Two weeks ago, I wrote about a U.S. spy satellite that had gone haywire and might need to be shot down. I noted how diplomatically sensitive it would be for the United States to do so after telling China that anti-satellite tests are a big no-no. Some commentators downplayed the possibility that the United States would really shoot the satellite down, but now comes word that it's gonna happen: The U.S. military will use its missile-defense system to blow the errant satellite to smithereens.

Mind you, a missile-defense system is not supposed to be a dual-use satellite killer. U.S. officials have pledged compliance with space and weapons treaties by giving other countries advance notice before shooting off space missiles. They also insist the move is necessary to prevent contamination from toxic substances and is not a showcase of U.S. weapons capability. Still, in the wake of the Chinese satellite missile hoopla, it smacks of "Anything you can do, I can do better."

What's more, shooting the satellite down could create orbital debris, which was a major point of criticism after the Chinese experiment. U.S. officials insist the Chinese test was different in nature as it was higher in altitude and the resulting debris poses a much longer-term threat. They estimate the mess from the U.S. operation will fall to the Earth within a few weeks, whereas debris from the Chinese test will be a danger for decades.

Meanwhile, Russia and China formally proposed a treaty banning space weapons this week, a move swiftly opposed by the White House. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov argues that space weaponization would cause a "chain reaction" and would start another "arms race."  Too late, Sergei -- the weaponization of space has already begun.

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This past weekend, 40 Qassam rockets fell on southern Israel. An eight-year old boy's leg was amputated as a result, and there has been a marked increase in fightin' words from Israel. Residents from the southern town of Sderot even staged mock rocket-attack drills on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to demonstrate what it's like to live under the constant threat of attack. Israelis are boiling over despite four retaliatory air attacks in Gaza Saturday night.

Sderot's mayor stepped up the pressure on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to act, saying, "It's got to be a direct war -- killing Mr. Haniya, killing his deputy, killing all his staff, his house, his government house." (That would be the first time a Seven Questions interview subject was assassinated.) But Olmert, who seems to have become more level-headed since his widely criticized attempt to neutralize Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, responded, "[O]utrage is not a plan for action." Defense Minister Ehud Barak chimed in with an Israeli version of the Powell Doctrine: the need for clear goals, "a [political] exit plan," and international support prior to military action.

The shadow of Winograd is apparent, yet it sounds like expanded action is likely against Gaza. According to Barak, it'll happen only "when the time is right."  Hamas leaders are reported to have cut back on public appearances, and it’s clear they are taking the threats on their lives seriously. They have even pulled out the Gilad Shalit card, saying the captured Israeli soldier will never return home if Hamas leaders are assassinated. Amid this web of rhetoric, the point, as always, is that the rockets need to stop falling for peace talks and hostage negotiations to move forward. If Hamas leaders can't control the threat, Israel will have no choice but to do it for them.

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Bush plans to leave office next year on a very high note - the highest in U.S. history, in fact. His final full budget, unveiled today, rings in at $3.1 trillion, the highest 12-month spending figure in U.S. history.

What's up: Military spending and projected deficits. What's down: Just about everything else.

The new budget will call for $515 billion for the Pentagon, the largest military budget (when adjusted for inflation) since World War II.

Bush claims that his spending plan will balance the budget by 2012. That forecast, however, only includes $70 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009 and zero dollars thereafter. The Congressional Research Service estimates that Iraq alone already costs more than $10 billion a month. In other words, it's highly unlikely that $70 billion is going to cut it next year, and the president's critics are calling the proposal a financial sleight of hand.

But don't think that Bush isn't all about saving dollars when he can: In a "moneysaving measure," the White House refrained from printing 3,000 copies of the mammoth budget for Congress and the media. It's online instead.  

A U.S. spy satellite has gone rogue and will likely come crashing down to the surface sometime in the next month or two. That's bad news, as the satellite is roughly the size of a school bus and may contain hazardous material. (The largest historical instance of "uncontrolled entry" was Skylab, which crashed and burned in 1979 in the Indian Ocean and the western Australian outback. Luckily, nobody was hurt.)

The satellite's fall to Earth presents an interesting dilemma for the U.S. administration. Let gravity take its course, and there's a chance innocent people could get hurt. Shoot it down, and the Bush administration might get into diplomatic trouble with China and create an unintended international precedent. Remember when, after China's anti-satellite missile test last January, the United States was harshly critical of the Chinese government? If the United States is now forced to shoot its own satellite down, it may only reinforce the impression abroad that America just does whatever it wants in space, but looks askance at strategic space activities by other countries. Beijing may leap at the chance to accuse Washington of promoting a double standard.

