Congress voted yesterday to extend essential provisions of the USA Patriot Act that were set to expire this Sunday. The 315-97 vote in favor of reauthorizing the three sun-setting provisions is a necessary step towards better protecting Americans from terrorism.

Once President Obama signs the bill into law he will extend the executive branch’s authority to employ effective and proven counterterrorism tools, which is especially important following recent events such as the Fort Hood shooting and attempted Christmas Day bombing.

The Heritage Foundation’s Dr. James Carafano and Alane Kochems write, “The Patriot Act provides means to facilitate information sharing, allows law-enforcement authorities employed to combat other crimes to take part in terrorism investigations, and establishes mechanisms for conducting surveillance of modern technologies, like cell phones.”

The three provisions in need of reauthorization have been important tools in the preventing terrorist attacks against the United States following September 11. First, the “Roving Wiretap” provision allows law enforcement to track suspects across different modes of communication as they try to evade detection. Second, renewal of the Business Record Order gives law enforcement the authority to request information about a suspect from a third party with approval from a FISA court, ensuring the protection of American civil liberties. Lastly, Congress reauthorized the “Lone-Wolf” provision, giving law enforcement the ability to track suspects not acting under orders from a foreign state or known terrorist organization. 

Some lawmakers expressed concern over reauthorizing these important provisions, but there is no doubt they make America safer. “Despite repeated attempts to demonstrate abuse, little evidence has ever been proffered to demonstrate any Patriot Act misuse," argues Jena McNeil. “In fact, at times the Patriot Act offers significantly more protections than available under common criminal investigations.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both spoke at the AtlanticCouncil this week to discuss factors that should be considered as NATO drafts a new "Strategic Concept," which defines NATO's purpose, nature, and security tasks.

Secretary Gates said Europe has underfunded defense budgets for NATO, and consequently, has undermined joint security. Specifically, he mentioned missile defense. Land invasion is no longer a pressing threat. The danger of missile attacks is more pressing and "more likely to come from outside NATO’s traditional borders; and more likely to require new approaches that incorporate far more than just military power."

On the president's new missile defense policy: "Last year, the Obama administration announced a new plan for missile defense in Europe – a phased, adaptive approach that will give us real capabilities in a shorter period of time than the previous plan. We consider this a U.S.-funded contribution to NATO missile defense, which is critical to the collective-defense mission to protect our populations, territory, and forces."

Iran is focusing on short- and medium-range missiles, but its long-range capability also poses a threat, whether the capability reaches fruition next year or five years from now. One of the top funding priorities is missile defense. The U.S. and our allies must prepare for long-range weapons, particularly from countries outside NATO that defy the U.N. Security Council.

In scaling back Bush-era missile defense policy, including reducing interceptors in Alaska and California, the Obama administration has left the U.S. vulnerable to long-range ballistic missiles and jeopardized systems like Ground-based Midcourse Defense. In assessing the missile threat, the administration seems to realize the need for more, not less, funding for these programs.

Secretary Gates acknowledges the importance of missile defense in his speech, but funding (or the lack thereof) reflects priority. We hope the administration restores missile defense funding and keeps all our options open.

Iran has announced it plans to build two new uranium enrichment facilities in hardened sites inside mountains to protect them from a possible attack, escalating its defiance of the U.N. Security Council and expanding its uranium enrichment efforts, which eventually could give it a nuclear weapon.

Iran's Nuclear Chief Ali Akbar Salehi explained that the facilities would be similar to the enrichment plant in Natanz, the notorious center of Iran’s nuclear program that violates three sets of United Nations sanctions.

This announcement follows an International Atomic Energy Agency report warning that Iran may be working on a nuclear warhead.

There are hopeful signs that the Obama Administration may be moving away from its failed engagement policy towards Tehran. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley acknowledged that Iran has rejected engagement with the international community, and General David Petraeus announced that the U.S. would pursue a “pressure track” to attempt to halt the nuclear program. Petraeus also confirmed that the U.S. would not take the military option off the table.

But the Obama Administration must impose stronger sanctions against Tehran if it is to make real progress. In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz made the case for gasoline sanctions that would put destabilizing pressure on Ahmadinejad’s government: “Refined-petroleum sanctions would rock an already shaky system.” 

