The Caspian Basin is endowed with large natural gas reserves, and there have been concerted efforts on behalf of European politicians, diplomats, and international companies to find a way to develop those energy resources and transport them to Europe. One motivation is to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas (36% of Europe’s imports come from Russia) because Russia has demonstrated a knack for using energy as a political tool.

If Europe could somehow gain access to natural gas from the Caspian, the thinking goes, Europe could significantly reduce its vulnerability to Russian political whims. A group of international oil and gas companies including BP and Statoil are working with the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) to develop one of the largest natural gas fields in the world, the Shah Deniz field. Located offshore of Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea, it holds an estimated 40 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Shah Deniz Consortium is expected to decide in June between two competing pipeline projects that will deliver Azeri gas to Western Europe.

The gas will first travel through the existing South Caucuses Pipeline (SCP), which runs from the Caspian, through Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Georgian-Turkish border. From there, the gas will be transported through the proposed Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (TANAP), which travels the length of Turkey to its border with Bulgaria. At that point, the story gets a little interesting.

There are two competing projects to carry Caspian gas from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Western Europe. The first is the Nabucco Pipeline, which has long been the political favorite. Nabucco was originally intended to run from the Caspian through Azerbaijan and Turkey, then north through Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, before terminating in Austria. TANAP supplanted Nabucco from the Caspian through Turkey. As a result, the revised “Nabucco-west” pipeline would run from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria. (click here for a great map of the pipelines).

For years, Nabucco has been the darling of the West because it was the main alternative to the Russian proposal, the South Stream project, which would carry Russian gas under the Black Sea to Bulgaria and then onwards to Western Europe. Nabucco would cut Russia out of the equation, enhancing European energy security. Many doubt the feasibility and seriousness of the South Stream project, as it would be enormously expensive.

After TANAP moved forward, the Russian proposed South Stream looks even less viable. Instead, the main competitor to Nabucco to carry gas from TANAP to the rest of Europe is the so-called Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP). A latecomer to the competition, TAP would carry gas through Greece, Albania, and then across the Adriatic Sea to Italy. TAP has not been on the political radar as much as Nabucco, but the consortium involved in TAP believes it has advantages over its competitor. For example, TAP is shorter, and therefore less expensive, and it will terminate in Italy, a much larger market than the smaller countries of Eastern Europe that Nabucco will traverse. TAP also has a political bonus of adding a major development project to economically-depressed Greece.

The Shah Deniz Consortium is expected to deliver a decision in June 2013 on how it plans to transport Azeri gas to Western Europe.

While much is riding on the decision for the companies involved, the business case is often clouded with politics. TAP seems to have an edge on Nabucco in terms of economics, but removing the geopolitical jockeying is not easy. The countries in Central and Eastern Europe that depend heavily on Russian energy will not be pleased if Nabucco loses out.

However, European policymakers are mandated to maintain impartiality. From an energy security perspective, as Caspian gas looks more likely to run the Southern Corridor through TANAP (cutting out Russia), many policymakers in Western Europe are indifferent to Nabucco or TAP. Accessing gas from a source other than Russia would achieve the objective of diversification, making it irrelevant whether the project runs through the Balkans or across the Adriatic.

Still, building a pipeline that will travel 2,500 miles from the Caspian to Western Europe is daunting and will take years to complete. The Shah Deniz Consortium estimates that it can deliver 10 billion cubic meters per year to Europe with first deliveries expected in 2019. Keep an eye out for the June decision.

On Monday, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and William M. Cowan wrote a letter to Ernest Moniz, the MIT physicist who has just been confirmed as the secretary of the Department of Energy, urging him to restore funding to the experiment.

Fusion Power – A 10 Year Plan to Energy Security – White Paper 2013 by The American Security Project

ASP agrees that climate change is a national security threat.  As Senator Boxer said, climate change poses a direct threat to American national security both at home and abroad and  requires a greater effort from the government in combating it. As Senator Boxer urged: “We must follow the analysis and advice of our Nation’s military leaders and national security experts to protect the American people by addressing the dangerous threat posed by climate disruption.”

ASP’s Climate Security Report and Global Security & Defense Index on Climate Change are available below:

Video (ASP mentioned at 4 hours 32 minutes) http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/transcript/transcript.php?id=218984

Relevant Excerpt from Senator Boxer’s Speech:

“The U.S. military is not alone in viewing climate change as a threat. A recent study found that over 70 percent of nations surveyed around the world view climate change as a national security threat. This is from the American Security Project: Global Security Defense Index on Climate Change, March 21, 2013.

