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Arms Control

Scott Sagan's essay on 'Shared Responsibilities for Nuclear Disarmament' fosters global debate on eve of NPT review conference

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The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has published a paper with seven essays from leading scholars invited to respond to Scott Sagan's concluding essay Shared Responsibilities for Nuclear Disarmament in the Fall 2009 special issue of Daedalus on the global nuclear future. The paper includes Sagan's original essay and responses by James M. Acton, Jayantha Dhanapala, Mustafa Kibaroglu, Harald Muller, Yukio Satoh, Mohamed I. Shaker and Achilles Zaluar.

As Leslie Berlowitz, CEO of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, states in an excerpt from the paper's introduction:

"Renewed interest in arms control and restated commitments to the longterm goal of nuclear disarmament have clearly increased over recent years, most dramatically with President Barack Obama's April 2009 speech in Prague. With that change in focus comes an opportunity for the international community to rethink how Article VI of the NPT is traditionally interpreted and to move beyond the cycle of repeated complaints from the 'have-nots' that the 'haves' are not doing enough to disarm themselves and repeated retorts by the "haves" that they are already taking every step that is realistic or prudent. The promise of a different approach to the commitments made under the NPT forms the basis of the Scott Sagan's valuable article--"Shared Responsibilities for Nuclear Disarmament"...

"The differences in national perspectives and the differences in individual opinions about appropriate disarmament steps among the authors should not mask a commitment they all share. The contributors to this volume agree that new thinking and continued debate about how best to maintain momentum toward nuclear disarmament is to be welcomed. Only by seeking out, and taking into consideration, a cross section of views can progress toward the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world continue... 

"Their contributions serve to expand the discussion that was started by the original Daedalus article--and together they are intended to spark renewed policy debates about how best to pursue global disarmament, debates that will be prominent at the May 2010 NPT Review Conference in New York City and in the years following that important meeting."

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Nuclear review shows bipartisanship

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William J. Perry
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The release last week of the Obama administration's Nuclear Posture Review brings long overdue attention to the vital issue of U.S. strategic posture. Issues raised in the NPR and START have reinvigorated a crucial national nuclear dialogue that has been missing.

As the chairman and vice chairman of Congress's bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission, which issued its report last May, we have watched with great interest the administration's steady progress this past year on its Nuclear Posture Review and the START negotiations.

Themes from our report run through the Nuclear Posture Review and are embodied in the new START agreement. While debate and disagreement must be part of the crossfire in this renewed nuclear dialogue, we want to emphasize important dimensions of both the Posture Review and START treaty that figure prominently in our bipartisan report.

Now that the NPR is completed, we see that it is compatible with our recommendations. The review gives a comprehensive and pragmatic plan for reducing nuclear risks to the United States. We believe it offers a bipartisan path forward - while allowing for healthy disagreements on specific issues.

And it incorporates many of our points - such as pursuing a quick and modest reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia and sustaining the nuclear triad of land-based ICBMs, sea-based SLBMs and bombers. It also recognizes that nuclear weapons safeguarded U.S. security during the Cold War by deterring attack and that we will need them for deterrence in the foreseeable future, as long as others also possess them.

We also see that the NPR puts special emphasis, as our report recommended, on improving the nation's complex nuclear infrastructure and enhancing programs to recruit and keep the nation's best scientific minds. The administration's commitment to increase investment in our national laboratories also ensures that they continue their important role in sustaining a safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal and in solving many other problems facing the nation.

The review is correct to make preventing nuclear terrorism and proliferation the top priority, while also seeking to strengthen deterrence and to reassure U.S. allies and recognizing the importance of strategic stability with Russia and an emerging China. Our commission reached the same conclusions.

The NPR's changes in U.S. declaratory policy - especially the assurance that Washington "will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear parties to the Nonproliferation Treaty that are in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations" - go beyond our recommendation that the U.S. retain "calculated ambiguity."

It is, however, a sensible variation on a theme that the U.S. should support nonproliferation while preserving deterrence for itself and its allies.

We also note that the NPR chose, as we advised, to avoid adopting a "no first use" policy for nuclear weapons while narrowing the scope of possible first use to "extreme circumstances" - language that was in our bipartisan report.

