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“What's really strikes me about ACA is the potential to shape the next generation of leaders on arms control and nuclear policy. This is something I witnessed firsthand as someone who was introduced to the field through ACA.”
– Alicia Sanders-Zakre
ICAN
June 2, 2022
United States

U.S. Scientists Studied, Rejected Nukes in Vietnam

Christine Kucia

The U.S. government studied the feasibility of tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) use during the Vietnam War and concluded that it “would offer the U.S. no military advantage commensurate with its political cost,” according to a recently declassified 1966 report that was released March 9.

JASON, a group of scientists that provides guidance to the U.S. government on military and arms control issues, conducted the study to assess the military and political consequences of unilateral U.S. TNW use in Southeast Asia, as well as the possible use of nuclear weapons against U.S. forces in the Vietnam conflict.

“Tactical Nuclear Weapons in South Asia” explored a variety of circumstances in which the weapons could be used against enemy forces, weighing the number of targets, the movement of enemy troops, and the impact of possible enemy support from China or the Soviet Union. It also assessed U.S. force vulnerability in the event of an enemy strike, concluding that U.S. military deployments would be severely compromised due to force density, troop location, and a lack of measures to protect bases.

The JASON study also warned of the possible proliferation consequences of TNW use in Southeast Asia, concluding, “Insurgent groups everywhere in the world would take note and would try by all available means to acquire TNWs for themselves.”

Touching on the political consequences of first use of TNWs in Vietnam, the study suggested that the United States would face a severe backlash of public opinion worldwide. The scientists acknowledged, “In sum, the political effects of U.S. first use of TNW in Vietnam would be uniformly bad and could be catastrophic.”

The report emerged publicly as the Bush administration contemplates new nuclear weapons development. In November 2002, Congress authorized the administration’s request to conduct a three-year research project on a robust nuclear earth penetrating nuclear weapon, which could defeat hardened and deeply buried targets. (See ACT, December 2002.) Most recently, the Pentagon requested the repeal of 1993 legislation prohibiting research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons. (See ACT, April 2003.)

The U.S. government studied the feasibility of tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) use during the Vietnam War and concluded that it “would offer the U.S. no military advantage...

Creating a New Multilateral Export Control Regime

Michael Beck and Seema Gahlaut

As the United States turns to military means to disarm Iraq, it is an opportune time to reflect on the role that Western governments played in arming Iraq with the technologies and components needed for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and on the failure of export controls to limit Iraq’s access to such items. It is important to remember that much of Iraq’s WMD capability was derived not from smuggling and theft, but from purchases of key weapons-related components by Iraqi agents who systematically exploited gaps in Western export control systems. Post-Persian Gulf War national and international investigations revealed that Iraq purchased—either directly or through front companies—the majority of materials and technologies needed for its various weapons programs.

Much of what we know about Iraqi capabilities indicates that they were built over the years by setting up elaborate networks of shell companies, innocuous procurement agents, and convoluted financial and transshipment routes.1 One recent media report notes that “Iraqi agents have been known to carry 30-page shopping lists of prohibited equipment. They usually pay in cash and buy in bulk. The military industrial commission usually remits the money through the nearest Iraqi ambassador or military attaché.”2 All of this effort converged on one goal: to divert legitimate exports of dual-use goods and technologies, those with both civilian and military applications, into Iraq’s illicit weapons programs.

The Iraqi case has at least three serious implications for the future U.S. arms control and nonproliferation agenda. First, the post-September 11 focus on preventing nuclear and other WMD materials and technology with military purposes from falling into the hands of terrorists needs to be complemented with a parallel focus on ensuring that trade in dual-use technologies is closely monitored and regulated. For those trying to operate under the radar while building their WMD capability, seemingly legitimate purchases of technologies and materials are as attractive as smuggling of such technologies. Indeed, the recent revelations about the WMD capabilities of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea suggest that these states apparent capabilities owe a great deal to the export decisions—deliberate or inadvertent—made by supplier states such as Russia, China, Germany, France, and Pakistan.

Second, the U.S. reliance on supply-side strategies such as export controls, which involve government licensing and oversight of the trade in weapons and sensitive weapons-related technologies, need to be tempered with the understanding that these tools comprise only one segment—albeit an important segment—within the broad spectrum of arms control and nonproliferation tools available to the international community. Export controls are designed to thwart and delay proliferation by limiting access to WMD-related technologies and goods. By limiting access, these controls help to make WMD programs more expensive, financially and diplomatically, for countries seeking such weapons. Unfortunately, the ease with which technical knowledge and hardware spread in our globalized world means that export controls by themselves cannot end proliferation. They are the proverbial finger in the dike that stanches the flow while waiting for reinforcement. That reinforcement stems from parallel support on multiple fronts, such as confidence-building measures, arms control agreements, multilateral sanctions and incentives, and counterproliferation, all of which are aimed at offering viable alternatives to merely coping with the effects of proliferation. Although export controls may have inherent limitations, they are certainly less costly than pre-emptive strikes and armed interventions to disarm proliferators.

Finally, the United States must work with its allies and other major suppliers to strengthen cooperation in regulating and monitoring trade in weaponry and dangerous technology. Currently, they seek to coordinate their export regulations on proliferation-sensitive technologies and conventional arms through four multilateral export control regimes: the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the Australia Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), and the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies. These multilateral regimes operate at the cutting edge of security, economics, and technology. Consequently, they have borne the brunt of the dizzying changes in their operating environment. Uncertainty about who is “the enemy,” which markets to ignore, and which technologies to consider obsolete is the dominant characteristic of this environment. Despite the challenge of operating in a fluid environment, the export control regimes will remain relevant if suitably modified. (See ACA Fact Sheets for more information on multilateral export control regimes.)

The four existing export control regimes have scored some noteworthy successes. They have improved international cooperation in regulating and monitoring the trade in sensitive technologies, and they have helped harmonize the export control systems of major supplier states. Without these export control regimes and coordinated international efforts to monitor proliferation-relevant technologies and arms, states such as North Korea, Iraq, and Iran and nonstate groups hostile to the United States would have access to even more advanced and dangerous weaponry.

Nevertheless, these regimes have serious flaws and are ill-equipped to respond to an increasingly complex environment characterized by technology trade on a global scale, as well as new substate threats.3 Perhaps most importantly, advances in technology—including technology with potential military applications—are far outpacing changes in national regulations and multilateral agreements.4 Even with incremental improvements, export controls are becoming less, not more, effective. The United States and its allies should rethink their approach to controlling dangerous exports, and sooner rather than later.

Problems with Current Regimes

Governments are struggling to coordinate export controls for several reasons. First, the members of the regimes are finding it more and more difficult to agree on which countries should be targeted for stringent controls. The export control regimes originated with groups of like-minded supplier states, notably the United States and its allies in Western Europe and Japan, that agreed on the nature of the threat and appropriate responses.

Since the end of the Cold War, the number of states participating in the regimes has grown, but at the cost of diluting the original membership criteria. This expansion was driven primarily by the euphoric belief in the nonproliferation community that the end of the Cold War had inaugurated an era in which former Warsaw Pact states would make common cause with the West to squelch WMD proliferation. Another factor was the consolidation of the European Union (EU) into a common economic market with few barriers to the movement of goods and services. The extension of the export control regimes to include the EU thus became almost automatic. The MTCR, for example, has grown in membership from seven members (the Group of Seven) in 1987 to 33 in 2002. That means that the regimes now include nonsuppliers as well as states that differ significantly in their definition of threats and their understanding of the letter and spirit of the requirements imposed by the regimes.5

In part, these differences reflect the disparate economic and strategic interests of the member states. Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, for instance, are now members of some of the regimes. Unlike traditional U.S. allies, these countries face serious economic hardships, making their defense establishments far less willing to walk away from questionable but lucrative dealings with China, India, and Iran.6 Instead, these countries are inclined to search for loopholes in the export control regimes.

Second, the former communist countries and U.S. allies in Europe resent U.S. pressure—and U.S. political power—to implement strict controls. U.S. regulations are much stricter than are those of the other regime members, leading them to see U.S. controls as unreasonable and as a means of maintaining the already-commanding U.S. technological edge. As such, some countries have begun finding ways to undercut U.S. export controls. Reports have surfaced that Germany and Sweden permitted the export of electron-beam machines needed for making computer chips to the Chinese firm SMIC, even though the United States routinely bars its own companies from exporting these items to SMIC for fear of proliferation.7 Britain and France have long been suppliers of conventional weapons to India and Pakistan.8 U.S. companies, predictably, have become increasingly vociferous in their complaints about their declining ability to compete.

