Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War

by Gates, Robert M

  MISSILE DEFENSE AGAINST IRAN

  The United States began working on defenses against ballistic missiles in the 1960s. Stringent limits were imposed on the development and deployment of missile defenses in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty we signed with the Soviet Union. Even so, the missile defense endeavor received a huge boost in 1983 with President Reagan’s announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), intended conceptually to provide a “shield” for the United States against an all-out Soviet attack. Generally speaking, in the years after Reagan’s SDI (or “Star Wars”) speech, most Republicans supported virtually all missile defense programs and most Democrats opposed them as both unworkable and far too costly. In 2002, as we’ve seen, President Bush unilaterally withdrew the United States from the 1972 treaty, thereby removing any restrictions on our development and deployment of missile defenses. By the time I became secretary of defense, most members of Congress had come around—with widely varying levels of enthusiasm—to support deploying a very limited capability intended to defend against an accidental launch or a handful of missiles fired by a “rogue” state such as North Korea or Iran. Few in either party supported efforts to field a system large or advanced enough to protect against a mass strike from the nuclear arsenals of either Russia or China, an effort that would have been at once technologically challenging, staggeringly expensive, and strategically destabilizing.

  At the end of 2008, our strategic missile defenses consisted of twenty-three ground-based interceptors (GBIs) deployed at Fort Greely, Alaska, and four more at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. By the end of FY2010, thirty such interceptors were planned to be in place. Those associated with the program had reasonable confidence that the missiles could accomplish the limited mission of knocking down one or a few missiles aimed at the United States. When I became secretary of defense, the president delegated to me, as he had to Secretary Rumsfeld, the authority to launch these interceptors against incoming missiles if there was no time to get his approval.

  This was the situation when I recommended to Bush, a few days after I took office, that we approach the Poles and Czechs about cohosting a “third” GBI site on their soil—radar in the Czech Republic and ten ground-based interceptors in Poland. Both countries had shown interest in hosting elements of the missile defense system. Our primary purpose in this initiative was to better defend the United States (and limited areas of Europe) against Iranian ballistic missiles, whose threat was growing.

  As I wrote earlier, by the end of 2008 it looked increasingly certain that Czech political opposition to the radar would prevent its construction there. Poland had agreed to host the interceptors immediately following the Russian invasion of Georgia after stalling for more than a year, but their growing demands for U.S. security guarantees beyond our NATO commitment, as well as other disagreements, brought the negotiations to a halt. By the time Obama took office, it was pretty clear that our initiative was going nowhere politically in either Poland or the Czech Republic, and that even if it was somehow to proceed, political wrangling would delay its initial operating capability by many years.

  A technically feasible alternative approach to missile defense in Europe surfaced in mid-2009 in the Pentagon (not, as later alleged, in the White House). A new intelligence estimate of the Iranian missile program published in February 2009 caused us in Defense to rethink our priorities. The assessment said the long-range Iranian missile threat had not matured as anticipated, but the threat from Iranian short- and medium-range missiles, which could strike our troops and facilities in Europe and the Middle East, had developed more rapidly than expected and had become the Iranian government’s priority. The Iranians were now thought to be capable of nearly simultaneous launches of between fifty and seventy of these shorter-range missiles at a time. These conclusions raised serious questions about our existing strategy, which had been developed primarily to provide improved defenses for the U.S. homeland—not Europe—against long-range Iranian missiles launched one or two at a time. But the Iranians no longer seemed focused on building an ICBM, at least in the near term. And ten interceptors in Poland could at best defend against only a handful of Iranian missiles. The site would easily be overwhelmed by a salvo launch of dozens of shorter-range missiles.

  In the spring of 2009 General Cartwright briefed me on technological advances made during the previous two years with the sea-based Standard Missile 3s (SM-3) and the possibility of using them as a missile defense alternative to the ground-based interceptors. New, more capable versions of the SM-3, originally designed to defend our ships against hostile aircraft and shorter-range ballistic missiles, were being deployed on a growing number of U.S. warships and had been used successfully to destroy that falling U.S. satellite during the Bush administration. These new SM-3 variants were still in development, but there had been eight successful tests, and they were considered to be at least as capable against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles as GBIs and could be fully operational years earlier. The SM-3, due to the significantly lower cost than GBIs, could be produced and deployed in large numbers.

  There had also been technological advances in airborne, space-based, and ground-based sensors that considerably outperformed the fixed-site radar originally intended for the Czech Republic. These new sensors not only would allow our system to be integrated with partner countries’ warning systems, but also could make better use of radars already operating across the globe, including updated Cold War–era installations. Cartwright, former commander of Strategic Command, was a strong and early advocate for a new approach, which was affirmed by the early findings of the Pentagon-led Ballistic Missile Defense Review, begun in March 2009.

