What is the impact of the events of September 11 and the subsequent "war on terrorism" on nuclear issues? The "war on terrorism" is a handy political moniker for what the United States must learn to do in response to changes that have actually been taking place over several years. Some of the US responses to date have been wise. Some need a new look. Perhaps most important, in some areas, the United States and other countries have not responded and may be at a loss to respond, given the constraints on their policies. Some of these lacking responses provide the most important items on the post September 11 security agenda. In what follows, I will give one view of what these are and what to do about them.

I begin with nuclear terrorism, particularly the possibility of using nuclear weapons for terrorist purposes. The next section addresses the related issue of nuclear proliferation to state and non-state actors. The events of September 11 have given a new twist to that issue. There is a relationship between the possibility of nuclear weapons getting into terrorists' hands and the problems in Iraq, South and Central Asia, and North Korea. The following sections deals with an item that is no longer high on the US political agenda but which is tied to proliferation and terrorism and has a greater long-range potential for causing trouble, the incipient nuclear rivalries around the world. In closing, I suggest some elements of a desirable nuclear posture to deal with some of the problems outlined.

Since the Bush administration took office, and especially since excerpts of the Nuclear Posture Review were released, there have appeared in America some heated arguments about the Bush administration's changes to the Clinton administration's nuclear strategy, what consequences these changes would produce, and what influences they would exert on international and regional security. Different people have different views. The purpose of this working paper is to find solutions to these key issues. The effects of the Bush administration's nuclear strategy on China's security are also discussed.

The main viewpoint of the working paper is that the Bush administration has made the most fundamental adjustments to America's nuclear strategy since the end of the Cold War. These adjustments greatly modify U.S. nuclear deterrent strategy, the country's policy on using nuclear weapons, the triad of deterrent forces structure, and nuclear arms control policy. The new nuclear strategy would upset a balance of forces and stability regionally and around the globe. Moreover, the United States is shifting the focus of military strategy from Europe to Asia. This would exert significant influences on Asian-Pacific regional security and China's security.

STANFORD, Calif.— More than 100 hostages are dead after Russian authorities used an unidentified gas to incapacitate terrorists holding 750 people in a Moscow theater. Nearly all of the deaths were due to the gas, which Russian authorities have so far refused to identify.

Press coverage has rightly emphasized grief and the question of why antidotes were not immediately available. It has then focused on whether the Russians' use of gas was a violation of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. But this focus, while important, risks overlooking the big picture when it comes to Russian chemical weapons.

The Chemical Weapons Convention is a global treaty with more than 170 signatory nations. It bans the production, acquisition, stockpiling, transfer and use of chemical weapons -- the first arms-control treaty to outlaw an entire class of so-called weapons of mass destruction. It also requires its signatories to declare and destroy, by certain deadlines, the chemical weapons they possess.

Since the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in war -- a reaction to gas attacks in World War I -- the world has struggled to ban these weapons. In part, this is because of their indiscriminate nature.

After Sept. 11, 2001, it seems all the more important to eliminate stocks of such weapons because access to them could confer such power to terrorists. In a world with 70,000 metric tons of chemical weapons agents, some of which may be vulnerable to terrorist theft, the verified elimination of these weapons will be a step toward greater security for all. This is true despite the disturbing fact that Iraq, North Korea and certain other nations are not parties to the convention.

The weapons convention permits the production and use of riot-control agents for law enforcement purposes. Until the Russians inform us of the agent used, whether they were in violation of the convention will remain uncertain. But renewed attention to Russian chemical agents should focus on a more important issue. Russia retains some 40,000 tons of chemical warfare blister agents and nerve gas. It is required by the convention to destroy them, and the United States and European nations have agreed to help. But American efforts under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program are stalled in Congress.

The Cooperative Threat Reduction program began in 1992. It provides expertise and funding to help the former Soviet Union secure and destroy nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and materials. Progress with chemical and biological weapons has been especially slow, and the Russians have too often been less than forthcoming.

Of particular concern has been the Russian stockpile at Shchuch'ye, a town near the southern border with Kazakhstan. The Shchuch'ye stockpile contains nearly two million artillery shells -- and hundreds of missile warheads -- filled with nerve gas or other chemical weapons. Although stockpile security has been upgraded with help from American financing, the threat of insider theft remains real. Many of the shells are in working condition, and they are small and easily transportable.

Cooperative Threat Reduction funds have paid to design a plant for construction at Shchuch'ye to destroy these weapons securely and safely. The Pentagon wants $130 million for construction in the new fiscal year. Russia, its economy still weak, won't do this without American assistance. But the program is currently stalled in a Congressional conference committee due to a disagreement over granting the president authority to proceed with the project.

