Missile Defense Cooperation

Voice:  Thank you for coming today. As you know, we have Assistant Secretaries Fried and Rood here and General Obering.  As I mentioned, this will be on the record. 

U/S Rood:  I’d just make a couple of opening comments and then turn to Dan for some additional ones and General Obering, of course.

First of all we just finished, just a few minutes ago, the North Atlantic Council Reinforced Meeting to talk again about missile defense.  There have been several of these, of course, in recent months.  We continue to have I think a nice evolution in the dialogue at the Alliance and a growing set of common views among the allies about how to proceed on this subject.

Just to give you a sense of some of the activities that were going on, we came to today’s session, that is the American delegation, and briefed on some of our recent interactions with the governments in Poland and the Czech Republic with respect to the negotiations to place a radar and up to ten interceptors in those countries for missile defense purposes.
We also talked about our interactions with the Russian government on this subject and our efforts to try to address their concerns.

Then there were a number of other activities with respect to the threat and some of our recent testing activities that we updated Allies on. And of course the Allies had a number of things they wanted to discuss as well. It wasn’t merely American interventions and presentations.

With respect to some of the things that are going on for us, again, our activities here at NATO remain a priority for us in the United States.  We are active in the various NATO bodies in trying to advance the missile defense discussion. We think that the work here at NATO continues to progress sort of slowly but surely in the right direction in that regard, whether that be on a common assessment of the missile threat, which we think we’re largely there.  Or some common beliefs on how the Alliance should structure its work in the coming months and years.

Obviously not every word in every document is agreed, certainly far from it, but nonetheless in terms of views and the beliefs of member nations we see a real progression.
In our negotiations with the Czech government and the Polish government, I’d say with regard to our negotiations with the Czechs first, there we are quite well advanced.  In fact there is only just one sentence that remains in the agreement to be negotiated.  We’ve come a long way in that area.  I think my expectation is in the very hear term we will successfully complete those negotiations.

With regard to the Poles, I’ll be taking a U.S. delegation to Warsaw tomorrow for another round of negotiations.  In recent months, weeks, we’ve had good visits to the United States by the Minister of Defense and Minister of Foreign Affairs from Poland that have we think moved this issue significantly forward.  We resume negotiations with the Tusk government.  This will be the second round since the resumption of those negotiations.
The majority of the issues in the negotiations have been resolved.  There are still some substantial issues that remain to be done but I think we’re optimistic still in the United States that we can successfully conclude these negotiations in the near term.

Prime Minister Tusk will be in Washington on Monday where he’ll meet with President Bush.  Obviously this will be a significant area for discussion between the two leaders.  But again, we remain optimistic that we’ll be able to reach agreement in the near term.

With regard to our discussions with our Russian colleagues, I recently was in, about two weeks ago led a U.S. team to Budapest, Hungary where we had another round of expert discussions on missile defense as well as on other topics like nuclear arms reduction.  This is, I believe it’s the seventh time that we have had experts meet over the past year to talk about missile defense.  We have had unprecedented exchanges with the Russians on intelligence, intelligence that we in the United States had previously only shared with NATO Allies to try to explain our concerns about the progression in the missile threat facing both NATO Allies and the United States.

We have also had discussions about U.S. proposals for missile defense cooperation. 
We stand by those proposals and they remain firmly on the table.  We nearly a year ago put forward a proposal for missile defense cooperation across the full spectrum of missile defense activities with our Russian colleagues.  Since then we have put forward proposals for a joint regional missile defense architecture which would be a partnership between Russia, Europe and the United States for the objective of protecting our territories and people, in those three areas, from missile attack.  And we’ve also put forward more modest proposals for radar cooperation, sort of expanding upon the proposal made by
President Putin last year on radar data sharing.

Unfortunately at the moment our Russian counterparts are not prepared to move forward on those proposals, but we have kept them on the table and we’re serious about still trying to find a way that we can cooperate because we in the United States think the greatest confidence building measure, the greatest assurance we can provide to the Russians is that they in fact be partners in this missile defense effort.That they have insight and influence over the future direction because they’re a full partner.

