Draft outline of my spring course on Nuclear Proliferation and Nonproliferation

Substantive comments welcomed.

1: Technical requirements of nuclear proliferation

PART I: Nuclear Proliferation

2: Assessing nuclear proliferation

3. Explaining and predicting nuclear proliferation, part I

4: Explaining and predicting nuclear proliferation, part II

5. Security, alliance structure, and nuclear proliferation

6. Non-state actors, smuggling, and terrorism

7. Implications of a nuclear revival

PART II: Nuclear Nonproliferation

8: The global norm and the NPT bargain

7: Structuring international nuclear commerce

8: Safeguards and physical protection

10: Latency, Detection, and Warning

11: Enforcement and interdiction

12: Cooperative threat reduction

13: Counterproliferation by force

14: Security implications of the global nuclear system

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.

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[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

Teaching Nonproliferation: Hands on, Online, and Followed on

Last month I attended a terrific meeting on the topic of “Nuclear Security Education: The Intersection of Policy, Science, and Technology” hosted by the University of Tennessee Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, sponsored by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

I learned a lot, and came away convinced of three specific elements that should be included to prepare the next generation of nuclear nonproliferation practitioners. Nuclear security education should be hands on, online, with follow on.

Nuclear security education should be hands on, with experiential learning opportunities, physical exhibits, and field trips. Simulations of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors meetings and State Evaluation Exercises have been pioneered at the Monterey Institute’s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and, with interdisciplinary teams of nuclear engineering and international affairs students at the Nuclear Security Science Policy Institute at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University (TAMU). Listening to former IAEA safeguards inspectors discuss the tools of their trade, I became intensely curious about those tools – and my students have responded very well to radiochemistry Professor Christopher Cahill’s efforts to bring uranium and detection equipment into the classroom. Field trips to the National Laboratories or working nuclear facilities suggest great promise.

Nuclear security education should be online, with great videos of lectures, simulations, and virtual reality experiences are available now. TAMU’s Nuclear Safeguards Education Portal contains top-shelf lectures on the fuel cycle; GW’s Elliott School has a Web Video Initiative with several great talks featuring a series of Nuclear Policy Talks by Rose Gottemoeller, Ellen Tauscher, Jayantha Dhanapala and others, and, of course, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a wealth of offerings in Nuclear Engineering, Physics, and Political Science. The Henry L. Stimson Center just introduced a great online game called “Cheater’s Risk” that allows students to explore proliferation pathways interactively in the context of a reacting international community trying to detect their efforts and Google Earth can help explore any location on the planet. Virtual reality (VR) is an exceptionally promising area – Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is working on VR safeguards inspections that could be tailored for generic facility types or for specific facilities to prepare inspectors for specific inspection activities (or be displayed on their handheld or through a monocle during the inspection itself) and a simulation of detection of nuclear material on a container ship may also be in the works. Security considerations may keep some of these tools offline, but TAMU’s Bill Charlton reports the University of Denver has a nuclear reactor available in Second Life open to all.

Nuclear security education should be followed on, with linkages to additional education, professional societies, and job opportunities. NNSA sponsored six summer courses through the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative this summer at the National Laboratories and universities and the Center for Strategic International Studies Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) is one of a growing number of networking opportunities for young people interested in learning more about nonproliferation. The Institute of Nuclear Materials Management is an important vehicle of validating and extending nonproliferation education. NNSA’s Nonproliferation Graduate Fellowship Program is one great pathway to a career in the field.

Great food for thought as those teaching on these topics prepare our fall courses.

Everybody's Bomb: Urgency, Inclusion, and Hope in Response to Nuclear Weapons

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery byDouglas B. Shaw on March 16, 2010
At a Woodstock Theological Center Forum on "God and the Bomb: Deterrence, Disarmament and Human Security" at Georgetown University

In December, the fellows and leadership of the Woodstock Theological Center engaged in a discussion on the topic of “Nuclear Deterrence or Disarmament: A Global Human Choice.” With their help, I better understand that the weighty historical choices humanity faces today are not between deterrence and disarmament but between engagement and what Woodstock Senior Fellow Delores Leckey termed “a kind of great apathy that we are part of and complicit in.” In response to my greater awareness of my own complicity in this great apathy, I am grateful to Father Lo Biondo for organizing this forum and Archbishop Migliore, Father Langan, Professor Maryann Cusimano Love, and all of you for the opportunity tonight to offer my thoughts on urgency, inclusion, and hope in response to nuclear weapons. My hope is that everyone here tonight will leave carrying a little more responsibility for what I think of as everybody’s bomb.

I. Nuclear weapons require an urgent response

A little more than twenty years ago, the fall of the “iron curtain” revealed a “nuclear archipelago” of vulnerable fissile material – plutonium and highly enriched uranium that could be used by terrorists to make nuclear weapons – across the former Soviet Union. At the same time, glacially slow arms control negotiations between the United States and Russia finally began to result in actual agreements requiring on-site verification and implementation. The prospect of nuclear terrorism displaced the Cold War order; as President Barack Obama has observed, “[i]n a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up.”

In light of these developments, some of which are now two decades past, many people think that nuclear weapons are yesterday’s news; that the danger nuclear weapons pose went away with the end of the Cold War. The truth is that as long as nuclear weapons exist, they pose an extraordinary threat to human life and civilization and this danger requires urgent action.

