The Politics and Ethics of Nonproliferation
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A lasting legacy of the Cold War is the continued existence of weapons of mass destruction--uniquely, nuclear arms. The context in which they exist has been drastically changed in the realm of international politics. Father Hehir will probe the changed context of proliferation, as he addresses the continuing ethical and strategic challenges inherited from the past and now reshaped in this century.
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Speaker's Biography: J. Bryan Hehir is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life at Harvard University and the Secretary for Social Services and the President of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Boston. Father Hehir's research focuses on ethics and foreign policy, and the role of religion on world politics and in American society. His writings include The Moral Measurement of War: A Tradition of Continuity and Change and Military Intervention and National Sovereignty.
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J. Bryan Hehir
Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life, Kennedy School of Government
Speaker
Harvard University
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Thinking inside the box needed to secure borders, write CISAC professor and colleague
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The president's border security and immigration reform proposals won't protect Americans from the gravest cross-border threat: the possibility that a ship, truck or train will one day import a 40-foot cargo container in which terrorists have hidden a dirty bomb or nuclear weapon. To tackle this problem, policymakers need to think inside the box, write CISAC's Lawrence M. Wein and colleague Stephen E. Flynn in this New York Times op-ed.
This week President Bush will seek to focus the nation's attention on border security and immigration reform. But the president's proposals won't protect Americans from our gravest cross-border threat: the possibility that a ship, truck or train will one day import a 40-foot cargo container in which terrorists have hidden a dirty bomb or nuclear weapon.
The Bush administration maintains that it has a smart strategy to reduce this risk. A new 24-Hour Rule requires that importers report the contents of their containers to customs inspectors one day before the boxes are loaded on ships bound for the United States. The Department of Homeland Security's National Targeting Center then reviews the data, checking against other intelligence to determine which boxes may pose a threat. Although the containers deemed high risk are inspected at cooperating foreign ports or when they enter the United States, the rest--more than 90 percent--land here without any perusal.
We have two concerns about this strategy. First, it presumes that the United States government has good enough intelligence about Al Qaeda to reliably discern which containers are suspicious and which are not. But our inability to thwart the attacks in Iraq demonstrates that we lack such specific tactical intelligence. And supporting customs inspectors, who must make the first assessment of risk, is not a priority for the intelligence agencies. Inspectors must rely on their experience in spotting anomalies--a company that claims to be exporting pineapples from Iceland, for example.
Second, determined terrorists can easily take advantage of the knowledge that customs inspectors routinely designate certain shipments as low risk. A container frequently makes 10 or more stops between its factory of origin and the vessel carrying it to American shores. Many of the way stations are in poorly policed parts of the world. Because name-brand companies like Wal-Mart and General Motors are widely known to be considered low-risk, terrorists need only to stake out their shipment routes and exploit the weakest points to introduce a weapon of mass destruction. A terrorist cell posing as a legal shipping company for more than two years, or a terrorist truck driver hauling goods from a well-known shipper, can also be confident of being perceived as low risk.
So what needs to be done? A pilot project under way in Hong Kong, the world's largest container port along with Singapore, offers one piece of a potential solution. At an estimated cost of $7 per container, new technology can photograph the box's exterior, screen for radioactive material, and collect a gamma-ray image of a box's contents while the truck on which it is carried moves at 10 miles per hour.
Terrorists can defeat radiation sensors by shielding a dirty bomb with dense materials like lead. But by combining those sensors with gamma ray images, the Hong Kong system allows inspectors to sound the alarm on suspiciously dense objects. Inspectors would need to analyze enough of the scans--perhaps 20 percent to 30 percent--to convince terrorists that there is a good chance that an indistinct image will lead a container's contents to be sent for more reliable X-ray or manual examinations. Images of container contents would then be reviewed remotely by inspectors inside the United States who are trained to spot possible nuclear weapons.
If terrorists were to succeed in shipping a dirty bomb, for example, the database of these images could serve as a kind of black box--an invaluable forensic tool in the effort to identify how and where security was breached. That information could help prevent politicians from reacting spasmodically and freezing the entire container system after an attack.
