Stanford University

Arms Control

Rebuilding the NPT Consensus

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This report and the contributed papers are the result of a project sponsored by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with funding from the Flora Family Foundation and of an associated workshop held October 16–17, 2007, at Stanford University. The Center for International Security and Cooperation in Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which carried out the project and hosted the workshop, expresses its gratitude to both.

Workshop participants included experienced former statesmen and academics and others with extensive experience in nuclear weaponry and arms control at both the policy and technical levels. The contributed papers from the participants follow the Project Report. The workshop agenda is in Appendix 1. A list of participants can be found in Appendix 2.

Discussion during the two-day workshop was extremely rich and represented a number of informed and different points of view. In the report, we refer to viewpoints presented by one or more participants, noting their names in parentheses. Unfortunately, we cannot hope to summarize all the important and relevant points made, and we apologize to those participants who may feel that a relevant contribution has been slighted. We refer the reader to the papers for a fuller picture of the various contributions. The three authors are solely responsible for the conclusions of the Project Report and any omissions.

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Michael M. May

The Indian Nuclear Program: Reflections Based on a Trip to India

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Abstract
We will present our observations from a visit to India’s nuclear facilities and several think tanks during March 2008. We will comment on India’s nuclear research programs, nuclear energy development, and the implications for the proposed U.S.-India nuclear deal and for scientific collaboration between our countries. We visited the Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (IGCAR) in Kalpakkam, the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) in Trombay, had detailed discussions with the top leadership of the India Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and also visited several institutes in Bangalore and Chennai to discuss nuclear energy and nuclear nonproliferation.

Chaim Braun is a vice president of Altos Management Partners, Inc., and a CISAC science fellow and affiliate. He is a member of the Near-Term Deployment and the Economic Cross-Cut Working Groups of the Department of Energy (DOE) Generation IV Roadmap study. He conducted several nuclear economics-related studies for the DOE Nuclear Energy Office, the Energy Information Administration, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Non-Proliferation Trust International, and others. Braun has worked as a member of Bechtel Power Corporation's Nuclear Management Group, and led studies on power plant performance and economics used to support maintenance services. Braun has worked on a study of safeguarding the Agreed Framework in North Korea, he was the co-leader of a NATO Study of Terrorist Threats to Nuclear Power Plants, led CISAC's Summer Study on Terrorist Threats to Research Reactors, and most recently co-authored an article with former CISAC Co-Director Chris Chyba on nuclear proliferation rings.

Siegfried Hecker is a professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, a senior fellow at FSI, and co-director of CISAC. He is also an emeritus director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Hecker's research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapon policy and international security, nuclear security (including nonproliferation and counter terrorism), and cooperative nuclear threat reduction. Over the past 15 years, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. His current interests include the challenges of nuclear India, Pakistan, North Korea, and the nuclear aspirations of Iran. Hecker works closely with the Russian Academy of Sciences and is actively involved with the U.S. National Academies, serving on the National Academy of Engineering Council and its International Programs Committee, as chair of the Committee on Counterterrorism Challenges for Russia and the United States, and as a member of the National Academies Committee on International Security and Arms Control Nonproliferation Panel.

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Chaim Braun CISAC Fellow and CISAC Affiliate Speaker

Siegfried S. Hecker

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C220
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-6468 (650) 723-0089
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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Research Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
hecker2.jpg PhD

Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.

Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.

Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.

Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.

Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.

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The Myth of the Authoritarian Model: How Putin's Crackdown Holds Russia Back

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Kathryn Stoner-Weiss (speaker) is Associate Director for Research and Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL. Prior to coming to Stanford, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School for International and Public Affairs. At Princeton she received the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship awarded to outstanding junior faculty. She also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University. She has held fellowships at Harvard University as well as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.
In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author of two single authored books: Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge, 2006), and Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton, 1997). She is also co-editor (along with Michael McFaul) of After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (Cambridge, 2004).
She received a BA and MA in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University. She speaks Russian and French.