Third, the control regimes do not require their members to fully disclose which exports they have approved and which they have denied; consequently, they lack the kind of transparency that is crucial to prevent one country from supplying an item that was denied by another. For example, a recent General Accounting Office (GAO) report noted that many governments that participate in the Nuclear Suppliers Group have yet to share any information on export denials. Nor have they shared even the informal suggestions they have issued to businesses advising them not to pursue contracts with suspect end-users.9

The GAO report also drew attention to problems of timely information-sharing. The report noted that the United States did not report any of 27 Australia Group-related export license denials between 1996 and 2001 and also pointed out that nearly half of the Wassenaar member states failed to submit information on export denials within established reporting time frames. The report observed, furthermore, that regime members often failed to incorporate the decisions reached within the regimes into their national export control regulations quickly and uniformly. There have been cases in which some countries, including the United States, have taken as long as a year to make the agreed-upon changes to their national laws.

Fourth, the regimes continue to operate informally and by consensus. Although unanimity may enhance the regimes’ perceived legitimacy, it also allows any single member to hold any decision hostage. In addition, members sometimes ignore even those decisions to which they have freely assented, since those decisions are not legally binding. Member states have been left to decide for themselves which regulations they want to incorporate into their national export control systems and how they will be implemented. Even when states egregiously disregard their commitments, other member states can do little more than attempt to shame the violator. Although 32 of the 34 members of the NSG agreed that Russia’s shipments of nuclear fuel to India in January 2001 were inconsistent with Russia’s NSG commitments, they could do no more than exhort Moscow not to continue with the deal.10

Finally, the new members of the multilateral export control regimes, including former Warsaw Pact members, lack the institutional capacity and the resources to implement export controls fully. To be sure, the United States has created an active and effective export control assistance program that provides vital help to much of the former Soviet bloc. Yet, many in Europe and the United States have clamored to reward East European countries with membership in the regimes for political reasons—and to do so before these countries have proved their ability to implement and enforce controls.11

The Challenge of Globalization

In addition to dealing with the internal strains caused by their growing membership, the regimes must also cope with external pressures from increasing globalization and the rapid advancement of technology. In the high-technology sector, for example, industry standards and practices change rapidly, and these innovations spread quickly around the world. At the same time, the growth of global trade and financial markets has encouraged consolidation and integration across national borders through mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic partnerships. In addition, the leveling effect of the skill revolution and technology diffusion has induced industry to reorganize its functions in global networks rather than nationally based hierarchies. Intra-firm and intra-industry intelligence gathering and information-sharing have become the prime requisites for rapid innovation.12 At the same time, global defense and high-technology firms are engaged in an increasingly competitive struggle for markets. Export controls that place uneven or significant hurdles in the way of efficient sharing of information, ideas, and personnel across national boundaries are viewed by many global companies as a threat to their ability to innovate and to capture new markets.

The multilateral control regimes include provisions for revision and updating of the necessary lists and rules. In theory, then, they should be able to adapt swiftly to changes in technology and industry. In practice, they operate in a bureaucratic environment that allows only glacial change—meaning that reform measures inevitably fall behind technological innovation. Government regulations on the export of goods, technologies, and skilled personnel, whether national or multilateral, have lagged far behind business. Even at the national level, officials have to struggle to build a consensus around new regulatory needs and, in some cases, even struggle to comprehend how emerging technologies are related to security requirements. As a result, timely international coordination is even more problematic.

Controlling exports of emerging dual-use technologies today requires particular foresight and the ability to juggle competing demands. Officials in supplier states have to keep pace not only with technologies that pose a threat today but also with technological innovations that might be militarily relevant tomorrow. At the same time, they have to stay abreast of whether foreign competitors are moving forward with similar sales, for fear that by clamping down too hard they could threaten the competitiveness of domestic firms—harming their own constituents.

Such assessments have become even more complicated now that states outside the regimes are becoming important economic and military powers. Most prominently, regime members are torn over how to treat countries such as China, India, and Israel, which have emerged as attractive markets for high-technology goods and as useful partners to help develop certain technologies. But exporting sensitive dual-use goods to these countries is problematic because they could fuel weapons programs and encourage these states, along with North Korea, Iraq, and Pakistan, to supply WMD technology to third parties—resulting in secondary proliferation.

These nontraditional suppliers represent the latest proliferation concern. The Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, asserted recently that a number of countries were determined to preserve their WMD and missile programs over the long term by innovative means. These countries, said Tenet, were seeking to insulate their programs against interdiction and disruption. They were also trying to reduce their dependence on imports by developing indigenous production capabilities. Although indigenously manufactured components are not always good substitutes for foreign imports—particularly when more advanced technologies are involved—they suffice as a stopgap in many cases. In addition, as they refined their domestic capabilities, these countries could emerge as new suppliers of technology and expertise. Most worrisome, many of these countries—such as India, Iran, and Pakistan—do not adhere to the export restraints embodied in such supplier groups as the NSG and the MTCR.13 The United States and other regime members must now find strategies to ensure that these countries do not supply other states with weapons of mass destruction and missiles.

The business of controlling exports in today’s global era is complex because threats are numerous and difficult to categorize, and the list of technologies that appear innocuous on their face but can add to the lethality of hostile groups is growing. At the same time, the rapid growth and diffusion of dual-use technology makes it more difficult to pinpoint the sources of proliferation. It weakens the arguments for controlling basic technologies, since these technologies have numerous commercial uses as well as the capacity to be pressed into service to build armaments.

Proposed Solutions

How can the multilateral export control regimes be reformed to address the growing list of challenges before them? Knowledgeable observers have proposed a variety of options for strengthening them. We can broadly categorize these into policy- and process-level solutions. Policy-level solutions recommend a frank re-examination of the purpose of the regimes, the role of the United States in them, the demands issued by the new members, and their policies toward nonmembers. Process-level solutions recommend ways to improve the export control regimes by making them more robust, by improving information sharing, and by socializing new members into the norms of nonproliferation. Strengthening the regimes will require solutions at both the policy and process levels.

As a first step, export control regime member states should institute a permanent secretariat in Vienna for the four existing regimes and arrange for them to hold their plenary meetings in that city. A meeting of all countries that are party to one or more of the export control regimes would be held prior to the individual plenaries. This grand plenary meeting might be called “The Multilateral Export Control Coordination Forum.” This forum would facilitate discussions of how best to address many of the cross-cutting export control issues currently facing the regimes while serving as a platform for negotiating a newly restructured export control regime that would encompass the controls embodied in the existing four regimes. Bringing together the work of the existing regimes would help minimize their inefficiencies while putting their limited political and technical resources to best use.

Holding the plenary meetings of existing export control regimes jointly would yield manifold benefits. First, it would promote inter-regime dialogue on cross-cutting export control issues such as transshipment, controls on transfers of intangible technologies, information sharing on end-users of concern, best practices, and harmonized export documentation. Second, it would help avoid duplication of effort, because the strategies to deal with complex control issues and problematic end-users vis-à-vis different types of technologies are similar, if not the same.

Third, it would save money. Too much of what occurs at regime meetings is “diplomatic tourism.” For example, in 2003 the regime plenaries will be held in Seoul (NSG), Buenos Aires (MTCR), and Vienna (Wassenaar Arrangement). The presence of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other security and economic institutions such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Preparatory Commission in Vienna would also facilitate cost savings because regime members could post their technical experts on nuclear and other security issues in the city for managing related nonproliferation work.

Fourth, co-locating the activities of all the regimes would allow them to build some institutional memory and semi-permanent expertise—counteracting the high rate of personnel turnover in national export control agencies and helping new entrants negotiate the sharp learning curve. A single location would also streamline the current, scattershot efforts of the regimes’ staffs to keep records of what transpired at various meetings.

Finally, if multilateral export control efforts were centralized, higher-level policymakers would be more likely to attend the plenary sessions and see the importance of coordinating international controls on all dangerous items. Their participation, in turn, could mobilize the resources and the political capital needed to pursue a more significant restructuring of the existing four export control regimes.

Vienna is the natural location to host these meetings and a secretariat, since the Wassenaar Arrangement has already been working there for some time. The functioning Wassenaar Secretariat could provide organizational support for the annual plenaries and the biannual technical meetings. Moreover, the secretariat could become the locus for training new representatives from member states on export controls.

Still, these procedural reforms do not go far enough. The existing regimes remain far too informal to promote coordinated and harmonized export controls. They are also limited in their ability to formulate timely and actionable policies to meet new challenges because, as noted earlier, they operate on the basis of consensus decision-making. The situation will continue to worsen as the membership of the regimes becomes even more diverse in terms of capabilities and interests.

To be sure, the Bush administration’s National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction recognizes these shortcomings and calls for strengthening the existing multilateral regimes. But it fails to lay out specific suggestions. And the reality is that these regimes are beyond tinkering. They cannot be strengthened as currently constituted and must be restructured.