Immediate danger

This danger is immediate and stems from a combination of factors: terrorists intent on using nuclear weapons, the potential availability of these weapons or materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons, and lapses of security. In the asymmetric struggle against terrorism, nuclear weapons are worse than useless – they are a liability: a potential source of incredible destructive power for terrorists, an obstacle to reductions in nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials elsewhere, and used by some as evidence of the injustice and indiscriminate violence embedded in the contemporary world order.

Founding Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Graham Allison predicted in his 2004 book, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, that “if the United States and other governments keep doing what they are doing today, a nuclear terrorist attack on America is more likely than not in the decade ahead.”[1] Such an attack could kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Preserving our agency

In addition to the lives lost, our agency to respond to the danger may not outlast the first act of nuclear terrorism. In 1996, Senator Richard Lugar ran a campaign ad dramatizing a conversation in which a child asks her mother about the future possibility of nuclear terrorism; the ad closes on the little girl asking: “Mommy, won’t the bomb wake everybody up?”[2]

Johns Hopkins University Professor Daniel Deudney offers an alarming answer to this innocent question: “that a 9/11 to the fourth or fifth power could lead to a Patriot Act to the fourth or fifth power and the end of constitutionalism” – the next nuclear attack could undermine the American way of life and the basis for our free society.

For Americans, I believe this argues strongly that anything we might want to do the day after a nuclear attack, we would be better off to do the day before. This requires citizen engagement. Just like health care, the federal deficit, and every other issue important to our future, the responsibility for nuclear weapons policy cannot belong to the Government bureaucracy alone.
The day after the next nuclear detonation in a major city, I believe that many Americans – including some in this room – might feel called to respond personally. Unfortunately, this calling will come in the context of a global political environment of fear unprecedented in human history. The bomb will wake everybody up, but our options afterward may be constrained by this fear. Many may wish then that they had acted now.

Shaping our future capacity to respond

This challenge is not new, but it may be accelerating. Throughout the nuclear age humanity has made choices that have shaped our capacity to respond to nuclear weapons dangers today. We have come to many forks in the road, made several wrong turns, and been enormously lucky many times. But we also have a number of important choices immediately ahead of us that will shape our future capacity to respond to the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. I’ve listed eight of these in a hand-out tonight. Each of these represents an important opportunity for citizen engagement.

II. Nuclear weapons require greater inclusion

We are witnessing today an irreversible widening of responsibility for the problems nuclear weapons pose to human security across dimensions of geography and sovereign authority, legal rules and diplomatic fora, scientific disciplines and technical skill sets, as well as society and culture. The effect of the problem is the same – a species-level danger to humanity in its physical and moral aspects – but we are increasingly aware that its causes and our capacities for response are more diverse, complex, and multifaceted than we previously understood.

Our deepening understanding of this global human danger shares important attributes with our deepening understanding of climate change. The difficulty of fully parsing expert disagreement about climate change has not prevented a widening sense of public responsibility for the problem and appropriate responses. People around the world are making economic and political choices that reflect this priority. They don’t know for sure that they will save a polar bear, but they’re collective attention and action changes the political context for policy making by elevating the issue, attracting more resources and critical focus to the effort to find solutions, and raising the political price of neglecting the problem.

A similar increase in public engagement could also improve the context for nuclear weapons policy making, by supporting governments exhibiting more political commitment; more scholarly research across more disciplines; better education and more technical experts; and more public awareness. We need to act out of a heightened awareness that the bomb is the problem, and that it is everybody’s problem – everybody’s bomb.

Global inclusion

Inequality is the crack that threatens to shatter the future of nuclear proliferation restraint. In explaining his country’s 1998 nuclear tests, Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh used the term “nuclear apartheid” to describe the current international legal order in which most countries have forsworn nuclear weapons in exchange for the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology and a vague and largely unfulfilled pledge by the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China to work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. He’s wrong – the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – the NPT – did not create two classes of states but merely recognized that this destructive technology had already spread to five states and that it was in the common interest of all to stop this spread and for those who already had these weapons to work toward their elimination. The problem is that Minister Singh’s logic is seductive. Some on the “have not” side of history seek a greater role in world affairs through nuclear weapons. More productive means of inclusion must be found.

Inclusion means listening to those with whom we disagree to specify and work to reduce areas of disagreement. Not every disagreement can be resolved and not every partner is willing to earnestly undertake this work – the governments of both Iran and North Korea are both clearly engaged in behavior that threatens global efforts to reduce and control nuclear weapons as well as every other milestone in the field of international law and organization. But diplomacy is about talking to – and about – the “bad guys.” It is about maintaining agreement across a wider global community so that when Iran or North Korea breaks the rules, their behavior is aberrant and unacceptable. Clear solutions for lawbreaking may not always exist, but long-term peace and stability demand that we maintain international agreement about standards for responsible global citizenship.

This is properly the work of diplomacy. Archbishop Migliore has observed that multilateralism is an important and superior alternative to violence as a means to security. But it is also the work of social organization and scholarship, to find ways to overcome disagreements by establishing new standards of responsible global citizenship.

