A Dangerous Gap in Nuclear Education

Neglect of the study of nuclear weapons in higher education has resulted in a gap in the specialized knowledge needed today. In 2009 remarks at the Elliott School, Sir Lawrence Freedman observed a “missing generation” of nuclear policy experts. A quarter of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration staff will reach retirement age by 2013.[i] Half the International Atomic Energy Agency’s leadership will retire within five years.[ii] General Kevin Chilton who leads the U.S. Strategic Command observes: "We've allowed an entire generation to skip class."[iii] Various efforts respond to elements of this challenge: the Stanton Foundation’s nuclear security fellows program is supporting faculty development, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Next Generation Safeguards Initiative is focusing resources on filling specific technical gaps, and the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies is innovating in the delivery of boutique graduate education. However, the vast majority of young Americans aspiring to careers in the executive and legislative branches of government, the defense contracting and consulting community, and the Washington non-profit sector will not receive formal education on nuclear issues. We remain dangerously unprepared for a future in which an increasing share of nuclear destructive potential will be recessed away from weapons deployment into the vagaries of nuclear fuel cycle operations.

---

[i] Bryan Bender, “Alarm over shortage of nuclear experts,” Boston Globe, April 3, 2010, link: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/04/03/alarm_over_shortage_of_nuclear_experts/

[ii] James Doyle, Los Alamos National Laboratory, “Nuclear Security as a Multidisciplinary Field of Study,” link: http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/ndo/n4/documents/safe_ed_laur08-1896.pdf

[iii] General Kevin Chilton , “2009 Deterrence Symposium Opening Remarks,” July 29, 2009, link: http://www.stratcom.mil/speeches/24/2009_Deterrence_Symposium_Opening_Remarks

A Walk the Senate should take

Last night's Washington opening of the American Ensemble Theater production of A Walk in the Woods could not be more timely.

Lee Blessing's Pulitzer-nominated play casts two people with the awesome responsibility to reduce the risk of nuclear war through negotiated arms reductions. This brilliant and well-acted play highlights the urgent necessity and daunting challenge of responding to the danger posed by nuclear weapons just in time, as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to take its most important vote on arms control in a generation by the end of the month. Statesmanship will be at a premium in consideration of this landmark agreement, as the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) between the United States and Russia moves to the Senate floor where a two-thirds majority -- and therefore bipartisan cooperation -- will be necessary to ratify it.

In the play, negotiators John Honeyman and Andrey Botvinnik represent the Cold War adversaries, the United States, and the Soviet Union respectively. They struggle to reach an agreement. Many wish them to fail, and their argument, and friendship, resonate with the issues under debate over the new START Treaty.

Some argue that nuclear weapons make war too horrible for any "rational" leader to risk. Blessing's Soviet presciently observes how globalization complicates this delicate logic: "Once we only had to be rational in English and Russian." Today we must do so in more languages and perhaps with terrorists who have no territory or population for us to threaten. And as the Gulf oil spill attests, accidents happen. Nuclear weapons endanger human civilization.

Blessing's heroes offer hope by rising from their seats and opening their imaginations to each other. History agrees. In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, arms negotiators moved their work from Geneva's gilded halls to the sauna, the target range, and the pool - and over countless vodka toasts, we made a lot of progress.

A generation later, over 22 thousand nuclear weapons remain. This spring, U.S. and Russian negotiators concluded a new arms reduction treaty, but now face domestic politics in both countries. In Washington, the Senate began hearings on ratification of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty earlier this month and will receive a new National Intelligence Estimate on its effects in a matter of days. Earlier this year, the U.S. Government proposed $180 billion in new spending related to nuclear weapons. Some political leaders argue that this is not enough - that we should resume nuclear explosive testing and develop new nuclear weapons. As Blessing observes of our efforts to escape nuclear annihilation, "sometimes the hawks eat a few doves."

Still, survival requires that someone take up this work, and the brave few who do have each other. Why should arms negotiators become friends? Andrey Botvinnik argues "because someone has to."

The United States and the world would be more secure if every Senator and staffer involved in foreign affairs saw this production.

Not all of them will, but you still can. Three of the five performances of this important production are already sold out, a few tickets remain for the 11:30 a.m. show on Saturday (July 17) and the 3:00 p.m. show on the following Saturday (July 24). Get your tickets now.

Newsweek misrepresents nuclear weapons scholarship

Jonathan Tepperman’s thesis in his September 7th Newsweek article “Why Obama should Learn to Love the Bomb” that “a growing and compelling body of research suggests that nuclear weapons may not, in fact, make the world more dangerous” badly misrepresents the state of scholarship on this crucial topic.