We believe that the substantial edge the U.S. has developed in conventional military capabilities, which the NPR notes, permits this country to sharply reduce reliance on nuclear weapons. But we caution those who make light of this major U.S. strategic advantage and its implications.

We support the NPR's call for the U.S. not to develop new nuclear weapons now. Our report similarly called for a case-by-case approach to extending the life of today's warheads. And we agree that the focus should be on safety, security and reliability - not developing new military capabilities.

The NPR echoes our call to negotiate a worldwide end to the production of new fissile materials - the key ingredients of nuclear weapons.

Our final report strongly endorsed the U.S. deterrence policy to cover our allies and partners with the U.S. nuclear umbrella - an objective the NPR also embraces.

The report suggested deploying proven missile defenses against threats such as North Korea and Iran but emphasized, as the NPR does, that these defenses should not be so big as to encourage Russia to add warheads to counter them, which would only undermine efforts to reduce nuclear weapons. We included China as well as Russia in this.

But in two areas, we believe the NPR might have fallen short of the mark.

First, we understand that the review considered declassifying additional information about the size and composition of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. It should have done so. This would demonstrate U.S. leadership on the transparency that is needed to secure nuclear materials globally and to bolster strategic stability with Russia and China.

Second, the NPR called for the consideration of conventional "prompt global strike" capabilities. But it did not explain whether these systems would have a niche role against small regional powers such as North Korea or be an ultimate substitute for nuclear weapons in deterrence with Russia and China.

We feel the former is the only sensible approach. Keeping this issue ill-defined creates needless anxiety in Moscow and Beijing that could lead to future problems.

Even with these two caveats, the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review makes important strides in charting a sustainable bipartisan path forward for the United States.

Healthy disagreement over some NPR specifics should not obscure the valuable contribution it makes to advancing U.S. security interests - resting, as it does in part, on our bipartisan 2009 Strategic Posture Commission report.

William J. Perry served as secretary of defense in the Clinton administration. He was chairman of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. James R. Schlesinger was the nation's first energy secretary and served as secretary of defense from July 1973 to November 1975. He was vice chairman of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.

 

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President Barack Obama holds a bilateral meeting with President Hu Jintao of China, during the Nuclear Security Summit at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., April 12, 2010.
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David Holloway weighs in on U.S.-Russian nuclear treaty slated for signing this week

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With an April 8 date set for the United States and Russia to sign a new nuclear arms reduction treaty, each country is preparing to cut their deployed weapons by about 30 percent. That caps each side at 1,550 nuclear warheads and bombs and 700 deployed strategic missiles and bombers.

The pact, which needs approval by the U.S. Senate and Russian Duma, is the culmination of a year's worth of often tumultuous negotiations. It's also an important step in President Obama's push for a nuclear-free world, an idea that was given a roadmap during a 2006 conference at Stanford's Hoover Institution. The conference, which was convened by former Secretary of State George Shultz and Stanford physicist Sidney Drell, resulted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in January 2007 calling for a world without nuclear weapons.

The piece was written by Shultz, a professor emeritus at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and a distinguished Hoover fellow; William Perry, President Clinton's defense secretary and an emeritus senior fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations; and Sam Nunn, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

President Obama mentioned the four men in a March 26 statement announcing the new treaty, noting their support for more assertive action in reducing nuclear weapons.

David Holloway, a professor of international history and faculty member at FSI's Center for International Security and Cooperation, participated in the Hoover conference and has analyzed the steps taken to shrink the world's nuclear stockpile.

Holloway, author of Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956, spoke with the Stanford News Service about the latest pact between the United States and Russia, and what the prospects are for further reduction of nuclear weapons.

Put the treaty in context. How significant is it?

You could say it's a small step in an important process. In the 1980s, there were about 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Most were owned by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Now there are about 22,000 nuclear weapons, 90 percent of them owned by the U.S. and Russia. A number of those weapons are slated for dismantling, but it takes time to do that. Meanwhile, the feeling is that it's better to regulate the US-Russian nuclear relationship by treaty, so that it does not develop in an unpredictable way or a way that causes instability in the relationship.

This treaty reduces only the number of deployed warheads and nuclear delivery systems. What will happen to those weapons?