We have also discussed a range of transparency and confidence building measures including things like inspections and monitoring by Russian personnel at facilities in Poland, the Czech Republic.  Of course that would have to be done consistent with and only with the agreement and any conditions established by those host nations.  We’ve put forward ideas for liaison officers between the United States and Russia, data declarations, technical exchanges on the capabilities of the system.  Really a full range of ideas in that area to try to address some Russian concerns.

Clearly the Russians still have some concerns and we’re trying to work through those.  Our ministers, our secretaries of state and defense, have been active on this with their
Russian colleagues.  They’ll be shortly active again with their Russian colleagues in this regard.  We’re giving this a very high degree of high level attention to try to reach and understanding with the Russian government that addresses their concerns because we in the United States fundamentally don’t think that what we’re doing harms Russian security.  We’re talking about deployment about the ten interceptors in Poland with a radar, that clearly we don’t this can affect the Russian strategic offensive force which has thousands of nuclear weapons and hundreds of missiles.  Secondly, we don’t think the system we’re deploying, A, it’s not aimed at Russia; and B, we think it essentially has no capability to intercept a Russian ICBM aimed at the United States.

It remains to be seen whether the Russian government will in fact seek to reach an understanding with the United States that addresses their concerns.  We’re going to keep pushing in that area and we received a lot of encouragement from Allies today.  I think Allies think we’re taking the right approach in our discussions with Russia.  They too, a number of the Allies, have their own exchanges with the Russians and they have very similar feedback and results from those exchanges.  So I think the Alliance is very like-minded in terms of the support for the approach that we are pursuing with the Russian government.

With that, I should turn to my colleague Dan Fried.

U/S Fried:  We’ve come a very long way in the past 18 months on missile defense.  Eighteen months ago we were developing our ideas for the so-called third site, the proposal for Czech radars and Polish missiles, but we did not have yet a notion of how the NATO part of missile defense could work.  We hadn’t thought it through.  We were briefing the Russians, but we hadn’t developed our proposals to bring them in to this program in a cooperative way.  Since then we’ve done all of those things.  We have greatly increased NATO’s role in missile defense, or our sense of what NATO’s role could be if NATO decides to go this way.  We’ve made it clear there are a number of options not only technically feasible, but technically advantageous.  The more we look at this the more it’s clear that proceeding in a multilateral fashion through NATO will increase security.  It isn’t simply adding up the systems when you put them together or integrate them.  You increase their capabilities rather substantially.

Likewise with Russia, it has turned out when we do the analysis that cooperation with Russia would do more than simply add our systems together.  It would increase everyone’s capability, increasing the defensive potential of these systems by quite a bit.

I will acknowledge freely that in reaching out to NATO and reaching out to Russia, we have benefited from the good advice of many of our European colleagues as well as, frankly, some Americans who approach missile defense in a bipartisan spirit.  So we have listened to people with helpful advice on this, including the Poles and Czechs.  I should be quite specific.  We’re very happy with the way things have been going.  This is a complicated system.  There are complicated negotiations underway but we’re making good progress, both technically and politically.  What was initially a controversial issue in Europe is becoming less so as it becomes more clear that the United States is serious about working with Russia and working with NATO.  So that is all to the good.  We’ve had a good day here moving forward.  We have benefited from the discussions today and look forward to continuing to work with our allies.

LtGen Obering:  Just a few points.  First of all, the reason why we’re doing this is extremely important.  And as both John and Dan alluded to, the threat is continuing and progressing.

Just so you know, there were about 120 ballistic missile flight tests last year, in 2007, outside of the United States.  Iran was the third most active country in that flight test program.

Our deployments in the U.S. are going very very well.  We have added to our interceptors in Alaska and California.  We have now deployed our Aegis ships with their own sea-based interceptors primarily in the Pacific region and that’s in context, in combination with the sensors that we deployed, radars, both the sea-based and land-based.