First, Tepperman references a handful of scholars to make his argument while dismissing the majority who disagree with him. George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn opposed this view in two op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and other leading scholars and practitioners participated in a 2007 conference at Stanford University, now memorialized as a 500-page volume, Reykjavik Revisited. Scores of experts are summarily excluded from Tepperman’s article.

Second, Tepperman suggests a robust understanding of how deterrence relates to today’s challenges where none exists. Nuclear deterrence scholar Sir Lawrence Freedman observed a “lost generation” of nuclear weapons specialists in remarks at the Elliott School of International Affairs this spring and Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, General Kevin Chilton, observed this summer “we have allowed an entire generation to skip class, as it were, on the subject of strategic deterrence.” More scholarship is needed to translate “nuclear optimism” and other Cold War concepts into the Twenty-first Century.

Third, in over 2,700 words on deterrence, not one of them is “accident.” This is a catastrophic flaw in characterizing scholarly debate on nuclear weapons. Kenneth Waltz, cited by Tepperman as “the leading nuclear optimist” underlines this point by co-authoring a book titled The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed with Stanford University’s Scott Sagan who has done decades of careful scholarship to demonstrate the relevance of accidents to nuclear deterrence.

Tepperman’s “iron logic” of deterrence is undermined by a more unstable plutonium logic that can only be understood by the combined lights of physics, engineering, political science, economics, and at least more than a dozen other disciplines that James Doyle of Los Alamos National Laboratory argues constitute “nuclear security science.” The nuclear future ahead of us is long, imperfect, and badly in need of more research and more informed public debate.

A little more lost plutonium gets accounted for

After the “unacceptable mistake” of having unintentionally flown six-nuclear tipped weapons across the country, and the mix-up that resulted in nuclear missile fuses, rather than helicopter batteries, being sent to in Taiwan, bad news about nuclear weapon mistakes may come in threes:

Most recently, a story from the Spanish newspaper El País (a summary of which appeared on the website http://www.typicallyspanish.com/) reported last week that Teresa Mendizábal, the Director of the Environment Department of the Energy, Environment, and Technology Research Centre, CIEMAT (part of the Ministry of Education), stated that 1,000 square meters of radioactively contaminated material, containing plutonium and americium, have been found near Palomares, Spain.

The contaminated material has been discovered 42 years after the Palomares accident where four U.S. hydrogen bombs fell over the village of Palomares (in the Almeria region in Southeastern Spain) following a 1966 mid-air collision between a U.S. B-52G bomber and tanker aircraft during in-flight refueling (which killed all crew members). Three nuclear weapons were recovered in Palomares and a fourth was recovered from the Mediterranean Sea. While the nuclear weapons did not detonate, two of them contaminated part of the area (releasing more than 20 kg of plutonium according to a PressTV article). In 1966, the US military airlifted contaminated soil from the site of the crash. Cietmat has been conducting monitoring studies of the area for over 40 years, because of concerns about the above-ground and wind-blown soil, and started decontamination in 2004. Now underground contamination from buried soil has been found as well. The article reports that the US military stated at the time of the accident that it air-lifted all the plutonium-contaminated soil (1.6 million tons), but hid the fact that it had buried some remaining soil in two ditches in 1966.

The article notes that until 2004, lettuce was being grown above the buried waste, and there were plans to develop the area. The article indicates that a formal agreement on clean up of the contamination at Palomares (the extent of which was yet unknown) was reached with the United States in 2006, when the United States provided $2 million for the soil studies. The article notes that it is expected that the United States will remove the contaminated underground soil (further negotiations are expected in June with the US Department of Energy when a US delegation will travel to Spain), as Spain has argued that it cannot store plutonium.

The legacy of this incident underscores the unintended dangers necessarily associated with nuclear weapons operations.

Diverse Coalition Launches Campaign to Stop U.S. Nuclear Deal with India

Twenty-three organizations yesterday launched a coalition to stop the Bush Administration’s proposed nuclear trade agreement with India. The proposed agreement would exempt that nuclear-armed nation from longstanding U.S. and international restrictions on states that do not meet global standards to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

The Campaign for Responsibility in Nuclear Trade believes the agreement would: dangerously weaken nonproliferation efforts and embolden countries like Iran and North Korea to pursue the development of nuclear weapons; further destabilize South Asia and Pakistan in particular; and violate or weaken international and U.S. laws, including the Hyde Act, which Congress passed in 2006 to provide a framework for the bilateral U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement.