Heritage Fellow James Phillips argues, “Sanctions alone are unlikely to be decisive in changing Iranian behavior, but they can substantially raise the economic, political, and diplomatic costs to the regime of continuing its current hostile policies and drive a deeper wedge between the regime and the Iranian people.”  

On December 25th there was a clear failure to connect the dots that could have prevented Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding a plane bound for the U.S with a bomb strapped to his body.  However, as explained last week at Heritage by former Homeland Security Advisor, the Hon. Kenneth Wainstein, the U.S. would not have even been in the position to try and piece together this intelligence information before the Patriot Act lowered the walls between intelligence and law enforcement. 

Immediately after 9/11, intelligence operators realized that they possessed too small of a tool shed to effectively fight terrorism.  As Mr. Wainstein explained, Congress can take a lot of credit for responding with the 2001 passage of the Patriot Act and subsequent amendments of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  Yet, there is no way to say that the intelligence and law enforcement community have every tool they need, because the terrorist threat is evolving every day.  Add to this fact that criminal investigators often have more powers than national security investigators, due to historic fears of abuse of authority and lack of sufficient oversight, and the result is that in many cases the U.S. is fighting terrorism with one hand behind our backs.   

Now, many of the tools created in response to 9/11 are beginning to weaken even further.  For example, on February 28th three key provisions of the Patriot Act are due to expire following a 60-day extension.  To avoid another 9/11 or other tragedy Mr. Wainstein suggests several legislative proposals such as making these key provisions permanent.  Fighting the long war against terrorism truly demands a “Time for Certainty in Counterterrorism Policies.”

On February 1, 2010, the Obama Administration released its defense budget proposal as part of its fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget request.The defense budget proposal contains three components:

• A $33 billion supplemental appropriation to support overseas contingency operations (OCO) during the current fiscal year;
• A detailed FY 2011 budget request for the core defense program and OCO funding; and
• An outline of defense spending levels for FY 2010 through FY 2015.

The Administration proposes spending $738.7 billion on defense in FY 2011: $159.3 billion on OCO and $579.4 billion on the core defense program. The Administration's proposal lacks a detailed description of the spending projections for FY 2012 through FY 2015, except that it estimates annual OCO spending at $50 billion annually.

The most important of the proposal's three components is the spending outline for FY 2010 through FY 2015 because it reveals the future trend of the overall defense budget. This trend line clearly shows that the resources provided to the military will not be sufficient to maintain America's long-standing security commitments to the American people and to U.S. allies and friends. These commitments include, for example, defending the American people against attack, preserving freedom of the high seas, and preventing a hostile power from dominating Europe.

Congress has a constitutional duty to use its power of the purse to fill the gaps that the Obama Administration's defense budget would otherwise expose.

A Delayed Draconian Cut

Under the Obama Administration's current budget outline, total defense spending is expected to decline from $722.1 billion in FY 2010 to $698.2 billion (in current dollars) in FY 2015. As a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), total defense spending would fall from about 4.9 percent in FY 2010 to roughly 3.6 percent in FY 2015. (See Chart 1.)

In 2009, the Obama Administration's budget outline had recommended a draconian cut in the FY 2011 defense budget. The good news is that the Administration has flinched, proposing a FY 2011 budget of $738.7 billion--$118 billion more that it had proposed in last year's budget. The bad news is that this merely delays the draconian cut. Under the budget outline in the FY 2011 budget, the FY 2012 defense budget would drop roughly $92 billion below the proposed FY 2011 level. This cut is the most important factor contributing to the negative trend of defense spending declining as a percentage of GDP.

This planned cut directly affects the core defense program, which funds the military capabilities needed to uphold U.S. security commitments into the future. The core defense program is slated to decline from 3.8 percent of GDP in FY 2010 to less than 3.4 percent in FY 2015. (See Chart 1.) According to the Administration's budget outline of a year ago, the core defense budget will continue declining after FY 2015, approaching 3 percent of GDP by FY 2019.

Read the full text of Baker Spring's article at Heritage.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the NATO Strategic Concept Seminar on Monday and urged Russia's cooperation in preventing nuclear proliferation and other transnational threats.