Some missile sites will be closed down and the warheads will be put into storage. The treaty apparently won't commit either side to dismantling the warheads. It only moves them from deployment. But cutting the number of delivery systems is important because if you don't have the missiles or bombers to launch the warheads, then the warheads aren't much use.

Is there a system in place to keep each country in compliance with the treaty?

Each country has the capacity to monitor the other side's compliance with the treaty. There are satellites that can see what the other side is doing; there are arrangements for the electronic monitoring of test flights and so on; and there are exchanges of inspectors. The two countries have considerable experience of cooperation in this area.

The treaty does not restrict America's plans to build a missile defense shield in Europe. But explain the tensions between Russia and U.S. over that issue.

This was probably the most difficult part of the negotiations. The Russians were eager to get limits on American defenses against ballistic missiles, and the U.S. was very reluctant to include them in this treaty. The Russians are worried what the effect of defense systems would be on their ability to retaliate in the event of an American first strike - as improbable as that is.

Despite that tension, the Obama administration has said it wants to "reset" U.S.-Russian relations. Does this treaty help?

The treaty makes great sense in terms of that agenda. It's an affirmation of Russia's position as a nuclear superpower, and it gives the Russians some assurance that they will maintain the status of an American partner in this area.

What the United States wants is help on issues like Iran and Afghanistan: making sure we can get supplies across Russia to Afghanistan and persuading Russia to continue putting pressure on Iran to back away from making nuclear weapons.

The treaty will have to be ratified by the U.S. Senate. How do you expect that to play out?

The mood in Washington isn't very bipartisan at present, of course. And there are many people who think: why should we have an agreement with the Russians? We're stronger; they're weaker. We shouldn't limit our own flexibility by negotiating agreements. That was a strong view in the Bush administration - that arms control is a bad thing and it only limits our freedom of action. And the issue of missile defense systems will be a contentious issue. There are people who want to see absolutely no restrictions on our defenses against ballistic missiles, whereas that is one of the goals of Russian policy.

How does this treaty fit in with concerns that unstable countries and terrorist groups might get their hands on nuclear weapons?

The Russians aren't about to blow us up, and we're not about to blow them up. The real fear is that other people will get hold of nuclear weapons. In the Obama administration's view, this treaty is part of a single effort to create a tough nuclear regime where states that have nuclear weapons are taking steps toward getting rid of them. And at the same time, the mechanisms for preventing new states - and in particular terrorist groups - from getting hold of nuclear weapons or the materials to make them are being strengthened.

Under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which entered into force in 1970, states that have nuclear weapons are obliged to pursue nuclear disarmament, while the states without them have promised not to acquire them. So if you want to strengthen this nuclear regime and make it harder for other states and terrorist groups to get nuclear weapons, then those with the nuclear weapons need to be moving toward zero. That's a key element in the administration's policy. The judgment is that a discriminatory regime is not viable in the long run.

What's the likelihood that we'll get to world free of nuclear weapons?

The president laid that out as a goal, and he said it probably wouldn't happen in his lifetime. Nobody can say that we can get to zero in say 20 years, but we do know what the first steps should be on such a path, and this treaty is one of them.

Before the world could get to zero nuclear weapons, there would have to be certainty that nobody could break out and say, "I've got lots of nuclear weapons, so you better listen to me."

The goal of zero is a vision, but I think it's an essential one because it gives you a sense of the direction you should go in.

What are the next steps Russia and the U.S. will take to reduce their nuclear stockpiles?

It's not clear. There is no agreement to have a further round of talks, but I very much hope there is one. There could be further negotiations on the reduction of strategic forces, but it seems more likely that talks might focus on the possibilities of cooperation in ballistic missile defense and/or on tactical nuclear weapons - the shorter-range systems that are not covered by the new treaty.

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Game Changers for Nuclear Energy

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Kate Marvel is a CISAC postdoctoral fellow working on energy security and nuclear nonproliferation.  She received a PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Scholar and a member of Trinity College. She chaired Cambridge University Student Pugwash and is a member of the Executive Board of International Student/Young Pugwash. Kate holds a BA in physics and astronomy from the University of California at Berkeley and has worked at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, California, and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in South Africa.   She is active in outreach work and has lectured in settings as diverse as a community center in Lesotho, a physics institute in Tehran, and the Secret Garden Party Festival in the UK.