Such a program could significantly reduce the likelihood that terrorists will smuggle plutonium or a dirty bomb through American ports. But it still would not stop a terrorist from importing highly enriched uranium, which can be used to construct a nuclear weapon. Lengthening the time that a container is screened for radiation would help, and this could be done without increasing waiting times if additional monitors were added to the Hong Kong system near the gate where the trucks must already stop for driver identification checks. Better still would be for the Department of Homeland Security to make the development of new technology that can recognize the unique signature of highly enriched uranium an urgent priority.
Finally, we must find ways to ensure that terrorists do not breach containers before shipments arrive at loading ports. Sensors should be installed inside containers in order to track their movements, detect any infiltration and discern the presence of radioactive material. Where boxes are loaded, certified independent inspectors should verify that companies have followed adequate protocols to ensure that legitimate and authorized goods are being shipped.
Taken together, these recommendations will require new investments and an extraordinary degree of international cooperation. But increased container security will not only help the United States prevent terrorism, it will also help all countries reduce theft, stop the smuggling of drugs and humans, crack down on tariff evasion and improve export controls. What's more, such a program would require an investment of just one one-hundredth of the capital that could be lost if we shut down the global container shipping system after an attack.
Container security is a complex problem with enormous stakes. American officials insist that existing programs have matters well in hand. But we cannot afford to take these perky reassurances at face value while the same officials fail to embrace promising initiatives like the Hong Kong pilot project.
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Katrina: Redefining the Essence of Homeland Security
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Paul Stockton is the associate provost at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and is director of its Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Stockton is the editor of Homeland Security (forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2005). His research has appeared in Political Science Quarterly, International Security and Strategic Survey. He is co-editor of Reconstituting America's Defense: America's New National Security Strategy (1992). Stockton has also published an Adelphi Paper and has contributed chapters to a number of books, including James Lindsay and Randall Ripley, eds., U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War (1997). Stockton received a BA summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1976 and a PhD in government from Harvard University in 1986. He served from 1986-1989 as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Stockton was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship for 1989-1990 by CISAC. In August 1990, he joined the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School. From 1995 until 2000, he served as director of the NPS Center for Civil-Military Relations. From 2000-2001, he founded and served as the acting dean of the NPS School of International Graduate Studies. He was appointed associate provost in 2001.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Paul Stockton
Associate Provost, Director, Center for Homeland Security
Speaker
Naval Postgraduate School
Seminars
Law, Just War, and the International Fight Against Terrorism: Is It War?
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Allen S. Weiner examines to what degree the global "war on terror" that has erupted since September 11, 2001 fits the "just war" doctrine of international relations or even whether it can properly be considered a war at all in terms of positive international law. Whether or not these labels apply is not merely a matter of academic debate, Weiner notes, but has broader implications for the international legal responsibilities of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and other theaters of the "war on terror
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, East 207 Encina Hall
Allen S. Weiner
Stanford Law School
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Neukom Faculty Office Building, Room N238
Stanford, CA 94305-8610
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aweiner@stanford.edu
Senior Lecturer in Law
Director, Stanford Program in International Law
Director, Stanford Humanitarian Program
Director, Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation
CISAC Core Faculty Member
Allen S. Weiner, JD ’89, is an international legal scholar whose research and teaching focus primarily on the fields of international security and international conflict resolution. He also studies the challenges of online misinformation and disinformation. In the international security realm, his work spans such issues as international law and the response to contemporary security threats; the relationship between international and domestic law in the context of armed conflict; the law of war (international humanitarian law); just war theory, and international criminal law (including transitional justice). In the realm of international conflict resolution, his highly multidisciplinary work analyzes the barriers to resolving intractable political conflicts, with a particular focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His work on misinformation and disinformation includes a focus on the potential harmful uses of social media in conflict settings, including war zones. Weiner’s scholarship is deeply informed by experience; he practiced international law in the U.S. Department of State for more than a decade advising government policymakers, negotiating international agreements, and representing the United States in litigation before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Court of Justice, and the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal.