Social inclusion

A tradition of social activism for inclusion in nuclear solutions has contributed to our ability to live with our bomb. In the 1940s, the Federation of Atomic Scientists coined the term “education for survival” to characterize their work to educate the public about the danger they had brought into the world in response to wartime necessity.[3] In the 1960s, His Holiness Pope John XXIII responded to the extraordinary danger of the Cuban Missile Crisis through his encyclical Pacem en Terris. In the 1980s, Randall Forsberg sparked a Nuclear Freeze movement and the U.S. Catholic Bishops issued a pastoral letter on war and peace in the nuclear age. Perhaps closer to home for this community, in the pages of America Magazine just five years ago, the late Father Robert F. Drinan asked “[w]ould it be possible to educate and arouse America’s 64 million Catholics to become a church that is a strong political force aimed at persuading the Congress and the White House to renounce and defuse nuclear weapons?”

Epistemic inclusion

Some who study the role of nuclear weapons in world politics believe that the elimination of nuclear weapons is impossible and dangerously destabilizing to attempt. Some research traditions have rigorously constructed elaborate theoretical responses for managing the problems of the nuclear age that depend on nuclear weapons – and in some cases quite a few nuclear weapons – for stability. We cannot turn our back on these but must translate them forward to new generations and map them to new political facts and technical developments.
Some disciplines – including medicine, public health, and theology – are often excluded from some important discussions about nuclear weapons. This exclusion should be considered critically, because some of these disciplines have a history of pushing their way into the discussion with important positive effects. In the 1960s, for example, members of Physicians for Social Responsibility raised public awareness about the dangers of nuclear testing by demonstrating that Strontium-90, a by-product of nuclear fission, could be found in the baby teeth of American children.

Georgetown University’s President, Jack DeGioia, suggests that while scholarship demands impartial methods to reveal truth, sometimes the truth makes demands of us – that the creation of knowledge will sometimes demand action. If we agree, then everyone who holds legitimate knowledge about the danger nuclear weapons pose should be part of the conversation about their future.

III. Everyone is a source of hope for living with the bomb

In arguing for the development of the hydrogen bomb, its designer Edward Teller argued that “[i]f the development is possible, it is out of our powers to prevent it.”[4] But while this technological determinism may be logically seductive, history has not borne it out. There are still only two handfuls of nuclear armed states and there are reasons to hope to reduce that number toward zero. The momentum to move toward the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons has been renewed by President Obama and by four renowned leaders of the Cold War era: Sam Nunn, Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger, and George Shultz.

Nuclear weapons are a familiarizing and globalizing technology

During the conversation about nuclear weapons at Woodstock in December, Father Haughey recalled the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, emphasizing that “[t]he use of nuclear weapons awakened me to our vulnerability and our common humanity.” The images of the atomic bombings may be lost to the popular imagination, but they can be recalled. Even some who take a more coldly rational view of nuclear weapons allow that they build a certain sort of global community by placing the cost of war so high that no rational person would risk it. As Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb observed, “[t]he true security of this nation, as of any other, will be found, if at all, only in the collective efforts of all.”[5] However horrible, nuclear weapons can serve to emphasize the unity of global humanity.
Powerful interests are engaged

In fact, among major global dangers to human security including poverty, pandemic disease, and environmental degradation, nuclear weapons are unusual because they command the immediate attention of the most powerful people on earth.

Nuclear weapons are the one issue that literally follows the President of the United States everywhere he goes in the person of a military aide carrying the “football” that could enable the use of American nuclear weapons. Moreover, the United States spends tens of billions of dollars of each year and has spent more than $5 trillion total on nuclear weapons.[6] Unlike some causes for citizen engagement, nuclear weapons already command the attention of our leaders. It is the public that remains complacent.

We know what we ought to do; the real problem is how

I am calling for radical change tonight. I am not asking you to support the abolition of nuclear weapons – I do happen to believe it to be necessary and find myself in good company from Henry Kissinger to Richard Branson in doing so – but our discussion at Woodstock suggests to me that this is not the argument I need to win. Brilliant people disagree for the most careful and thoughtful reasons on this topic – I only need to convince you to be one of them.

The human family has not concluded that nuclear weapons are a moral evil, the way we have about slavery – although important institutions including the Catholic Church have come close. Even in the act of committing the United States to the abolition of nuclear weapons last Palm Sunday, President Barack Obama allowed that it would probably not happen in his lifetime. But for all the complexity of and disagreement about nuclear weapons, there are some things we know about them. We ought not to live comfortably behind the threat of killing millions of other human beings in an afternoon – because it is morally dubious at best and because it is an unreliable means to guarantee our security. If it is our lot to carry this burden today, we ought to try to relieve it for future generations. We – all of us here tonight in this room and throughout the human family – ought to engage this challenge deeply.

In response, and as a political scientist, I find an insight offered by Archbishop Migliore particularly illuminating: “Here the recognition of the values of morality would play an instrumental role in effecting political will.”[7] Religious and social institutions can call people to learn and embrace their share of nuclear dangers. My hypothesis is that leaving each of you with a greater sensitivity to your potential control over the bomb – your own imaginary “nuclear football” over your shoulder and always present in your conscience – will lead to more and better ideas more carefully and reliably acted upon for living with everybody’s bomb and reducing the danger that you will use yours carelessly.