The changed environment of the existing regimes strongly suggests that a new, combined, and somewhat more formal regime should be established. This new regime should be based on an explicit agreement among its members to formulate and implement policies that will impede the efforts of hostile states, states that sponsor terrorism, terrorist organizations, and individuals to obtain weapons of mass destruction and the goods, technologies, and know-how that can be used to build them. Specifically, the members of a beefed-up regime would undertake to establish transparent, effective, and harmonious export control policies and practices—especially common regulations for the trade and transfer of conventional weapons and dual-use items—so that they can accomplish the objectives of the regime without impeding legitimate commercial transactions. All of the members would also have to agree to abide by the decisions of the regime, including those that are reached without unanimous consent.

Membership in such a regime should be open to those states that are currently participating in any of the four export control regimes (NSG, MTCR, Australia Group, or Wassenaar) as currently constituted. Membership should also be open to states that are both able to transfer or retransfer relevant goods or technologies and ready to make an unambiguous commitment to the goal of nonproliferation in general and the regime’s objectives in particular. All members, new and old, would be evaluated both for their commitment and their ability to implement export control regulations.

A restructured multilateral export control regime should be governed by the following principles and objectives:

1. Replace consensus decision-making with majority voting, at least in such areas as admitting new members, identifying violations by existing members, and developing remedies to deal with violations. Prospective members of a new regime should also consider replacing consensus decision-making rules with weighted voting on issues such as modifying the control lists. This would give more weight to the preferences of suppliers of a particular item than to transit states.

2. Specify the commitments and responsibilities of members and formalize the operations of the regime. For instance, prospective members might be required to agree to incorporate decisions taken within the regime into national law within a specified period and with minimal exceptions based on national circumstances. Measures of this kind would limit the scope for arbitrary flouting of the regime by individual governments.

3. Introduce a dispute-resolution mechanism that allows collective discussion about possible violations by a member, gives that member an opportunity to explain its behavior, and requires all members to abide by the collective decision at the end of the process.

4. Establish clear and uniform criteria for membership, possibly including conditions for expulsion.

5. Establish a tiered list of end-users. Tier 1—the Denied Parties List—should consist of end-users, such as terrorist organizations, that all members agree must be denied controlled technologies. Tier 2—the Sensitive Parties List—should consist of end-users and destinations that are considered proliferation sensitive. Transfers to entities on this list would require approval from a two-thirds majority of member states. Tier 3 should constitute a watch list. Transfers to actors on this list would be based on national discretion, but members would agree to share information on the transaction with the regime after they have approved exports to these actors.

6. Establish an Executive Committee composed of representatives from all member countries. The committee would meet regularly to review proposed transfers to entities on Tier 2; to share information on end-users and developments of common concern; and to chart out new regime policies, such as best practices, to be considered at the annual plenary meetings.

7. Create a team of international experts to provide export control training to prospective members and countries interested in adhering to the standards upheld by the regime.

8. Strengthen information-sharing requirements to include not only denial notifications, but approvals.

9. Require all existing members to agree to these changes explicitly and reaffirm their membership in the new regime and requiring any new entrants to do the same.

Opposition to Restructuring

Officials commonly offer several different objections to the notion of fundamentally revamping the export control regimes. Some experts and officials argue that even a sweeping process of centralizing and restructuring would not yield control regimes that are substantially more effective than the current ones. Others claim that any attempt to restructure or merge the regimes would risk moving export control efforts toward the least common denominator, thereby weakening multilateral efforts. Some point to problems that could arise from the fact the four regimes have differing memberships. From this, they conclude that establishing one control regime would be nearly impossible. Finally, some argue that renegotiating the regimes would be too politically difficult, and thus muddling through under the status quo is preferable.

These concerns are worth considering. Yet, on closer examination, none of them provides grounds for failing to move quickly to strengthen multilateral proliferation controls given the growing challenges posed by global trade and the spread of dangerous weapons technology. First, crafting an overarching multilateral control regime would result not in a weaker regime, but in a stronger one. The point of restructuring a new regime is to raise the bar, not lower it. If the potential members of a new regime failed to negotiate a significantly improved arrangement, they would simply stick with the status quo and continue to make incremental improvements.

Second, the reality is that the existing hodgepodge of regimes already represents the least common denominator. Almost any change would be an improvement. At present, all decisions are taken on the basis of consensus, allowing even one member to stall efforts at reform. By contrast, our idea is to begin by informally coordinating multilateral export controls across regimes and to use this collaborative work as a springboard to a new, overarching institution. The member governments would not agree to abandon the existing export control regimes until they were convinced that the new regime would be a meaningful improvement over the old. The existence of a new regime would also not obviate the possibility of, or need for, micro-regimes that might allow two or three countries to coordinate additional controls on selected technologies.

The fact that the existing regimes have different memberships is also not an insurmountable obstacle to reform. The most politically significant membership issue is Russia’s absence from the Australia Group. Some officials in the United States and Europe are quick to note that the Australia Group is the most effective of the control regimes precisely because Russia is not a member. However, a restructured regime could deal with problem countries such as Russia, as well as concerns that members will not uphold the decisions laid down by the regime, in at least three ways. First, under the aegis of a single regime, sub-arrangements might be devised that excluded Russia and thus sidestepped the difficulties entailed in dealings with Moscow. Second, if consensus rules were replaced with more democratic voting rules, Russian attempts to stall reform would be thwarted. Third, if incorporated into the new regime, as we have proposed, a dispute-resolution mechanism would allow other members collectively to censure, or even expel, problem countries.

It is also true that the United States sometimes uses consensus rules to prevent further erosion of the regime or to defend its economic interests, leading some to suggest that the status quo is adequate. The benefits gained from Washington’s vetoing of the membership of one country or the decontrol of a particular item, however, are fewer than the benefits that would accrue from a new institution that facilitated increased information sharing, the implementation of best practices, common approaches to licensing, and a more coordinated response to actors of proliferation and security concern.

Perhaps the most serious obstacle, however, is the opposition of the business community to a tougher system of export control. To gain a measure of the influence of the defense industry, consider that worldwide military expenditures topped $839 billion in 2001, up from $798 billion in 2000.14 The top five global suppliers of conventional weapons are all members of the Wassenaar Arrangement. In 2001, total world arms transfer agreements were worth nearly $26.4 billion. The United States led the world with 45 percent of all such agreements.15  One reason the defense industry has such influence in the U.S. government is because of federal campaign contributions. Industry contributions totaled $9.5 million during the 2002 election cycle.16 Strengthening the Wassenaar Arrangement and multilateral arms export controls in the face of such influence is especially problematic.

Dual-use technology exports are likewise of great importance for some industry sectors. Moreover, many of the important markets for high-technology companies are in countries of some security concern. The Department of Commerce, for example, licensed more than $12 billion worth of dual-use trade to China between 1991 and 2001. The pace of technological change and innovation in the high-technology sector in the United States has further diminished the latitude and propensity of the Commerce Department, the Department of Defense, and other licensing agencies to severely restrict the market-clearing decisions of domestic companies in these sectors. The situation is not significantly different in other supplier nations.

Nevertheless, the ability of the European Union to construct a common export control system demonstrates that, if governments demonstrate sufficient political will, a new multilateral export control regime can emerge that is better equipped to respond to new threats and new trade realities. Although export decisions are made at the member-state level, the EU’s dual-use export control regime is significant to the extent that it entails binding guidelines and common criteria. Despite these obstacles, in an age in which terrorists and their sponsors seek dangerous technology and weapons, bureaucratic turf wars and the economic interests of suppliers must not dictate policy outcomes, thereby compromising the security of this country and its allies.

The Need for Political Leadership

Greater political leadership is essential. To date, export controls have been underused as nonproliferation tools. They are poorly understood by the public, policymakers, and even nonproliferation specialists—many of whom seemingly believe that controlling weapons of mass destruction is simply a matter of physically securing related materials and technologies. They often fail to appreciate the fact that countries that have acquired weapons of mass destruction have done so by purchasing component parts, technologies, and materials (most of which are dual-use in nature) by lawful means. They also fail to recognize the role that Western suppliers play in arming parties in conflict-prone regions.

An additional barrier to reform is that export controls appear to be too bureaucratically and technically complex to engage the attention of political leaders around the world. Having four regimes that appear to policymakers to be doing the same thing—regulating weapons-related technologies and items—has resulted in a lack of sustained high-level political attention in almost all member states, including the United States. In this context, one can understand the complaints from high-technology firms and their clients about confusing and overlapping regulations and the consequent introduction of piecemeal solutions by individual legislators. In most countries that we have studied, the issues appear so esoteric to national policymakers that few high-level political resources are invested to rationalize the national export control system as a whole. The enterprise of harmonizing national systems with the requirements of the multilateral regimes commands even less support.17

Who should lead the effort to strengthen multilateral export controls? The United States is the obvious candidate to spearhead an effort to strengthen export controls, especially in light of the Bush administration’s emphasis on countering terrorism and the WMD threat from Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Within the U.S. government, however, the idea of merging the export control regimes will likely encounter bureaucratic resistance and inertia. Some of the opposition stems from the concerns that were discussed and discounted above. Each regime also enjoys a handful of defenders in Washington. These individuals typically insist that the language, issues, communities, and status of each individual regime is too unique to blend without incurring significant risk.