Countries around the world recognize that climate change is a national security threat, but it is the U.S. military that must take a leading role. As one of America’s retired military leaders, former U. S. Navy Vice Admiral Lee Gunn, stated: 

Climate Change poses a clear and present danger to the United States of America ….. The imperative, then, is for leadership and action on a global scale. The United States must act. The United States must lead. This is from the November 1, 2012, “Climate Change and the Homeland,” American Security Project.

I could not agree more. We must follow the analysis and advice of our Nation’s military leaders and national security experts to protect the American people by addressing the dangerous threat posed by climate disruption. 

I want to show a few charts about what people are saying, and then I will stop. “The cost of inaction will be staggering.” This ran in March. 

The effects of climate change in the world’s most vulnerable regions present a serious threat to American national security. Countries least able to adapt to or mitigate the impacts of climate change will suffer the most, but the resulting crisis will quickly become a burden on U.S. priorities. Both the Department of Defense and State Department have identified climate change as a serious risk to American security and an agent of instability.

This is a very bipartisan group. It is actually mostly Republicans on this, of people saying do something about this. Our national security is at stake. 

When there are refugees who are run out of their country, what is going to happen to the world? There already are climate refugees.”

Further ASP Resources on Climate Change can be accessed below.

• Preliminary Results: The Global Security and Defense Index on Climate Change, March 2013
• 2012 Climate Security Report, November 2012
• Climate Change, The Arab Spring and Food Prices, November 2012
• Military Basing and Climate Change, November 2012
• Pay Now, Pay Later, February 2011
• Climate Change and Immigration: Warnings for America’s Southern Border, September 2010
• Climate Security Index, September 2009
• National Survey on Global Warming, March 2009

Holland talks about America’s energy use, the threats of climate change, why the next generation takes climate change seriously, and how to build more resilient communities.

Tuesday’s appearance by Apple CEO Tim Cook and other senior execs, however, was one for the wonks. The company was on the defensive before a powerful Senate subcommittee over the tech giant’s corporate tax practices. Mr. Cook defended the Cupertino, Calif.-based company, pushing back on a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report that Apple was using offshore accounting tricks to dodge taxes on billions of dollars in profits. Yet Mr. Cook also used the spotlight to call for a simpler corporate tax code and lower tax rates, even if it meant Apple paying out more to the U.S. government. See Apple’s statement.

Indeed, the U.S. tax code is too complicated and the corporate rate at 35% is among the highest in the world. It takes little imagination to see why companies are willing to get creative, even if it means drawing the ire of lawmakers. In prepared testimony, Apple said it pays a 30.5% rate in federal taxes. Lawmakers can’t fire a tech CEO like Mr. Cook or dock their bonus, after all, but shareholders can.

This situation hurts American competitiveness on many levels. It also injects politics into an issue that needs quick action and clear-minded solutions.

The World Economic Forum’s most recent survey of competitiveness found that the U.S. tax rate for corporations and tax regulations were among the top reasons executives cited for America’s declining ranking. The U.S. is ranked 7^th globally after falling steadily from first place in the 2008-2009 survey.  See WEF report.

The task for the White House and Congress is to eliminate loopholes, lower the corporate tax rate and smooth the way for repatriating offshored cash. Those are longer-term fixes but they can become near-term realities by getting executives like Mr. Cook on board.

Near term, until the laws change, this remains a corporate issue. With celebrity executives taking the stand the focus will be on CEOs and CFOs.

For Washington’s influencers, that is the wrong place to direct their attention. It is ultimately an issue for the board of directors, the very people who hire and fire CEOs. They are the ones who set standards and keep a company’s strategic compass pointed in the right direction.

The challenge for corporate boards is to come up with a compelling plan for all that potentially U.S.-bound money that shareholders will find credible. Simply bringing it home to be taxed won’t pass muster, even if it is at a reduced rate from today’s levels. Apple’s recent $17 billion debt sale underscores that cash-hungry shareholders will get satisfaction, but it will be through engineered transactions such as this one rather than bringing cash back to the U.S. to be taxed at a high rate. Remember that through dividends and stock buybacks Apple shareholders have been promised $100 billion during the next three years.