This is exactly why it's time to push for an international treaty banning space weapons, opponents of the weaponization of the final frontier might argue. I don't want space missiles from other countries pointed at my house any more than the next guy, but I do wonder if a space arms race isn't the more likely outcome. The capabilities space affords corporations and governments are just too powerful to leave unprotected, unfortunately, and the Chinese probably see "Star Wars" as one area where they can catch up with the United States.

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In the wake of U.S. President George W. Bush's visit, it appears that more violence, rather than the hoped-for peace, is breaking out in the Palestinian territories. Israeli Defense Minister and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak has promised to step up the assault on Gaza militants who have been attacking southern Israel with Qassam rockets:

Even as we stand here, Qassam fire continues. The [Israel Defense Force (IDF)] will continue in its ongoing operation and deepen it in order to strike at the perpetrators, until the firing stops… It won't be easy, it won't happen this weekend, but we will bring an end to Qassam attacks on Sderot."

To add to the chorus, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had this to say:

The answer to the Qassam rocket attacks is an uncompromising war on terror which originates from Gaza, and not only through dialogue and negotiations. [Israel] must be clear: when speaking of a Palestinian state, we are talking about two parts—Gaza and the West Bank."

The Hamas government in Gaza has reportedly agreed to try and stop the rocket fire, but tellingly warned that it would be difficult to do so if Israeli military assaults continue. 

Honestly though, how can anyone ask people on either side to negotiate for peace while bombs are falling on their civilians? It sounds like the roadmap needs a detour: Get Gaza under control, then talk about what comes next.

The Guardian reports on a proposal by the FBI to setup an international database for "major criminals and terrorists":

The US-initiated programme, "Server in the Sky", would take cooperation between the police forces way beyond the current faxing of fingerprints across the Atlantic. Allies in the "war against terror" - the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand - have formed a working group, the International Information Consortium, to plan their strategy.

Here I was naively assuming that we already had a shared computer database for this type of thing. I mean, they really fax fingerprints nowadays?

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I never really quite understood the rationale for having to switch off all electronic devices during airplane takeoffs and landings. The stated reason for the ban is that the devices could somehow interfere with the plane's operation or ignite a fire after a crash.

But Boeing apparently has some more serious kinks to work out with its newest jet, the 787 Dreamliner, which already has 800 advance orders ahead of its November launch. The Federal Aviation Administration fears that a new feature on the plane that allows passengers to connect their mobile computers to the Internet may allow a terrorist to disrupt the plane's control systems. This is especially worrisome, as we know that many terrorists have advanced engineering degrees and could be familiar with how to carry out just such an operation. The Web sites of jihadist sympathizers are often very professionally done and have sophisticated encryption features.

With airport security bans as stringent as they already are, I wouldn't be surprised if an outright ban on electronic devices in the cabin were instituted in the near future. That ought to boost the approval ratings of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.

One of my favorite characters in Charlie Wilson's War (the book, not the schlocky Hollywood flick) is Michael Vickers, the wonkish ex-Green Beret and CIA paramilitary officer who, at the tender age of 31, masterminded the weapons and guerrilla warfare strategy used by the Afghan mujahedin to fight the Soviets. By all accounts, Vickers is brilliant, and he was critical to the success of the CIA's covert program, in which the United States funneled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons through Pakistan's intelligence services. Though the CIA never funded al Qaeda and the Taliban did not yet exist, many people blame U.S. policy—in which Vickers played such a key role—for fanning the flames of Islamic radicalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan that later came back to bite the United States on 9/11.

For years, Vickers toiled away on boring but influential reports for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank with close ties to the Pentagon. But as of July 2007, Vickers is now an assistant secretary of defense with an enormous portfolio: winning the war on terrorism. Vickers oversees Special Operations Command, whose budget has recently doubled to $6 billion in 2008, and he's especially concerned about... Pakistan's growing Islamic radicalism. Funny, that.

Testifying before Congress back in March 2006, before moving to the Pentagon, Vickers predicted that the future of the global war on terrorism (GWOT) would "likely be a protracted, indirect and clandestine fight in scores [of] countries with which the U.S. is not at war." He added:

The GWOT is an intelligence and special operation-intensive war. Getting this aspect of interagency organization right, and making full use of special authorities to wage the indirect and clandestine fight, is imperative. Particularly important in this regard is leveraging the CIA's Title 50 authority for [Special Operations Forces] operations through flexible detailing of SOF personnel to the Agency.