Senior Lecturer Weiner is director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law, director of the Stanford Humanitarian Program, and director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2003, Weiner served as legal counselor at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague and attorney adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC. He clerked for Judge John Steadman of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
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Terror and Beauty - The European Institute for Mathematical Methods in Counterterrorism
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Concepts and techniques from mathematics--specifically, from lattice theory and reflexive theory--have already been applied to counterterrorism and computer security problems. The following is a partial list of such problems:
- Strategies for disrupting terrorist cells
- Data analysis of terrorist activity
- Border penetration and security
- Terrorist cell formation
- Information security
This article proposes the creation of a European Institute for Mathematical Methods in Counterterrorism (IMMC), to be based in Austria. Such an institute would require minimal investment but could serve as a catalyst to draw several million euros in research grants and contracts to Austria. This influx of funding would benefit not merely scientists and firms working in homeland security, but other aspects of Austrian science as well.
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University Scholars Play Prominent Role in Charting Reforms for United Nations
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A new united nations report recommending the most sweeping reform in the institution's history offers a global vision of collective security for the 21st century that is as committed to development in poor nations as it is to prevention of nuclear terrorism in rich ones.
A new united nations report recommending the most sweeping reform in the institution's history offers a global vision of collective security for the 21st century that is as committed to development in poor nations as it is to prevention of nuclear terrorism in rich ones.
The point is, according to the report's research director, Stephen Stedman, a threat to one is a threat to all in today's world. "Globalization means that a major terrorist attack anywhere in the industrial world would have devastating consequences for the well-being of millions around the developing world," the document states. The report's value lies in putting forward a comparative framework of collective security that addresses all the compelling threats of the day, Stedman explained. "The recommendations really are the most important possible makeover of the institution in 60 years," he said. "I think something is going to come out of it." Stedman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at the Stanford Institute for International Studies (SIIS), was recruited a year ago by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to direct research for the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change. Stedman is an expert on civil wars, mediation, conflict prevention, and peacekeeping.
Annan created the 16-member blue-ribbon panel, made up mostly of former government leaders and ministers, in the wake of widespread heated criticism of the United Nations following the U.S.-led war in Iraq. In Annan's annual report to the General Assembly in 2003, he said, "Rarely have such dire forecasts been made about the U.N. ... We have reached a fork in the road ... a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the U.N. was founded." The panel was charged with analyzing global security threats and proposing far-reaching reforms to the international system.
On December 2 the panel, chaired by former Thai prime minister Anand Panyarachun, issued its 95-page report: "A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility." The document identifies six major threats to global security:
-War between states;
-Violence within states, including civil wars, large-scale human rights abuses, and genocide;
-Poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation;
-Nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological weapons;
-Terrorism; and
-Transnational organized crime.
Although states do not face these threats equally, a collective security system must take all member states' threats seriously and deal with them equitably, the report noted. It specifically mentioned the world's appallingly slow response to AIDS.
The report makes 101 recommendations for collective prevention and response to the threats, including ways to reform the United Nations. Annan described these in a December 3 editorial in the International Herald Tribune as "the most comprehensive and coherent set of proposals for forging a common response to common threats that I have seen."
The document also reaffirms the right of states to defend themselves-even preemptively-when an attack is imminent, and it offers guidelines to help the Security Council decide when to authorize the use of force. Stedman said other significant proposals involve improving biosecurity, strengthening nuclear nonproliferation, and defining terrorism. Panel members agreed that any politically motivated violence against civilians should be regarded as terrorism and condemned.
The panel was very critical of the Human Rights Commission, a body that has often harmed the United Nations' reputation by permitting the membership of some of the worst human-rights violators, including Cuba, Libya, and Sudan. The report also discussed the need for new institutions, such as a peace-building commission, that would support countries emerging from conflict.
Scott Sagan, co-director of CISAC, described the report as hard-hitting, although he said he would have tried to extend the withdrawal clause of the nonproliferation treaty from three months to a year. "I think it's the beginning of some major changes that will be helpful," he said. "We need to get states to work together to reform the U.N. rather than sniping at it."