Clinton said missile defense "will make this continent a safer place. That safety could extend to Russia, if Russia decides to cooperate with us. It is an extraordinary opportunity for us to work together to build our mutual security. Missile defense, we believe, will make this continent a safer place. And that safety could extend to Russia if Russia decides to cooperate with us. It provides an extraordinary opportunity for us to work together to build our mutual security in the 21st century. The spirit of collective defense must also include nontraditional threats. And we believe NATO’s new Strategic Concept must address these."

Relations between NATO and Russia soured last year after NATO criticized the former Soviet Union for invading Georgia. Clinton told the audience what NATO expects from Russia: "We have real differences with Russia on several issues. And we intend to use the NATO-Russia Council as a forum for frank discussions about areas where we disagree. We will use it to press Russia to live up to its commitments on Georgia and to reiterate our commitment to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states. We will use it to challenge the assertion put forward in Russia’s new military doctrine that NATO’s enlargement and its global actions constitute a military danger to Russia. We will also use the Council to advocate on behalf of human rights and individual liberty – these are principles and values that Russia committed to uphold when it accepted the NATO-Russia Founding Act."

Russia and NATO are cooperating in training counternarcotics officers from Afghanistan and Central Asia to stop drug trafficking, and Clinton said she hopes there will be missile defense cooperation as well. 

"[W]e hope to extend that cooperation to other fields, again, most notably in the area of missile defense…NATO and Russia should have a regular exchange of information on posture, doctrine, and planned military exercises, as well as specific measures to permit observation of military exercises and to allow visits to new or significantly improved military installations. We look forward to working closely with all of our Allies, Russia, and our other partners in the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty during the coming months to reverse the erosion of this valuable regime. If we truly believe that our security is indivisible, we must do more to strengthen the sense of strategic reassurance across the Euro-Atlantic area. As we look ahead, our challenge with Russia is to build a relationship where the principles that both sides have agreed to on paper are consistently respected in practice."

Read Clinton's full remarks.

On the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, Iran announced that it was now a nuclear state, capable of enriching higher levels of uranium. The rogue nation recently announced plans to build two more uranium enrichment sites, although it still claims the nuclear enrichment is for peaceful and scientific purposes.

Despite these developments, Iran stated in a document reportedly seen by news organizations that it's ready to give up most of its stockpile of enriched uranium in exchange for fuel rods, but the exchange must take place on its territory. The U.N. has rejected this demand.

China and Russia both refuse to support further sanctions against Iran and seek a diplomatic solution.

Meanwhile, Iran revealed plans to build 10 more nuclear enrichment plans, including the two previously mentioned. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed an energy embargo against Iran, with or without the U.N.'s approval.

How will the U.S. respond? General David Petraeus said on "Meet the Press" that given our attempts to resolve differences with Iran diplomatically, the U.S. can "now to go on what is termed the pressure track. That's the course on which we are embarked now." He added that the administration will "send the kind of signal to Iran about the very serious concerns that the countries in the region and, indeed, the entire world have... about Iran's activities in the nuclear program."

Talking tough is one thing; following it up with action is another. What will this "pressure track" against Iran entail? The U.S. has already given Iran too wide a berth. While we're trying to be diplomatic, Iran is enriching more uranium and building more nuclear sites.

Last week, the Heritage Foundation's James Carafano said we can speed up the process of freedom in Iran and contain nuclear proliferation by adopting "tough unilateral sanctions that hit the regime in the gut." He added that the president needs to "spare no effort to shame Iran for its horrific human rights record, and…put the 'third site'—the deployment of missile defense to Poland and the Czech Republic–back on the table. Take out every avenue Tehran has to threaten the West."

(Sources: Reuters and AFP)

In is recent Washington Examiner column, the Heritage Foundation's James Carafano recounts the successful Airborne Laser (ABL) test that occurred earlier this month. Within two minutes of launching, the high-energy laser found its target and destroyed it.

"Not bad for a defensive weapon once ridiculed as science fiction," Carafano writes. "Skeptics even persuaded the Obama administration to slot the airborne laser for the ninth circle of procurement hell -- a pit for dead-end research and development programs. But this month's dramatic success has put the critics on their heels…The Point Mugu exercise was what engineers call a 'proof of principle' test. They tested it. It is proven."