[1] Ibid., page 203.
[2] Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Henry Holt and Company) 2004, page 209.
[3] Ibid. page 220.
[4] As quoted by Joseph Cirincione, Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons (New York: Columbia University Press) 2007, page 71.
[5] J.R. Oppenheimer, “The New Weapon: The Turn of the Screw,” Chapter 5 in Dexter Masters and Katharine Way, eds. One World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb, (New York: The New Press) 2007 reprint, page 68.
[6] Stephen I. Schwartz, Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington: Brookings) 1998 see press release at: http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/1998/atomic.aspx
[7] Archbishop Celestino Migliore, “Nuclear Weapons Contravene Every Aspect of Humanitarian Law,” Official Documents of the Roman Catholic Church, January 29, 2009, pps. 2-3.

What Richard Perle and Andrew Marshall think you should know about nuclear weapons

Stuck at home in a blizzard, I'm catching up with my DVR and found the following gem of an exchange that took place at the Hudson Institute on February 23, 2009 and was aired on C-Span 2's Book TV at 1:30 am on March 16, 2009.

The event celebrated the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center’s publication of Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter edited by Henry Sokolski and Robert Zarate (Strategic Studies Institute, January 2009) featuring discussion from Richard Perle and Andrew Marshall.

Henry Sokolski: do you have any thoughts, either of you, about what we should be encouraging in the way of education of young people who are interested in foreign affairs and military affairs or what we should be asking or demanding of the studies that are funded by the United States Government that deal with these topics? How shall I put it, let's leave Albert and Roberta out of it.

Richard Perle: My immediate reaction to that is that what we should be teaching is not the conclusions they arrived at or, for that matter, the substance of their research, but the tools, the methodology. I can't imagine a better way to bring a young student along than to give him the famous Base Study and invite him to reflect on the mode of analysis that is reflected in it. It was the rigor and discipline they brought to every issue they examined. Now, as it happens, many of those issues are still with us and I think they have a great deal to contribute in the way we think about those issues, but far more important is respect for their approach to the analysis of issues and there is much too little of that today in universities and government funded research programs.

Andrew Marshall: Well, I would certainly second that, I think in addition other things I've written suggest reading a lot of history. Clearly, one of the things you want people to understand is the uncertainty of things; how you really need to look at a variety of alternative futures. Any notion that you know what's going to happen is not going to work.

LT in the FT

Leonor is quoted in Wednesday’s Financial Times story “Split on the atom” by Ed Crooks and James Blitz:

"The world will be a much more dangerous place if more countries acquire enrichment and reprocessing facilities, because then we will have more potential nuclear weapons states."

This is a pedestrian post for such an important date of remembrance, but it is also true and reflective of a pressing problem for the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime.

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.

Nuclear Umbrella: Pick 40

Defense News recently ran an editorial arguing that the United States should build new nuclear weapons or run the risk of losing the skills necessary to build these weapons, and:

“That's simply unacceptable for a nation whose nuclear protective umbrella covers some 40 nations.”

The number 40 captured my imagination. I thought immediately of the 28 members of NATO. Then it occurred to me that this includes the United States itself, which is a provider of the extended deterrent usually referred to as the “nuclear umbrella” and thus might not be counted toward the 40. And, of course, the United Kingdom and France have their own independent nuclear deterrents, so 25 in NATO properly under the U.S. “nuclear umbrella.” But then I decided that coming to agreement about this will require a more cooperative spirit, so 28.

Japan is an oft-cited (if increasingly complex) case, and South Korea leaps to mind, but I started running out of steam in my effort to count to 40.

Then it occurred to me I might have the whole thing the wrong way round. I began again: 192 members of the United Nations, now subtracting:

• 33 members of the Latin American Nuclear Weapon Free Zone,
• 13 parties to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone,
• 10 parties to the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone,
• 53 signatories to the African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone, and
• 5 parties to the Central Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone
  And, of course,
• 28 NATO members previously mentioned

This should leave 50 UN members not in NATO or an explicit nuclear weapon free zone agreement, right?

Of course, the devil is in the details, with Taiwan probably relevant and Niue party to Pelindaba and Brunei party to Bangkok all without seats in Turtle Bay – but building on the collaborative spirit referenced above, let’s say this is all part of a round 30, leaving 10 states to be named later under the U.S. “nuclear umbrella” from among (more or less) the follwing 53: Afghanistan, Andorra, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bhutan, China, Cyprus, Egypt, Finland, Georgia, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Maldives, Malta, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Qatar, Moldova, Russia, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Timor-Leste, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Plus, the Holy See.

This list certainly includes some of my favorites, but the point is that the who the United States has pledged to defend is potentially important at a moment when our negative security assurances (not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) will again be discussed critically at the 2010 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The stakes may not seem what they once were in extending our deterrent largesse in this way, but exactly which states we have pledged to defend with nuclear weapons under what conditions remains a worthy topic of public debate because it has implications for the effectiveness of our nonproliferation policy.

Renew Article IV with Renewables

Forty-two years since the conclusion of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the world has changed substantially. Nuclear power generation has provided enormous quantities of electricity, fueling growth over decades and clarifying challenges that were dimly understood in the 1960s. Germany, for example, may be changing course away from indefinite reliance on nuclear power while even the United States may be as much as a generation away from a permanent solution for the disposal of high-level nuclear waste. In light of these changes, state practice in compliance with NPT Article IV commitments related to peaceful uses of nuclear energy has changed as well, and could change still further, potentially to the benefit of the NPT regime and international peace and security.

Clearly, the peaceful benefits -- and challenges -- of nuclear energy have become more diffuse and complex than they were in 1967. These peaceful benefits today include the advantage of historical perspective on varied international experiences with nuclear power generation and the more informed policy choices this perspective enables.