The Bush administration's new national security strategy has emphasized the destruction of weapons of mass destruction by pre-emptive strikes if necessary. But at Shchuch'ye alone, the United States could destroy more than 5,000 tons of ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction through a different kind of pre-emptive strike -- action by a Congressional committee.  

China is India's largest and most important neighbor, and despite recent efforts at improving relations between the two countries, the over half-century-old border dispute remains unresolved. While the prospects of a Sino-Indian border war are remote, it is essential that India understand the security implications of the rapidly modernizing Chinese military. It is in this context that this paper attempts to assess the airpower balance and the growing strength of the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). The paper argues that even if the pace of its modernization remains slow, the PLAAF will have decisively surpassed regional air forces in strength and capabilities by the end of the current decade.

Air Commodore Ramesh V. Phadke is an active duty officer of the Indian Air Force, currently working as Senior Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies & Analyses, New Delhi, India. He has held five command positions and many important staff appointments. He is a postgraduate in Defence Studies and has been working on airpower issues. His current interests include China's military modernization and India's national security.

He was a CISAC visiting fellow in 2001 as part of the project "Strategic Stability: China and South Asia."

The United States is in the midst of its third major debate on nationwide ballistic missile defense-the first culminating in the 1972 ABM Treaty and the second sparked by President Reagan's "Star Wars" speech in 1983. This time the Cold War is over, the objectives for the defense are limited, and technology has advanced to the point where some options may be technically feasible.

However, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are not the primary threat to the United States, as events since September 11 demonstrate. Other homeland defense programs, especially civil defenses against bioterrorism, are more important. Yet emerging missile states may acquire ICBMs some day. To the extent that this is a concern, diplomatic efforts can limit the spread of ballistic missiles, and deterrence can dissuade their use. National missile defense (NMD), then, is insurance against the relatively unlikely event that ICBMs will be launched against the United States.

If the United States decides to deploy a limited NMD, the questions become what type and how much? A midcourse NMD system (one that attempts to intercept missile warheads as they fall through outer space) of the sort proposed for deployment in Alaska is the most technically mature option and would probably work well enough against emerging ICBM threats to justify limited deployment, assuming that the threat materializes. However, such a defense should contain only about 20 interceptors to minimize adverse political reactions from Russia and China. Over the long run, midcourse defenses may be vulnerable to sophisticated countermeasures. Therefore, the United States should place greater emphasis on land, naval, and air-based boostphase intercept options (defenses that attempt to intercept the ballistic missile while its rocket motors are still burning) because they are more robust to countermeasures and they pose relatively little threat to Russia and China. Space-based boost-phase NMD systems have the advantage of global coverage; however, they are technically more challenging, probably more expensive, and more destabilizing.

A joint Stanford University-Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory team of scientists, nuclear engineers and arms control experts has concluded in a new study that North Korea's compliance with the 1994 Agreed Framework can be verified to a satisfactory degree of accuracy. Special effort, however, will be needed from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as well as support from the US, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan and perhaps other countries. Most importantly, cooperation and openness from North Korea are essential.

The 1994 Agreed Framework (AF) between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has become the centerpiece of recent US efforts to reduce the threat of conflict on the Korean peninsula. Under the AF, the US and its allies (mainly South Korea) will provide the DPRK with two large nuclear-power reactors and other benefits such as annual shipments of fuel oil for the generation of electricity until the nuclear-power reactors being built for that purpose are able to do so. In exchange the DPRK will declare how much nuclear weapon-usable material it has produced; identify, freeze, and eventually dismantle specified facilities for producing this material; and remain a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and allow the implementation of its safeguards agreement.

The AF is now being carried out according to a complex and currently delayed schedule. Fuel oil shipments have been provided to the DPRK, the site for the two nuclear-power reactors has largely been prepared, and construction has begun on some components. The DPRK, for its part, has declared some nuclear weapon-usable material and has identified and frozen some facilities for producing this material.

As emphasized in President Bush's statement at the White House on March 7, 2001, verification is an essential part of any agreement with North Korea. How well can it be verified that the DPRK has no access to nuclear weapon-usable material? What is the potential impact of delays, disagreements, and lack of cooperation on verification? The United States and the international community must answer these questions if the nuclear-power reactor project is to proceed as planned.

The report analyzes in detail both the task of safeguarding the nuclear-power reactors to be provided and also that of dealing with known or suspected nuclear-materials production facilities in the DPRK. Scenarios governing both DPRK cooperation and possible non-cooperation, up to and including abrogation of the agreement are considered.

The challenges of verification examined in this report must be met if a necessary minimum of trust is to be established between the parties and the rewards of the agreement are to be realized. The authors believe that the challenges can be met under the conditions outlined in this report, but that special effort on all sides will be needed to meet them.