In addition, our testing has been going extremely well.  We have now not had a major system failure in our test program in over three years.  With the ten of ten successful intercepts that we did in 2007, we are now up to about 34 of 42 successful intercepts going back to 2001.  So the idea that this system does not work is just not true.  It does.
Finally, we have taken concrete steps to show how the U.S. proposals in terms of expanding defensive coverage against longer range missiles could be integrated with a NATO capability.  We took a positive step in January where we actually took data from the U.S. command and control systems for missile defense and we imported that into the NATO air command and control system that will be used as the backbone for a NATO theater missile defense program.  Conversely, we took NATO data and moved that into the U.S. system and showed how we could exchange that information.  We’ll continue to do that with a demonstration in June and a more advanced one in an exercise in September.
So we’re on a path to try to allow NATO and to allow the decision makers to understand what this integrated architecture would look like between the U.S. proposals and NATO and how we would proceed.

That’s all I wanted to add, so with that, any questions?

Question:  Anna Slojewska from Rzeczposolita. 
On Poland, taking into account the size of the negotiations with the Polish government and the conditions being put by the government of Poland.  Do you believe it is probable that the negotiations will be concluded after the end of the President Bush’s term?
And my second question may be very basic but I don’t know how this works.  Does it make any sense to have the installation in Czech Republic without an installation in Poland?

U/S Fried:  If your time line is the end of President Bush’s administration, I’d say the odds are extremely high that they will be successful.  Extremely high.  We’ve had good work with the Poles.  I’m not the negotiator, John is.  But I can see that our positions are converging.  Prime Minister Tusk’s and especially Minister Sikorsky’s visits to Washington were important steps forward.  We’re doing a lot of good work and John Rood is on his way to Warsaw tomorrow.

U/S Rood:  We’re optimistic that we can reach agreement, as I said, in the near term.  I’d certainly define the near term as during the Bush administration’s tenure in office.  On the second part of your question, does the radar make sense – perhaps General Obering should take that.

LtGen Obering:  When we made the proposal of having the interceptors in Poland and the radar in the Czech Republic, they were designed to act together to defeat a long range threat and you need the interceptors to be able to do that along with the radar.
Having said that, one of the key attributes about this integration between the U.S. and the NATO systems is that you get great benefit from that radar to potential NATO-deployed capabilities.  Tremendously expanding the detection and the engagement ranges of a NATO-deployed system, whether it be a Patriot-like system or whether it be an Aegis-like system.  The radar is powerful enough that it would tremendously improve those NATO capabilities.  That is why we say that we want to start down this path of how we integrate these systems.

Question:  Mark John from Reuters.

I remember being briefed by U.S. officials about a year or so ago about the strong desirability of having a firm commitment form NATO allies by the Bucharest Summit for the go-ahead with the bolt-on system.  Notwithstanding your optimism about how things are going in the alliance about that, one does hear the system substantial concerns about the cost and other issues.  So my question is, how confident are you that you’re going to get some kind of commitment at Bucharest?  If not, what is the outcome most satisfactory for you?  And if you don’t get that commitment what does that mean in terms of the lead times to for the bolt-on?   

U/S Rood:  We think we’re making good progress in the Alliance on discussions in terms of what the alliance would recognize at the Bucharest Summit.  We think the Alliance will recognize the value of missile defense at Bucharest and that it will I think move forward to carry the work that’s ongoing to a further plane, if you will.
I think clearly as Dan and General Obering and I have talked about, there is a growing consensus in the alliance on the threat that’s faced, the fact that missile defense is one of the means used to respond to that kind of missile threat.  And that the Alliance has a role in this regard.  So I think we’re reasonably optimistic that we’re going to be successful at Bucharest.

U/S Fried:  A year ago Allies wanted to see two things from us, from the Americans.  They wanted to see our commitment to working with NATO on missile defense, and they wanted to see us make a commitment to work with Russia.  And they wanted us not just to do it, but to really mean it.

I think they’re convinced that we mean it and they’ve been convinced by the scope of our proposals and by the fact that our technical briefings show that this is actually extraordinarily beneficial.  I don’t know what General Obering thought at the beginning before the studies, but I, as a non-expert, I’ve been surprised by how much cooperation makes just raw military sense, security sense.  I think the Allies are impressed by that.  So for political reasons and reasons of security, there is growing interest in doing something with us.  We’ve made a lot of progress.

Question:  Will there be commitment?

U/S Fried:  You’ll get some language at Bucharest.  Because we’re not there yet, it’s really dangerous to predict.  But we were discussing, a lot of our discussions today had to do with what had to be done between now and Bucharest, might be done at Bucharest, so we’re making good progress.  Especially, frankly, compared to where we were a year ago.  You remember the debate in Europe then so we’ve come a long way.