In some countries, there are additional bureaucratic hurdles. For instance, it is not clear whether the concerns spelled out by government officials are genuine or whether they reflect more personal anxieties that reform would entail additional work and a loss of control. In some cases, officials who manage export control programs contend that they cannot fathom restructuring and strengthening the system because they are too busy defending the existing regimes from domestic and industry representatives who would just as soon do away with multilateral controls altogether. It is almost certain that, if key policymakers turn to the individuals currently implementing the regimes’ policies for guidance, they will be told that restructuring or replacing the four existing arrangements would be too difficult to negotiate, not to mention fraught with risks.

A more realistic way the United States can help bring about a strengthened multilateral system would be for Congress to call on the secretary of state to strengthen the multilateral system. Such legislation could be included in a reauthorization of the Export Administration Act, which has been languishing on Capitol Hill for more than a decade. A surprising ally in the quest to reform multilateral export controls might also be some U.S. industry groups. An often-heard complaint in industry circles is that control policies and licensing decisions and practices vary widely from supplier country to supplier country. As a result, they argue that foreign competitors in Europe and Japan have an unfair competitive edge. Thus, some businesspeople might welcome a multilateral control system that helps to “level the playing field,” along with legislation that simplifies the licensing process.

The European Union could also help spur reform. There is already considerable support for a reformed and consolidated export control regime, especially among the smaller countries. The expansion of the EU and NATO is in many ways forcing this issue, since new members of these organizations are expected to have export control systems compatible with those of the present members. All of the current EU member states are participants in all four regimes. As a group, however, the ten states most likely to be admitted to the EU are a mixed bag. Estonia does not take part in any of the regimes; Cyprus, to name one, is a member of only two of the regimes; the Visegrad countries are full members of all four regimes. If future EU members are not party to the regimes, there is the risk of conflict between regime export requirements and EU export privileges. There is also the problem of prospective EU countries that lack robust and effective export controls.

Reform or Stasis?

The grave threat posed by continued WMD proliferation and loosely regulated military exports suggests that export controls can no longer be entrusted to lethargic and informal organizations. Four regimes with vague provisions, limited information-sharing requirements, and crippling consensus rules are no match for terrorist organizations, to say nothing of countries such as Iran that are seeking weapons of mass destruction and other arms. The magnitude of this threat requires a wholehearted commitment by the political establishment in the United States and other countries.

We recommend forging a single, strengthened regime characterized by binding commitments on its members and some form of majority-based decision-making. We believe that a consolidated multilateral export regime would realign the multilateral effort to implement, enforce, and coordinate WMD and dual-use export controls in two highly beneficial ways: it would provide an opportunity for existing member states to renew their commitment, and it would allow other supplier states to join the nonproliferation effort. It is time to step back and retool the regimes in ways that maximize their unique strengths vis-à-vis the other nonproliferation tools and institutions.

History amply demonstrates that crisis is usually required to precipitate reform. One would think that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Iraq’s success in acquiring Western components for its WMD arsenal, and current concerns over proliferation elsewhere would prompt the kind of sweeping change we advocate. Yet, it is not apparent that even these clear signs of danger are adequate. Will it take an actual WMD attack on an American city, followed by revelations that American firms supplied the means to build the weapons used in the attack, to goad us into action?

Two possible futures await us. Either international efforts to strengthen the norms and legal barriers to weapons of mass destruction will be bolstered through a significantly improved regime or international efforts to monitor dangerous technologies and weaponry will falter. If our choice is the latter, we will have repeated the mistake of selling the rope used to hang ourselves.


NOTES
1. See David Albright and Khidhir Hamza, “Iraq’s Reconstitution of Its Nuclear Weapons Program,” Arms Control Today, October 1998.
2. Bob Drogin, “How Hussein Gets ‘Anything He Wants,’” The Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2002.
3. See Joseph Cirincione, ed., Repairing the Regime: Preventing the Spread of Mass Destruction (New York: Routledge, 2000), and Michael Barletta and Amy Sands, eds., Nonproliferation Regimes at Risk, Occasional Paper No. 3, Center for Nonproliferation Studies (Monterey: Monterey Institute for International Studies, 1999).
4. See William W. Keller and Janne E. Nolan, “Proliferation of Advanced Weaponry: Threat to Stability,” Foreign Policy, winter 1997-98, and Michael Hirsh, “The Great Technology Giveaway,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 1998, 2-9.
5. See Seema Gahlaut and Victor Zaborskiy, “Do Regimes Have The Members They Need?” Center for International Trade and Security Working Paper (Athens; Center for International Trade and Security, February 2003).
6. George Tenet, “Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions, 1 January through 30 June 2000.” (Publisher/date)
7. See Richard Read, “U.S. Trade, Security Interests Clash Over Tech Exports to China,” Oregon Live, February 3, 2003.
8. “UK’s Arms Exports to India and Pakistan,” available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2012620.stm; “Al-Qaeda vs France, Or India vs Pakistan?” available at http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/DE11Df01.html.
9. See U.S. General Accounting Office, Strategy Needed to Strengthen Multilateral Export Control Regimes (Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 2002), GAO-03-43.
10. Ibid., 23.
11. For example, partly as a reward for its decision to forego nuclear commerce with Iran, Ukraine was allowed to enter the MTCR. As part of the membership agreement, Ukraine will keep its hundreds of Scud missiles – the type of rocket MTCR was specifically designed to counter – through the end of their service lives, and will not forswear future production of short-range missiles should Ukraine find it necessary. Howard Diamond, “U.S., Ukraine Sign Nuclear Accord, Agree on MTCR Accession,” Arms Control Today, March 1998.
12. See Sam Nunn Bank of America Policy Forum, Executive Summary: Globalization, Technology Trade and American Leadership: A New Strategy for the 21st Century (Athens: The University of Georgia, March 2000), Technology and Security in the 21st Century: U.S. Military Export Control Reform (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2001), and Sten Lundbo, “Nonproliferation: Expansion of Export Control Mechanisms,” Aussenpolitik 48, no. 2 (August 1997).
13. See his annual Congressional testimony, “Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions, 1 January Through 30 June 2000.” See also Jason Ellis, “Beyond Nonproliferation: Secondary Supply, Proliferation Management, and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Comparative Strategy (2001), 1-24, and Michael Moodie, “Beyond Proliferation: The Challenge of Technology Diffusion,” The Washington Quarterly 18, no. 2, (spring 1995).
14. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Yearbook 2002: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
15. Richard F. Grimmet, "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1993-2000,” CRS Report for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, August 16, 2001).
16. This includes combined amounts from three categories, Defense Aerospace, Defense Electronics, and Miscellaneous Defense, in the database “Top Industries Giving to Members of Congress 2002 Cycle,” from the Center for Responsive Politics; available at http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/mems.asp?party=A&cycle=2002.
17. See, Michael Beck, R. Cupitt, Seema Gahlaut, and Scott Jones, To Deny or To Supply: Nonproliferation Export Controls in Five Key Countries (New York: Kluwer International, forthcoming).

 


Michael Beck is assistant director of the Center for International Trade and Security (CITS) at the University of Georgia. Seema Gahlaut is a senior research associate at CITS.

 

Senate Approves Flawed Nuclear Treaty; Arms Experts Say U.S. and Russia Need to Do More to Reduce Nuclear Dangers

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For Immediate Release: March 6, 2003

Press Contacts: Christine Kucia, Research Analyst at (202) 463-8270 x103; Daryl Kimball, Executive Director at (202) 463-8270 x107

(Washington, D.C.): The Senate today unanimously approved the U.S.-Russian Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), also known as the Moscow Treaty, after two days of debate during which several proposals to strengthen the accord were withdrawn or rejected.

“Democratic and Republican senators have missed a vital opportunity to add practical conditions to the flawed Moscow Treaty to keep the nuclear risk reduction process on track,” said Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association. “As a result, the treaty is little more than a gentlemen’s agreement that will allow each country to continue deploying and storing thousands of nuclear warheads more than two decades after the end of the Cold War,” he noted.

Signed May 24, 2002 by Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, SORT requires the United States and Russia to each reduce its number of deployed strategic warheads from today’s 5,000-6,000 to no more than 2,200 by the end of 2012, when the treaty will expire. The agreement requires that the warheads be removed from their delivery systems, but does not require their destruction, permitting both sides to keep as many warheads and delivery vehicles as they want for future use. For its part, Washington intends to store enough warheads that it could field up to 4,600 warheads in as little as three years after the treaty ends. Moscow’s plans for the warheads it will remove from service under the treaty are unclear.

Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged in Senate testimony last July that the accord does not limit the amount of warheads either country can possess. “The treaty will allow you to have as many warheads as you want,” Powell stated.