Nuclear power may not be suitable for every state, particularly in the context of increasing Non-Nuclear Weapon State sensitivity to each state’s own responsibility to comply with Article VI, as Professor Scott Sagan recently suggested at an event sponsored by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

In this context, Non-Nuclear Weapon States should have the option to embrace assistance in the research, development, and deployment of renewable energy resources, distributed generation capacity, and energy efficiency as constitutive of Nuclear Weapon State compliance with Article IV. In some cases, these technologies may be more appropriate to the needs of Non-Nuclear Weapon States than nuclear power generation; assessment of this possibility should specifically include plans for future global growth in these technologies.

A view of Article IV compliance inclusive of non-power generation cooperation has a substantial history in the NPT regime. In the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency’s January 1995 publication NPT Article IV: The Human Dimension, non-power cooperation is emphasized specifically as constitutive of U.S. compliance with Article IV (p.2):

“U.S. support for the technical assistance programs administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has enabled many nations to make great strides in the application of nuclear techniques to a wide range of non-nuclear power disciplines. These techniques are used for such purposes as diagnosing and treating human and animal disease, optimizing soil fertility and crop production, reducing industrial pollution and improving the efficiency of industrial operations, to name just some. Many of the Agency’s programs are tailored to the needs of individual countries. Others are undertaken on a region-wide, or international basis. A closer look at some of them reveals the enormous benefits that many nations have realized in terms of an improved quality of life for their citizens.”

and (p. 18):

“The United States’ wide-ranging bilateral and multilateral technical assistance activities underscore its firm commitment to the goal enshrined in Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of promoting ‘the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials, and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy…with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.’”

The arguments – and this specific document – were an organic part of the global discussion leading up to the successful indefinite extension of the Treaty in 1995.

One danger of moves in this direction is that they could be seen by some Non-Nuclear Weapon States as an attempt to buy out an “inalienable right.” This is a legitimate concern as a key objective of the process of strengthening the NPT is increasing the perception of universal equity among its states parties. However, careful alignment of efforts at “renewable” Article IV compliance with “the needs of the developing areas of the world;” efforts to strengthen global compliance with other Articles – particularly I, II, and III; and the responsibility of aid recipient states to comply with Article VI could mitigate and balance these concerns. This is not a one-size-fits-all solution – but neither are the other proposed solutions, including internationalization of the fuel cycle or the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. We may be years away from the right idea about the future of Article IV compliance, so we should definitely keep an open mind about the future of the benefits of peaceful uses of nuclear energy and potential linkages to renewable energy, distributed generation, and energy efficiency.

Imagining Iran

Like millions around the world, we are moved by the reports and images of Iranian citizens demanding effective democracy and resisting violent oppression. We are reminded of earlier instances when heroic leadership led to dramatic political change.

This vital national drama plays out against a backdrop of global significance. The Iranian Government’s refusal to fully align its nuclear behavior with its international legal commitments and the directives of the United Nations Security Council threatens international peace and security.

Today, Iran is a singular problem in terms of compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its actions threaten the global norm against the spread of nuclear weapons. New prospects for progress toward a nuclear weapon-free world are precariously balanced on a prudent and coordinated response among many states, each with its own security and political equities to service. The Iranian Government ‘s rejection of the emerging multilateral effort to move toward the global abolition of nuclear weapons and contrary national development of sensitive nuclear fuel cycle technologies are disproportionately shaping our common human future much for the worse.

But what if they weren’t? Witnessing the courage of ordinary Iranians, we recall the challenges faced by leaders including Washington, Gandhi, and Mandela and the transformational changes their heroism made possible. Today, the hope for such leadership sparks interesting possibilities for international security and world peace, as well as for the people of Iran.

Next spring, the NPT will be reviewed by its states parties. Many expect Iran to play a cynical and destructive role in the proceedings, but there is a precedent for another alternative. When the NPT was made permanent at the 1995 Review and Extension Conference, the revolutionary leaders of South Africa’s new multi-racial democracy played an important role in rallying the world behind the then-hotly contested option of indefinite extension. They had the authentic claim to leadership of a state that had renounced and destroyed its nuclear arsenal under international verification as well as President Nelson Mandela’s extraordinary moral authority and they played an important and positive global leadership role.

What sort of leadership could a transformed Iranian diplomacy offer the world at the 2010 NPT Review Conference? Full compliance and openness to verification is obviously a first step, but South Africa did not stop there and there is no reason Iran could not go further. Aligning its longtime assertiveness on Article IV and “peaceful uses” more closely with international law and global expectations through acceptance of some type of internationalization of its nuclear fuel cycle could be a second important step. A third step might be to explore how global confidence could be maximized in the compliance of NPT states parties with their Article VI disarmament obligations, for instance through cooperative efforts to develop non-nuclear energy alternatives in cooperation with other states parties, new technologies and practices for detecting nuclear materials and processes, and nonproliferation and disarmament education practices to align national pride with global leadership for peace and security rather than the development of nuclear technology. We are indebted to Professor Scott Sagan for his recent observation (in an exchange with Ambassador Lewis Dunn at an event sponsored by The Nonproliferation Review of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies) that non-nuclear weapon states parties to the NPT should all make explicit efforts to comply with the disarmament provisions of Article VI.