It is also important to remember that shareholders demand value for their investment in a firm. As the World Economic Forum report indicates, there is a sense that the U.S. does not offer the edge that it once did to the world’s major companies. Congress should keep this in mind. Each tax dollar collected is, in a sense, an investment in the American system. Ensuring it is a worthwhile investment will help boards of directors and CEOs make the case for repatriating foreign profits.

Technology should not be the only place to find innovation in America. Congress could do with it a little bit too, especially when it comes to taxes.

Yet again, we are reminded that weather is an issue of national security. Six months ago, the Marines deployed to Staten Island and the New York area in response to Hurricane Sandy. In every major disaster, America’s armed forces are called to assist in disaster relief. That is appropriate because of the expertise and organization that these units can bring. Today, the Oklahoma National Guard is providing critical assistance in relief and recovery efforts. We hope their presence saves lives.

DoD Image, National Guard in Moore, OK

We know that elements of the Oklahoma National Guard have, over the past three years, served in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and in the Sinai Peninsula. Today, they are playing a critical role in their own home-towns. This is important work.

As we watch this, we are reminded that the missions of national security and homeland security don’t stop with what we think of as traditional security threats, like terrorism or interstate war.  In the 21^st Century, the weather presents real threats to national security. Ultimately, the more time those American forces spend deploying for weather and disaster relief missions, the less time they will have to prepare for those traditional security threats.

We thank all of our servicemen and women for their support in this trying time.

Carolyn Johnson’s article in the Boston Globe points out that unless Congress acts to appropriate more funding, the facility will have to go into “cold” shutdown.

MIT’s Alcator CMOD control room – empty due to budget cuts

This budgetary process began in April, when the Administration released their FY2014 budget request, more than two months late. In this budget, America’s research program to develop fusion as an energy source continued its dangerous to spiral into irrelevance.

For background, the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, which covers the Magnetic Fusion Energy program,  is within the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. In the budget request, the Administration asks for $458.3 million, of which $225 million is the U.S. contribution to the intentional ITER Project, and the remaining $233 million is for research and operations at America’s domestic labs (see the full budget justification here).

ITER is funded by six nations, including the United States, plus the European Union. The American contribution only amounts to 9% of the entire project, and our scientists will gain 100% of the results. The bulk of the funding for US ITER will be spent on contracts and programs within the United States. ITER is a critical component of fusion research; it will be the largest magnetic fusion facility ever constructed, and be a stepping stone on the way to full commercialization.

However, if there is not a vibrant domestic program, which would most likely include MIT’s Alcator C-MOD reactor and a plan for operations at other research facilities around the country, then American scientists cannot take advantage of the breakthroughs from ITER. ASP’s 10 year plan for fusion research would give the country the scientific base to take advantage of ITER. On the other hand, if the fusion budget continues its current trajectory, then America’s scientists will be left behind  - or, as the Boston Globe article says, they will go looking for work in other countries.

However – over the last month since the budget was released, there has been some notable opposition in Congress to the budget cuts.

First, Senators Feinstein, Alexander, Wyden, and Murkowski (Chair and Ranking Members of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, respectively) sent a letter to the General Accounting Office (GAO) requesting an investigation into what the full cost of ITER will be. If thoroughly conducted, this investigation could allow both Congressional committees to begin to put a plan together.

Second, is a bipartisan letter signed by 50 Members of the House of Representatives to Chairman Frelinghuysen and Ranking Member Kaptur of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water (who control funding for fusion). The letter expressing support for a level of funding in the FY14 bill that would be enough to keep MIT open. This is evidence that there may be momentum to undo the DOE’s proposed cuts.

Third, Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts sent a letter to Secretary Moniz expressing his opposition to the cuts.

Fourth, Senators Warren and Cowen sent a letter on May 20 to new Secretary Moniz expressing their opposition to the cuts, and concern about the DoE surpassing its authority.

Finally, the entire Massachusetts delegation to Congress signed an April letter to Under Secretary of Energy Poneman that expressed support for MIT’s Alcator C-Mod. They further raised a concern that the Department of Energy is ignoring Congressional intent, because at no time has Congress authorized or appropriated funds to close MIT’s Alcator. Moreover, as the government is currently operating under a ‘Continuing Resolution’ for this fiscal year, it is illegal to end current programs.