Pavel Podvig (discussant) joined CISAC as a research associate in 2004. Before that he was a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He worked as a visiting researcher with the Security Studies Program at MIT and with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and he taught physics in MIPT's General Physics Department for more than ten years. Podvig graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1988, with a degree in physics. In 2004 he received a PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations. His research has focused on technical and political issues of missile defense, space security, U.S.-Russian relations, structure and capabilities of the Russian strategic forces, and nuclear nonproliferation. He was the head of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces research project and the editor of a book of the same title, which is considered a definitive source of information on Russian strategic forces.

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Kathryn Stoner

FSI
Stanford University
Encina Hall C140
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 736-1820 (650) 724-2996
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Satre Family Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and a Senior Fellow at CDDRL and the Center on International Security and Cooperation at FSI. From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford and she teaches in the Department of Political Science, and in the Program on International Relations, as well as in the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.

Prior to coming to Stanford in 2004, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Princeton School for International and Public Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School). At Princeton she received the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship awarded to outstanding junior faculty. She also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University. She has held fellowships at Harvard University as well as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. 

In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author or co-editor of six books: "Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective," written and edited with Michael A. McFaul (Johns Hopkins 2013);  "Autocracy and Democracy in the Post-Communist World," co-edited with Valerie Bunce and Michael A. McFaul (Cambridge, 2010);  "Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia" (Cambridge, 2006); "After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions" (Cambridge, 2004), coedited with Michael McFaul; and "Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional" Governance (Princeton, 1997); and "Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order" (Oxford University Press, 2021).

She received a BA (1988) and MA (1989) in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University (1995). In 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Iliad State University, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Mosbacher Director, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), Stanford University
Senior Fellow (by courtesy), Hoover Institution
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Pavel Podvig

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Pavel Podvig is an independent analyst based in Geneva, where he runs his research project, "Russian Nuclear Forces." He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and a researcher with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. Pavel Podvig started his work on arms control at the Center for Arms Control Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), which was the first independent research organization in Russia dedicated to analysis of technical issues of disarmament and nonproliferation. Pavel Podvig led the Center for Arms Control Studies project that produced the book, Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (MIT Press, 2001). In recognition of his work in Russia, the American Physical Society awarded Podvig the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award of 2008 (with Anatoli Diakov). Podvig worked with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, the Security Studies Program at MIT, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. His current research focuses on the Russian strategic forces and nuclear weapons complex, as well as technical and political aspects of nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament, missile defense, and U.S.-Russian arms control process. Pavel Podvig is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. He has a  physics degree from MIPT and PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

For a list of publications, please visit http://russianforces.org/podvig/.

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Negotiating with North Korea: 1992-2007

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Over the past seven years, public debate and political commentary on North Korea’s nuclear program have pitted one mode of negotiations (bilateral) against another (multilateral).  That debate obscured important lessons from the past and impeded diplomatic progress.  The purpose of this paper is not to revisit the debate between the various approaches but rather to analyze the diplomacy as it has actually unfolded.

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Robert Carlin

U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation: Better Later than Sooner

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On July 5, 2005, President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed an agreement pledging their governments to actions designed to culminate in a formal nuclear cooperation agreement that would end a three-decade U.S. nuclear embargo against India. Although the formal agreement has not yet received final approval from Congress, concerns about the consequences of the agreement, particularly its possible adverse effect on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the worldwide nonproliferation regime, have made the agreement controversial. This article traces the events that led to the Bush-Singh meeting, explicates the current situation, examines the arguments for and against the proposed agreement, and makes some preliminary judgments regarding the agreement's effects on the nonproliferation regime. The failure to prevent India's 1998 nuclear tests with the threat of sanctions (because the Indians calculated that long-term U.S. resolve was not sustainable) set in motion a chain of events that would ultimately end the nuclear embargo. However, the conditions for a better U.S.-India nuclear agreement--from a nonproliferation perspective--will inevitably arise if the current proposed agreement is not adopted.