What Vickers is reportedly doing now as assistant secretary, described in Friday's Washington Post, seems to reflect the same approach:

Vickers's plan to build a global counterterrorist network... is focused on a list of 20 "high-priority" countries, with Pakistan posing a central preoccupation for Vickers, who said al-Qaeda sanctuaries in the country's western tribal areas are a serious threat to the United States. The list also includes Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, the Philippines, Yemen, Somalia and Iran, and Vickers hints that some European countries could be on it. Beyond that, the plan covers another 29 "priority" countries, as well as "other countries" that Vickers does not name.

Since 9/11, there have been occasional tensions between U.S. diplomats on the one hand, and the DoD and the CIA on the other, over clandestine activities that have gone on without the knowledge of the ambassador. If Vickers is inserting more special ops teams around the world, those tensions are bound to increase.

One of Vickers's former colleagues says he "tends to think like a gangster." It's a mindset that has served Vickers well in the past, yet it carries risks. If Vickers's teams nail Osama bin Laden in northwest Pakistan, he'll be hailed as a genius. If, on the other hand, they cause an international incident... 

Via Radar Online, here's a revealing chart of U.S. government spending on paper-shredding over the past seven years:

The chart comes from usaspending.gov, a very slick new Web site put together by the folks at the White House Office of Management and  Budget (OMB). Interestingly, they hired one of their fiercest critics—OMB Watch—to help build it. That must have taken guts, but the end product is a journalist's dream. It's fully searchable, sortable, and chock full of information that takes hours to pull together by other means.

Just something I noticed: The top contractor for "paper shredding services" is not some corporate behemoth, but rather a place called National Industries for the Severely Handicapped. NISH's Web site suggests cites identity theft as the main reason one would want to shred documents, but I think the obvious explanation based on the chart is the Iraq war, which involves reams and reams of classified documents that must be destroyed.

European Commission

I'm in Brussels this week, making the rounds at the EU and NATO. Yesterday, I had a meeting with Franco Frattini, the European Commissioner for Justice, Peace, and Security. Turns out he's getting ready to introduce a series of counterterrorism proposals to the European Parliament next month. His action plan, which he plans on officially introducing on November 6, will have three parts:

1. Tracking explosive materials: Frattini will make a series of recommendations for public institutions and private companies to work together to better track explosive materials. He also thinks that there needs to be a more specific definition of "conspiracy." 

2. Creating a register of non-EU visitors: Frattini wants to create a Passenger Name Record (PNR), similar to the one that the United States has, with information about non-EU citizens on flights in and out of the EU. 

3. Blocking certain Web sites: Frattini thinks Internet providers should shut down sites that provide information about making bombs or otherwise incite violence.

Get my take after the jump.  

The inaugural Ibrahim Index of African Governance was released today. The survey, financed by the Sudanese mobile-phone entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim, ranks sub-Saharan African countries according to security, rule of law, human rights, and development. Two tiny island nations, Mauritius and the Seychelles, came out on top. Botswana, Cape Verde, and South Africa are the best-governed countries on the mainland, while unsurprisingly, Sudan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia were the worst. Ibrahim is also planning to give a $5 million prize next month to a former African head of state who exemplified good governance. The BBC examines some of the top candidates here.

One of the strengths of the index is that it includes retroactive data dating back to 2000, which allows readers to examine trends over time. Rwanda was the most improved nation, jumping 18 spots to 18th place. In fact, one American businessman has called the country "the most undervalued 'stock' on the continent and maybe in the world." Rwanda, however, is still categorized as "not free" in the most recent Freedom House Freedom in the World survey, which criticizes President Paul Kagame's government for its crackdowns on the press and opposition groups. This should raise some interesting questions about the role of democratization in good governance and whether it is even possible or advisable to fully democratize a country that still has the ethnic and recent historical baggage of Rwanda.

One of the index's weaknesses is that it only includes data as recent as 2005. Two years can be a lifetime in African politics, which partially explains Liberia's abysmal showing at 43 out of 48. In 2005, Liberia was still under the transitional government that followed the country's civil war and Charles Taylor's removal from power. It will be interesting to see what effect the presidency of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who took over at the end of that year, will have on the country's future ranking. Liberia was the most improved country in the 2007 FP Failed States Index.

Deborah D. Avant, professor of political science and director of international studies at University of California, Irvine, and author of Think Again: Mercenaries from a few years ago, has this to say about the Blackwater contretemps in Iraq:

Is it accidental that the Iraqi government's reaction to the latest Blackwater incident comes on the heels of U.S. criticism of Iraqi progress?