Ultimately, the reactor at MIT is important – it is one of only three in the country. Alcator conducts research on plasma confinement, one of the remaining engineering challenges for fusion energy. It is especially important for training the graduate students – there will be a 25% reduction in fusion grad students due to this closure.

However, the broader problem raised by the Administration’s budget is the lack of a plan for fusion research. If we want to take the lead on research in developing a clean, safe, and secure energy source for the 21st Century, we must do better than this. ASP has a plan, where is the Administration’s plan?

[Updated on 5/21/13 to include the letter from Governor Deval Patrick]

[Updated again on 5/22/13 to include the letter from Senators Warren and Cowen]

However, transforming how the Pentagon spends money and manages its back office remains a losing battle, according to the Government Accountability Office.

In a report this month, the GAO found that while the DoD is working to implement its plans to organize and streamline the very systems it uses to run the defense bureaucracy, it’s falling short. While the GAO report is focused on the business systems used by the Pentagon, it is an important subject because these are the very tools used to make decisions involving more than half a trillion dollars a year in taxpayer money. If the IT systems themselves are not up to snuff, it will be hard to enact the kind of oversight and management that is expected today.

“DOD continues to develop content for its business enterprise architecture, such as business rules, and is proceeding with efforts to extend the architecture to its components,” the GAO wrote in the report. “However, even though DOD has spent more than 10 years and at least $379 million on its business enterprise architecture, its ability to use the architecture to guide and constrain investments has been limited by, among other things, the lack of a detailed plan.”

See the full GAO report “DOD BUSINESS SYSTEMS MODERNIZATION: Further Actions Needed to Address Challenges and Improve Accountability”.

Ultimately, big changes are more about people than technology. In this case, the GAO report found that the Pentagon office in charge of overhauling business systems “has not used a documented, fact-based, data-driven methodology to assess needs and existing capabilities, nor has it performed a gap analysis of the number of staff required and the specific skills and abilities needed to effectively achieve its mission of leading and enabling end-to-end integration and improvement of business operations in support of national security.”

One of the main challenges for Pentagon civilian and military leaders in the coming years is actually twofold. A bureaucracy used to a decade of steady budget growth and strong political support must become thrifty. The Defense Department also must improve its fiscal credibility as the government department charged with the biggest slice of discretionary spending.

Inefficiency of any kind is bad for government, taxpayers and the defense industry. It fuels the Pentagon’s most vocal critics and undercuts even ardent supporters.

Worse, just like companies in any business can take on the worst traits of their mainstay customers, the same is true in the defense realm. Meetings beget meetings and paperwork can indeed dominate the day. When that happens, strategic aims get lost in the shuffle.

With U.S. forces coming home from Afghanistan and budget pressure increasing by the day, the Pentagon cannot afford to waste one of its most precious resources: time.

Miklos Porkolab, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center where the project is housed, said that unless Congress decides to step in, 70 employees will be laid off, including physicists, technicians, engineers, and support staff. The shutdown will leave only two fusion experiments in the United States, one at Princeton University and the other at General Atomics, a company in San Diego.

Half of the workers have already received notice, Porkolab said. Most of the 20 doctoral students working on the Alcator C-Mod project will be able to complete their thesis work based on data they’ve already taken, but about five may need to switch projects. The effect of the shutdown will reverberate beyond MIT, which produces the most PhD scientists in the field of fusion and plasma research in the United States.

To read the full article, click here.

That is just one way to count the toll that extreme weather events are taking on the U.S.

According to a new American Security Project report, “Protecting the Homeland: The Rising Costs of Inaction on Climate Change,” the costs of hurricane damage are rising quickly. The federal government spent $288.9 billion on hurricane relief from 2000 to 2009, more than triple the amount spent during the 1990s, according to the ASP report. Overall federal spending on responding to large disasters totaled $392 billion during the same period. As a reference, that amount is on par with the last three years of war spending on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another way of counting the cost is to look at how continuing this ad-hoc approach to disaster preparedness hurts American competitiveness. Major infrastructure already faces serious underinvestment and degradation; weather-driven damage compounds the problem. Businesses need to have confidence that they can get goods and people quickly and safely into, out of and around the country. Disaster politics are nasty, too, given the heart-wrenching loss of life, livelihood and property and financial stakes running into the billions. See the ASP report “American Competitiveness: A Matter of National Security.”