Moreover, the treaty provides no new verification measures to confirm that both parties are carrying out the pledged reductions. As a result, the U.S. intelligence community has determined that the United States will not be able to verify Russian compliance with high confidence.

“Under the treaty, neither country can know for certain whether the other is fulfilling its promises, nor if nuclear warheads and materials are being stored safely to prevent their illicit transfer to or theft by terrorists or unfriendly governments,” said Wade Boese, research director of the Arms Control Association.

“Given warming U.S.-Russian relations and existing concerns about Russia’s ability to properly secure its nuclear materials, the greater threat to U.S. security may well be the warheads Russia keeps in storage instead of those it deploys on its missiles, bombers, and submarines,” Boese cautioned.

In his July 2002 Senate testimony, former Senator Sam Nunn contended that the treaty by itself would not accomplish much, stating: “If it is not followed with other substantive actions it will become irrelevant at best and counterproductive at worst.”

To help remedy the treaty’s shortcomings, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee added two modest conditions February 5 to the agreement. One mandates an annual report by the administration on U.S.-Russian Cooperative Threat Reduction programs, which provide U.S. assistance to help secure and destroy Russian weapons of mass destruction. The other requires a yearly update on the status of U.S. and Russian treaty implementation, including strategic force levels, planned reductions each calendar year, and verification or transparency measures that have been or might be employed. The Senate approved both conditions today.

“While the added conditions provide some increased accountability and transparency of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, the treaty still falls far short of enacting permanent, meaningful reductions in a verifiable manner that can help build the trust needed to liquidate the legacy of the Cold War, as President Bush envisioned,” said Christine Kucia, the Arms Control Association’s strategic analyst.

Recognizing SORT’s flaws, several senators offered amendments to the resolution of ratification to strengthen the pact. Senator Carl Levin attempted to amend the resolution of ratification by requiring that the Senate is informed at least 60 days in advance of any decision to terminate or extend the treaty. It was defeated 50-44. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) proposed that the intelligence community annually report on its ability to verify Russia’s compliance with the treaty. It was defeated 50-45.

Moscow deploys an estimated 4,000 tactical nuclear warheads and Washington is currently estimated to have approximately 1,000 tactical nuclear warheads. In addition to their tactical and deployed strategic nuclear arsenals, the United States is believed to have more than 5,000 nuclear warheads in spare and reserve stockpiles and Russia is estimated to have another 11,000 warheads stockpiled.

“The flaws in the Moscow Treaty require that the Bush administration pursue additional measures with Russia to reduce the dangers posed by Cold War nuclear arsenals,” Kimball stated. He suggested, “In the coming months, the United States and Russia should resume discussions on additional transparency and verification measures, methods for verifying excess warhead and missile dismantlement, and begin talks on controlling the thousands of smaller, more portable, tactical nuclear weapons.”

“SORT should be seen as a beginning—not an end—for further U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reductions,” Kimball said.

For more information on the SORT agreement and nuclear weapons, see the Association's Web site at http://www.armscontrol.org/subject/ussp/ or http://www.armscontrol.org/subject/sr/.

 

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The Arms Control Association is an independent, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies. Established in 1971,the Association publishes the monthly journal, Arms Control Today.

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U.S. Aims to Deploy Space-Based Missile Interceptors in Five Years

Wade Boese

The United States is exploring concepts for basing missile interceptors in space with the objective of beginning deployment of three to five armed satellites for testing purposes as early as 2008, according to recent Pentagon briefings and statements.

An official for the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA), which oversees missile defense research and development, stressed in a February 6 interview that the effort to create a so-called space-based test bed, comprising at least three satellites, is in the preliminary stages. The official said no design for the satellites yet exists and that MDA will seek to draw up specifications for possible systems this year. The agency plans to award contracts to private companies as early as next winter to start work on design proposals.

The guiding idea is to field satellites armed with multiple hit-to-kill interceptors capable of destroying a ballistic missile through a high-speed collision shortly after its launch. Ideally, the interceptor would hit the missile in its boost phase, when the rocket engines are still firing and the warhead has not yet separated from the missile.

The proposal is reminiscent of former President George H. W. Bush’s “Brilliant Pebbles” concept, which the Clinton administration shelved after assuming office in January 1993. The elder Bush’s plan, however, was much more ambitious than current thinking, envisioning up to 1,000 interceptors based in orbit.

Past U.S. efforts to develop space-based missile defenses have failed, largely due to a combination of technological infeasibility, other funding priorities, and strong congressional opposition. With Republicans, who are generally more supportive of missile defense efforts than Democrats, in control of Congress, the Pentagon’s plans are more likely to win legislative approval unscathed.

While the MDA official emphasized that any interceptors initially deployed in space would be strictly for testing, other countries leery about U.S. missile defense plans, such as China, might draw different conclusions, particularly since the Bush administration announced in December 2002 that missile defense systems previously described as being for testing purposes would serve as the initial elements of a multilayered missile defense system.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld highlighted the dual nature of U.S. missile defense programs at a February 13 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, stating, “I would characterize what we have proposed as simultaneously a test bed as well as a minimal deployment. It is both things.” Rumsfeld was referring to the ground-based missile defense system to be set up in Alaska and California next year, but presumably a space-based test bed would also have some operational capability.

China is spearheading efforts at the Geneva-based UN Conference on Disarmament, which operates by consensus, to negotiate an agreement on the prevention of an arms race in outer space. (See ACT, March 2003.) One of the driving concerns behind China’s proposal is the potential deployment of U.S. missile defense elements in space.

The United States is opposing the Chinese proposal, arguing that there is no arms race in outer space and that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which bans the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space, is sufficient.

The United States is exploring concepts for basing missile interceptors in space with the objective of beginning deployment of three to five armed satellites...

U.S. Concludes Ukraine Policy Review

The United States completed a review of U.S. policy toward Ukraine in mid-January, concluding that it is in the United States’ best interest to continue pursuing closer ties with Ukraine despite unresolved concerns about its possible export of military equipment to Iraq in violation of a 1990 UN arms embargo.

While describing U.S.-Ukrainian relations as going through their most difficult period since Ukraine’s 1991 independence from the Soviet Union, Steven Pifer, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said in a February 13 speech that the United States must continue to engage Ukraine and not isolate it. He said the United States would focus on aiding Ukrainian economic and export control reforms, pursuing closer military ties, and bolstering Ukrainian civil society. The latter entails promoting democracy and freedom of the press in Ukraine, according to State Department officials.

This broad engagement, according to State Department spokesman Mark Toner, will take place even though Ukraine “has not satisfactorily answered all our questions” about President Leonid Kuchma’s July 2000 approval of an illicit export of the Kolchuga early-warning system to Iraq. (See ACT, October 2002.) Ukraine contends the export never took place, but a team of U.S. and British investigators who visited Ukraine for eight days last year reported, “The Government of Ukraine (GOU) failed to provide the team with satisfactory evidence that the transfer of a Kolchuga to Iraq could not or did not take place.”

Though the United States intends to pursue better relations with Ukraine, the Kolchuga affair is not going to be forgotten. U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual noted in a January 9 speech in Washington that “trust has been eroded” between the United States and Ukraine. Another State Department official, who asked to remain anonymous, commented February 21 that the U.S. government intends to be “cautious in contacts with senior [Ukrainian] officials.”

All U.S. assistance to Ukraine during fiscal year 2002 totaled approximately $278 million. Fiscal year 2003 funding is expected to be a little less, but the precise amount is still being determined.

U.S. Will Upgrade Missile Defense Radar in U.K.

London will permit the United States to upgrade a U.S. radar based on British territory in order to enable better tracking of ballistic missiles in flight, British Secretary of Defense Geoffrey Hoon announced February 5.

Located at Fylingdales, the early-warning radar is envisioned by the Bush administration as an important part of its missile defense efforts, tracking any missile launched from the Middle East or North Africa toward the United States. The radar cannot currently provide the quality of information that the United States wants, so the Bush administration asked London in December 2002 if work could be done to improve the radar.

At this time, the sole U.S. radar considered capable of providing some tracking capability of ballistic missiles to the Pentagon’s proposed missile defense system is in Alaska and fixed to face northwest toward Asia and Russia, offering no capability to help counter a missile traveling from the direction of the Near East. No country in that region is currently thought to possess a missile capable of striking the United States.

Hoon’s announcement marks an agreement in principle to allow the upgrades to take place. The two governments are negotiating a more formal memorandum of understanding, which is expected to include provisions enabling British companies to compete for work on the project.

Much of the upgrade will involve updating computer hardware and software. There will be no changes to the radar’s “external appearance or power output,” according to Hoon.

The defense secretary further stated that agreeing to the upgrade does not commit the United Kingdom to any additional cooperation with the United States on missile defenses. Hoon added, however, that the agreement does “keep open the prospect of acquiring missile defense capabilities for the U.K., should we desire such protection at some point in the future.”

