MARFORCOM 12 JAN MEDIA REPORT

Early Bird summary

Today’s Early Bird leads with a story from the Washington Post that reports that U.S. troops are “on edge” as rules shift in Iraq. The story goes on to state that tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq started the year calibrating their missions to conform with a new security agreement that demands that American combat troops depend more heavily than ever on their often-bungling Iraqi counterparts. Sometimes that means dragging one or two along on patrol.

Also high in the Early Bird is a story from USA Today outlining some of the challenges the incoming Obama administration will face in Afghanistan, notably:
Corruption. Police make about $3 a day, not enough to support their families, Zaruba says, so many take bribes and steal from people they're supposed to protect. Police corruption weakens the government's influence and its ability to target Taliban insurgents, says Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution.
Corruption among officials, including the police, "is a huge concern and will continue to be," Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview with USA TODAY. "We've got to root corruption out if we're going to have a successful government."
Inexperience. Few Afghan leaders have run a government office or a military unit, McKiernan says. "Where is the human capital to occupy governmental positions, to be leaders, to be mayors, to run budgets, to contract labor, to be the civil administration of the country?" he asks. "It takes a long time to develop."
A drug-based economy. Afghanistan's farm-based economy is dominated by opium farming, which feeds the world's heroin trade.
In 2007, Afghanistan supplied 93% of the world's opium, the State Department said. Government revenue last year was $715 million, according to the CIA. Illicit poppy production, meanwhile, brings in $4 billion.
Poor security. There currently aren't enough troops to secure large parts of Afghanistan, particularly in the south, McKiernan says. Afghanistan's army has only 76,000 troops and is trying to boost its army to 134,000 troops over the next five years. There are also about 30,000 NATO troops.
The stakes for the incoming Obama administration are high, McKiernan says, although he thinks Afghanistan is "headed in the right direction. The Afghan people are a wonderful people. They are worth the commitment of the international community."
Mullen said that in September he said U.S. forces weren't winning in Afghanistan. "But we can," he said. "I still hold to that."
A 'dangerous' enemy. Not all Afghan insurgents are part of the fundamentalist Taliban, McKiernan says. In an interview with USA TODAY at the NATO headquarters in Kabul, he said Taliban militants control the south, while several other terror organizations linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban hold the east.
Other noteworthy stories in today’s Early Bird:
The Associated Press reports that Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. promised U.S. support for Afghanistan's struggle against terrorism, drugs and corruption, in a surprise visit yesterday to a dangerous Taliban-stronghold area of Afghanistan. The future of the region where al-Qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks, Biden said, "affects us all."Underscoring the difficulties of the fight to come, hundreds of militants crossed from eastern Afghanistan and attacked paramilitary forces in the lawless frontier of neighboring Pakistan on the same day that Biden visited Afghanistan's southern Kandahar and Helmand provinces.
§ The New York Times reports that hundreds of Taliban militants poured into northwestern Pakistan in a large frontal attack on a paramilitary base late Saturday and Sunday that left at least 40 militants and 6 Pakistani soldiers dead, according to Pakistani security officials.The attack, on an outpost of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force in the Mohmand district, appeared to be the heaviest assault on Pakistani troops in months. And in a reversal of usual patterns, it involved a large number of Taliban forces from Afghanistan attacking into Pakistan, signaling coordination among militants on both sides of the border.At the same time, a separate and equally deadly battle played out just 60 miles to the south. Gangs of Sunnis and Shiites fought each other, rampaging through the villages of the Hangu district over the weekend, destroying dozens of homes and leaving at least 40 people dead between the rival groups, according to reports from authorities carried by Pakistani news media and accounts from local residents. Hundreds of Taliban fighters rushed in to support Sunni gangs, as government attack helicopters hovered overhead, trying to intimidate gunmen into withdrawing.
§ The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the Marine Corps has set a trial date for a sergeant accused of killing a captive during the battle of Fallujah more than four years ago.Jermaine Nelson's court-martial, expected to last nearly two weeks, will start Feb. 16. Nelson is charged with unpremeditated murder and dereliction of duty stemming from the shooting on Nov. 9, 2004. Prosecutors said he shot a detainee without justification.Defense attorneys have suggested that their client suffered from post-traumatic stress and sleep deprivation at the time. They are trying to keep the prosecution from introducing potentially incriminating statements Nelson gave to investigators.If convicted, Nelson could be sent to prison for life.