  Based on all available information, the U.S. national security leadership, military and civilian, concluded that our priorities should be to work with allies and partners to strengthen regional deterrence architectures; to pursue a “phased adaptive,” or evolutionary, approach to missile defense within each region, tailored to the threats and circumstances unique to that region; and because global demand for missile defense assets over the following decade might exceed supply, to make them mobile so they could be shifted from region to region as circumstances required.

  Independent of these findings and assessments, in preparing the fiscal year 2010 budget, I decided to cancel several huge, expensive, and failing missile defense programs, such as the airborne laser and the kinetic energy interceptor, as described earlier. At the same time, I decided to keep the number of silo-based GBIs in Alaska and California at thirty rather than expanding the deployment to forty-four, and I authorized continued research, development, and testing of our defenses against the long-range-missile threat from Iranian and North Korean missiles. (I also canceled completion of a second field of silos for the GBIs at Fort Greely, but after visiting there a few months later and seeing how close they were to completion, I reversed myself and approved finishing the second field. I was no expert but was always willing to listen to those who were.) Meanwhile, reflecting the new emphasis on regional missile defense, I allocated a great deal of money in the budget to accelerate building the inventory of SM-3 missile interceptors, as well as other regional missile defense systems. I also agreed to fund improved missile defense capability on six more destroyers.

  I was determined to increase our capability as quickly as possible to protect our deployed forces and our allies. We briefed Congress on these changes on several occasions between May and July, and the response was generally favorable. The only opposition was focused on my cancellation of several of the big—and failing—development programs.

  Those who would later charge that Obama walked away from the third site in Europe to please the Russians seemed oblivious to growing Polish and Czech opposition to the site and, more important, to the reality that the Defense Department was already reordering its missile defense priorities to focus on the immediate short- to medium-range-missile threat. While there certainly were some in the State Departm
ent and the White House who believed the third site in Europe was incompatible with the Russian “reset,” we in Defense did not. Making the Russians happy wasn’t exactly on my to-do list.

  In August, the NSS asked the Defense Department to prepare a paper on what had changed to warrant a new direction for missile defense in Europe, and we laid it all out. The principals met on September 1, 2009, and agreed to recommend that the president approve the phased adaptive approach to missile defense in Europe, while agreeing to my proposal to guard against the longer-term threat by keeping open the option for eventually deploying European-based radar and GBIs. The continued investment in GBIs was opposed by some Obama appointees at the State Department and the NSS. We agreed to continue to seek opportunities for cooperation with Russia, including the possible integration of one of their radars that could provide useful tracking data. I formally proposed the Phased-Adaptive Approach in a memorandum to the president on September 11, nearly three years after proposing the third site to President Bush. Times, technology, and threats change. We had to change with them.

  Then, as so often happened, a leak made us look like a bunch of bumbling fools, oblivious to the sensitivities of our allies. To date, there had been none of the obligatory consultations with Congress or our allies about what would be the first major reversal of a Bush national security policy and a major shift in the U.S. missile defense strategy in Europe. When we learned on September 16 that the details of the new missile defense approach were in the hands of the press, we had to act quickly to correct that. That evening Hillary dispatched a team of officials from both State and Defense to brief European governments and NATO. The president called the prime ministers of both Poland and the Czech Republic to inform them of his decision and to promise that he was dispatching administration officials immediately to Warsaw and Prague to brief them.

  The morning of the seventeenth, the president publicly announced the new approach. In one of those unanticipated and unfortunate coincidences, that month was the seventieth anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland. Some news stories asserted that Poland had again been “betrayed,” and most suggested that our timing had added insult to injury with the Poles. The president and his domestic advisers clearly wanted me out front to defend this new strategy; I had recommended the earlier approach to Bush and had the credibility to justify a different approach under Obama. It was neither the first nor last time under Obama that I was used to provide political cover, but it was okay in this instance since I sincerely believed the new program was better—more in accord with the political realities in Europe and more effective against the emerging Iranian threat. And I had been successful in preserving the GBI alternative, at least for the time being.

  By the time General Cartwright and I sallied forth to the press room to talk about the new program, Republicans in Congress and former Bush officials were all over the airwaves harshly criticizing this “betrayal” of our allies in order to curry favor with the Russians. Senator McCain called the move “seriously misguided.” I told the press what had prompted the reassessment and explained the details of the planned system. In response to a question, I said the Russians had to accept that there was going to be a missile defense system in Europe. We hoped they’d join it, but we were going to proceed regardless.

  The damage from the leak was manageable in Europe. I thought the Polish and Czech governments were probably relieved that they could avoid a showdown with their parliaments; the plan would have lost for sure in Prague and probably in Warsaw. In my calls with both defense ministers on the eighteenth, I said we still wanted them to be involved with missile defense in Europe.