We realize that democratization alone will not solve the nuclear proliferation problem, as Ambassador Jack F. Matlock observes in his chapter “Regional Animosities and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation” in George P. Shultz, Steven P. Andreasen, Sidney D. Drell, and James E. Goodby’s pivotal Reykjavik Revisited: Steps Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons (Hoover/NTI, 2008):

“even a democratically elected government in Iran might well continue the Iranian program unless the external political environment is altered (p 406)…In Iranian eyes, since the other states seem to have accepted Pakistan’s nuclear status (even with its record of proliferation!), what valid motive could they have for denying Iran that capability other than a desire to make it vulnerable to military intervention, as the lack of nuclear weapons made both Serbia and Iraq vulnerable to military attacks even though they had not threatened the attackers? Such would be the rationale of the current Iranian leaders – and the likely rationale of any, more democratic, replacement regime faced with the same geopolitical configuration (p. 411).”

But heroic actions inspire us to imagine a future different than today, and a transformed Iran would have the capacity to exercise an important leadership role toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

The importance of being Frank with Japan

Vice President of the Cohen Group and longtime senior U.S. official with responsibility for nuclear weapons policy, serving in the U.S. National Security Council and Office of the Secretary of Defense, Frank Miller spoke this morning to the Congressional Breakfast Series sponsored by the National Defense University Foundation and the National Defense Industrial Association.

Mr. Miller made many interesting, important, and thoughtful comments on the future direction of U.S. nuclear weapons policy. One of his more predictable comments was that:

“our friends and our allies will continue to look to us to provide a nuclear umbrella, and if we don’t some if not many of them will build their own nuclear weapons.”

This argument has long struck the Nukes on a Blog team as too open-ended. Never having heard clarity about the specific circumstances or U.S. actions that might lead U.S. allies to reconsider their nonproliferation commitments, we are unable to imagine productive debate about how such dangerous circumstances might be avoided or mitigated in the context of prudent efforts toward nuclear disarmament in compliance with our shared obligations to Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the political requirements of stable nuclear nonproliferation more broadly. Nukes on a Blog recidivists will recall that Leonor questioned the requirements of extended deterrence and their relationship to allied nuclear proliferation with Mr. Miller in October 2007, with less than fully satisfying results.

The Japanese case is one of a small number at the center of this topic. Professor Michael Mochizuki sheds interesting light on the Japanese nonproliferation commitment in a July 2007 article for The Nonproliferation Review. Ploughshares Fund President Joseph Cirincione recently shared his concern with a capacity audience at the Elliott School of International Affairs that this argument could be used to block movement toward further deep cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals:

“you should watch this debate…this is one of the new arguments for doing nothing…I think it’s nonsense; I think there are some Japanese officials using this for their own purposes and I don’t think it’s true.”

These arguments suggest to us that there are multiple important and interrelated factors that bear on the nonproliferation commitments of U.S. allies, particularly including Japan; that a careful understanding of the conditions necessary for the stability of these commitments must be part of any effective strategy to prevent nuclear proliferation globally; and that the emerging historic opportunity to make prudent and effective progress toward the abolition of nuclear weapons suggest that greater and more inclusive consideration of these topics is urgently needed in dialog with our allies -- again particularly including Japan.

We are pleased to discover seeming agreement with Mr. Miller on needed next steps in this regard, as he explained today:

“We need to work with the Japanese Government and open up a very rich dialogue with the Japanese Government…”

like that we have had with our European allies about the requirements of extended deterrence;

“that is a dialogue that is desperately needed.”

Joseph Cirincione to Speak at GW

Joseph Cirincione, President of the Ploughshares Fund, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons, and a leading expert on nuclear weapons policy and nonproliferation will discuss the Obama Administration’s new nuclear policy.

“Barack Obama’s New Nuclear Policy”
Wednesday, March 25th at 6:10 p.m.
Elliott School of International Affairs
The George Washington University
1957 E Street., NW room 505
rsvp to dbs@gwu.edu

Oh, Canada (I wish thee stood on guard for us)

The Canadian Press reports that Canadian Minister of International Trade and Minister of the Asia-Pacific Gateway Stockwell Day announced in Mumbai that Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. has already signed a Memorandum of Understanding to sell nuclear technology to India as the Indian and Canadian Governments close in on an agreement on peaceful nuclear cooperation.

When Nik Cavell originally proposed the idea of transferring Canadian nuclear technology to India in March 1955, then Minister of External Affairs (later to be Nobel Peace Laureate and Prime Minister) Lester Pearson thought is would be:

“a most important gesture, the effects of which might be very great indeed.” (as referenced by Duane Bratt in The Politics of Candu Exports, page 89).

Of course, he was right. While Article III of the agreement that transferred the Canadian-Indian Research U.S. (CIRUS) reactor to India the following year specified that:

“The Government of India will ensure that the reactor and any products resulting from its use will be employed for peaceful purposes only.” (Ibid., page 95)

The Indians were left entirely to their own devices with regard to verifying compliance with this provision. While Canadian negotiators pressed for safeguards, the Indians resisted effectively, as Bratt recalls the Canadian side concluded:

“India was going to acquire nuclear technology without safeguards, so Canada might as well be the supplier.”