Media summary
1. Leading newspaper headlines: The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox lead with news that Israeli soldiers pushed into heavily populated areas of Gaza City Sunday morning. (Slate Magazine)
2. MARSOC forces to focus on specific regions of world in future: Marine Corps special operations forces likely will tailor training for missions in Afghanistan, Africa and Southeast Asia in the future, the commanding general of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command told Inside the Navy last week. (Inside Defense Newsstand)
3. Israelis edge into urban Gaza: Israeli forces are moving slowly into Gaza's most densely populated areas, reports say, as they continue air and ground attacks on Hamas militants. (BBC)
4. Pakistan al-Qaeda leaders dead: Al-Qaeda's operations chief in Pakistan and another top aide have been killed, US and Pakistani sources say. (BBC)
5. Australians kill Taleban chief: Australian special forces have killed a senior Taleban leader in southern Afghanistan, the Australian Defence Ministry has said. (BBC)
6. U.S. Rep. wants Marine name added to Navy: For eight years, U.S. Rep. Walter Jones has tried to get the United States Marine Corps the recognition he believes the branch deserves. (Beaufort Gazette)
7. Nuclear apocalypse and the Letter of Last Resort: At this very moment, miles beneath the surface of the ocean, there is a British nuclear submarine carrying powerful ICBMs (nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles). In the control room of the sub, the Daily Mail reports, "there is a safe attached to a control room floor. Inside that, there is an inner safe. And inside that sits a letter. It is addressed to the submarine commander and it is from the Prime Minister. In that letter, Gordon Brown conveys the most awesome decision of his political career ... and none of us is ever likely to know what he decided." (Slate Magazine)
Leading newspaper headlines
The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox lead with news that Israeli soldiers pushed into heavily populated areas of Gaza City Sunday morning. After some heavy fighting with Hamas militants, the Israeli troops pulled back. Everyone says this could have been a trial run for a stronger push into Gaza's urban areas—or just a tactic to pressure Hamas into accepting a cease-fire agreement. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that while "Israel is getting close to achieving the goals it set" in Gaza, "patience, determination, and effort are still needed."
The Los Angeles Times leads with a look at how President-elect Barack Obama's "first real workweek in Washington" was characterized by several missteps, as he came under criticism from members of his own party for failing to keep them in the loop. The clashes came as a bit of a surprise: Many thought that the first president elected directly from Congress since John F. Kennedy would have been a master at dealing with lawmakers. USA Today leads with word that for the first time, American airline carriers have gone two consecutive years without a single passenger death in a crash. Experts say it's a testament to how flying has become safer over the past several years. One professor estimates that it's more likely that a child will be elected president during his or her lifetime than die on an airline flight in the United States or another industrialized nation.
The LAT declares that the fighting that took place between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters yesterday "was the heaviest since Israel attacked the Palestinian enclave Dec. 27." The short-lived push into Gaza's urban areas could mark the beginning of a new phase in the conflict, something Israeli officials hinted at when they announced that the military had been sending reserve units into Gaza since Thursday. Thousands of reservists have been summoned and put though a training course on urban combat, notes the WSJ. Early morning wire stories report that Israel bombed the homes of Hamas leaders today as its ground troops continued to move closer to Gaza City's urban center.
The NYT points out that the diplomats believe the next 48 hours "would be crucial" in deciding whether a cease-fire could be reached. The WP and NYT point out that Israeli media are reporting there is disagreement between Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak about how the war should end. Meanwhile, Israeli military officials are growing impatient and want the country's leaders to decide what the next step should be. The WSJ and NYT point out that every day the Israeli troops remain in their current positions outside urban areas, they become more vulnerable to attacks.
The NYT notes that Israeli officials were "all pushing a concerted message" that Hamas leaders are looking to reach a cease-fire. But these claims are dubious at best. In a front-page piece, the LAT says that two weeks after the Israeli incursion began, most think Hamas is "battered but defiant." As the Palestinian death toll quickly approaches 900, many think Hamas can't accept a cease-fire that merely maintains the status quo. If it doesn't gain any concessions from Israel, Hamas is likely to come under intense criticism that all the death and destruction were for nothing. At the same time, letting the conflict drag on for too long could turn more Gazans against Hamas.
In a front-page analysis, the NYT says that officials in Egypt and Jordan are worried that the Gaza incursion could bring an end to the dream of a two-state solution, in which Israel and an independent Palestinian state can live side by side. Egyptian and Jordanian officials fear that they will be forced to open their borders to Palestinians and could become the mediators between Palestinians and Israel. Egypt and Jordan have come under intense criticism from Iran and Syria, as well as countless of citizens in the Arab world, for failing to stand up for the Gazans. Behind the scenes, there's a long-standing power play in the region over influence in the Muslim world that has been accelerated due to the ongoing conflict.
Just in case he had any doubts, Obama confirmed last week that just because he's popular doesn't mean that members of his own party will blithely go along with anything he proposes. Some say Obama's team just needs to get acclimated to the new surroundings. "For a campaign that got kudos for being as well-run as Obama's, they probably thought they were going to come to Washington and continue with that successful framework," Dee Dee Myers, one of President Clinton's press secretaries said. "In many ways they have. But there's also a lot of acclimating that's going on too." By the end of the week, Obama's team had learned to play nice and managed to resolve some of the conflicts, but others continue to linger. Ultimately, many insiders continue to be irritated by Obama's insularity and many lawmakers keep on repeating (over and over again) that they just want to take part in the decision-making process.