“When Congress takes a close look at the Bush Administration’s proposed agreement, it will find a dangerous, unprecedented deal,” said John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World. “The proposal undermines over 30 years of nonproliferation policy, will increase India’s capability to produce nuclear weapons and its stockpile of nuclear weapons-material, and sends the wrong message to Pakistan during a time of crisis in that country. We feel confident that, under the Congressional microscope, the many flaws of this deal will be exposed, and it will ultimately be rejected for the sake of preserving national security and global stability.”

The U.S.-Indian bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement would allow the transfer of U.S. nuclear technology and material to India. However, it fails to hold India to the same responsible nonproliferation and disarmament rules that are required of advanced nuclear states. The deal will increase India’s nuclear weapons production capability, exacerbate a nuclear arms race in the region, undermine international non-proliferation norms, and encourage the creation of large nuclear material stockpiles. Its contribution to meeting India’s growing energy needs has been greatly exaggerated and it would create economic opportunities for foreign nuclear industries without any guarantees for U.S. businesses.

The pact must win approval from the U.S. Congress, which changed U.S. law in December 2006 to allow negotiation of the agreement, under several conditions that have not been met in the final language of the agreement. Those conditions include a new agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency for safeguarding Indian power reactors and changes to the international guidelines of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group, which currently restrict trade with India.

Members of the Campaign are working to educate the U.S. Congress and public about the dangers of the deal, and are working with experts and organizations in two-dozen countries to inform deliberation over the deal within Nuclear Suppliers Group and its member state governments.

The new coalition’s partners include: Council for a Livable World, Arms Control Association, Federation of American Scientists, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Washington office, United Methodist Church - General Board of Church and Society, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Institute for Religion and Public Policy, Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, All Souls Nuclear Disarmament Task Force, British American Security Information Council, Women’s Action for New Directions, Americans for Democratic Action, Peace Action, Peace Action West, Arms Control Advocacy Collaborative, Beyond Nuclear, Bipartisan Security Group, Citizens for Global Solutions, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Nuclear Information Resource Information Service.

Advisors to the coalition include Ambassador Robert Grey (Ret.), former U.S. Representative to the Conference on Disarmament and Director of the Bipartisan Security Group; Dr. Leonard Weiss, former staff director of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Nuclear Proliferation and the Committee on Governmental Affairs; Dr. Robert G. Gard, Jr., Lt. Gen., U.S. Army (Ret.), Senior Military Fellow, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; Subrata Ghoshroy, Director, Promoting Nuclear Stability in South Asia Project, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Dr. Christopher Paine, Nuclear Program Director, Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Campaign’s website is www.responsiblenucleartrade.com.

About the Campaign for Responsibility in Nuclear Trade
The Campaign for Responsibility in Nuclear Trade, a partnership project of 23 nuclear arms control, non-proliferation, environmental and consumer protection organizations, opposes the July 2005 proposal for civil nuclear cooperation with India and the additional U.S. concessions made to India as a result of subsequent negotiations because they pose far-reaching and adverse implications for U.S. and international security, global nuclear non-proliferation efforts, human life and health, and the environment. More information about the campaign can be found at www.responsiblenucleartrade.com.

The U.S.-India nuclear deal keeps getting worse for everybody

Last year, Congress passed the Hyde Act, changing thirty-year old U.S. non-proliferation law to make a special exception for India to receive sensitive nuclear technology and material from the United States even though India has repeatedly rejected meaningful nuclear non-proliferation commitments (such as signing the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, or ceasing the production of fissile material for weapons purposes in anticipation, as the five nuclear weapon states parties to the NPT have done). The Hyde Act substantially weakened U.S. non-proliferation law, undermined the NPT, and weakened the global norm against nuclear weapons proliferation.

However, the Hyde Act at least ensured that certain minimal non-proliferation conditions, including providing in section 106 that nuclear trade with India must cease if India conducts a nuclear weapon test. India balked at this condition, making sure that it was not included in the “123 agreement” it negotiated with the United States. Under the 123 agreement, it is unclear what the repercussion of an Indian nuclear test would be and subject to interpretation (which the Indians have been quick to use in their favor), and the requirement to cut off nuclear trade is gone.

Recently, NPR’s Steve Inskeep asked Undersecretary Burns about this blatant concession:

STEVE INSKEEP: Let’s talk about skeptics in the United States. You mentioned that Congress voted in support of this deal, but with a lot of conditions. And I wonder whether the negotiations are meeting those conditions. Here’s one. As I understand it, Congress said they want a deal that states that if India ever conducts another nuclear test, this civilian nuclear cooperation ends. Does your current deal do that?

UNDERSECRETARY NICHOLAS BURNS: Yes it does. We have a clear obligation under the Atomic Energy Act to react if a country like India conducts a nuclear test and the President, and any future President will always have that right under our law.