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Nonproliferation Review
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Leonard Weiss
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CTBT Ratification and the Future of Nuclear Non-Proliferation: The 2007 Entry-Into-Force Conference

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The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is a pivotal litmus test to determine a nation's "walking-the-walk dedication" on nonproliferation matters. The September Article XIV conference to obtain Entrance-Into-Force was attended by delegations from Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia, and 101 other nations, but not the United States, North Korea, and India (1). The views of key global diplomats on the purpose and direction of the CTBT will be cited, followed by an analysis of funding and regional acceptance.

Official proceedings were adjourned for a two-hour session with three non-diplomats and Ambassador Jaap Ramaker (UN Conference on Disarmament chief CTBT negotiator) (2). The technical presentation on CTBT monitoring progress (2005-6 CISAC study) will be summarized (3). Monitoring has advanced since the 1999 Senate defeat by lowering the monitoring threshold from 1 kt to 0.1 kilotons (1-2 kt in a cavity), and by improvements in regional seismology (results of 2006-DPRK test and other data), correlation-wave seismology, interferometric synthetic aperture radar, cooperative monitoring at test sites without losing secrets, radionuclide monitoring improvement by a factor of 10, and other results. This presentation showed that the CTBT was effectively verifiable, in accordance with the Nitze-Baker definition.

CTBT has not been discharged from the Senate's Executive Calendar, thus the United States cannot legally resume nuclear testing without a Senate vote to discharge it. The NPT regime is in trouble; Article IV will mostly allow sensitive fuel cycle operations. The overlap between NPT and CTBT will be discussed. The statement of concern on CTBT by Senator Kyl (Cong. Record, 10-24-07) will be examined. Lastly, a path to Entrance-Into-Force for the CTBT will be described.

David Hafemeister was a 2005-2006 science fellow at CISAC. He is a professor (emeritus) of physics at California Polytechnic State University. He spent a dozen years in Washington as professional staff member for Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and Governmental Affairs (1990-93 on arms control treaties at the end of the Cold War), science advisor to Senator John Glenn (1975-77), special assistant to Under Secretary of State Benson and Deputy-Under Secretary Nye (1977-78), visiting scientist in the State Department's Office of Nuclear Proliferation Policy (1979), the Office of Strategic Nuclear Policy (1987) and study director at the National Academy of Sciences (2000-02). He also held appointments at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and the Lawrence-Berkeley, Argonne and Los Alamos national laboratories. He was chair of the APS Forum on Physics and Society (1985-6) and the APS Panel on Public Affairs (1996-7). He has written or edited ten books and 140 articles and was awarded the APS Szilard award in 1996.

(1) http://www.ctbto.org/reference/article_xiv/2007/article_xiv07_main.htm

(2) http://www.vertic.org/news.asp#ctbtreport

(3) D. Hafemeister, "Progress in CTBT Monitoring Since its 1999 Senate Defeat," Science and Global Security 15(3), 151-183 (2007).

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David Hafemeister Speaker
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Open Source Intelligence

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This presentation provides an overview of the history of US satellite-based reconnaissance as has been publicly revealed by the US Government to date. Extrapolating from there, it will transition to the evolutionary and revolutionary role that commercial satellite imagery is now playing on the international stage in proving a heretofore-unimaginable basis for greater global transparency and the way it has helped, and will continue to help, to detect and monitor undeclared unconventional weapons related facilities and activities. In addition, new geospatial tools, which draw heavily upon commercial satellite imagery as well as augmenting it, have also become available over the internet. Among those Geospatial tools, "Digital Virtual Globes" (i.e., Google Earth, Virtual Earth, etc.) not only provide a much improved mapping capability over previously used simple plan-view line drawings used by various international inspection organizations such as the IAEA, but the offer much improved visualization of known and inspected sites. Such digital globes also provide a new, essentially free means to conduct broad area baseline search for possible "clandestine" sites...either allege through open source leads; identified on internet blogs and wiki layers with input from a "free" cadre of global browsers and/or by knowledgeable local citizens that can include ground photos and maps; or by other initiatives based on existing country program knowledge. The digital globes also provide highly accurate terrain mapping for better overall geospatial context and allow detailed 3-D perspectives of all sites or areas of interest. 3-D modeling software, when used in conjunction with these digital globes can significantly enhance individual building characterization and visualization (including interiors), allowing for better international inspector training through pre-inspection walk-arounds or fly-around, and perhaps better IAEA safeguard decision making. In sum, these new geospatial visualization aids are ideal for international inspector training and orientation, as well as site characterization, monitoring and verification. But perhaps just as significantly, these new geospatial tools also now make it possible for anyone to conduct his or her own satellite-based reconnaissance for any application from the comfort of home, at a wi-fi enabled coffee shop, or even on the beach at a tropical island resort.