CISAC was closely involved in the panel's work and was named in a cover letter accompanying the report from Panyarachun to Annan. Co-director Chris Chyba served on the panel's 30-member resource group, providing expertise on nuclear nonproliferation and bioterrorism. Bruce Jones, a former CISAC Hamburg Fellow, acted as Stedman's deputy, and Tarun Chhabra, a graduate of CISAC's undergraduate honors program and recent Marshall Scholarship recipient, worked as a research officer. Political science Professors David Laitin and James Fearon, and SIIS Senior Fellow David Victor, provided, respectively, expertise on terrorism, civil wars, and the environment, Stedman said. "There is an immense amount of Stanford influence in the report," he added.
CISAC also hosted a nuclear nonproliferation workshop for the panel on campus last March and helped organize a meeting during the summer in Bangkok. SIIS co-hosted a conference on governance and sovereignty on campus in April and a meeting at Oxford University in June. CISAC provided workspace to give the research team a quiet place to focus on writing the report's first draft in August.
The report has attracted intense international media interest in part because it calls for expanding the U.N. Security Council, its top decision-making group, from 15 to 24 members. The panel was unable to agree on one proposal and offers two options that would make the council more representative and democratic. "I believe either formula would strengthen the legitimacy in the eyes of the world, by bringing its membership closer to the realities of the 21st century-as opposed to those of 1945, when the U.N. Charter was drafted," Annan wrote in the International Herald Tribune.
According to Stedman, the media has highlighted the Security Council's proposed expansion because so many nations have a stake in it. "But in the absence of a new consensus on international peace and security, expansion of the council will not be effective," he explained.
In March, Annan will use the report to inform a series of proposals he will present to the 191 U.N. member states. These, in turn, will be submitted to a summit of world leaders before the General Assembly convenes next September in New York. Stedman said he has been asked to stay on for another year as a special advisor to the secretary general to keep the United Nations "on message" during negotiations.
Engagement by the United States, which has openly questioned the institution's relevance, will be critical to implementing the report's recommendations, said Stedman, who added that the superpower can benefit from a revamped United Nations. "Putting threats to the United States into a global framework makes it more secure," he said.
Stedman noted that one of the most disturbing aspects of the panel's consultations was listening to government representatives from civil-society organizations dismiss the seriousness of bio- and nuclear terror threats against the United States. "They were essentially denying this as a real threat to American security," he said. "I said it's as real a threat to the U.S. as other threats are to you."
When Stedman accepted the job, he thought he would spend 80 percent of his time on research and writing and 20 percent on consultations and negotiating. In fact, he said, it was the other way around. "It's unlike anything I've ever done," he said. "It's been a blast." In contrast to academia, where a researcher presents his or her best findings and defends them, Stedman was faced with 16 people who would push back, reject, or accept his work. "I had to work to change language to include their concerns," he said. "My biggest concern at the beginning was that the report would be based on the lowest common denominator. It's not."
Stedman said the panel members remained open-minded throughout the year. "They showed flexibility, listened to arguments, and changed their minds," he said. "Our job was to be as persuasive, rigorous, and comprehensive in our analysis as we were able to achieve."
In the end, Stedman said, the report belongs to the panel. "Parts of what the exercise shows is that access to those making policy is really important," he said. "If you do really good work and you have access, you have a chance of being heard. Kofi Annan gave me that opportunity."
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If It's Broke, Don't Fix It
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When Norwegian and U.S. scientists launched the Black Brant XII sounding rocket from a small island off Norway's northwest coast on January 25, 1995, they intended for it to harmlessly collect scientific data about the Northern Lights. But when Russia's early warning system radars detected the rocket, they generated an alarm that entered the nuclear forces command and control system and reached the highest levels of government. An accidental nuclear war was never a possibility--by the time the alarm reached Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the rocket had been properly identified--but the incident clearly demonstrated the dangers of a launch-on-warning posture.
A Cold War hangover, launch-on-warning was designed to provide additional protection to nuclear forces by ensuring that a retaliatory attack could be initiated before a first strike obliterated its targets. Implementing launch-on-warning required substantial investment into a network of early warning radars and satellites--plus a command and control system that would allow missiles to be on constant "hair-trigger alert." Its cost proved high enough that only two nuclear powers--the United States and Soviet Union--established a launch-on-warning capability. Nearly 15 years after the Soviet Union's collapse, neither the United States nor Russia have abandoned it.