Question:  You have insisted on the new mood and the mellowing of the Allies in recent weeks and days, but you have spoken as well of the Russians and we don’t’ get any news from the other side that they are mellowing and buying your ideas.  So do you think it is going to go ahead regardless of the Russians?  They don’t have any veto so to say about this line of towers?

U/S Fried:   Well, you’re right that we haven’t detected a lot of signs of, as you say, mellowing. But I would put it this way.  We very much want to work with the Russians.  We think it makes good sense for security as well as good sense politically.  It’s good strategic sense to work with the Russians on missile defense and we’re quite serious about this.  We want to work with them both to address their concerns, but also to engage them on the benefits for everyone of this kind of cooperation.

U/S Rood:  Clearly we’re continuing to work hard with the Russians to try to both reach agreement son cooperation into areas where we can address their concerns.  Far form giving up on this area we are quite determined to continue to work on that.
We’ve not yet reached those kind of understandings with the Russians.  You’re right in saying that.  But I think it’s something we’re going to have to continue to just make the best effort we can in that regard.  As I say, there is a common view in NATO on the desirability of doing that, and again, we have been encouraged by our NATO Allies to continue in that regard.

Obviously decisions about proceeding forward are things that we’ll face in the coming weeks and months, but we’re still on track to do this.  We’re still engaged in these negotiations, and we’re still committed to the objective of providing this kind of missile defense protection against a growing threat not only for the United States but for our allies in NATO as well.

Question:  The coalition Democrats have repeated --

U/S Fried:  And you’re from?

Question:  I’m from the Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny.  Sorry.
-- have repeated the idea of slowing down the funds for the defense and missile defense project.  What does it mean for you?  And especially regarding the coalition requirements which are --

U/S Fried:  Actually there is a much more bipartisan approach in the United States missile defense than there was a year ago.  Representative Ellen Tauscher in particular who was a critic has been a very,  I would say a very, helpful force in Washington working with the administration as, I think it’s fair to say she started out as a constructive critic and has now been an important force in an emerging bipartisan consensus.

So I am more confident that missile defense is not going to be part of our own electoral cycle.  I think the Congress has voted funds that we need to keep going.

LtGen Obering:  Specifically, we asked for $310 million for this year, for 2008 for the European site activities, interceptor, long lead buys, et cetera.  We received all of that money except for $85 million.  And that $85 million was withheld pending agreements with the host nations.

So as Dan and John have alluded to, if we get those agreements in the timeframe that we believe, we don’t believe there will be a slowing down of this process in any substantial form, certainly no more than maybe several months.  Again, we think that’s important because the threat is progressing and I believe that in just a very few years, frankly, you’re going to see Iran have the ability to reach most of the capitals of Europe.  It will be a while before they can threaten the United States, but we believe there is a sense of urgency behind getting on with this which is why we think it’s so important to conclude the agreements and get on with the construction.

U/S Rood:  You might mention the overall figures for missile defense funding, which I think are another objective measurement of the bipartisan support.

LtGen Obering:  And then I’ll talk about cost since I’m on money.

We asked for $8.9 billion last year, in 2008, for missile defense.  This was to a Democratically controlled Congress.  The agency was appropriated $8.7 billion. So that was a strong showing of support, we believe, bipartisan as Dan is referring to, for missile defense across the board.

And just one other note on cost, and this is very interesting.  We often don’t talk about the cost of not doing this and those costs are both in financial terms and then consequence terms.  We have found out that directly in opposition of what you typically hear about missile defense being destabilizing, it is actually very stabilizing because it gives leaders another option in crises and they don’t feel pressured to either do a preemptive strike or do a retaliation if struck against.  It gives them an option to buy time, frankly, in some of these crises if they know they can rely on protection that missile defense can provide.  So there's a cost of what you will not have with respect to that.

But then the financial costs.  If you go back and look at every penny that we have spent on missile defense in the United States going all the way back to 1983, it’s about $100 billion  as of last year.  A lot of money over that timeframe.  But if you look at damage costs on September 11, 2001 to New York City alone, and that was not a weapon of mass destruction on a missile, that was the airliners going into the buildings.  That was almost $83 billion.