  Under both the Bush and Obama missile defense plans, I thought our goals and those of the Polish and Czech leaders were completely different, although no one ever had the audacity to say so publicly or even privately. Their goals were political, having nothing to do with Iran and everything to do with Russia: the U.S. deployments on their soil would be a concrete manifestation of U.S. security guarantees against Russia beyond our commitments under the NATO treaty. Our goals under both plans were primarily military: to deal with a rapidly evolving Iranian missile threat, as we repeatedly made clear to them and to the Russians. Indeed, Rice and I had told Putin that if the Iranian missile program went away, so would the need for U.S. missile defenses in Europe. That’s why I had offered to Putin in 2008 to delay making the sites operational until the Iranians flight-tested a missile that could reach Europe. Obama would catch hell for saying nearly the same thing to Russian president Medvedev.

  The New York Times bottom-lined all this with the headline “Obama Reshapes a Missile Shield to Blunt Tehran,” and The Washington Post subheadline was “New Plan Designed to Confront Iran’s Capabilities More Directly.” I never understood the fury of the U.S. critics. The new plan would get defenses operational in Europe and for our 80,000 troops there years earlier than the Bush approach, while still going forward with development of the ground-based interceptors for homeland defense. Obama would still be taking heat for “canceling” missile defense in Europe during the 2012 election.

  Obama’s new missile defense plan had one unintended, but welcome, consequence. For the first time since before Reagan’s “Star Wars” speech, building a limited American missile defense had broad bipartisan support in Congress. That was no small thing.

  RUSSIA

  The Obama administration’s desire to “reset” the relationship with Russia got off to an awkward start. Hillary had her first meeting with Russian foreign minister Lavrov in Geneva on March 6, and someone persuaded her to present him with a big red button, with the word “reset” printed on the top in Russian. Unfortunately, the Russian word on the button actually said “overcharge.” This reaffirmed my strong view that gimmicks in foreign policy generally backfire. They are right up there with presidents putting on funny hats—they result in pictures you have to live with forever.

  Russian behavior in 2009–10 vis-à-vis Iran was mixed. At one point early on, Medvedev conceded to Obama that the United States had been right about Iran’s nuclear and missile ambitions (words that could never have crossed Putin’s lips). The Russians would not block efforts to get new sanctions against Iran approved by the UN, even though they would continue to work to water them down. They refrained from sending the Iranians a very sophisticated new air defense system—the S-300—which would have made an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities considerably harder. Putin had promised Bush he would not send the system to Iran and, after Obama became president, actually broke the contract with the Iranians.

  When it came to missile defense in Europe, however, the Russians almost immediately concluded that the new approach announced by Obama was potentially a bigger problem for them than the Bush plan had been. They were worried about the possibility of future modifications to the systems that would, in fact, give them capabilities against Russian ICBMs. They came to believe the potential deployment of hundreds of advanced SM-3 missiles that we were planning between 2018 and 2020 posed an even bigger threat to them than the GBIs. From that point—a few weeks after the September announcement—the Russians mounted an even more aggressive campaign against the new approach than they had the old, and they would continue to do so for the rest of my time as secretary and beyond. Discussion of potential partnering on missile defense continued for political purposes on both sides, but in reality, a slim chance had become no chance. Missile defense would continue to be the Russians’ principal target in meetings of the NATO-Russia Council and in bilateral meetings with all senior U.S. officials. The Iranian threat simply did not outweigh concerns over their own long-term security. How ironic that U.S. critics of the new approach had portrayed it as a big concession to the Russians. It would have been nice to hear a critic in Washington—just once in my career—say, Well, I got that wrong.

  With one exception, I played a minor role in the U.S.-Russian relationship during my time in the Obama administration. Where Condi Rice and I had travele
d to Russia on several occasions for “two plus two” meetings with our counterparts and to meet with Putin and Medvedev, I visited Russia only once during my two and a half years working for Obama, and that was near the end of my tenure in 2011. There was not a single “two plus two” meeting during that period. I had regular bilateral discussions with Russian minister of defense Serdyukov at NATO sessions when the NATO-Russia Council met, but these rarely lasted more than half an hour and, with translation, provided little opportunity for serious dialogue; he usually had only enough time to poke a stick in my eye over missile defense.

  The one exception was negotiation of a new treaty imposing further reductions on the strategic nuclear delivery systems of both countries. I had a personal history with this decades-long endeavor. I had been a junior intelligence adviser to the U.S. delegation negotiating the first such treaty with the Soviets in the early 1970s (SALT I—Strategic Arms Limitation Talks I), and a junior member of the U.S. delegation present in Vienna when President Carter signed the second such treaty in 1979 (SALT II), which was never ratified by the U.S. Senate because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Negotiations for additional limits on both sides’ nuclear arsenals continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s (the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty—START—talks), but not much was actually accomplished. Under Bush 43, the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT, also known as the Moscow Treaty), reducing the nuclear arsenals of both sides to between 1,700 and 2,200 operational deployed warheads, was signed in 2002, to expire at the end of 2012 if not superseded by a new treaty.