Denmark has yet to reply to a similar U.S. request for a radar located on Greenland, which is Danish territory. A public hearing on the issue by the Danish parliament is set for April 23, and no reply is expected before then.

Stopping a Dangerous Drift in U.S. Arms Control Policy

Representative John M. Spratt, Jr.

The United States is facing an increasingly diverse set of threats from weapons of mass destruction. War is looming in Iraq, a crisis is developing on the Korean Peninsula, and Iran is moving to develop nuclear weapons. The terrorists who assaulted the United States on September 11, 2001 may have lacked nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, but they did not lack the malevolence to use them. We find ourselves in a new arms race: one between the efforts of terrorists and rogue states to acquire them and our efforts to stop them.

There may never have been a more appropriate time to ask how we can more effectively reduce the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction and to assess how our nuclear policies help or hinder that goal. Clearly, business as usual is not enough, but we should not slight the steps we have taken—they have helped. A prime example is the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, initiated by former Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), which seeks to secure the arsenals of Russia and other former Soviet states in order to prevent proliferators from obtaining nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

The Nunn-Lugar program, based in the Department of Defense, and its companion nonproliferation programs at the Energy and State Departments are entering their second decade, and they have made major progress. As of November 2002, the Pentagon’s threat reduction programs had helped to deactivate 6,020 warheads, destroy 486 intercontinental ballistic missiles, and eliminate 347 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and 97 strategic bombers. Perhaps the best known of the Energy Department efforts, the Material Protection, Control and Accounting (MPC&A) Program, has also established a strong track record. With only a modest budget, the MPC&A program has improved safeguards for 192 metric tons of fissile material, enough for some 8,000 nuclear devices.

Still, much remains to be done. It may seem evident that these programs have proven their mettle and merit more funding, but it is not clear to everyone. From the start, those protective of the defense budget looked upon Nunn-Lugar as an interloper, a way of siphoning money off real defense programs and into “foreign affairs.” A few years ago, when I sponsored the second step of this bill, called Nunn-Lugar-Domenici, I could not convince a single Republican on the House Armed Services Committee to join me as a co-sponsor. And when threat reduction measures are passed, they have often been hampered by “certifications” requirements that have held up funding.

Today’s emerging dangers not only validate the concerns that gave rise to those programs; they call for us to do more. Unfortunately, instead of accelerating our nonproliferation efforts, we are allowing threat reduction to tread water. Perhaps worse, after more than a decade of arms control progress, U.S. policy is now drifting in a dangerous direction as the Bush administration contemplates a resumption of nuclear testing and the development of new “bunker-busting” nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration and the Congress need to boost threat reduction activities and halt efforts to increase the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security policy. Morally, these steps will enhance our authority as we move to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Practically, they will help strengthen safeguards and keep weapons of mass destruction from terrorists and rogue states.

Tepid Support for Nonproliferation

Cooperative threat reduction efforts are slowly but surely undoing the legacy of the Cold War. They are succeeding in spite of impediments, and they deserve more money, more emphasis, and more recognition for what they have accomplished. These programs represent a textbook example of how Congress can innovate and initiate national security policy, but in our system there is no substitute for presidential commitment. Although the Bush administration is officially supportive, its support is hardly zealous. Its stated policies are correct but often not backed up by its budget policies, and the White House seems more inclined toward counterproliferation than nonproliferation.

For example, in the “National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction,” published in December, President Bush declared, “We must accord the highest priority to the protection of the United States, our forces, and our friends and allies from the existing and growing WMD threat.” I agree. But the statement lists “Counter-Proliferation to Combat WMD Use” as first among the “Pillars of Our National Strategy,” coming ahead of efforts to “Strengthen Non-Proliferation to Combat WMD Proliferation.” Certainly, nonproliferation efforts cannot rid the world of all the threats posed by weapons of mass destruction, and we have to have a wide range of counterproliferation programs. But counterproliferation, even when founded on “active defenses,” interdiction, and a “strong declaratory policy” may do little to actually reduce the spread of—and thus the threat from—weapons of mass destruction. The administration’s priorities seem misplaced.

Ballistic missile defense is a prime example of how the emphasis on counterproliferation comes at the expense of nonproliferation. The administration has increased spending on missile defense systems by nearly 60 percent—from about $5 billion two years ago to almost $8 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2003. The request for FY 2004 is more than $9 billion. Yet, during that time, the administration’s funding requests for nonproliferation were comparatively flat. I am a supporter of ballistic missile defense in certain configurations, such as those centered on ground-based interceptors, but I consider it our last line of defense. Furthermore, today’s greatest threats are not ballistic missiles launched by a nation-state, with return address attached, but an aerosol-spray can with biological agents, chemicals released into a ventilation system, nuclear devices buried in cargo containers, or a radiological weapon in the back of a truck. The heavy emphasis on missile defense draws funding and attention away from these other, more likely threats.

The president’s December strategy statement says that “maintaining an extensive and efficient set of non-proliferation and threat reduction assistance to Russia and other former Soviet states is a high priority.” The stress on “maintaining” implies that we are doing all that we can in the realm of nonproliferation and cooperative threat reduction, but that contention is at odds with the evidence. For example, the administration has said it will “encourage friends and allies to increase their contributions to these programs,” but it has not pledged to enlarge our own efforts. There was much clamor over the “10 Plus 10 Over 10” arrangement made among the G-8 nations last June, under which the United States and Europe would spend a total of $20 billion on threat reduction over the next 10 years. But, in truth, that pledge merely committed the United States to its existing level of nonproliferation spending.

The Bush administration’s support for threat reduction efforts certainly does not reach the level suggested by several independent assessments, most notably that chaired by Howard H. Baker, Jr. and Lloyd Cutler, who, in their January 2001 report, urged tripling the funding of the Energy Department’s threat reduction programs. Although the overall defense budget has grown substantially under Bush, funding for nonproliferation stands essentially where it stood in President Clinton’s last budget. And without congressional support, it would not stand there.

In FY 2001, $443.4 million was appropriated for the Pentagon’s CTR program. Bush’s first real budget, FY 2002, proposed to cut 10 percent from the CTR program, and Congress followed his lead, appropriating just $403 million. The president increased his request by only 3.4 percent in his FY 2003 budget, to $416.7 million, and Congress approved that amount. The administration argued that the CTR budget dipped in FY 2002 only because the first part of a major project—construction of the Mayak fissile material storage facility—had been completed, but that does not explain the modest request for FY 2003.

In fairness, the administration has just proposed a robust increase in the Pentagon’s CTR program for FY 2004, including an especially welcome request for accelerated work at the Shchuch’ye chemical demilitarization facility. But two-thirds of nonproliferation funds flow through the Energy Department, and the president’s FY 2004 request for those efforts is essentially flat compared to last year. The new request follows a trend that dates back to Bush’s first budget. After $864 million was appropriated for Energy Department nonproliferation programs in FY 2001, President Bush proposed a cut of nearly $100 million in his FY 2002 request. Only congressional action, spurred by the reaction to September 11, boosted funding to $803.6 million, and with emergency supplemental appropriations approved later, the total amount eventually reached $1.06 billion.

At first glance, the president’s initial FY 2003 budget request of $1.11 billion for the Energy Department’s nonproliferation programs seemed to represent an increase over the 2002 enacted level. However, the increase was deceptive for two reasons. First, the FY 2003 request included $49 million for a program transferred from the Department of Defense (elimination of weapons-grade plutonium at the Tomsk and Kransnoyarsk reactors). Second, the U.S. plutonium disposition program received a $108 million (45 percent) increase in the president’s budget, going from $241 million in FY 2002 to $350 million in FY 2003. If the president’s request is adjusted to exclude the transfer of the Pentagon program and include only the nonproliferation activities outside the United States, the president’s budget for Energy Department nonproliferation programs actually represented a $71 million (9 percent) decrease from the 2002 enacted level.

The FY 2004 request for Energy Department programs, released earlier this month, is similarly deceptive. The total appears to jump by 30 percent, from an amended FY 2003 request of $1.03 billion to an FY 2004 request of $1.34 billion. But the funding request is skewed by an increase of more than $300 million for a mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility in Aiken, South Carolina. The MOX facility is crucial: it could eventually process about 34 metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel as required by a 2000 agreement that commits Russia to doing the same. But the vast majority of funding for MOX remains in the United States, it does not go to Russia. With the $309 million boost to construction in South Carolina set aside, the president’s budget proposes simply to maintain our current level of effort in the former Soviet Union—there is no increase at all.

Signs of a Dangerous Drift

Even with this unimpressive record, my greatest concern is not the administration’s tepid support for threat reduction programs or the questionable wisdom of sinking billions into missile defense as opposed to nonproliferation. My greatest concern is that some in the administration and in Congress seem to think that the United States can move the world in one direction while Washington moves in another—that we can continue to prevail on other countries not to develop nuclear weapons while we develop new tactical applications for such weapons and possibly resume nuclear testing.