As Obama prepares to move into the Oval Office, he told an interviewer yesterday that he's unlikely to pursue broad investigations into controversial Bush administration programs, such as domestic wiretapping and harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. Obama insisted that he wouldn't hesitate to encourage prosecution if the Justice Department found that laws had been broken, but the president-elect suggested he wouldn't go out looking for these violations. Obama said he believes the country needs "to look forward as opposed to looking backwards." While many Democrats want the Bush-administration investigations to begin as soon as Obama takes the oath of office, the president-elect knows that pursuing that course could raise the ire of the country's intelligence agencies.
Besides, Obama has enough on his plate already. The WP analyzes key economic data and concludes that President Bush's tenure will be remembered as the worst eight years for the American economy in decades. Overall, jobs increased by about 2 percent, the worst growth since the data began to be collected seven decades ago. The growth of the country's gross domestic product was so moribund that only Truman's administration had it worse. Bush officials insist the economy expanded steadily from 2003 to 2007, but economists are increasingly saying that the growth was pretty much driven by "interrelated booms" that "have proved unsustainable." While it might be tempting to blame the ongoing financial crisis for the grim statistics, the truth is that even without last year's recession, the U.S. economy was particularly weak. "[W]e really went nowhere for almost ten years, after you extract the boost provided by the housing and mortgage boom," an economist said. "It's almost a lost economic decade."
The WSJ fronts word that Obama and congressional leaders will be acting quickly to keep the estate tax in the books past its current expiration date of 2010. Congress approved eliminating the levy, which has often been called the "death tax" by its opponents, in 2001 and instituted a system where the rate decreased for several years before its full elimination next year. But now lawmakers will move to reverse tracks and lock in the rate and exemptions that took effect this year. Democratic leaders know that if they fail to act now, it will be more difficult to bring it back from the dead than to simply continue at the current rate.
On the NYT's editorial page, Adam Cohen writes about the "bizarre claim" making the rounds in Republican circles that Franklin Roosevelt's massive public-works projects made the Great Depression worse. This talking point is gaining popularity now that Obama's stimulus plan is being debated, but it's nothing new. Conservatives have spoken up against the New Deal since it started, although they had a hard time convincing Americans, who were able to see the improvements in the economy with their own eyes. "The problem, we now know, is not that F.D.R. spent too much priming the pump," writes Cohen, "but rather that he spent too little."
After he caused a huge ruckus last week by stating that Obama's stimulus plan "falls well short of what's needed," Krugman is back on the topic today. He writes about how the president-elect could make it more efficient. Unsurprisingly, Krugman says Obama should get rid of the $150 billion in business tax cuts. But most importantly, size does matter, and Obama just needs to make it bigger. So far, Obama's team has highlighted that there's a limited number of "shovel-ready" projects that could bring about a short-term boost in the economy. But economic forecasts predict that unemployment will remain high for several years, so Obama also needs to include longer-term investment projects.

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Afghanistan, Africa and Southeast Asia eyed
MARSOC FORCES TO FOCUS ON SPECIFIC REGIONS OF WORLD IN FUTURE
_______________________________________________
Date: January 12, 2009

Marine Corps special operations forces likely will tailor training for missions in Afghanistan, Africa and Southeast Asia in the future, the commanding general of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command told Inside the Navy last week.
The Marine component of U.S. Special Operations Command was formed in late 2005 and officially stood up in 2006. In 2008, Marine special operations forces had 31 deployments throughout the world, including training forces in South America and Africa and conducting reconnaissance and other specialized missions in Afghanistan.
“We will, over time, try to narrow down [missions] to Afghanistan, Africa and Southeast Asia, which makes it easier for us both from a training standpoint and I think provides us the ability to have a long term, more consistent application and presence in those areas,” Maj. Gen. Mastin Robeson, MARSOC’s top officer, told ITN in a Jan. 5 telephone interview.
Last month, Robeson said he participated in meetings with SOCOM chief Adm. Eric Olson to discuss a more regionalized focus for MARSOC.
“I’ve talked to Adm. Olson about the merit of maybe necking down our operational focus, so that we can focus a little more definitively on culture and language,” Robeson said. “He asked me look at three primary areas: Afghanistan, Africa and Southeast Asia.”
No official decision has been made yet about narrowing MARSOC’s regional focus, the two-star general noted.
Marine special operators will continue to deploy worldwide this year, Robeson said.
“We will continue to support the missions that SOCOM has asked us to take on in 2009,” he explained. Forty-one missions to Africa, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and South America are scheduled this year, Robeson said.