So we almost reached the entire investment in this program in one attack on one city and if that was not a -- again, that was not a weapon of mass destruction. Had it been it could have been in the trillions of dollars and massive casualties, even more than we had.
So what is the cost of preventing that?

U/S Rood:  These are costs measured in dollars, not including lives and things of that nature.

Question:  I would like to go back to my Polish colleague’s question.  Could you, a question for General Obering.  Can you exclude the possibility that finally there will be just a radar base in Czech Republic and not the missiles in Poland?

LtGen Obering:  Could we exclude the possibility?  I will answer you the same way I did.  We proposed the interceptors and the radar in the Czech Republic because that is the only viable protection that we have for the near future to be able to provide defense against the longer range missiles.  So that’s why that makes sense to go do.

The benefit of having the radar, however, is that not only would it feed information to the long range interceptors; it would also feed information into the shorter range interceptors.  And we think that’s extremely beneficial and extremely powerful as well.  But I don’t like to talk in terms of excluding anything because obviously we like to have as many options on our table as we can.

U/S Rood:  But just to be clear, we’re pursuing negotiations for both the interceptors and radar because this is a system with several components.  All the components that we’ve proposed are important to us.  We’re not seeking to separate those facilities.

U/S Fried:  The Polish and Czech negotiators have been very skilled.  They’ve been very tough.  They know how to push us.  Their job is to get the best deal for their country as well as look out for the security of their country.  Just professionally I think that both countries have fielded very serious people.  I think we will succeed.  And it’s good that they’re looking out for the interests of their country.  This is the right approach.  These negotiations are serious.  But I think we are going to succeed with both countries.  I don’t mind, and I’ve told my Polish and Czech colleagues, I don’t mind tough negotiators if they’re straightforward.  Tell us what they need, work with us on what’s possible, keep their word.  We’ve kept ours, we’re doing well.

Question:  Paul Ames from AP.

I just want to ask if you can maybe narrow the definition of near term.  You spoke about before the end of the administration, which shows you’re looking at --

U/S Rood:  That was the question we had, right?  You asked the question, we answered it.

Question:  Is your target date the end of the year or do you have another target date --

U/S Rood:  I’m often asked this question and in diplomacy when you’re negotiating these agreements, frankly, I find it hard to predict when do people agree?  This is an imprecise science.  This is not a production line or something of that nature.  So I’m hesitant to venture a specific guess only because my impression is, as I say, in the near term we are, I think we will be successful.  I’m rather optimistic that a successful negotiation will be completed.  It’s difficult to, in the area of diplomacy to pin these things down to specific time estimates, so I’ll stay away from that.

U/S Fried:  One last from somebody who hasn’t asked?  If it’s quick, we’ll get in two.

Question:  Jim Neuger from Bloomberg, back to Russia.

You said there have been no signs so far of Russia mellowing.  As a long time student of Russian affairs and the Russian mind, what evidence do you see that the incoming Russian President with the future Prime Minister will be more cooperative than the current administration has been?

U/S Fried:  As a long term student of Russian affairs I know better than to make predictions about the agendas of new political leaders.  We look forward to working with Mr. Medvedev who will be Russia’s next President.  President Bush, I believe, had a conversation with him yesterday.  We look forward to working with his national security team.

We take this very seriously.  We believe there is both a real, we have a real common interest with Russia in moving it ahead on security cooperation in general, including missile defense in particular.  We think it makes good sense for both countries.  We want to be creative about this.  We want to address Russian concerns as well as hold open the prospect for very far-reaching cooperation.

What the Russians do, I can’t say, but we are very serious about this.

Question:  Nicholas Busse, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

In the Western European debate costs start to play a role.  You mentioned the big numbers. The sheer amount of money that is needed for the system. Were you at one point in time, did you intend to tell the Europeans from the American system,  I'm not talking about the American system, the NATO system, provide security for Europe so we expect you to financially contribute to this in one way or another?