The official position of the Bush administration is that it intends to maintain the moratorium on underground nuclear explosions. At the same time, this administration has made plain that it does not support a permanent ban and that it will not seek ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Furthermore, it has voiced doubts about the effectiveness of the Stockpile Stewardship Program, which is intended to maintain the effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent without testing. In certain quarters of Congress, there has long been skepticism of the program, and it is not news that a cadre of members wants to see the United States resume testing. What is new is that the administration itself has voiced doubts about Stockpile Stewardship.

In the January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, for example, the administration raised concern that two to three years are required to prepare for a new test. The review argues that “a two- to three-year posture may be too long to address any serious defect [in the arsenal] that might be discovered in the future.” This concern led to a 2002 study at the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) of options for reducing the lead time required for a test. Last spring, NNSA’s top scientist, Everett Beckner, told my staff that the study would probably conclude that 18 months is the shortest feasible lead-time. But testing advocates in the House pushed for shorter lead times. In the final conference agreement on the FY 2003 defense authorization bill, we reached a compromise by asking NNSA to examine the options both shorter and longer than 18 months and to offer a recommendation among those.

Despite testimony last spring and summer that the administration had no plans to resume testing, a memo was leaked in November from Pete Aldridge, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics. The memo was directed to the nuclear weapons labs and urged exploration of possible tests. It asked the weapons labs to “assess the technical risks associated in maintaining the U.S. arsenal without nuclear testing” and suggested that “the United States take another look at conducting small nuclear tests.” The memo went on to say, “We will need to refurbish several aging weapons systems” and should “be prepared to respond to new nuclear weapons requirements in the future.”

Indeed, during the 107th Congress, two related efforts were launched to pursue new nuclear weapons. The first supported research, development, and possibly testing of new, low-yield nuclear weapons because some believe they will be needed to counter post-Cold War threats. This proposal went against a law that banned the development of low-yield nuclear weapons—a law that I co-authored 10 years ago with former Representative Elizabeth Furse (D-OR) because I was afraid that pursuing low-yield weapons would lower the threshold for nuclear use. Last year, during debate over the FY 2003 defense authorization bill, House Republicans attempted to overturn that ban via an amendment offered by Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA). I urged Representative Weldon to reconsider his proposal, and we were able to negotiate a modification to the law, rather than outright repeal. In the end, however, the law remained untouched, as the Senate included no such modification in its version of the defense bill, and the House language was dropped in conference. But the issue remains contentious, and repeal of the ban on low-yield weapons was formally endorsed in February by the Republican Policy Committee, an arm of the GOP House leadership.

Support for new nuclear weapons also came from the Bush administration, which requested $15 million last year to study the feasibility of modifying existing warheads to create a “robust nuclear earth penetrator” that could destroy hardened and deeply buried targets. The administration has argued that the nuclear arsenal’s existing earth penetrator, the B-61-11 bomb, has “serious limitations for a wide range of target conditions” and that the study would simply investigate options for “repackaging” an existing warhead to survive earth penetration. The Pentagon has vigorously denied that the study will lead to the development of new nuclear weapons; it argues that the study will almost certainly conclude that its goals can be met by hardening the casings of existing warheads. I was unenthusiastic about funding, but it was authorized and appropriated anyway. Conferees to the Defense Authorization Act did, however, agree to require the National Academy of Sciences to study the effects of using nuclear weapons to attack hardened and deeply buried targets and report to us this summer. The development of these so-called nuclear bunker-busters was also endorsed by the Republican Policy Committee.

One of the early dividends of the Cold War’s end was the drastic reduction in the number of tactical nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia deployed. On our side, the follow-on to the Lance, a battlefield missile, was canceled, and after that, the warhead for a new nuclear sea mine. Then, atomic landmines and artillery shells were retired from service. Once these weapons were removed, senior officers acknowledged that they had had doubts as to their military worth, particularly given the consequences of going nuclear early in any war. General Charles A. Horner came home from the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and told me, “I have seen the future, and it works. Precision-guided munitions and stand-off weapons make nuclear weapons obsolete.”

The United States would be backsliding badly if it resumed reliance on tactical nuclear weapons. That step would be tantamount to saying, “These weapons are like any other.” Surely, that is not the message we want to convey.

Charting a Better Course

Congress has made some attempts to address the existing deficiencies in U.S. nuclear policy and threat reduction efforts. For example, Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) and I introduced the Nuclear Threat Reduction Act in 2001 and again in 2002, and I feel sure we will do the same in 2003. The 2001 bill proposed the following:

  • Reducing the overall number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile;
  • Reducing, where feasible, the alert status of weapons in our active stockpile; and
  • Increasing threat reduction funding to about two-thirds of the amount the Baker-Cutler report recommended.

In 2002, we called for five steps:

  • Authority that would allow the president to waive congressionally mandated certification requirements that prevent CTR funds from being spent;
  • Expanded accounting and inventory of weapons of mass destruction in the United States and Russia;
  • Targeted funding increases for select nonproliferation and counter-proliferation programs, including MPC&A and Shchuch’ye;
  • Clarification of the Nuclear Posture Review, especially of its implications for the size of the U.S. stockpile; and
  • Codification of the nuclear testing moratorium and a 12-month notification requirement to resume testing.

Some of these provisions have become law in one form or another. But as I noted earlier, funding for CTR and nonproliferation programs has been essentially flat for two years. And our proposal regarding the nuclear test moratorium was, of course, not approved. Here are a handful of steps that should be made a priority in the 108th Congress.

Additional Resources for Nonproliferation

Threat reduction programs at the Defense, Energy, and State Departments have proven their mettle. They have already reduced direct threats to the United States more than even a robust missile defense system could hope.

Virtually every independent analysis of U.S. programs to secure and eventually destroy nuclear weapons and materials in Russia has said we should increase the resources we devote to those efforts. In 2001, the bipartisan Baker-Cutler commission recommended spending $30 billion over the next decade, calling the threat posed by poorly secured nuclear weapons and materials the single greatest security threat facing the United States. Nevertheless, the Bush administration has proposed only select, modest increases for threat reduction programs, and the nonproliferation budget is still dwarfed by the budget for less urgent efforts, such as missile defense.

There is a broad bipartisan consensus that the national security interests of the United States demand more than the status quo on nonproliferation programs in the former Soviet Union and, increasingly, in other nations as well. The president should reconsider his FY 2004 budget request for these critical programs and work with Congress to devote a more appropriate share of our national security budget to them—one that gets us closer to the levels recommended by the Baker-Cutler report.

Codify the Testing Moratorium

With an ever-expanding number of nations looking to develop nuclear weapons, it is critical that the United States affirm its commitment to the nuclear test moratorium by codifying it. Demonstrating our commitment will enhance our standing to argue for a continued worldwide moratorium. The law I proposed last year would provide that the administration can resume tests provided that it gives Congress 12 months’ notice, so that we can thoroughly debate what would represent a major shift in our nuclear posture. I tried to add this language to the FY 2003 defense bill during Armed Services Committee deliberations. When my amendment was defeated in a party-line vote, I offered it as a floor amendment to the defense bill. Although this is serious policy and relevant to the defense authorization bill, the Rules Committee would not allow consideration of my amendment.

Establish a Nonproliferation “Czar”

U.S. nuclear and nonproliferation policy is in a period of transition. In this context, we need someone with the power, access, resources, and ability to focus attention on the issue—a kind of Tom Ridge for nonproliferation. That’s not just my opinion. Panel after panel has recommended creating such a position. In 1995, a panel of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology recommended it. The 1996 Nunn-Lugar-Domenici legislation called for it, after extensive congressional hearings documented the need. In 1999, the “Deutsch Commission” recommended it. And most recently, the Baker-Cutler report called for it. The United States needs a nonproliferation czar, and the position should be established at the president’s initiative. If Congress imposes the requirement on the president, the position is not going to enjoy the stature, clout, and cachet needed to be effective.

Accelerate HEU Disposition

Our nonproliferation programs need support to keep on doing what they have been doing, but it seems time for them to have a new target, a more ambitious goal. For starters, we should expedite the disposal of Russia’s highly enriched uranium (HEU). The United States has taken a few successful steps, chiefly the 1993 HEU agreement, under which we pay Russia to blend down 500 metric tons of HEU into a non-weapons-usable form suitable for reactor fuel. Under the existing agreement, however, the full 500 tons will not be eliminated until 2013. If Russia proceeds with dismantlement of all its nuclear weapons scheduled to be removed from deployment, there will be hundreds of additional tons of HEU in storage, posing one of the world’s greatest proliferation risks. We should accelerate the 1993 agreement and move aggressively to dispose of any additional Russian HEU.