Ultimately, Robeson said a narrower focus for his command will enhance training efforts, especially in limiting the number of languages and cultures that have to be taught, and will also help the Marines maintain a “persistent presence” to foster relationships with the foreign troops they train and assist abroad.
“A more consistent application and presence in those areas . . . is a positive thing for both training and the ability to form relationships,” Robeson argued.
Right now, the commanding general explained language training is aimed at one member of a team having advanced skills and the rest of the team developing “survival skills.”
“In the near term, I’ve concentrated on immersion training for that one person with survival training for everyone else,” he said. “The next stage is increasing our pipeline so we can have a better language skill across the board for everybody.”
A formalized training pipeline is in the works, Robeson said, but nonetheless he said the language capability of the forward-deployed units has been good.
“I’m stunned at how successful the language and culture program has been without a formal pipeline,” he said. “What we’re trying to do now is formalize the pipeline to make it more enduring.
“The challenge is the number of languages and cultures we’re training to because of the breadth of our focus and . . . if we can neck down our culture and language focus, we can get better at it,” Robeson continued. “I’m amazed at how well MARSOC has gripped this thus far.”
MARSOC is divided into three components: Marine Corps Special Operations Companies that conduct direct action and reconnaissance missions; Marine Corps Special Operations Adviser Groups that train and advise foreign forces; and the Marine Corps Special Operations Support Group.
Currently, MARSOC has an end strength of 2,091 Marine special operators, Maj. Michael Armistead, a spokesman for the command, said. By fiscal year 2010, the command is budgeted for 2,517 Marines, Armistead noted. -- Zachary M. Peterson
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Israelis 'edge into urban Gaza'
Israel says its military pressure on Hamas is proving effective
Israeli forces are moving slowly into Gaza's most densely populated areas, reports say, as they continue air and ground attacks on Hamas militants.
Some reservists are in action on the ground, but the army denied escalating the war to a "third phase" - an all-out push on Gaza City and other towns.
Fewer air strikes were carried out overnight - 12 compared with as many as 60 on previous nights.
At least nine rockets or mortars were fired on Israel from Gaza.
Israeli spokesman Mark Regev said Hamas's military machine was taking "serious punishment" and Israel was "advancing towards the end game".
Since the majority of the Hamas militants are pretty much in hiding in those places, mainly urban places, then we operate in those areas
Maj Avital LeibovichIsraeli military spokeswoman
Gaza offensive - in maps
Gaza survivors' accounts
Reports suggest diplomatic efforts between Egypt and Hamas in Cairo are progressing.
After meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair said elements were in place for a ceasefire agreement.
"I am hopeful we can put an agreement together but it's going to have to be worked on very hard and it's got to be credible," he told journalists.
Reservists 'in training'
At least five Palestinians including one militant were killed on Monday, bringing the total Palestinian death toll during the conflict to about 900, Palestinian medics said. Israel says 13 Israelis have died.
Israel is preventing international journalists from entering the coastal strip, making it impossible to independently confirm such figures.
There were reports of fierce fighting around Gaza City ahead of the daily three-hour truce to allow aid deliveries to Gaza.
Analysis: Where is Israel heading?
Why Gaza war looks set to go on
In pictures: Crisis into third week
Israeli military spokeswoman Maj Avital Leibovich said troops were continuing their advance into urban areas.
"Since the majority of the Hamas militants are pretty much in hiding in those places, mainly urban places, then we operate in those areas," she said, quoted by AP news agency.
Reservists are reported to be securing areas gained in the fighting.
Brig Gen Avi Benayahu, Israel's chief military spokesman, said thousands more - who would comprise a new, expanded phase in the ground operation if it was ordered - were still in training and had not been deployed.
Israel hopes the scale of its operation will greatly reduce the number of missiles fired from Gaza into southern Israel, while eroding support for Hamas.
Militants fired at least nine rockets on Monday, one on the town of Ashkelon, striking a house, and one on Kiryat Gat, but none of them caused casualties.
Mr Regev told the BBC Israel's goals were "very minimalistic" and "purely defensive".


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Pakistan al-Qaeda leaders 'dead'
Swedan is said to have been Kini's top aide
Al-Qaeda's operations chief in Pakistan and another top aide have been killed, US and Pakistani sources say.
Kenyans Usama al-Kini and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan were killed last week by a missile fired from a US drone near the Afghan border, the sources said.
Kini was believed to be behind last year's deadly attack on the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, US officials said.
Fifty-five people were killed when a truck packed with explosives rammed the hotel in September 2008.
A Pakistan government official, requesting anonymity, told the BBC the two men were killed along with a militant from Pakistan's Punjab province in South Waziristan, on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.
A US counter-terrorism official said it was strongly believed that they were killed in a missile strike by a CIA drone aircraft on a building on 1 January.
