Mark Kirk gets his feelings hurt, says a spectacularly dumb thing

Russian ambassador to NATO/kooky unreformed nationalist Dmitri Rogozin, who has a habit of saying (and tweeting) somewhat nutty stuff, took a whole bunch of shots at unilateralist Russophobe dinosaurs/U.S. Senators John Kyl and Mark Kirk in his country's press after meeting with the two this week. The story is related by Josh Rogin at The Cable. Here's the money line from Rogozin:

"The meeting [with Kirk and Kyl] is very useful because it shows that the alternative to Barack Obama is a collapse of all the programs of cooperation with Russia. Today, I had the impression that I was transported in a time machine back several decades, and in front of me sat two monsters of the Cold War, who looked at me not through pupils, but targeting sights."

The guy is always good for a few lulz, but Kirk was less amused. He gave Rogin a few snippy quotes that aren't worth recounting, but also dropped what I imagine he thinks is the hammer:

"In a potential missile combat scenario between NATO and Iran, Russia is thoroughly irrelevant. So Russian concerns about what we do and not do about the Iranian threat are interesting but largely irrelevant."

Wow. Russia is thoroughly irrelevant, and its concerns are largely irrelevant. (See if you can't sort that one out for yourself.)

I know it's probably a bit much to expect sophisticated understanding of strategic deterrence theory from a guy who "misremembers" his own military record, but could we at least hope for some common sense?

"In a potential missile combat scenario between NATO and Iran," precisely nobody with nuclear weapons and an early-warning/launch detection system is "irrelevant." Especially not a state with a massive arsenal of nuclear warheads and the delivery systems to get them to American soil, one with a cultivated distrust of American intentions vis-a-vis missile defense.

"In a potential missile combat scenario" in which the sky fills up with ballistic missiles, every damned guy on the planet with a red button is going to go reaching for it until he has a pretty solid sense that none of those missiles is going to land on him. That solid sense is probably going to take just a little while longer to materialize when you've got a bunch of senior "statesmen" running their yaps and posturing in ways that seem almost certainly intended to impede information-sharing and common understanding, to keep the other guy off balance, wondering if -- in spite of official policy statements to the contrary -- our missile defenses really are targeting his weapons.

Russia's "irrelevant" to a scenario that could kindle nuclear war, huh, Senator? More irrelevant than a guy who has to shit-talk his own government to America's biggest foreign creditors just to get on the news? More irrelevant than a guy who spent much of his time in the House impotently railing against the government's irresponsible spending habits while serving as a member of the body that writes America's checks? More irrelevant than a guy whose idea of inspired leadership and aggressive oversight is pathetic obstructionism and delaying tactics in a condominium of ignorance with the U.S. Senate's most trifling and manifestly inconsequential clowns?

Well hell, Rogozin, I might take "irrelevant" as a compliment coming from that guy.

Missile defense: SECDEF told us this was coming five months ago!

This morning I woke to a "breaking news alert" from the Washington Post, headlined as follows: "Czech Premier: Obama Scrapping Missile Shield" (here's the updated story). Within half an hour of getting to the office, I'd had three people ask me "so what do you think of Obama cancelling the missile defense program?" There's probably a rant to be had here about sensationalist media and misleading headlines, but I'll leave that alone.

So as you probably know by now, the administration has decided to abandon plans to continue the Bush-era European-based missile defense system that would have become operational around 2017 or 2018. Ballistic missile defense is not being abandoned, though, despite what the headlines might've suggested. Here's what the President had to say, and here's the transcript of Secretary Gates and General Cartwright's Pentagon press conference on the subject.

The new program will be based around the Army's forthcoming Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile and Navy SM-3s, building off the sea service's success with Aegis-equipped ships performing the theater missile defense (TMD) mission. Secretary Gates insists that our international partners are still being encouraged to participate in this system, and that the changes from the old system are intended in large part to protect European allies against short- and medium-range Iranian missiles (which are much more likely threat than an imagined Iranian ICMB capability). Over time the system will include land-based missiles and radars (unidirectional X-band), also, and the Czechs and Poles will be encouraged to host those sites (well, the missiles, at least -- the radars are likely to be based in the Caucasus).

I don't really want to get bogged down on technical details and all that nonsense, because if you care about that stuff you can find it yourself. The point of this is to bring to your attention the fact that THIS STUFF IS NOT NEW. Everyone's running around like there was no sign of this announcement, as if it's a dramatic change that came without any warning. But remember Secretary Gates' April 6th news briefing, the one where he came out and announced some key points in his budget recommendation? You know, when we all focused on the cancellation of FCS ground vehicles, the presidential helicopter, the 187 cap on F-22, "a fundamental overhaul of our approach to procurement, acquisition, and contracting," and the "rare chance to match virtue to necessity, to critically and ruthlessly separate appetites from real requirements, those things that are desirable in a perfect world from those things that are truly needed in light of the threats America faces and the missions we are likely to undertake in the years ahead; an opportunity to truly reform the way we do business"?

Yeah, me too. But here's the bits I didn't remember until I reread it this afternoon (this first part coming in listing of "new or additional investments and shifts in several key areas," on the lines immediately below the one about F-22):

Fourth, to better protect our forces and those of our allies in theater from ballistic missile attack, we will add $700 million to field more of our most capable theater missile defense systems; specifically, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, THAAD, and the Standard Missile 3 programs.

Fifth, we will add $200 million to fund the conversion of six additional Aegis ships to provide ballistic-missile-defense capabilities.

And then later, when discussing acquisition and contracting reform, and more specifically program cancellations:

[...] in the area of missile defense, we will restructure the program to focus on the rogue state and theater missile threat. We will not increase the number of current ground-based interceptors in Alaska, as had been planned, but we will continue to robustly fund continued research and development to improve the capability we already have to defend against long-range rogue missile threats, a threat North Korea's missile launch this past weekend reminds us is real.

There it is in black and white: the Defense Department has been planning for six months to shift to a more theater-oriented BMD network, rather than a continental defense. How did so many people (including me) miss it?

Oh yeah, and something else that I forgot to mention the first time through -- here's GEN Cartwright on where this all came from: "Most of this work has emanated from the congressionally directed Ballistic Missile Defense Review that is a part of our QDR analysis." In light of the fact that Secretary Gates' April speech came before most of the QDR work was done, that seems dubious. Congress does mandate, of course, that DoD perform a BMD review as part of the QDR. Congress mandates the entire QDR, but it would be silly to suggest that the strategic realignment that's going on Department-wide was something that "emanated from the QDR;" it's more accurate to say that the QDR is shaking out along the lines of the changing conventional wisdom about these issues.