A good start would be to commit to shoring up preparedness through a national resiliency initiative. Upgrading infrastructure such as ports, bridges, bulkheads and levees is a needed step in storm-prone coastal areas. Establishing a U.S. infrastructure bank would help tap private-public funding sources. As well, taking climate change seriously as a national security issue is a crucial first step toward building a consensus for action.

These steps represent significant and meaningful measures to literally make the country stronger. Such surety cannot be bought on the cheap, or without political commitment to ideas bigger than any one party. Yet such spending and focus represents a sound investment in American prosperity and national security.

Extreme weather will continue to vex the country for the foreseeable future but it need not exact so high a toll. After all, hurricane season begins next month.

See ASP’s Reports

Image courtesy of Consensus Project

Importantly, as the science became better understood, the consensus has become stronger – they identify a 90% consensus at the beginning of the time period in question, 1991, that grew to a 98% consensus by 2011.

The truth, of course, is that there’s no real debate within the scientific community about whether or not climate change is real or caused by man. The scientific debates are about how damaging climate change will be and how sensitive the system is to human inputs.

Importantly, the study only looks at peer reviewed papers. Peer review is important because that means that a statement of fact within the report has been verified by other experts in the field. For centuries, this is how science works: an assertion is made by a scientist, and then their peers test that hypothesis to see if it holds water. In today’s world, anybody can have an opinion and write a blog or get on TV as an ‘expert’ – but it takes a significant step further to have that opinion peer-reviewed as fact.

So – memo to journalists – the next time you look for a counter point to your story about climate change, ask whether the scientists assertions have been peer reviewed. And – memo to the general public – lets stop having a debate about the science: a debate which scientists are no longer having. Instead, let’s hear a debate about solutions.

Finally – memo to policymakers – if you don’t want to implement a ‘cap and trade’ or a carbon tax, that is a valid position, but you cannot argue that its because of ‘questions’ about the science. It is simply no longer credible  (whether it was at any time) to say that ‘the jury is still out’ on climate science.

You can argue that the impacts won’t be harmful or that the costs will outweigh the benefits, but you cannot argue that the science is wrong. By the way, ASP’s work conclusively finds that climate change will have significant impacts on national and homeland security (see our Climate Security Report), and argues that the costs of inaction on climate change are far beyond the costs of action (see our Pay Now, Pay Later report).

Protecting the Homeland – the Rising Costs of Inaction on Climate Change by The American Security Project

The list is long. Some interpreted the Obama administration’s victory as a mandate to tackle historic problems like the debt or reforming immigration. Month by month, however, 2013 is proving to be no different than any other year in recent political history. There are a bevy of scandals at hand, constituting an incongruent sweep of subjects covering everything from the rights of reporters to work without government surveillance, embassy security in hot zones like Libya, abhorrent sexual abuse within the armed forces and the abuse of federal investigatory powers into political groups.

All the while, America’s competitiveness keeps taking blow after blow. Congress and the White House run headlong willingly into political skirmishes over these issues while ignoring the big, strategic challenges that will shape America’s security and prosperity well into the 21^st Century. If they keep doing so, the ability to credibly improve American competitiveness by changing immigration laws, reforming education, reducing the national debt or shoring up the defense industrial base, will continue to deteriorate. None of that will be possible without compromise and competency – both frighteningly scarce right now.

As David Ignatius in the Washington Post wrote in an op-ed Thursday, the government can’t seem to get out of its own way. “The crippling problem in Washington these days isn’t any organized conspiracy against conservatives, journalists or anyone else,” he wrote. “Rather, it’s a federal establishment that’s increasingly paralyzed because of poor management and political second-guessing.” See the Washington Post op-ed.

It does not have to be this way. By organizing around the simple notion that a functional political system is the bedrock of American strength and prosperity, lawmakers have a chance to step back from another grueling campaign of partisan attrition this summer. American competitiveness is already slipping, dragged down in part by the legislative and regulatory turmoil that can be attributed to this dysfunction. Consider that Wall Street has already frowned upon political dysfunction before when America’s debt rating was downgraded in 2011. Credit ratings agencies will do so again if this continues. America’s financial system cannot afford that, not can our allies and creditors.