'Significant'
The Pakistani military said it was conducting its own investigation.
Kini was involved in the Islamabad Marriott attack, officials say
The men - both born in Kenya - were on the FBI's most-wanted list over the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Kini was also thought to have been behind an unsuccessful attempt on the life of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was later killed in a separate attack, US officials said.
The Pakistani official told the BBC the two were trying to develop a weapon that could shoot down the high-flying drone aircraft.
He said he did not know if they were involved in the suicide bombing of the Marriott but he said Kini was certainly behind the bombing of the Danish embassy in Islamabad in June last year.
They were known in South Waziristan as "The Lion" and "Mr Engineer", the official added.
It was reported on 1 January that an unmanned CIA aircraft had fired three missiles in the Karikot area of South Waziristan, killing three suspected militants.
Initial reports suggested those killed were militants of Turkmen origin.
The US has launched dozens of similar drone attacks in recent months, mostly targeting Taleban and al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan's tribal regions.
The lawless tribal areas (Fata) on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan are considered a sanctuary for the insurgents.
The US says the militants regularly cross over the porous border into Afghanistan where the US troops have been fighting since 2001.
The drone attacks are believed to have been largely on-target, hitting Taleban and al-Qaeda hideouts.
There have been few civilian casualties, officials say.
But Pakistani media and opposition parties term these attacks a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity and the government has been under immense public pressure to defend its territory against them.
Islamabad says the attacks are counter-productive as they help offset the negative popularity the Islamist militants have gained in areas under their control.

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Australians 'kill Taleban chief'
Australian special forces have killed a senior Taleban leader in southern Afghanistan, the Australian Defence Ministry has said.
Mullah Abdul Rasheed was described as a senior Taleban commander responsible for bringing in fighters and potential suicide bombers into Uruzgan province.
He was described as being responsible for the deaths of civilians and members of the coalition.
More than 1,000 Australian troops are based in Afghanistan.
"Rasheed was a senior commander in the Baluchi Valley and was believed to be responsible for Taleban operations in the area resulting in the deaths of Coalition Force members and Afghan civilians in recent months," an Australian Defence Ministry statement said.
"He had been identified as a primary IED facilitator, responsible for coordinating IED emplacement in Uruzgan province," the statement said.
His death had "disrupted" Taleban operations in the restive province, the ministry said.

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U.S. Rep. wants Marine name added to Navy
Published Mon, Jan 12, 2009 12:00 AM
By PATRICK DONOHUEpdonohue@beaufortgazette.com843-986-5531
For eight years, U.S. Rep. Walter Jones has tried to get the United States Marine Corps the recognition he believes the branch deserves.
Jones, a Republican who represents North Carolina's 3rd Congressional District -- which includes Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point -- has introduced legislation in every congressional session since 2001 to rename the Department of the Navy.
On the first day of the 111th Congress, Jones relaunched his efforts, introducing a bill Tuesday to redesignate the Department of the Navy as the Department of the Navy and Marine Corps. It has been referred to the House Armed Services Committee.
"There isn't a subordinate relationship between the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps," Jones said in a statement. "They are equivalent parts of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and it is time to recognize their equal status."
Jones' bill is symbolic, he said, of the Corps' role in defending the nation.
"(The bill) is about showing the nation the true meaning of the department and recognizing the overall importance of the Marine Corps to our national security," he said. "The Navy and the Marine Corps have operated as one entity for more than two centuries, and the H.R. 24 would ensure the name of the department they share exemplifies this fact."
The Corps has operated a component of the Navy since its creation in 1775.
Jones is seeking cosponsors for the legislation and likely will find a friend in Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, who represents the South Carolina's 2nd Congressional District, which includes Beaufort County.
Wilsonwas among 152 members of the House who cosponsored Jones' attempt in 2007 to rename the Navy, and said he's likely to attach his name to Jones' latest bill.
"I am in support of this legislation because I believe it is a proper way to recognize the Marine Corps' heroic role in defending American freedoms," Wilson said. "The Marines have fought in every major conflict our nation has faced and earned a reputation among friend and foe alike as a professional fighting force of the highest caliber."
Wilson also was a cosponsor on a similar piece of legislation Jones drafted in 2005.
None of Jones' bills has made it to the House floor for a vote.
For its part, the Corps has remained silent about Jones' repeated attempts to officially recognize the branch in the formal name of the Department of the Navy.
"Right now it would be inappropriate to comment on the bill as it is only in its initial phase," said Lt. Joshua Diddams, spokesman for the Corps at Headquarters Marine Corps in Arlington, Va. "We try to stay out of political issues."
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The Letter of Last ResortThe decision about nuclear apocalypse lying in a safe at the bottom of the sea.