Tom Isaacs serves as the Director for the Office of Planning and Special Studies at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  During his sabbatical leave he will be in residence at CISAC, focusing his research on several interconnected sets of challenges to the effective management of the worldwide expansion of nuclear energy.  He will also play an important role in a collaborative project with CISAC and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Global Nuclear Future Initiative.

Tom's career spans more than two decades with the Department of Energy including managing policies and programs on the advancement of nuclear power and issues associate with security, waste management, and public trust.  He has degrees in Engineering, Applied Physics, and Chemical Engineering from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Michael May is Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000. May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988, with some brief periods away from the Laboratory. While there, he held a variety of research and development positions, serving as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971. May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards. His current research interests are in the area of nuclear and terrorism, energy, security and environment, and the relation of nuclear weapons and foreign policy.

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Thomas Isaacs

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Tom is Co-Principal Investigator for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Developing Spent Fuel Strategies (DSFS) project coordinating international cooperation on issues at the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle with emphasis on spent fuel management and disposal in Pacific Rim countries. Participants include senior nuclear officials from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Canada, and the United States.

Tom advises national nuclear waste programs on facility siting, communications, stakeholder engagement, and public trust and confidence. He has worked with the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) for 15 years.

Tom was recently named as the Chair of the recently formed Experts Team to support Southern California Edison  at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Previously Tom was a Consulting Professor at CISAC, lead advisor to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, Member of the National Academy of Sciences Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, Director of Planning at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and long time senior executive at the Department of Energy where he led the siting of Yucca Mountain as the nation’s candidate site for a geologic repository.

He has degrees in Engineering, Applied Physics, and Chemical Engineering from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Thomas Isaacs CISAC Consulting Professor Speaker
Katherine D. Marvel CISCA Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker

Michael M. May

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Michael May is Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000.

May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988, with some brief periods away from the Laboratory. While there, he held a variety of research and development positions, serving as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971.

May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the International Institute on Strategic Studies, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards.

His current research interests are nuclear weapons policy in the US and in other countries; nuclear terrorism; nuclear and other forms of energy and their impact on the environment, health and safety and security; the use of statistics and mathematical models in the public sphere.

May is continuing work on creating a secure future for civilian nuclear applications. In October 2007, May hosted an international workshop on how the nuclear weapon states can help rebuild the consensus underlying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Proceedings and a summary report are available online or by email request. May also chaired a technical working group on nuclear forensics. The final report is available online.

In April 2007, May in cooperation with former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and Professor Ashton Carter of Harvard hosted a workshop on what would have to be done to be ready for a terrorist nuclear detonation. The report is available online at the Preventive Defense Project. A summary, titled, "The Day After: Action Following a Nuclear Blast in a U.S. City," was published fall 2007 in Washington Quarterly and is available online.

Recent work also includes a study of nuclear postures in several countries (2007 - 2009); an article on nuclear disarmament and one on tactical nuclear weapons; and a report with Kate Marvel for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on possible game changers in the nuclear energy industry.

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Michael M. May Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus; FSI Senior Fellow; CISAC Faculty Member Speaker
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Paper Tigers or Barriers to Proliferation: What Accessions Reveal about NPT Effectiveness

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Karthika Sasikumar

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Karthika Sasikumar began her education in Hyderabad, India. She obtained her undergraduate degree from St. Francis College for Women. From 1995 to 1999, she was a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, where she earned Master's and M.Phil Degrees from the School of International Studies.

Dr. Sasikumar received her Ph.D. from the Government Department at Cornell University in 2006. Her dissertation explores the interaction between India and the international nuclear nonproliferation order.

Before coming to San Jose State University, where she is a Professor of Political Science, Dr. Sasikumar was a Program Associate at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Associate in the International Security Program at Harvard University’s  Kennedy School of Government, both in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has also been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia’s  Liu Institute for Global Issues in Vancouver, and a Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University.

In 2010-11, she spent a year at the Belfer Center as the first Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow. She is the Vice-Chair of the SJSU Senate, and has served as a mentor in the Preparing Future Professors Program, and as the Co-PI for the university’s Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence.

Her research and teaching interests are in International Relations theory, international regimes, global security, migration, and national identity.