U/S Rood:  The assets that we have proposed to place in Poland and the Czech Republic, if I’m hearing your question right, we’re not proposing some kind of user fee or something of that nature, if that’s where you’re going.  These are in the budget of the United States Missile Defense Agency.  General Obering can speak more to that.  But there is, before that I will simply say the cost of these facilities will be borne by the United States, but there are contributions that the host nations make that are very meaningful.  The contribution, for example, that we expect the Czech Republic and Poland will make in terms of siting, placement of the site.  In-kind contributions.  The activities that occur in those countries whenever a facility is placed there, it does occur in their country and they have obligations and responsibilities that we have negotiated.

So we take those as very meaningful contributions, and the same is true with regard to the Danish government, the UK government, which are hosting elements of this system today.  They’re making a very meaningful contribution.  In some cases like at Farndales, British personnel serve there.  This is a significant and substantial contribution by these countries.

LtGen Obering:  I want to clarify the numbers.  When I talk about $8.9 billion, $8.7 billion a year, what that funds is everything that we’re doing. That means programs that will not deliver for another 15 years or 10 years.  That includes a healthy sum for research and development.

So when you’re talking about a contribution that a NATO member nation may make to a NATO developed missile defense, it is much much less than that.

There has already been the agreement to have a NATO active layer, theater missile defense system, which form the backbone of a deployed force protection. That has been a decision that NATO has made.

That means member states will already be building capabilities that will be integrated within missile defense for the protection of their deployed forces which could be used to do the bolting on, as we talked to, with the U.S. long range proposal.

So we’re talking about a marginal cost increase to member nations who would like to participate in this integrated architecture for European protection.  So it is not a massive hundred billion dollar investment the way the United States has done over these many 25 years or so.

U/S Fried:  Also, to follow up on something John said, it’s important to recognize that both Poland and the Czech Republic have been put under some pressure by Russia, which after all, has publicly made all kinds of tough remarks, talking about targeting those countries or at least Poland with nuclear weapons.  I mean, really just appalling comments.  And the Poles and Czechs have been quite staunch in standing up for their own national interests and deserve support from NATO and have received it. As a long time student of both countries I know it doesn’t pay to start trying to push around the Poles and Czechs.  It doesn’t work.  But they have stood up under some political pressure and it should be recognized and it should be appreciated.

Thank you.

U/S Rood:  Thank you very much.

Question:  -- the shooting down of the satellite, the spy satellite.  Has this anything to do with the system?  Did you get some input in on the system in this operation?

LtGen Obering:  The ship that was used, first of all I want you to understand something.  The interceptors that were modified, that were delivered for missile defense.  However we had to modify the interceptor, we had to modify the radars involved and we had to modify the ship’s weapon system.  These modifications cannot coexist with a missile defense mission.  So it was either to do this or to do missile defense.  So there were significant modifications that had to be made, number one.

Number two, it was a very very highly scripted event.  Otherwise, this was a very fragile capability that we could employ in this particular event, and there were a lot of factors that went into this.  So unlike what we do in our test program where we are actually testing operational capability, this was not a test of operational capability by any stretch. It was to try to make the best of a bad situation and trying to mitigate the risks that that satellite posed to people on the ground.  We knew that as going to survive reentry and that very highly toxic propellant could be harmful to humans.

So a lot of the investment that we have made allowed us to do that.  You never know what capabilities may be useful when you need them.  We’ve never had that ability before, and having that ability we were able to mitigate that risk to folks living her eon the earth.

U/S Rood:  Let’s be clear on this.  When we had this issue with the satellite that the United States had placed in orbit that had failed shortly after launch, we were concerned about the threat to human health and safety, particularly from the reentering toxic propellant.  Should it land in a populated area, Brussels or something, it could have hurt and killed a number of people.  So we took this action to mitigate that.  But the way that came up is when we found this problem, the President directed the Defense Department to look at all available options, what could be done.  That’s where this option was found . It’s something we’ve reversed now in terms of the modifications to those systems, but we need to be clear about the objective and the purpose and the genesis of this activity as you go forward.  I think we have tried to be very transparent with the international community and with our allies about why we were doing this.  Again, it was simply to address and mitigate to the extent we could a threat to human health and safety.

U/S Fried:  And the environment too.

U/S Rood:  Sure.

LtGen Obering:  Thank you very much, we appreciate it.