By Ron RosenbaumPosted Friday, Jan. 9, 2009, at 5:12 PM ET

Royal Navy nuclear submarine

The secret in the safe deposit box. That recurring image: I've found it fascinating and somewhat mysterious that, again and again, the mythic, apocryphal keys to some of the great mysteries of our time are said to be locked away in long-lost, deeply buried, or well-hidden safe deposit boxes. Or in locked safes with combinations or locations unknown.
When I was researching Explaining Hitler, I would often find that some crucial document—the 1931 Munich prosecutor's investigation of the death of Hitler's half-niece (and rumored sexual obsession) Geli Raubal, for instance, or the memoir of Hitler's hypnotherapist at a World War I military sanitarium; both documents said to offer hidden truths about Hitler's psyche had purportedly been secreted away, and subsequently lost, in Swiss safe deposit boxes.
Then, more recently, the manuscript of The Original of Laura, Vladimir Nabokov's final, unfinished novel, the one he wanted burned, was, we were told by his son Dmitri, locked away in ... a Swiss safe deposit box.
And now, in the course of researching a book on the new face of nuclear warfare, I came upon an astonishing reference to a "Last Resort Letter," a literally apocalyptic missive secreted in a safe within a safe, deep beneath the surface of the ocean, a Letter of Last Resort containing the orders for—or against—Armageddon.
Why the recurrence of the image of some valuable truth hidden in an inaccessible safe? My theory is that it allows us to believe that certain truths do exist: They're just forever locked away from our grasp. A thought both comforting and disturbing.
In the case of the Letter of Last Resort, the reference turns out to be factual: At this very moment, miles beneath the surface of the ocean, there is a British nuclear submarine carrying powerful ICBMs (nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles). In the control room of the sub, the Daily Mail reports, "there is a safe attached to a control room floor. Inside that, there is an inner safe. And inside that sits a letter. It is addressed to the submarine commander and it is from the Prime Minister. In that letter, Gordon Brown conveys the most awesome decision of his political career ... and none of us is ever likely to know what he decided."
The decision? Whether or not to fire the sub's missiles, capable of causing genocidal devastation in retaliation for an attack that would—should the safe and the letter need to be opened—have already visited nuclear destruction on Great Britain. The letter containing the prime minister's posthumous decision (assuming he would have been vaporized by the initial attack on the homeland) is known as the Last Resort Letter.
Its existence was revealed a little more than a month ago by two reporters for the United Kingdom's respected BBC Radio 4 in a report called "The Human Button," an investigation of the nuclear-launch decision-making process. Their report first appeared in print in the Nov. 30 issue of the Daily Mail; the documentary was broadcast two days later.
You didn't know about the Letter of Last Resort? Neither did I. I've never encountered anything like it when looking into the mechanics and morals of nuclear retaliation in this and other nuclear nations. As far as I know, no other nation has configured the nuclear retaliation decision in a manner so intimate, so personal. (Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising: England was, after all, the birthplace of the epistolary novel; should not its last expiring act be sealed in a handwritten letter?)
Indeed the Letter of Last Resort foregrounds, personalizes—endows with novelistic suspense—the apocalyptic decision that is rarely, especially in recent years, thought of. And yet which may, once again, in this new nuclear age, have to be rethought.
According to the reporters for BBC Radio 4, the safe containing the safe containing the Letter of Last Resort is to be opened only in the event of a nuclear attack on Britain that kills both Prime Minister Gordon Brown and a second, not identified person—the person he's designated as his alternate nuclear decision-maker in case of his death.
Assuming the death of his second as well, Brown's letter, the voice from the grave, from a person most probably reduced to radioactive ashes, will (theoretically) condemn to fiery death tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of innocent civilians.
Here is how the reporters described the writing of the most recent Last Resort Letter in their Daily Mail article:
Within days of coming to power, Gordon Brown had to make a decision with potentially massive consequences for Britain and the world.
Would he, in the event of a surprise nuclear attack in which he was killed before he could react, want Britain's last line of defense—a lone Trident submarine on patrol somewhere under the Atlantic—to retaliate?
Brown wrote his answer to that question four times, in long-hand, in the form of letters addressed to the Royal Navy submarine commanders who, we must all hope, will never be required to read one of them.
We are told that every prime minister in recent years has written such a letter and that letters that go unused (Tony Blair's for instance) are destroyed without being read.
This procedure raises several questions. If Gordon Brown wrote his letter more than a year ago, how would he (or any prime minister) know exactly why and by whom Britain might have been struck?
As the Daily Mail piece puts it:
How on earth does [the submarine commander] know if the PM has been killed and the normal chain of command obliterated? For obvious reasons, no one we spoke to would elaborate on the precise protocols. Suffice it to say that there is a complicated series of checks that the submarine commander must perform to establish the true situation—one of which, curiously, is to determine whether Radio 4 is still broadcasting.