Frank Pabian is a Senior Nonproliferation Infrastructure Analyst at Los Alamos National Laboratory who has over 35 years experience in the nuclear nonproliferation field including six years with the Office of Imagery Analysis and 18 years with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's "Z" Division. Frank also served as a Chief Inspector for the IAEA during UN inspections in Iraq from 1996-1998 focusing on "Capable Sites." In December 2002, Frank served as one of the first US nuclear inspectors back in Iraq with UN/IAEA. While at Los Alamos, Frank has developed and presented commercial satellite imagery based briefings on foreign clandestine nuclear facilities to the International Nuclear Suppliers Group, the IAEA, NATO, and the Foreign Ministries of China and India on behalf of the NNSA and STATE.

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Frank Pabian Speaker Los Alamos National Laboratory
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Science, Technology and Security Seminars (2009-2010)

Reykjavik Revisited: Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons

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Twenty-one years ago, at the October 1986 Reykjavik Summit, President Ronald Reagan and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev entered into an unprecedented dialogue regarding their desire to eliminate their countries' nuclear weapons; in 2006 a conference at the Hoover Institution attempted to rekindle the vision of that historic meeting; now, in the fall of 2007, this policy brief published collaboratively by the World Security Institute and Lawyers Alliance for World Security seeks to reinforce the goals of those who seek a world without nuclear weapons.

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More Than Words: The Value of U.S. Non-Nuclear-Use Promises

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Last year, for the first time, the United States voted in the U.N. General Assembly against a traditional resolution calling for negotiation of legally binding negative security assurances (NSAs) by nuclear-weapon states. These are promises not to use nuclear weapons against nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) states-parties that have promised not to acquire them. In the debate, the U.S. delegation explained that the United States "opposes a treaty on negative security assurances or any other binding instrument on security assurances."

U.S. military officials have long opposed explicit promises not to use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them. Prior to the current administration, however, the U.S. government had rarely been so clear in stating its opposition. This new position is contrary to U.S. national interests.

U.S. superiority in conventional weapons and the advent of precision-guided munitions means that the United States does not need to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons to achieve its military goals effectively, even against those states that possess chemical or biological weapons. Indeed, the United States needs to be prepared to use nuclear weapons only in response to an attack with nuclear weapons. Moreover, the U.S. refusal to endorse NSAs only encourages additional countries, including U.S. enemies, to acquire nuclear weapons.

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Arms Control Today
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New U.S.-India Nuclear Agreement Delayed: Indefinitely?

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There have been serious disagreements between India and the United States in negotiation of the proposed nuclear-cooperation agreement between the two countries described at this website on Dec. 20, 2006 and Jan. 17, 2007. Our December article reported the President George W. Bush administration's hope of submitting a final agreement with India to the international Nuclear Suppliers' Group for approval at the Group's April meeting this year, 2007. That hope was not achieved. Indeed, India's objections to provisions of the U.S.-drafted agreement designed to meet Congressional requirements have raised questions as to whether a U.S. nuclear agreement with India that meets Congressional requirements is likely. Given the new Democratic majority in the House and Senate, achieving acceptance by Congress in 2007 or 2008 of an agreement with India that satisfies the statute adopted in 2006 by a Republican-controlled Congress seems unlikely.

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