policy Watch.)

Missile Defense Shift Redirects Billions In Government Contracts
Roxana Tiron. The Hill. 19 September 2009.

A short piece on the companies and Congressmen that benefit from this decision and the companies and Congressmen who lose.



Readers are welcome to recommend other articles, publications, or blog posts of merit worth inclusion in the comments section.

ADDENDUM (4/10/09):

Welcome War News Update readers! For those of you who do not follow WNU, its editor wrote a short response to this post for the website. You can find that, and my reply to it, HERE.

Today the White House briefing room released a press report on American missile architecture in Europe. The portion of the report pertaining to this post reads as follows:

Throughout all four phases, the United States also will be testing and updating a range of approaches for improving our sensors for missile defense.  The new distributed interceptor and sensor architecture also does not require a single, large, fixed European radar that was to be located in the Czech Republic; this approach also uses different interceptor technology than the previous program, removing the need for a single field of 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland.  Therefore, the Secretary of Defense recommended that the United States no longer plan to move forward with that architecture.

The Czech Republic and Poland, as close, strategic and steadfast Allies of the United States, will be central to our continued consultations with NATO Allies on our defense against the growing ballistic missile threat.

I believe that this decision was wise on the part of the Obama administration. The proposed missile defense architecture put considerable strain on U.S.-Russian relations and, being too small to counter Russian barrages and unable to knock down Iranian middle-ranged missiles, would have had little utility in the event of a nuclear conflict. Its purpose was never greater than a show of solidarity between the United States and the peoples of Eastern Europe.

Such shows of solidarity are not worth their billion-dollar price tag.

Given the missile shield's relative uselessness, it makes sense to scrap it. But, it makes no sense at all to scrap the missile shield the way Obama administration has chosen to do so.

The date of Obama's announcement (and the writing of this post) is September 17th, 2009. 70 years to this very day, in the morning dawn of September 17th, 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland. The Seven Soviet field armies sent over the Polish border quickly overwhelmed the 20 Polish battalions guarding Poland's eastern front. The invasion removed Poland from the Second World War; Poles were to live 40 years under Moscow's rule before they were able to regain full autonomy.

On the 70th anniversary of the day  Russian troops began the subjugation of Poland, the President of the United States tells the Poles that they can no longer count on the United States to help protect them from Russian missile attacks.

This can be called nothing but diplomatic ineptitude. It would have been quite simple for Obama to announce this change in two weeks time. It would have been quite simple for Obama to announce this change in five days time.

Obama did not do this. With the timing of his actions he belittled an ally of America. This is not acceptable behavior for any President, much less one who has humiliated our Eastern European allies before.  Many have claimed that Obama's ascesion to the Presidency was a return of effective diplomacy. I have yet to see anything of the sort from our young leader.