During the Cold War, the origin of a nuclear attack would have been fairly easy to determine: The only nation likely to strike was the U.S.S.R. Now? A single wobbly missile from some Pakistani terror group from a freighter offshore? A series of terror bombs smuggled into the country whose detonation had—as they say in the nuclear terrorist trade—"no return address." Who would the sub captain target if the PM posthumously ordered a retaliatory launch? Would the Last Resort Letter provide any guidance except a Big Yes or a Big No? And it's not clear whether the captain is required to show the letter to anyone else. If the captain's the only one who reads the letter, what's to prevent him from substituting his own decision, his own notions of justice and vengeance, of what's ethical and what's not, for the PM's, from burning the letter and deciding for himself whether or not he wants to kill tens of millions of civilians depending on his mood or what he ate for breakfast or whether he had a fight with his wife before the sub left home?
And what if it's a mistaken launch by a salvo of Russian nuclear missiles that succeeded in vaporizing the United Kingdom? Should millions of citizens of Moscow and St. Petersburg, say, be destroyed without a chance to plead their case that it was a human or mechanical error? How would the sub commander know the circumstances if there's no one in authority left alive (or no functioning communications equipment to let him know)?
With all due respect to our British cousins, this seems, well, insane. Or it highlights the fact that the insanity of Mutually Assured Destruction—insanity that was obtained during the Cold War and that we thought we'd left behind—still exists as real policy, however deeply problematic it remains in this and many other respects. (The fact that British defense officialdom allowed the reporters to know about the Last Resort Letter suggests that they're proud of this system, evidence that a kind of group madness grips Her Majesty's Royal Navy.)
The old-fashioned, pen-and-ink-on-paper quality of it all (quill pen, perhaps?) somehow makes the system seem like it emanated from a 19th-century madhouse out of Wilkie Collins. Which makes it even more profoundly shocking that the system is still in place.
How would they know some hacker hadn't decided to play One Final Trick upon the world above? In 1997, the U.S. Navy discovered that there was a "backdoor" electronic entrance to the nuclear missile submarine launch control system, according to Bruce Blair, head of the World Security Institute, a Washington think tank. Blair told me the "backdoor" entrance would have allowed a diabolically ingenious hacker to insert a launch order into the system.
And it seems stunningly foolish, counterproductive, indeed self-destructive for the Royal Navy to reveal that the United Kingdom's last line of deterrence, its ultimate safeguard against nuclear attack—the certainty of retaliation—is not certain at all. In fact, any fanatical enemy could figure it had a 50-50 chance that Gordon Brown did not order retaliation. In all likelihood, it's probably 90-10 against; what prime minister, what human being would want to put in his own handwriting the order to kill tens or hundreds of millions of innocent civilians—especially at the point when the threat to do so had failed to deter the attack it was meant to deter?
The Letter of Last Resort serves at least one purpose: It reawakens us to the awful unresolved paradox of nuclear deterrence. We must make any potential nuclear attackers believe that they would be vaporized—suffer national nuclear holocaust—if they hit us first with nuclear weapons. And yet if they went ahead and did it, if the genocidal threat failed to deter them, there would be no point in carrying out retaliation; it would be useless mass murder, genocide pure if not simple.
On the other hand, if the potential foe thought that we might not retaliate once the threat served no purpose—that retaliatory "deterrence" would, in essence, turn out to be a bluff—it would encourage those disposed to strike first to cause a nuclear holocaust without fear of reprisal. We had to threaten genocide—and convince people we meant to carry out our threat—in order to prevent genocide.
This was always the problem with MAD, and it was spotlighted again by the Radio 4 documentary, which disclosed that at least one person in a position similar to that of Gordon Brown says he would have refused to give a Last Resort order to retaliate. That would be Denis Healey, former defense secretary to Labor PM Harold Wilson. Healey told the documentary makers, "I realized I would find it very, very difficult indeed to agree to use a nuclear weapon—and I think most people would."
Even if Britain were already lost, Healey told the BBC, "I think I would still have said that that, I'm afraid, is no reason for doing something like that. Because most of the people you kill would be innocent civilians."
Of course, innocent civilians, millions of them, might have been killed in the United Kingdom if the Soviets had known this was Healey's attitude at the time.
In 1996, Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, an adviser to Margaret Thatcher, wrote a remarkable essay for the London Spectator in which he reflected precisely on this paradox. He says that from conversations with Thatcher and Reagan, he was convinced both of them would have carried out the threatened nuclear retaliation at the heart of deterrence. They would have pushed the button no matter what. But he also said that upon further reflection of a religious nature, he realized that to do so would have been obscenely immoral. I've been obsessed with this question my entire life. The high point, though, may have been my frank discussion of it with the spear carriers of nuclear Armageddon, the Minuteman missile crewmen I met on a magazine assignment at the height of the Cold War. These were the men who, deep beneath the Great Plains in the "launch control centers," held the keys to the missile launch consoles. It was they who would perform the physical Last Resort act of twisting those keys in their slots and sending salvos of nuclear holocaust missiles halfway round the world.