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India and the NPT

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India's nuclear development has been accompanied by a dual track strategy of developing and building weapons while criticising the non-proliferation regime as discriminatory and simultaneously making public statements and proposals in favour of nuclear disarmament. But with international progress likely on aspects of nuclear disarmament over the next few months, India will be in the spotlight at the forthcoming 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference to help move the disarmament and non-proliferation agenda forward. This article proposes that India meet this challenge by announcing specific commitments on permanently ending nuclear testing and plutonium production for weapons by a set date. In the course of reaching this conclusion, the article traces the history of India's role in the development of the international non-proliferation regime, its proposals on disarmament, and also its relationship with the United States with respect to India's nuclear development and ambitions.

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Leonard Weiss

Activating a North Korea policy

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Robert Carlin
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Article Highlights * After a spring and summer filled with rocket and nuclear tests, relations with North Korea have calmed. * Washington should use this period of quiet to its advantage by abandoning its current hard-line strategy against Pyongyang in favor of a strategy of engagement. * Such a change will better help the United States reach its ultimate goal--a denuclearized North Korea.

It is routine in U.S. foreign policy for a pot not boiling over to be moved to the back burner. Precisely because the North Korean issue is not boiling, however, might offer an all-too-rare chance to make progress with Pyongyang. Over the past several months, the North has signaled publicly and privately that it is in engagement mode. In Washington, arguments abound about whether or not this is a stall tactic or a trick, but we'll never know if we don't move ahead with serious and sustained probing of the North's position. So long as our government sticks to an all-or-nothing approach in terms of Pyongyang, the opportunity to advance vital U.S. security interests in northeast Asia could be lost.

Underlying Washington's current position are two beliefs, so firmly held that they approach dogma. The first is that we should wait until the situation with North Korea breaks in our favor or sanctions force North Korean leadership to reassess its attachment to nuclear weapons. A year into the Obama administration, this waiting borders on self-imposed paralysis even though North Korea remains capable of badly damaging regional stability as well as U.S. nonproliferation goals. So instead of positively defining and shaping the realities on the ground, we have taken shelter behind fixed positions: enforcing U.N. Security Council sanctions and demanding that the North make progress on denuclearization at the Six-Party Talks. These may be useful parts of an overall policy, but they cannot be effective by themselves and must be handled carefully.

Sanctions will inevitably get in the way of diplomatic progress, and there needs to be a way to use their loosening--as much as their tightening--in support of negotiations. Moreover, Washington's single-minded insistence that the North return to the Six-Party Talks actually has ceded to Pyongyang a great deal of tactical initiative. There is nothing the North Koreans love more than leaping over our heads to a new position just as we think we have them cornered. As such, in mid-January, they reversed their opposition to talks in the framework of the September 2005 Six-Party joint statement and have proposed that talks proceed on all fronts simultaneously.

The second part of Washington's dogma is that there is no sense in negotiating with Pyongyang because history shows that agreements with North Korea always fail and the United States ends up snookered. But the idea that our deals with the North have all been useless is based on a flawed reading of the record, a lingering misrepresentation of the accomplishments of the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework. In fact, the utility of that agreement (which lasted from 1994 until 2002) is still evident. Without it, North Korea would have produced far more fissile material and a significantly larger arsenal of nuclear weapons. Two hulking, unfinished North Korean nuclear reactors testify to its lasting legacy.

Reinforcing the belief that we don't need to, or shouldn't, pursue an active policy toward North Korea is the Obama administration's apparent concern that it will be vulnerable to charges of being "weak" if it approaches Pyongyang from anything but the toughest position possible. Thus, on the grounds that the September 2005 joint statement calls for progress on the North's denuclearization before talks can begin on replacing the 1953 Korean Armistice with permanent peace arrangements, Washington rejected out of hand Pyongyang's recent proposals to move on both issues simultaneously. We may find it difficult to hold that position because it is neither what the joint statement actually says nor what some of the other parties (especially the Chinese) intended.