Each scandal dominating the media is connected to larger issues that need immediate attention. They are not distractions, but symptoms. Embassy security is tied to a larger question of the role of the military and the State Department in post-conflict environment. The question over the future of the armed forces after more than a decade of long deployments and counterinsurgency campaigns is tied to the sexual abuse cases, as well as suicides, getting increasing attention. The unprecedented surveillance of Associated Press journalists and the aggressive IRS investigation of Tea Party groups leads to fundamental examination of the appropriate size, and expected competency, of our government’s most sensitive functions: taxation and the national defense.

The key is to focus on taking action not for the advancement of one political party or another, but for the country. It is not too late to change course in Washington, but as the scandal-driven headlines reveal, time is running out.

Check out ASP’s White Paper on American Competitiveness that discusses these issues further:

Climate change is also sapping the economy and straining federal budgets as the government is forced to pay out record levels in disaster relief each year.

This fact sheet lays out some of the trends in climate events over the last ten to fifteen years, demonstrating rising threats to the United States.

Mitigating greenhouse gases is necessary to reduce the effects of climate change. However, the United States must also take adaptation measures in order to minimize the inevitable consequences of climate change.

Protecting the Homeland – the Rising Costs of Inaction on Climate Change

Protecting the Homeland – the Rising Costs of Inaction on Climate Change

Cultural diplomacy is a public diplomacy tool for long-term relationship building with a long history in the United States.  It can be used to humanize U.S. culture and its people, showcasing the diversity of this country and setting the stage for broader discussions. The long history of cultural diplomacy techniques by the United States includes the Jazz Ambassador Program, which sent Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and others on overseas tours.

While cultural diplomacy is far from being any type of magic bullet, it can sometimes be used to make significant inroads into closed-off societies. This was the case in the Soviet Union.

In their discussion, Della Mae brought attention to the two-way nature of their tour. Rather than focusing entirely on American culture through bluegrass music, the band members explained the relationships they built overseas, and how their interactions served as a learning experience they brought back to the U.S.

By absorbing the local culture in each of the countries they visited, Della Mae was not only able to better bring America to Central Asia, but help tell the story of Central Asia to America. This included performances of native tunes they picked up in several of the countries they visited.

The “Dellas” also discussed the excitement their tours brought to the people they visited. In Pakistan, the doors had to be removed from the auditorium they played in at a women’s college because of massive crowd overflow. By interacting with children, many of whom had never seen or held an instrument and were enthusiastic to do so, Della Mae introduced them to new possibilities for personal expression. And playing with local musicians and exchanging musical knowledge allowed a type of basic cross-cultural communication that is otherwise unattainable without the help of language fluency.

Overall, the members of Della Mae demonstrated that they are among the best cultural ambassadors the U.S. has to offer, not only because of their immeasurable talent, but because of their ability to build relationships on a one-to-one basis. Their work inspires not only those in other countries, but also those in the United States to think about alternative ways in which we can increase our national security.

Della speaks about their tour:

Della Mae plays selections, including some learned on their tour:

To read more about ITER, click here.

Fifty Democratic and Republican representatives have written to the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee in support of the Fusion Energy Sciences Program of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.  This letter requests that the subcommittee “protect U.S. capabilities in this area by including adequate funding for both the domestic fusion program and the international ITER fusion project in FY 2014.”

To read the full article, click here.

Yet the U.S. is at a point when the details matter more and more.

The Rare Earth Minerals

A great example is the risk run by the Defense Department when it comes to the future of the defense industrial base and, in particular, the sourcing of so-called rare-earths metals.

As retired Army Brigadier General John Adams (who is also an ASP Consensus member) and Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, point out in a Politico op-ed everything from night-vision gear used by elite U.S. forces to antitank missile propellant depends on a ready supply of materials such as lanthanum. China, in many important cases, dominates the supply of such scarce elements. See the op-ed in Politico.

The supply of these critical but hard-to-get ingredients creates a major strategic vulnerability.

It is also highlights a larger issue of what the role of America’s manufacturing capabilities should be in supply and equipping the U.S. military. See the American Security Project paper “Perspective – The Defense Industrial Base.”

Globalization has upended U.S. manufacturing — with lasting ramifications. It is important to find new ways to preserve domestic capabilities while not cutting off increasingly important aerospace and defense export markets. Lawmakers, the defense industry and the military also must be mindful of the health of the industrial base because it is important to balance affordability with even higher demand for excellence in design, manufacturing and program management.

Doing this strategically means minding the details without losing sight of the big stakes at play.