INSKEEP: Just so that I understand, you’ll have the right you say to end nuclear cooperation. Will the United States be required to end nuclear cooperation if there were another test under the agreement that you’ve negotiated so far?

BURNS: Steve, I believe that under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the President has the opportunity, the right, that’s how the law is written, and we have protected that right.

INSKEEP: Which means you wouldn’t necessarily end nuclear cooperation and the Indians seem to think that perhaps you wouldn’t.

BURNS: Oh I think it would be up to the American President at the time. But we have been very clear with the Indians that we do not want them to conduct another nuclear test and there is no indication that they have plans to do that any time soon. But protected the right and Congress was absolutely correct in asking us to do this.

INSKEEP: It sounds like you are right at the edge of what you might be able to get through Congress at some point and still you don’t have quite enough to bring Indians on-board.

BURNS: There are a lot of critics of this agreement but there are more people who support it.

Luckily, not in India, where the opposition parties – including the BJP and the Indian Communist party – have delayed the deal threatening to withdraw from Prime Minister Singh’s coalition if Singh goes forward with negotiations for the US-India deal.

However, despite these concessions, less distasteful to the Indian Communists may be a deal with Russia or France or Canada. Russia is already seeking to build four additional reactors at Kudankulam in India.

By making yet additional and dangerous concessions, the Bush Administration has not only further undermined U.S. law and international nuclear non-proliferation efforts, it has even failed to protect opportunities for American business.

Luckily for nuclear non-proliferation, the deal is still delayed in India.

Opposition to Nuclear Terrorism

United Kingdom Member of Parliament from Woodspring and Tory Shadow Secretary of State for Defence Dr. Liam Fox addressed the threat of nuclear terrorism yesterday in a speech at Kings College, London. He makes important points about the dangers of nuclear weapons and materials and echoes Professor Graham Allison’s “three no’s: no loose nukes, no new nascent nukes, and no new nuclear states.”

However, his silence is disappointing on the topic of British leadership in the nuclear disarmament process, particularly including specific steps suggested by outgoing UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Margaret Beckett in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace International Nonproliferation Conference in June.

Also of interest, Dr. Fox addresses the bargain of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) directly:

“The time is surely coming for us to revisit the NPT, especially article IV. Unless the international community develops new controls and ownership of both nuclear fuels and spent fuels and unless there are clear economic incentives for countries to accept this new authority, with the major powers willing to effectively police it, then we are asking for trouble.”

One may hope that this envisioned “revisitation” will be one that includes the voices of the international community full of non-nuclear weapon states and nuclear weapon free states who exercise impressive restraint and humility in their defense and security policies by not pursuing nuclear weapons. An imposed change – particularly one that envisions different classes of states with different rights and obligations – would strain an already weakened regime.

Norwegian Leadership toward a Nuclear Weapon Free World

"Nuclear proliferation is not yesterday's news," Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre told an audience organized by the Norwegian Red Cross, "it's a burning question for both today and the future,” Aftenpoften reported today.

The Foreign Minister’s remarks celebrated the 10th anniversary of the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer or Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, also known as the Ottawa Treaty. Recalling complex and stalled efforts to regulate landmines, Foreign Minister Støre observed that:

“The Ottawa process turned these dynamics upside down. Instead of a ‘race to the bottom,’ the participants found themselves in a process where they were constantly being challenged by civil society actors – not on the streets, but in conference halls, at roundtables, in the day-to-day negotiations.”

The Foreign Minister discussed landmines, small arms, and cluster munitions, but expanded significantly on the potential to bring more international voices into the nuclear disarmament discussion:

“In the field of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, Norway is leading a seven-nation initiative to bring states together, on a cross-regional basis, to deal with common challenges. All stakeholders are needed, and in this particular process we have succeeded in mobilising the UK - a nuclear-weapon state - and South Africa - a member of the Non-Aligned Movement.”

Could this effort grow into an “Oslo Process,” broadly engaging global civil society in an effort to promote prudent and verifiable progress toward a world free of nuclear weapons? Many important building blocks of such an effort are already in place or under development, including the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the Campaign for a Nuclear Weapon Free World, the call for a 2010 World Summit to eliminate nuclear weapons, the Mayors for Peace Program to Promote Solidarity of Cities Toward the Total Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, the Middle Powers Initiative, the New Agenda Coalition, former Senator Sam Nunn’s vision of “The Mountaintop,” and, of course, the stunningly progressive “Hoover Plan” articulated in a January 4, 2007 Wall Street Journal op-ed by George Schultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn.