The fundamental U.S. goal is exactly right: We want North Korea to denuclearize and to return to the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. But stating the goal isn't the same as moving closer to it. To do so, we must accomplish things that can help stabilize the situation, make it less likely that the strategic threat from the North will get worse, and begin exploring with Pyongyang a range of ideas for reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula and in the region. A couple of mid-term steps could include a halt in nuclear testing and long-range ballistic missile launches, along with a complete freeze of the Yongbyon nuclear center, which would involve further decommissioning and a return of international inspectors.

These interim steps won't "solve" the nuclear problem, but they aren't beyond what we can accomplish. They will do considerably more to protect our interests and those of our allies than the current all-or-nothing policy, which is going nowhere fast.

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Systems Resilience: A New Analytical Framework for Nonproliferation?

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Nonproliferation efforts have traditionally focused on controlling supply of proliferation-relevant technology, expertise, and material. As barriers to diffusion of all three have been lowered, there is increased acknowledgement of the need to reduce demand for such weapons, and, in cases where efforts to prevent proliferation have failed, the need to develop effective international responses. However, with few exceptions, approaches to nonproliferation have not changed qualitatively in the last 40 years. This research explores the concept of resilience as understood for other complex interactive systems, extracts key features, and applies them to nonproliferation. In addition, it examines unintended consequences of traditional nonproliferation strategies and feedbacks among them.  Based on insights gained from this exercise, a new analytical framework for nonproliferation will be proposed.

Arian L. Pregenzer is a 2009-2010 CISAC visiting scholar and a Senior Scientist in the Global Security Program at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is responsible for initiating new programs in arms control and nonproliferation and for developing strategies for international engagement for multiple laboratory programs. In addition, she provides leadership for Sandia's efforts to integrate across nuclear weapons, arms control, and nonproliferation missions to effectively meet nuclear security challenges.

Most recently, Dr. Pregenzer has focused on near-term steps that can enhance nuclear security while advancing the goals of NPT Article VI. She is particularly interested in how international technical cooperation on topics such as verification methods for nuclear arms control, nuclear weapons security and accountability, and nuclear fuel cycle management can establish the technical basis for moving toward a world without nuclear weapons.

Dr. Pregenzer has bachelors' degrees in physics, mathematics, and philosophy from the University of New Mexico, and a Ph.D. in theoretical condensed matter physics from the University of California at San Diego. Prior to her career in international security, she worked at Sandia to develop lithium ion sources for particle-beam-driven inertial confinement fusion.

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Arian Pregenzer CISAC Visiting Scholar Speaker
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Going Nuclear: Nuclear Proliferation and International Security in the 21st Century

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The spread of nuclear weapons is one of the most significant challenges to global security in the 21st century. Limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials may be the key to preventing a nuclear war or a catastrophic act of nuclear terrorism. Going Nuclear offers conceptual, historical, and analytical perspectives on current problems in controlling nuclear proliferation. It includes essays that examine why countries seek nuclear weapons as well as studies of the nuclear programs of India, Pakistan, and South Africa. The final section of the book offers recommendations for responding to the major contemporary proliferation challenges: keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of the hands of terrorists, ensuring that countries that renounce nuclear weapons never change their minds, and cracking down on networks that illicitly spread nuclear technologies.

Nearly all the chapters in this book have been previously published in the journal International Security. It contains a new preface and one chapter commissioned specifically for the volume, Matthew Bunn's "Nuclear Terrorism: A Strategy for Prevention."

 

CISAC contributors: Consulting Professor Chaim Braun, Co-Director Scott Sagan.

Other contributors, including former CISAC scholars: Samina Ahmed, Matthew Bunn, Christopher F. Chyba, Matthew Fuhrmann, Šumit Ganguly, S. Paul Kapur, Ariel E. Levite, Peter Liberman, Austin Long, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, Alexander H. Montgomery, Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, William C. Potter, Whitney Raas, Etel Solingen.

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Reframing Nuclear De-Alert: Decreasing the Operational Readiness of U.S. and Russian Arsenals

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Nearly twenty years after the end of the Cold War, Russia and the United States continue to maintain hundreds of nuclear weapons capable of striking the other side, and to have at least some of these nuclear forces at Cold War levels of alert, that is, ready to fire within a few minutes of receiving an order to do so.