Despite the ABL's success, the Obama administration opted not to build a second test aircraft. Why? "It will argue laser missile defense makes no sense because the weapon's range is limited to a few hundred kilometers. That would put the lumbering aircraft well within the range of air defense systems fielded by the likes of North Korea and Iran."

But shorter-range Scud missiles, however, are threats that the ABL can counter. The former Soviet Union made these missiles, and today other countries make their own.  Carafano notes that Iran's Shahab-3 is an advanced Scud variant probably capable of traveling 1,000 kilometers and carrying a warhead.

"It couldn't reach Washington from Tehran, but then, it wouldn't have to. Iran could easily extend the missile's reach simply by moving it to a commercial freighter and firing it from nearby using an improvised vertical launch tube disguised as cargo.'

Read Carafano's entire article in the Washington Examiner and join the discussion.

More than ten years after the Senate correctly rejected ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), Vice President Joe Biden is calling for ratification of the same treaty. The CTBT didn’t fit U.S. national security interests in 1999, and it certainly doesn't fit those interests now.
 
In fact, it’s more important now than ever that the U.S. maintain a credible nuclear arsenal capable of defending America from the increasing threat of proliferation.
 
Baker Spring points out: “Established nuclear powers (Russia and China), new de facto nuclear powers (India, North Korea, and Pakistan), and aspiring nuclear powers (Iran) are moving forward in establishing or expanding their nuclear capabilities.”
 
Furthermore, the U.S. must have a nuclear arsenal suited for an international system featuring multiple nuclear powers, rather than the bipolar system of the Cold War.  
 
Also, adherence to the CTBT will lead to inevitable disarmament instead of prudent arms control in line with our strategic interests. The Obama Administration has asserted that it will pursue disarmament while maintaining a nuclear arsenal sufficient for the demands of American security. However, ratification of the CTBT will lead to “disarmament brought about by atrophy.”
 
Without the ability to test its weapons and update its nuclear stockpile, the U.S. will not have confidence in its ability to deter its enemies with weapons that should be effective and up to date.
 
Instead of recklessly moving toward disarmament, the United States should develop a strategic security posture sufficient for protection against the proliferation of nuclear weapons that will allow for an alternative path of selectively applied arms control in the future. Spring argues that this alternative posture must allow America to maintain a modern nuclear force. Under the CTBT the United States will be limited by restrictions that endanger its ability to maintain a credible and effective nuclear deterrent.

A recent war game simulating the National Security Council’s response to a cyber attack highlighted the United States’ serious vulnerability to such an attack in an era where it is increasingly important to prepare for the potential consequences of cyber warfare.

The war game, in which several former government officials tried to manage the commercial and economic crash resulting from the collapse of the internet and cell phone service, indicates that the U.S. needs to do more to prepare for the worst case scenario.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the Senate Intell igence Committee earlier this month, “Malicious cyber activity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication.”

In the 2008 Annual Threat Assessment, former DNI Mike McConnell also warned that we were unprepared for a cyber attack. In the two years since that statement, several U.S. government agencies and members of the private sector have experienced cyber security attacks.

Jim Carafano and Eric Sayers have recommended that the U.S. create a “cyber security leadership program” to develop the skills necessary to combat this evolving threat. The program should train leaders that understand the cyber environment and can identify potential threats to help reduce vulnerabilities. An understanding of interagency cooperation and partnership between the public and private sectors is also essential to protect against cyber attacks.

“Cyber-strategic leadership is not a specific technical skill or person, but a set of knowledge, skills, and attributes essential to all leaders at all levels of government and in the private sector.”

Although the U.S. has not paid significant attention to cyber security in the past, recent events, including the recent Chinese attack against Google, have raised awareness in Washington. On February 4, the House easily passed the Cyber Security Enhancement Act, but the Senate counterpart isn’t likely to pass anytime soon.

The House bill mandates an agency-by-agency review of cyber security strategies and skills and establishes a government recruitment program to better equip the U.S. against cyber threats.

However, “Looking for single ‘silver-bullet’ solutions will not work,” argue Carafano and Sayers. “There is no technology, government policy, law, treaty, or program that can stop the acceleration of competition in the cyber universe.” Even in this new field of warfare, the fact remains that “all national security challenges are a series of actions and counteractions between competitors.”