Pentagon public relations had arranged the tour because they wanted me to see how sane its "missileers," as they were known, were. And they were sane. Too sane. It was 1978, and I had had been investigating "The Subterranean World of the Bomb" for a Harper's story of that name, and I decided I had to ask the missile crewmen the ultimate questions. This is how I described it:
I asked these sanest of all men how they could be sure they'd be able to launch when they knew it [the attack] was for real.
"One thing you have to understand, remember," one of the crewmen told me, "is that when I get an authenticated launch order I have to figure my wife and kids'd be dead already up above. The base is ground zero. Why shouldn't I launch? The only thing I'd have to look forward to if I ever got up to the surface would be romping around with huge mutant bunny rabbits." We all laughed. It seemed funny at the time.
"Okay then, put it this way," I said , "If you assume that when you get the launch order everyone on our side has been devastated by a Soviet first strike, is there any purpose served by destroying what's left of humanity by retaliating purely for revenge?"
Our conversation turned to the Christian ethic of "turn the other cheek," and I asked:
"Say you're [then President] Jimmy Carter, a serious Christian, and you're President when the whole deterrence thing fails. ...You see those missiles coming in on the radar screen and you know mass murder is about to happen to your people and nothing you can do will stop it. Is there any point in committing another act of mass murder?"
"You think he should surrender?" another crewman asked me.
"I don't know," I said, taken aback by the question.
Recently, long after that encounter, I came upon a fascinating study of Jewish thinking on nuclear retaliation—all this nuclear doctrine leads you ultimately to theological questions. In particular there was a fascinating passage in a paper written by Warner D. Farr, a colonel in the U.S. Army.
Farr had made a careful study of the theological literature on the Last Resort question of retaliation when deterrence fails.
"In Jewish law," he wrote, "it is asserted, 'there are two types of war, one obligatory and mandatory (milkhemet mitzvah) and the one authorized but optional (milkhemet reshut).' ... Interpretation of Jewish law concerning nuclear weapons does not permit their use for mutual assured destruction. However, it does allow possession and threatening their use, even if actual use is not justifiable under the law." (Italics mine.)
Threat, yes? Use, no? Who knew the Talmudists had parsed nuclear war so closely. The footnote to this assertion refers to a paper by a scholar named Michael J. Broyde called "Fighting the War and the Peace: Battlefield Ethics, Peace Talks, Treaties, and Pacifism in the Jewish Tradition."
Here's the relevant section on deterrence and retaliation and the Decision of Last Resort:
The use of nuclear weapons as a weapon of mass destruction is very problematic in Jewish law. In a situation of Mutually Assured Destruction if weapons are used, it is clear that the Jewish tradition would prohibit the actual use of such weapons if such weapons were to cause the large scale destruction of human life on the earth as it currently exists. The Talmud explicitly prohibits the waging of war in a situation where the casualty rate exceeds a sixth of the population. Lord Jakobovits, in an article written more than thirty years ago, summarized the Jewish law on this topic in his eloquent manner:
"In view of this vital limitation of the law of self-defense, it would appear that a defensive war likely to endanger the survival of the attacking and the defending nations alike, if not indeed the entire human race, can never be justified. On this assumption, then, that the choice posed by a threatened nuclear attack would be either complete destruction or surrender, only the second may be morally vindicated."
However, one caveat is needed: It is permissible to threaten to adopt a military strategy that it is in fact prohibited to use, in order to deter a war. While one injustice cannot ever justify another injustice, sometimes threatening to do a wrong can prevent the initial wrong from occurring. Just because one cannot pull the nuclear trigger does not mean one cannot own a nuclear gun. [Italics mine.]
It is important to understand the logical syllogism which permits this conduct. It is prohibited—because of the prohibition to lie—to threaten to use a weapon that is prohibited to actually use. However, it can be clearly demonstrated that lying to save the life of an innocent person is permissible. Thus, this lie becomes legally justifiable to save one's own life too. An example proves this point: If a person desired to kill an innocent person and one cannot prevent that act by killing the potential murderer, one could threaten this person by saying "if you kill this innocent person, I will kill your children." While, of course, one could not carry out the threat in response to the murder ...
So, Last Resort—threat, yes? Use, no? But if the foe knows there will be no use, the threat is useless. You encourage genocidal attack. An impossible paradox, but one we lived with throughout four decades of the Cold War. One, alas, that we are still living through, even if we only recognize it moment to moment, when something like the Last Resort Letter comes to light.
So, Slate readers. I put the question to you: What would be in your Letter of Last Resort? Retaliation or reprieve?