Jimmy Carter in Defense of Arms Control

In a September 12, 2007 article in the Taipei Times titled, “Nuclear Steps Undermine Peace,” former President Jimmy Carter argues “By abandoning many of the nuclear arms agreements negotiated in the last 50 years, the US has been sending mixed signals to North Korea, Iran and other states with the technical knowledge to create nuclear weapons.”

Senator Roche on the Need for Resilience on the Path to a Nuclear Weapon Free World

This weekend, former Canadian Senator Douglas Roche, OC, who advises the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations on issues related to nuclear disarmament, made a stand out presentation to a conference co-hosted by the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

He encouraged listeners to recover the absolute horror of the subject of the use of nuclear weapons and to awaken to the fact that half of the world’s population lives in a nuclear weapon state and that $12 trillion has been spent on nuclear weapons. He called for new resilience in response to nuclear dangers, observing a paradox of momentum and indifference with regard to these dangers, emphasizing that “by adopting a resilient attitude we can withstand the power politics that force nuclear weapons upon us.” Recalling the Hibakushas’ warning that “no one else should suffer as we did,” he held out hope that an emerging global consciousness would subvert the temptation to rely on threats of indiscriminate mass destruction.

Rice Skips, Disarmament Advances at ASEAN Regional Forum

Leon T. Hadar of the CATO Institute observes that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s decision to “prioritize” Middle East diplomacy over attendance at the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum may tend to marginalize U.S. influence in the region; noting that this is only the second time a U.S. Secretary of State has missed the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting since they began in 1994 (the first time was also Secretary Rice in 2005). But the decision may have an unintended consequence for efforts to promote progress toward a nuclear weapon free world.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte did attend and made a proprosal on nonproliferation to the 27 foreign ministers in attendance. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Chris Hill briefed the press yesterday in Manila, saying of ARF nonproliferation efforts that:

“we believe that this is the type of issue for which the ARF is ideally suited -- and we had a very good tete-a-tete on that issue. There are some technical problems that remain, but I’m confident that we can find a resolution. And I think the ARF can make a contribution in this field.”

Abdul Khalik of the Jakarta Post reports a slightly different version from Manila:

“Indonesia on Thursday blocked a U.S. proposal to stop the spread of nuclear weapons during the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in Manila because it did not include efforts toward disarmament…the U.S. then changed the wording of the proposal, but the proposal was dropped because Indonesia insisted the issue of disarmament must be included.”

Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda, who blocked the proposal, explained the connection:

"There's a slightly different approach in the sense that to us nuclear non-proliferation should be seen in the full context, not in separation with other elements, namely disarmament and cooperation on nuclear technology. That's why we suggested that perhaps we should add more elements in the area of cooperation if we're going to develop it in the context of ARF."

Nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament are organically linked through the international legal rule of sovereign equality embodied in Article 2(1) of the United Nations Charter. These objectives are also legally linked through the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which embodies the global norm of nuclear nonproliferation and binds it explicitly to progress toward the ultimate goal of nuclear disarmament in Article VI.

The gentle reminder from our friends in Manila serves the longstanding U.S. interest in enduring nonproliferation and disarmament and hopefully regional cooperation toward these entwined objectives will be strengthened by the exchange (and those observing from the United States will take this important feedback into account in planning for our ongoing efforts toward compliance with Article VI of the NPT). One may wonder if Secretary Rice would have been more successful in swaying her peers than her Deputy was, but we’ll never know because, as Benjamin Disraeli observed, "History is made by those who show up."

The Prodigal State Party

Yoo Cheong-mo of Yonhap reports that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Mohammed El Baradei called for North Korea to return to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at the Inchon International Airport in Seoul on Wednesday:

“Now is a very crucial time for the IAEA, Korea and the entire world. North Korea has just returned to a verification process. I wish it would lead to North Korea's return to the NPT and complete scrapping of its nuclear weapons program.”

This is an important step toward reigning in the North Korean breakout from the NPT. Some observers have contested the legal force of North Korea’s asserted departure from the NPT on January 10, 2003.

The argument that North Korea’s withdrawal is illegal because it was asserted to have immediate effect is weak. Complex negotiations following the DPRK’s original assertion of its intention to withdraw from the NPT around March 9-11, 1993 (Wit, Poneman, Gallucci, Going Critical, page 25-6) led to interesting disagreement as to whether a state party to the NPT could “suspend” its withdrawal after the three month waiting period specified in Article X of the NPT had run out or, in the alternative, its withdrawal clock was reset if it chose to remain in the Treaty after having announced its intent to withdraw. This disagreement cleverly widened room for diplomacy and sparked discussions about how procedural measures might raise the bar against further NPT defections, but it did not fundamentally change North Korea’s right to withdraw. It only mattered so long as everyone – including the North Koreans – agreed that North Korea remained a state party to the NPT.