Even during the Cold War, alert levels were not static and moved up or down in step with changes in the strategic and tactical environments. While the operational readiness of some weapon systems has been reduced, there has been no major change in the readiness levels of most of the nuclear weapon systems in the post-Cold War era. This is in considerable part because Russia and the United States believe that despite fundamental changes in their overall relationship, vital interest requires maintaining a high level of nuclear deterrence.

The post-Cold War experience also demonstrates that alert levels can be reduced and measures can be taken to reduce the risk of accidents or unauthorized takeover of nuclear weapons. Further measures could be taken to reduce operational readiness of nuclear arsenals. U.S. and Russian experts alike stressed survivability as a key element in the acceptance of these measures because of its importance to maintaining deterrence.

Cold War legacy postures under which thousands of weapons are kept on high readiness can be altered through top-down policy initiatives, as was the case in the early 1990s with one class of nuclear weapons.

Technical issues related to the peculiar "ready" character of land-based ICBMs can be resolved by bringing designers into discussions on decreasing operational readiness of nuclear weapons. There was a sense that technical solutions to the problems of nuclear risk reduction are available and can be multilateralized. Information sharing can help implementation of these solutions.

Concerns over "re-alerting" races and vulnerability of "de-alerted" forces to conventional or nuclear strikes during "reversal" can be addressed through survivable forces, dialogue, and confidence building.

Other nuclear weapon states apparently have alert practices that differ from those of Russia and the United States. It was debated whether this state of affairs can be ascribed to an absence of nuclear war fighting capabilities or to a different assessment of the post-Cold War nuclear security environment. There was a sense that nuclear doctrines and alert practices of different nuclear weapon states cannot be analyzed in a vacuum and must be evaluated as parts of a larger political and security framework.

Non-nuclear weapon states' experts forcefully asserted the legitimate interest their states have in the issue and underlined the practical and constructive approach of the U.N. General Assembly resolution on reducing operational readiness of nuclear forces.

Non-nuclear weapon states say that lowering of the operational status of nuclear weapons would both reduce the risk of accidental or unintended nuclear war and provide a much-needed practical boost for disarmament and nonproliferation. Decreasing the operational readiness of nuclear weapons would be a highly desirable confidence-building measure between nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states. It would also be a welcome step in the lead-up to the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.

The principal objection to decreasing operational readiness of nuclear weapons as commonly understood has been that it seeks to address a problem that does not exist. Even if it does exist in some instances, it can be addressed by technical and organizational means updated to cover current threats such as nuclear terrorism. Furthermore, the remedy itself could end up undermining nuclear deterrence and strategic or crisis stability.

The insight that emerged during the meeting was that the above objection flows from a narrow view of de-alerting as meaning measures that make it physically impossible to promptly launch an attack on order. Such a view also leads to a somewhat excessive focus on verification of technical measures, which ends up giving an easy argument to the opponents of de-alerting-that it is not verifiable and therefore should not be attempted.

There are no fundamental obstacles to many useful measures of decreasing operational readiness of nuclear weapons, provided the issue is not framed narrowly. De-alert has to be seen not only as a technical fix but also as a strategic step in deemphasizing the military role of nuclear weapons, in other words, moving to retaliatory strike postures and doctrines instead of legacy preemptive or "launch on warning" postures. The ongoing U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) offers an opportunity for such a perceptual shift.

If decreasing operational readiness of nuclear weapons is reframed in this manner, several concrete steps become possible:

As part of the START follow-on negotiations, Russia and the United States could examine how measures to reduce operational readiness can accompany the bilateral arms control process.

Both Russia and the United States could further strengthen controls against unauthorized action, takeover, and tampering; further increase the capability of warning systems to discriminate real from imagined attacks; and enhance the survivability of their forces and their command and control systems.

Arrangements related to data exchange and ensuring a capability to destroy a "rogue" missile in flight could be multilateralized, at least in terms of sharing data, to bring other declared nuclear weapon states into the process.

Multilateralization of institutions such as the Joint Data Exchange Center may also have collateral benefits in the area of space security.

The premise of maintaining nuclear deterrence between Russia and the United States should not be considered immutable. A dialogue on legacy nuclear postures and doctrines in the Russia-U.S. context may trigger a broader dialogue among relevant states on reducing the salience of nuclear weapons, thus facilitating progress on disarmament and nonproliferation.

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