In the wake of India’s “peaceful nuclear explosion” in 1974, Bratt observes that Canada may have had second thoughts about being the first to supply a reactor to India:

“Canada’s own domestic view of itself, as well as its international prestige, had taken a severe beating with the 1974 Indian explosion.” (Bratt, page 157)

And that:

“By the end of 1976, the threat of nuclear proliferation had become the dominant foreign policy goal related to CANDU exports, overriding any commercial interests.” (Bratt, page 150)

Unfortunately, this hard lesson and Canada’s history of leadership in taking prudent action to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons seems forgotten three decades later in a race to the bottom begun by the U.S.-India agreement on peaceful nuclear cooperation. This is a dangerous development at a time when new leadership is desperately needed to mend a broken bargain in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, manage a presumed nuclear renaissance, and respond to the Cold War’s legacy of nuclear dangers. We can hope that the Obama Administration will set a better global example on these important issues, but Canada did not serve the cause of a peaceful world in following the U.S. lead in this case.

Canada, India, and the United States each have important emerging responsibilities in the prevention of the spread or use of nuclear weapons. Leadership in defining and meeting these nonproliferation responsibilities should precede and form a necessary foundation for any further commercial steps related to the global expansion of nuclear power.

The Proliferation Security Initiative: Neither fish nor fowl (but perhaps a vehicle)

Proponents of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) are fond of explaining that it is “an activity, not an organization.” The presumption seems to be that international organizations are cumbersome and prone to bureaucratic pathologies, while activities are, by definition, outcome-oriented. A slippery distinction that might be supposed to undermine important efforts to codify verifiable and legally-binding rules related to nonproliferation.

On the other hand, PSI’s emphasis on “voluntary” cooperative activities recalls David Mittrany’s “functionalism,” in which a peaceful world society is:

“more likely to grow through doing things together in workshop and market place than by signing pacts in chancelleries” (as quoted by Professor Inis Claude, Jr., Swords into Plowshares, 4th edition, 1970, page 380).

Over time, such voluntary patterns of cooperation among states may become more familiar, reducing the risks and costs of cooperative transactions, perhaps leading to more transformational effects, as Professor Claude suggests:

“Internationalism will well up from the collaborative international contacts of officials in labor, health, agriculture, commerce, and related departments, eventually endangering the citadels in which diplomatic and military officials sit peering competitively and combatively at the world outside the state.”
(Swords into Plowshares, 383-4)

How do these obscure theoretical points relate to the PSI experience? On October 3, 2008, former Undersecretary of State for International Security and Arms Control Bob Joseph provided an interesting gloss on this question at a Security Policy Forum event at the Elliott School of International Affairs, recalling the response of two European states to an opportunity for cooperation to intercept the BBC China carrying proliferation-sensitive materials to Libya:

“the German response was ‘we are a member of the PSI, we will do this.’ The Italian response a day later was exactly the same.”

Wade Boese correctly observes that this interception cannot be so easily credited as a PSI achievement and that both Germany and Italy:

“had stopped proliferation in transit prior to PSI’s launch. The initiative does not legally empower or obligate countries to do anything that they previously could not do.”

The PSI is certainly open to criticism that it is intangible and has few specific successes concretely attributable to it. Certainly the German assertion of “membership” signals the elusive character of this phenomenon which is adamantly “not an organization” in the minds of its framers. But if Mr. Joseph is right and this understanding has been relaxed in the minds of key PSI partners, the PSI could become a means to more systematic and identifiable cooperation through the existing PSI mechanisms of communication and coordination. Ultimately, it might not even be the United States that takes the next step and, for example, proposes a charter. But John Bolton and friends have built the world a decidedly internationalist resource and it behooves the international community to think creatively about how it might be adapted to greater effectiveness.

The United Kingdom acts to globalize nuclear disarmament progress

On February 5, 2008, the British Secretary of Defence Des Browne addressed the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on “Laying the Foundations for Multilateral Disarmament.” He made a bold statement of the United Kingdom’s commitment to its nuclear disarmament obligations:

“The UK has a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and, in partnership with everyone who shares that ambition, we intend to make further progress towards this vision in the coming years.”

Browne continues, emphasizing the need for progress nuclear disarmament to be verifiable, not only to the nuclear weapons “haves,” but also to the non-nuclear weapons states:

“Our chances of eliminating nuclear weapons will be enhanced immeasurably if the Non-Nuclear Weapon States can see forward planning, commitment and action toward multilateral nuclear disarmament by Nuclear Weapon States. Without this, we risk generating the perception that the Nuclear Weapon States are failing to fulfil their disarmament obligations and this will be used by some states as an excuse for their nuclear intransigence.”

Browne reminds us that nuclear armament and disarmament are global issues, just as the obligation in Article VI of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) apply to all states parties to the Treaty. The Government of the United Kingdom has again made clear that it will not abdicate its responsibility for nuclear disarmament nor will it exclude its NPT partners, particularly with regard to its new initiative to develop new technologies for verifying nuclear disarmament.

“Developing such techniques will take time but it is very important it is not undertaken in ‘splendid isolation’. It must be built on the requirements of Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Weapon States alike. We need to consider not only what information we are willing to divulge but also what information a Non-Nuclear Weapon State will want to receive.”

Finally, Browne made a strong new proposal to host a conference to actively involve technical specialists from the national laboratories of the United Kingdom, United States, Russia, France, and China:

“the UK is willing to host a technical conference of P5 nuclear laboratories on
the verification of nuclear disarmament before the next NPT Review Conference in
2010. We hope such a conference will enable the five recognised nuclear
weapons states to reinforce a process of mutual confidence building: working
together to solve some of these difficult technical issues."