Law is important, but legalistic debate cannot reclaim the four-and-a-half years that the North has spent outside the NPT any more than IAEA inspectors can travel back in time to verify compliance during that period. But an unambiguous North Korean return to the NPT would be good for three reasons. First, it would multilateralize North Korea’s commitment to verified nuclear disarmament – even if entered into cynically, this global commitment to all NPT members would demonstrate that even a state that seems to spoil for an adjective (like “rogue” or “outlaw”) must acknowledge the relationship between verified and legally binding nonproliferation and contemporary sovereignty. Second, it would emphasize the resilience of the Treaty. Today, North Korea stands outside the NPT as a model to other states that might choose nuclear weapons proliferation over the rule of law, although no other states have yet followed suit. The DPRK’s return to the NPT would signal that breakout is not sustainable. Third, returning North Korea to the NPT would move this nearly universal Treaty even closer to universality – emphasizing that the historical and strategic circumstances that have left only three other states outside the Treaty should not be immune to creative efforts to bring them into meaningful and effective levels of partnership with NPT states parties for nonproliferation.

Plutonium Pit Party Points a Path to the Past

On Monday, July 2, Senator Pete Domenici, Representative Heather Wilson and others gathered at Los Alamos National Laboratories to “celebrate” the production of the first plutonium “pit” certified for use in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile since the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Rocky Flats facility in Colorado in 1989. Noticeably absent were 1) a clear vision for the future of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, 2) a sustainable vision for the future of the national laboratories, and 3) the application of the best science and technical expertise to the real problems urgently facing the United States.

At the event, Senator Domenici reportedly said:

“The only thing that would keep [Los Alamos] from being the permanent pit manufacturing center would be if we don't get the physical facilities.”

But bricks and mortar are not the only consideration in scoping the future of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, as Sam Nunn and other national leaders have argued, an informed and careful national consideration of the future of U.S. nuclear weapon is urgently needed.

But in a nearby event sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility/New Mexico, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, and the New Mexico Conference of Churches, concerned citizens questioned whether the celebration might be miscast:

Dr. Mike McCally of Physicians for Social Responsibility said:

“Nuclear weapons development is just not needed... DOE laboratories and Los Alamos in particular are not focused on the urgent needs of the 21st century. Laboratory programs focused on energy, environment, nuclear proliferation, global warming, would be a cause for celebration.”

Former Vice President of Sandia National Laboratories, Robert Peurifoy, who joined by telephone said:

“They don't need to be replaced at this time because they are not broken…I'm not in favor of jumping in and replacing something just to have work.”

Why is Los Alamos building new pits when we have no urgent need for replacements and lots of crucial scientific and technical work urgently needed to support the national interest in areas like port security, nonproliferation verification, energy efficiency, terrorism prevention, and environmental remediation?

Take a Sunday drive in your RRW

The Bush Administration appears to be using new talking points to convince Congress and the public that developing a new nuclear warhead is good policy. Both the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy have been using a new analogy, likening the new thermonuclear warhead that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos are designing to… a restored 1965 Mustang!

From the Department of Defense, General James Cartwright, Commander of US Strategic Command (nominated to become Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) stated during his testimony at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee on March 28, 2007:

“You also want to ensure that they [nuclear warheads] are the most secure that they can be. And we, in the 1950s, 60s and 70s as we put these weapons together, did not have the technologies that we have today for safety and security. We have learned a lot. And we use this example of the 1966 Mustang. Sure, I'd like to have it, but I'm not sure I want to give it to my teenager or grandson without disc brakes, seatbelts, airbags, et cetera. We have the technologies today readily available to make these safe and secure.”

So a new hydrogen bomb would be a fitting gift for his grandson?

From the National Nuclear Security Administration, Thomas D’Agostino, Acting Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, on June 15, 2007 at a briefing at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, as well as at a National Defense University breakfast briefing on May 9, 2007:

“Consider this challenge: Your 1965 Ford Mustang, which you maintain as a collector’s item, has been sitting in your garage for 40 years. You monitor it for such items as a clogged carburetor, corrosion in the engine block and battery discharge, and you replace parts when you deem it necessary. However, you don’t get to start the engine and take it for a test drive. The trick is to assure that if you do need it right away—to take your spouse to the hospital in an emergency—that it would work with certainty. That’s what we have to do in our nuclear weapons life extension program.”

While driving to the hospital at speed and in style sounds great, here is my question: If my spouse needs to go to the hospital, why not call an ambulance? Or use the family car built on a tested design that we know works, rather than a car that has never been tested or driven before?