 Check out ASP’s White Paper on American Competitiveness that discusses these issues further:

Also check out our fact sheet on Rare Earth Metals -

Fact Sheet Rare Earth Metals FINAL by The American Security Project

The military has been a leader in the development of biofuels – for good reason. As I’ve written before, the military’s single-source dependence on petroleum for fuel is a strategic vulnerability. Oil has a monopoly on energy supply for 80% of our military’s energy needs, including virtually all of the non-nuclear transportation. To simply accept that oil is going to remain as the sole source of liquid fuel that the US military relies on for its transportation, operations, and training is to say that we should accept the long-term strategic risks of price volatility and dependence upon uncertain foreign countries.

We should remember that, even if the military uses oil solely from the United States and its allies, the price that the Defense Logistics Agency pays for oil is largely set by global market conditions – and saying that those are highly vulnerable to conflict and unrest in the Middle East is an understatement.

Last year, in an attempt to address this threat, the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Energy were authorized under the Defense Production Act (DPA) to support the development of an alternative source of fuel. The funding agreed in a joint memorandum, and appropriated by Congress, each agency will invest $170 million over three years in helping to build a domestic biofuel industry (read more about the DoD’s biofuels policy here). This funding will be matched by investment from the private sector. Over the past several months, the agencies have been deliberating over which companies will partner with the government.

In many ways, the Navy has taken a lead on the transfer from oil to biofuels, as is appropriate for a branch that pioneered the move from sail to steam, coal to oil, and nuclear propulsion. In the summer of 2012, the high-profile test of the “Green Strike Group” – run on a 50/50 blend of biofuel – at the RIMPAC exercises off Hawaii were a clear sign of the importance that the Navy places on biofuels. However, the Air Force also has issued aggressive goals on biofuels: it claims that it will be able to use biofuels for 50% of its domestic fuel use by 2016.

On a political level, the DoD biofuel program has been under fire from (some) Capitol Hill Republicans for more than a year. However, a diverse coalition of supporters of biofuels, including farm-state Republicans like Nebraska’s Mike Johanns and Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, have beaten back the politically motivated attacks. The political heavy lifting of approving this program has already been done: the will of Congress is clearly that this program should go forward.

What About Sequestration?

Admittedly, the military is facing a tough budgetary environment, and across the board sequestration cuts mean that virtually every area of the military has been harmed. These cuts are already harming readiness, undermining the acquisition and training process, and are slashing much-needed research and development. However, even in the face of such cuts, an investment in deploying advanced biofuels is important. Even if the government could reprogram the funding intended for the biofuels DPA (something that is likely not allowed under current law), it is a mistake to slash investment in the future.

The question of how to fund investments in the next-generation is fundamental to building the fighting force of tomorrow. There is a natural tendency during downturns to cut investment – but it is precisely the opposite of what we should be doing. On a national scale, Dwight Eisenhower faced a deep recession in 1957-1958, with GDP falling by 7.1% in the fourth quarter of 1957, then falling by an astounding 10.4% in the first quarter of 1958. In precisely that time, however, President Eisenhower proposed, and Congress enacted, the National Defense Education Act which significantly increased federal support to education in science, math, and foreign languages. As detailed in August Cole’s post on ASP’s Flashpoint blog, the Soviet’s ‘Sputnik’ threat inspired massive R&D investments; the strategic threats of oil dependence should also inspire investment.

In contrast, today’s Congress is forcing the government, including the Department of Defense, to make harmful across-the-board cuts. The stupidity of Congress’ actions, however, should not excuse military and civilian leadership in the Department of Defense from making the important investments into the future; it is strategically important for the military to develop new sources of energy like biofuels. The military has long been a catalyst for technological advancement – and a successful biofuels industry will have impacts across society.

The stellarator, like the tokamak, uses magnetic fields to control hot plasmas in which fusion reactions can be created to produce energy. Where it differs is in the way these fields are created. To confine the plasma, it is necessary to put a twist in the magnetic field. The tokamak drives an electric current through the plasma to produce this twist. With the stellarator, the twist is provided by twisted magnetic coils outside of the plasma. Stellarators have actually been around for longer than tokamaks, dating back to the early 1950s, but the challenges of building such intricate machines have slowed progress. However, the construction of the advanced W 7-X stellarator at Greifswald in Germany is set to change all that, with assembly due for completion this year, first tests in 2014 and first plasma expected for 2015.

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