If you want disarmament, globalize ACDA

AFP reports that the new Australian Foreign Minister is promising a more assertive role in support of nuclear disarmament. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told a Tokyo news conference that:

"The current Australian Government came to office with a new commitment to seek
to be much more active... as a nation on nuclear non-proliferation and
disarmament matters."

We welcome this important step forward. But as former Prime Minister John Howard’s August 2007 deal to sell uranium to India – which has since been reversed by the new Australian Government – makes clear, nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament are not always Australia’s top foreign policy priorities. This is easy to understand, of course, bilateral relationships always loom large in comparison to global imperatives in international politics.

One way to strengthen efforts to promote nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament and to insulate them from political vaguaries may be to strengthen their institutional advocate. The Australian Safeguards and Nonproliferation Office (ASNO), consolidated under a single Director General in 2003 legislation, supports an impressive tradition of Australian arms control and disarmament leadership. ASNO is also subordinate to Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT):

“The Director General reports directly to the responsible Minister. Since 1994
this has been the Minister for Foreign Affairs. ASNO is staffed through DFAT on
the basis that it is a division within the Department. The Director General is a
statutory officer, while all other staff were employed under the Public Service
Act 1999, on a full-time basis.”

By pulling ASNO out from under DFAT, and giving arms control and disarmament an independent voice, Australian Members of Parliament could ensure that these concerns always reach their Head of Government unfiltered by “clientitis” – the tendency of officials responsible for bilateral relationships to sacrifice other priorities for the sake of those relationships – or by officials who are not daily steeped in the technical, legal, and strategic complexities of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

Until the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) was ploughed under ten years ago and the earth below it twice salted by John Bolton, it may have been the most institutionally successful advocate for arms control in any government, ever. In how many countries does a dedicated advocate of nuclear disarmament with authority and staff report directly to the Head of Government? Establishing an independent ASNO may not be a sufficient or even prudent step toward effective Australian nuclear disarmament advocacy, but since nothing else has worked, it may be time to consider giving nuclear disarmament the bureaucratic priority that trade and development assistance enjoy in many goverments through a greater measure of institutional independence and persistance. If nothing else, it would surely get more serious people talking more seriously about the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and give lie to the faulty assumption that nuclear weapons are not the common business of humanity.

Colombia ratifies the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Earthtimes reports this morning that Colombia has ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The Preparatory Commission for the Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) indicates Colombia’s date of ratification as January 29, 2008. Colombia’s ratification brings the total number of ratifications of the Treaty to 144 of 178 that have signed the CTBT.

Following a number of ratifications by smaller states this year, Colombia’s action significantly advances the CTBT toward entry into force as Colombia is one of 44 “Annex 2” states whose ratification is a prerequisite for entry into force.

CTBTO Executive Secretary Tibor Tóth remarked that:

“This is an extremely important event…Colombia's ratification creates a tipping
point and brings the Treaty one step closer to taking effect. We welcome
Colombia's move and expect other ratifications from Annex 2 countries to follow
suit.”

This bold action by Colombia demonstrates the capacity of all states to contribute to prudent, effective, and verified progress toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Ambassador Rosso Jose Serrano Cadena, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Colombia to the CTBTO said that:

Of the 44 “Annex 2” states only North Korea, India, and Pakistan have not yet signed the CTBT and China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, and the United States have not yet ratified.

“All peace loving countries must ratify the CTBT…We are sure that this will
happen. Also the Latin American and Caribbean region are now close to becoming a
complete CTBT continent.”

The ratification of Colombia leaves only Cuba, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago not having signed the CTBT and Guatemala not having ratified Treaty among the states parties to the Treaty of Tlatelolco, establishing the Nuclear Weapon Free Zone in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Test ban advances toward universality

Malaysia ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) on January 17, 2008, bringing the total number of ratifications to 143. Ambassador Tibor Tóth, Executive Secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Organization (CTBTO) reacted, releasing a statement which read, in part:

“This is very important internationally, but also regionally: Malaysia’s
ratification tips the balance in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) where 6 out of 10 countries now have ratified the Treaty.”

The CTBTO points out that, among ASEAN states:

“Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore and Vietnam have now ratified the CTBT, whereas Brunei Darussalam,
Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand have yet to ratify it.”

In other CTBT news, loyal readers will recall that on November 27, 2007, in a post on the occasion of the ratification of the CTBT by the Bahamas, we wrote “Barbados, the eyes of the world are now upon you!” We are pleased to report that Barbados signed the CTBT on January 14, 2008.

In our emerging tradition of blind luck in picking states about to sign or ratify the CTBT, we turn to Trinidad and Tobago to play its historic role in globalizing this important instrument for nuclear disarmament.

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.

Remembering George Kuzmycz

Nukes on a Blog remembers the contribution of the late George Kuzmycz to the prevention of the proliferation of nuclear weapons on the tenth anniversary of his untimely passing.

During the last few years of his life, George led U.S. Department of Energy efforts to secure weapons usable nuclear materials in Ukraine from theft or diversion.

George’s commitment to his native Ukraine and to nonproliferation are memorialized in the ongoing work of the George Kuzmycz Training Center for Physical Protection, Control and Accounting of Nuclear Material (English translation).

George’s life reminds us that the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation result from human choices and that it is possible, as George did, for each of us to take on more than our share of responsibility for responding to these dangers.