And how is this like using a nuclear weapon to threaten hundreds of thousands of people with instant death? It isn’t.

New nuclear warheads are unnecessary (because, while the oldest nuclear weapons date to 1970 as referenced by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the 2006 JASON group report on plutonium pit aging concluded that the triggers for nuclear weapons have “credible lifetimes of at least 100 years,” resulting in the plutonium pits in the current warheads remaining viable for at least another 60 years). New nuclear warheads also undermine US non-proliferation efforts (because the modernization of the US arsenal brings into question the United States’ commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty).

Aside from these arguments against developing new nuclear warheads, it remains uncertain whether a new warhead design would actually be more reliable compared to proven designs which have benefited from over 1000 tests.

In fact, prominent nuclear weapon scientist Dr. Richard Garwin, who contributed to the design the first thermonuclear weapons, in his testimony before the Energy & Water Development Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on March 29, 2007, stated that:

“The technical question as to whether the weapon can with confidence be placed into the stockpile after development but without nuclear explosion testing deserves more study” and “ Beyond the technical judgment of engineers and scientists, however, is the question whether at some future time after the weapon enters into service there may be political questioning by some president or presidential hopeful, or even by some future STRATCOM commander about the wisdom of having a growing stockpile of untested nuclear weapons. It seems likely that such high-level concerns would lead to a nuclear explosion test…”

There will be many more arguments made by supporters of new nuclear warheads, but I hope they put forth national security justifications that include more than weak analogies to antique muscle cars from the 1960s.

In the meantime, if we’re going spend millions of tax dollars on a design (Phase 2A) of a new nuclear warhead and on a cost study anyway, I’d like the RRW to have satellite radio and heated seats.

British disarmament initiative

Outgoing UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett writes in today’s Jerusalem Post:

"Mine is a generation that has always lived under the shadow of the bomb. But there is a danger in familiarity with something so terrible. If we allow our efforts on disarmament to slacken, if we allow ourselves to take the non-proliferation consensus for granted, the nuclear shadow that hangs over us will lengthen and it will deepen. It may, one day, blot out the light for good. We cannot allow that to happen."

Likening the effort to abolish nuclear weapons to William Wilberforce’s efforts to abolish slavery and suggesting that the United Kingdom should become a “disarmament laboratory” and:

“…concentrate on the complex but pivotal challenge of creating a robust, trusted and effective system of verification that does not give away national security or proliferation sensitive information.”

This op-ed highlights a major policy address in the same vein given at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace International Nonproliferation Conference on Monday.

Foreign Secretary Beckett’s replacement, former Environment Minister David Miliband, has already been named by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. But those familiar with Mr. Brown’s record as a leading advocate and agenda setter for ethical change in response to global poverty have much reason to hope that this bold new initiative is only the beginning of a newly strengthened British voice for effectively verified global nonproliferation and prudent progress toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

For now, jolly good show, Madame Secretary.

We'll always have Votkinsk

Reuters reports that on Tuesday Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov was quoted by Interfax in remarks in Votkinsk, Russia that his country has begun mass producing Topol-M inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs): "we are now entering a new and crucial stage of reequipping all of the strategic nuclear forces and operational and tactical systems."

Verification fans will recall Votkinsk fondly as the site of the first on-site inspections for verification of negotiated limits on nuclear arms agreed to by the former Soviet Union under the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty – a Treaty Russia threatened to leave in February. Although U.S. and Russian on-site inspection rights under the Treaty ended in 2001, continued observance of the Treaty’s limitation reflects both the shared interest in avoiding a resumed arms race and a hopeful model for global limitations on intermediate range missiles.

Both purposes appear to have lost their charm for President Vladimir Putin. When asked by Doug Saunders of The Globe and Mail earlier this month how Russia might respond to the proposed American deployment of a missile defense system in Europe, President Putin specifically denied that Russian missile acquisition and potential abandonment of the INF Treaty are linked to the proposal, but replied that “As far as the INF treaty is concerned, this is a broader issue and it does not relate directly to missile defence systems of the United States. The thing is that only the United States and the Russian Federation bear the burden of not developing intermediate-range missiles, and the other countries are involved in this – Israel, Pakistan, Iran, Korea, South Korea even, as far as I'm concerned. . . . If everyone complied with it, then it would be clear, but when other countries in the world are fighting to pursue such efforts, then I do not understand why the U.S. and Russia should place such restrictions on themselves. We are considering what we should do in order to ensure our security . . . a lot of countries are involved in these efforts, including our neighbours. I repeat that this does not have anything to do with the U.S. plans to deploy missile defences in Europe. We are going to find responses to both threats, though.”