Numerous proposals have tried to address launch-on-warning concerns. Most point to the Black Brant XII incident as evidence that the precipitous decline of the Russian early warning and command and control systems is the main problem. The argument is simple: If the early warning system was unreliable a decade ago when it was in relatively good shape, imagine how bad the situation is today, after years of decline. Accordingly, many believe the remedy lies in helping Russia compensate for the disrepair, either by creating arrangements that would allow Russia and the United States to share their early warning data, or by providing direct assistance to Russia that would allow it to upgrade its system. These proposals are misguided. Repairing the Russian early warning system would actually increase the danger of an accidental launch.
The reason for this is that the role of the Russian early warning system today is marginal at best. Even in its prime, the system could not provide the data necessary for a launch-on-warning strike. The radar network has always had serious gaps in coverage and the space-based segment of the system was not designed to detect sea-launched missiles. In addition to this, a series of problems plagued the system during its development and early deployment stages. As a result, the Soviet military learned to regard the alarms it generated with suspicion.
The system's deterioration has only added to doubts about its ability to provide a reliable warning. The breakup of the Soviet Union left most of the radars outside Russian territory. At present, Russia operates only three early warning satellites, while minimally reliable coverage of U.S. territory requires at least five. No second-generation satellites, which would expand coverage to the oceans, are operational today. This leaves Russia with an early warning system it can't really trust.
The lack of trust is exactly the reason why the decline of the system is much less dangerous that it may seem. The continued disrepair erodes confidence in the system's performance further and makes it much less likely that an alarm (whether real or false) would be acted upon. Attempts to repair or upgrade the system, on the other hand, would only increase the danger of miscalculation, since such actions would introduce new elements into an already complex system and boost confidence in its performance.
By the same logic, the United States should not be complacent about its early warning system simply because it is thought to be more robust and reliable than its Russian counterpart. High confidence in the U.S. system could make a technical malfunction--should one ever occur--an extremely dangerous event, since U.S. operators would be unlikely to question the information provided by the system.
The best way to deal with the dangers of accidental launch is to remove missiles from hair-trigger alert, for example by introducing physical barriers that would prevent a launch on warning. Technical solutions that have been suggested include removing warheads from missiles or limiting submarine patrol areas. None of these measures have been implemented, since they involve intrusive and cumbersome verification provisions that neither side is willing to accept. What these proposals don't take into account though is that the main goal of de-alerting--reducing the risk of accidental launch--does not require transparency or verification. If a missile does not have a warhead, it won't be able to leave a silo regardless of whether or not one can verify it. In this respect de-alerting is quite different from disarmament, where verification rightfully belongs.
Moreover, transparency could make de-alerting potentially dangerous. Reducing a missile's readiness for all the world to see could create instability during a crisis. If one country decides to bring its missiles back into operation, its counterpart might feel the need to do the same lest its forces remain unprepared for a launch. This might create a rush to re-alert forces, and the dangers associated with re-alerting could outweigh any de-alerting benefits. Ideally, de-alerting measures should be completely undetectable. This approach would remove missiles from the launch-on-warning equation while minimizing the instabilities associated with re-alerting.
With the verification hurdle removed, there is no reason why the United States and Russia should not make a public commitment to de-alert their strategic arsenals. They don't even need to do it together. De-alerting is beneficial even when done unilaterally. Of course, there will be plenty of questions about the value of commitments that are neither enforceable nor verifiable. But the value would be quite real--thousands of missiles would no longer be on hair-trigger alert. And the next time Norway launches a scientific sounding rocket, we can all breathe a little easier.
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Apocalypse Soon
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Robert McNamara is worried. He knows how close we've come. His counsel helped the Kennedy administration avert nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, he believes the United States must no longer rely on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. To do so is immoral, illegal, and dreadfully dangerous.
This article, the cover story for the May/June 2005 issue of Foreign Policy, began as a talk McNamara delivered at Stanford to CISAC researchers, staff, and friends on Oct. 18, 2004.
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Foreign Policy