The United States sent in an army of private-security contractors (PSCs) with only a whiff of controversy as the insurgency mounted in Iraq—contrasting sharply with the hoopla over the so-called surge. But this week's media frenzy demonstrates the political pitfalls of a reliance on companies like Blackwater. The Iraqi government is certainly justified in raising questions about how these companies operate, especially regarding the still unclear legal status of PSC personnel. But the Iraqi government has reacted mildly to the dozen or so previous incidents that have reached the Western press, making Maliki's outraged calls for the expulsion of Blackwater and a review of all PSCs working in Iraq seem puzzling at first. One wonders, though, if Maliki’s reaction to this incident is driven by a desire to take the spotlight off the Iraqi government's failures and buy it some bargaining room, both in domestic circles and with the Americans. Practically, the United States cannot operate in Iraq without PSCs—and Maliki knows this. The chance to point a finger at one of the more controversial elements of U.S. strategy and put the United States on the hot seat even while sticking up for Iraqi sovereignty in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad is probably too good for him to pass up.

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Last week, the Pentagon admitted that a B-52 had mistakenly flown nuclear-armed cruise missiles across the United States. And worse, for almost fourteen hours no one—at the base of departure, on the bomber itself, or at the base of arrival—had any idea something was wrong. Officials have assured the public that there was no danger of a nuclear explosion, even if the plane had crashed.

The specific warheads carried by U.S. cruise missiles belong to the W80 family, in this case the W80-1. (Other versions of the W80 are designed for use with Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are launched from submarines.) There are about 1,450 of these warheads in the active stockpile, with another 360 or so in the inactive stockpile. They have "dialable" (variable) yields of up to 150 kilotons, or about 10 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. And, as mentioned by the Pentagon, they have several safety measures built in to prevent accidental detonation.

First, the actual detonation system is physically protected by an "exclusion zone," which isolates it from electric (and to some extent physical) shocks. The exclusion zone can be connected to the rest of the warhead’s electronics by a "strong link," which does not physically connect until the warhead is armed.

An accident—fire, lighting strike, crash, etc.—could breach either or both of these safeguards, so the electronics inside the exclusion zone also contain safeguards, called "weak links." These are electronic links designed to fail under lower stress than either the exclusion zone or the strong link. This ensures that, for instance, if the exclusion zone collapses, the weak links will as well and the nuclear core will remain inert.

And beyond those nested safety systems, most U.S. warheads have other safeguards, including insensitive high explosives that will not detonate easily due to mechanical shock. The biggest worry with this incident was not technical, but organizational: How did nuclear warheads get loaded onto a plane and flown across the country before anyone even noticed they were gone?

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With the rise of China and India upending the world's consumption patterns, protecting increasingly tight oil supplies is proving to be no small undertaking. By some estimates, a major supply disruption could send oil prices spiraling above $100 a barrel.

In our September/October issue, FP took a closer look at moves by Russian oil giants Gazprom and Rosneft to establish their own private armies, equipped with machine guns and anti-riot gear, to guard their goods.

And now Saudi Arabia, a politically fragile country perched atop some 25 percent of the world's oil reserves, has stepped up its own efforts to protect oil plants and pipelines—the kingdom's economic lifeline—from potential attacks. After spending an estimated $5 billion and setting up a 35,000-strong security force, the Financial Times reports, Saudi Arabia will have more people guarding its petroleum than protecting the country's skies (Air Force: 18,000) or seas (Navy: 15,500) combined. Compared to a chaotic Nigeria and a stubborn Russia, Saudi Arabia has been a very reliable oil supplier. And the Saudis are keen on staying that way.

The kingdom's fears are not unfounded: This past February's foiled al Qaeda plot to blow up the Abqaiq oil center, which handles two-thirds of the country's oil supply, exposed potential security gaps. Plus, Osama bin Laden has been calling for attacks on the Arabian peninsula's oil installations since 2004. And the Saudis are no doubt expecting blowback from seasoned jihadis returning from Iraq.

Any substantial disruption to Saudi oil production would send shock waves through the global economy, and particularly the gas-guzzling United States. Accordingly, U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin is actively training 5,000 Saudi personnel to use such nifty technology as laser security and satellite imaging. And how does Saudi Arabia plan on ensuring that a force this large will be impervious to radical infiltration? The FT says that recruits are being "heavily vetted" and sought from outside the country's existing security forces. That's going to involve a heckuva lot of background checks.