While one may think President Putin protests the linkage to European missile defense a bit too much, and find his suggestion that a global treaty would be better to be cynical, the U.S. effort to multilateralize the INF Treaty following the fall of the former Soviet Union suggests the sort of expansion of verification provisions developed during the Cold War that could contribute to greater global confidence in a strengthened nonproliferation regime.

Unlikely as it seems today, and even as Votkinsk becomes the birthplace of a new generation of Russian ICBMs, we should keep in mind that if we succeed in realizing President Reagan’s vision of a world free of nuclear weapons – given new life in January in the Wall Street Journal by George Schultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn – Votkinsk (along with Magna, Utah) will be where on-site inspection for nuclear disarmament was first achieved and this counterintuitive achievement should remind us that positive change is possible through careful and innovative diplomacy.

Trust, but verify with the Washington Times

Here’s an excerpt from Doug's letter to the editor in today’s Washington Times:

“nuclear weaponry and strategic deterrence no longer receive the serious national deliberation they should. Mr. Gaffney's call for a national debate is doubly important because he is wrong about everything else.”

Click here for the full letter (it’s the second one down, after the sexeducrats).

Verification Works: START Something Global

Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance and Implementation Paula DeSutter recently told Reuters Diplomatic Correspondent Carol Giacomo that while the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) "has been important and for the most part has done its job,” many provisions "are no longer necessary. We don't believe we're in a place where we need have to have the detailed lists (of weapons) and verification measures."

This doesn’t seem right to us. We have found that looking at things on the basis of careful planning to know what you are looking for and how you will know it if you see it is a great way to know what and where things are. Just the other day, our cat, Dmitri, got out of the apartment while we were doing laundry. As we went to bed, we thought he was in the apartment when he was really lost in the hallway – we didn’t realize this until we went to look for him.

While we only have one cat, so counting is less complicated, the verification challenge is basically the same with nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials. Thinking we know where they are is not as good as checking periodically and having a camera or even a variety of sensors pointed at them. Hoping that access is controlled to locations where nuclear weapons or weapons-usable materials are stored is not as good as monitoring the access points. Wishing that we had been more careful in accounting for them is not as good as actually doing the job.

Assistant Secretary DeSutter laments her task of negotiating a replacement to START, saying “you're never going to know how many warheads they are going to have on various missiles.” But the early days of on-site inspection taught us to never say never. Before the late President Ronald Reagan cracked the Soviet “nyet” that had blocked agreement about on-site inspection since the dawn of the nuclear age, perimeter-portal monitoring, cargoscan, and other technologies deployed to verify the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and later agreements seemed impossible to reach agreement about as well. By the time U.S. START inspectors began to see Russian Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles in the field, everything had changed and smart people were talking seriously about warhead-level verification and the procedural and technological advances it would require. The task was not easy, but the payoff was enormous: Soviet nuclear weapons designed to kill millions of Americans were eliminated and loose nukes were secured.

Assistant Secretary DeSutter is right in understanding that this task is difficult – the U.S. alone cannot account for as much as 8 metric tons of highly enriched uranium, and as the massively oversized Cold War arsenals come down, smaller numbers of weapons and caches of weapons-usable material will become increasingly militarily significant, making the other states with nuclear weapons and some states without nuclear weapons that operate advanced nuclear power programs increasingly important to the discussion. The task of verifying nonproliferation is a daunting global challenge for political and military leaders, diplomats, scientists, businesspeople, engineers, physicians, and even communities and ordinary citizens. The truth is, we are unlikely to be perfectly successful forever. But the number and impact of verification failures are likely to be higher if we do not translate the lessons of the Cold War into a global nonproliferation verification effort. The negotiation of a replacement to START is an excellent place to begin, by bringing in the British, French and Chinese and, as possible, other states of proliferation concern. Maybe not every state will have the same commitments, maybe some will be protocol parties in the first round, but if we want to be able to “trust but verify” in the future we need to start talking about it before the opportunity for credible accounting of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons-usable materials wastes further.

Many non-nuclear weapon states parties to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) have long viewed this topic as their business too, because the nuclear weapon states parties have committed to each of them through the NPT’s Article VI “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” If we truly want to be in partnership for nuclear proliferation prevention with states that either border states with nuclear weapons-usable materials or are high-volume transshipment points, we should explicitly include them in discussions about global nonproliferation verification.

The Bush Administration is clinging to the weapons of the Cold War, repeatedly proposing new nuclear weapons, rather than learning the lessons of this dangerous period: verification works, and it’s high time we got about creating a global context for it.