Last year’s Defense Authorization Act authorized $10 million for exploring options to accelerate the disposition of Russian HEU, and the State Department Authorization Act empowered the administration to pursue “debt for nonproliferation” swaps with Russia. The United States should negotiate with Russia to transfer ownership of its HEU stocks to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in exchange for the IMF discharging some part of Russia’s $6.7 billion debt. The IMF would take title to the HEU and, under our leadership, arrange for it to be blended down. The resulting low-enriched uranium would then be sold as reactor fuel, recouping part or all of the value of the forgiven debt. Russia would reap a financial reward and the global community a significant nonproliferation victory.

Russia’s HEU is a compelling problem because the stockpile is enormous, and the risk that some of it could be pilfered is alarming. However, smaller quantities of enriched uranium are also scattered around the world at some 40-50 research reactors. Most of it is not adequately accounted for, and much of it is poorly secured. These nuclear materials are probably at greater risk of being stolen or misappropriated than Russian HEU, and their security would be another worthy project for the Department of Energy.

If we are to avoid an international security environment even more dangerous than the one we face today—one undeniably even more inimical to U.S. security interests—we must seek new and more effective ways to prevent production and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We must not merely settle for measures designed to counter proliferation that has already occurred.

We must also re-establish our credibility as an adherent to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. This means we should abandon any push for development of new nuclear weapons, low-yield or otherwise, and reaffirm our commitment to a moratorium on nuclear tests. Only in so doing can the United States credibly urge other nations to cease pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The United States must respond to the unprecedented challenges facing us with a reinvigorated commitment to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. This is no time to drift back into dangerous thinking and policies discarded—with good reason—more than a decade ago.

 


John M. Spratt, Jr., congressman from South Carolina, is the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee and a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.

 

A Strategic Choice: New Bunker Busters Versus Nonproliferation

Sidney Drell, James Goodby, Raymond Jeanloz, and Robert Peurifoy

The United States has repeatedly emphasized the importance of international cooperation in the effort to slow down and, as possible, counter the spread of weapons of mass destruction. In particular, it has specified that strengthening the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is vital to this effort.

Secretary of State Colin Powell stressed the U.S. commitment to bolster the treaty and its efforts to counter the spread of nuclear technology to other nations in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last July: “The committee members know that the NPT is the centerpiece of the global nuclear nonproliferation regime. It plays a critical role in efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons including to terrorists and states that support them. The NPT’s value depends upon all parties honoring their obligations. The United States places great importance on fulfilling its NPT undertakings.”

The joint declaration that Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin issued in Moscow on May 24 of last year affirmed that “the United States and Russia will also seek broad international support for a strategy of proactive non-proliferation, including by implementing and bolstering the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the conventions on the prohibition of chemical and biological weapons.” President Bush reiterated the importance of international cooperation in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in his letter issuing the new National Security Strategy on September 17, 2002, as well as in the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction that was published three months later.

There is good reason for the United States to support the NPT and promote its objectives. Today, 57 years after atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just eight nations—many fewer than predicted originally—are believed to possess deployed nuclear weapons. All but four countries in the world (India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea, which has recently withdrawn) are formally committed to the NPT, which first entered into force in 1970. A number of nations that had started down the road to nuclear weapons have abandoned them. These include Argentina and Brazil, which mutually shut down their advancing programs; South Africa, which destroyed its initial force; and Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, which returned all of their nuclear weapons to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is now a norm of nonpossession to which most nations adhere.

But the nonproliferation regime is fragile, and it currently faces severe challenges from Iran, Iraq, and particularly North Korea. Unfortunately, in recent months it has also been challenged by the United States. Statements by the administration, including the portions of the Nuclear Posture Review leaked in March 2002, suggest that the United States needs new, low-yield—and presumably “more useable”—nuclear weapons to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets. The world’s only superpower would send a negative signal to the non-nuclear states if it felt the need to develop new types of nuclear weapons.

Such an initiative would further undermine the NPT if it led to a resumption of nuclear explosive testing in order to deploy new weapons designs. In 1995, many of the world’s non-nuclear nations made it clear that their continued adherence to the NPT was contingent on the cessation of all nuclear-yield testing. Although it has adhered to a self-imposed moratorium on such tests for more than a decade, the United States has refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), thereby forgoing the opportunity to strengthen the NPT regime. A decision to resume testing to build low-yield nuclear weapons could deal the regime a fatal blow while providing the United States with a capability of questionable military value.

Utility of Bunker Busters

The Bush administration has said it may need to build a new class of low-yield, earth-penetrating nuclear weapons—sometimes called “bunker busters”—because of its concern about whether the U.S. military can destroy the growing number of hard and deeply buried facilities being built in a number of countries. Citing recent government studies, the Nuclear Posture Review states that more than 70 countries now have such underground facilities for military purposes. These include more than 1,000 known or suspected strategic targets, which are used for storing weapons of mass destruction, protecting senior leaders, and executing top-echelon command and control functions. Among the underground targets of most concern are very hardened structures built at depths of 1,000 feet or so with reinforced concrete capable of withstanding up to 1,000 atmospheres overpressure.

Destroying such targets requires knowing exactly where they are and then precisely delivering a warhead that can penetrate into the earth without damage before detonating. The warhead must also have a sufficiently large explosive yield to transmit a strong shock. These challenges are recognized in the NPR as follows: “New capabilities must be developed to defeat emerging threats such as hard and deeply buried targets (HDBT), and to define and attack mobile and relocatable targets, to defeat chemical and biological agents and to improve accuracy and limit collateral damage.” The NPR emphasizes further that “need may arise to modify, upgrade, or replace portions of the extant nuclear force or develop concepts for follow-on nuclear weapons better suited to the nation’s needs. It is unlikely that a reduced version of the Cold War nuclear arsenal will be precisely the nuclear force that the United States will require in 2012 and beyond.”

The United States has already designed and tested a variety of low-yield nuclear devices that could be adapted for delivery in structurally strengthened warheads for destroying underground targets at shallow depths. Recently it adapted a high-yield weapon—the B61-11 bomb, with yields that exceed a hundred kilotons—in this manner. A key technical challenge is to develop the means to deliver such a bomb intact to depths of 10-20 feet before detonation. Detonation at such depths increases, by a factor of 10 to 20 relative to a surface burst, the energy of the explosion that is delivered into the ground instead of into the atmosphere. The warhead therefore hits the target—a hardened, buried bunker or tunnel—with a much stronger shock than an identical warhead that is detonated on or above the surface.

Taking into account realistic limits on material strengths, about 50 feet is the maximum depth to which a warhead dropped from the air into dry rock soil could maintain its integrity until detonated. This is true even with impact at supersonic speeds. For the shock to reach down to 1,000 feet with enough strength to destroy a hard target in dry rock, the warhead would require a yield significantly larger than 100 kilotons. Accuracy is also crucial. A major challenge for destroying hardened underground targets is the need to improve significantly our ability to locate, identify, and characterize such targets. The payoff of accuracy in target location and delivery of a weapon is significant. It is also important to find any vulnerable points such as tunnel entrances or air ducts.

Given these technical facts, how can the United States hold HDBTs at risk? The most important steps are gaining better intelligence for accurate target characterization and location; improving precision of delivery of warheads; further hardening warheads so they can penetrate the earth to a depth of at least 20-30 feet, instead of just a few feet, as is possible now; and establishing control of the area around localized underground targets using conventional forces and tactics.

But the Nuclear Posture Review, and a number of members of the defense establishment, have suggested that the United States develop a new class of hardened, low-yield nuclear weapons. The implication is that, if their resulting collateral damage can be substantially reduced by lowering the explosive power of the warhead, nuclear weapons would be more politically palatable and therefore more “useable” for attacking deeply buried targets in tactical missions—even in or near urban settings, which can be the preferred locales for such targets.

Consider, however, the radioactive contamination from a one-kiloton warhead, detonated at a depth of 20-50 feet. This is, approximately, just 1/13 the yield that destroyed Hiroshima, yet it would eject more than 1 million cubic feet of radioactive debris from a crater about the size of ground zero at the World Trade Center—bigger than a football field. Indeed, the Hiroshima bomb was detonated at an altitude of close to 1,900 feet in order to minimize radioactive fallout by not digging any crater. A weapon intended to destroy hard, buried targets is therefore going to produce a lot of dangerous radioactive fallout. Of course, a nuclear weapon with a yield capable of destroying a target 1,000 feet underground—a yield well over 100 kilotons—would dig a much larger crater and create a substantially larger amount of radioactive debris.

We emphasize this point because recent reports, columns, and quotes in the media call for the United States to develop new, low-yield nuclear weapons for use against hard, deeply buried targets because they would produce less collateral damage. But even a one-kiloton earth penetrator would be quite devastating in a city, and against really deep targets, yields in the hundreds of kilotons would be required. In the past, the United States has developed, tested, and deployed nuclear warheads with a full range of yields, from small fractions of kilotons up to many megatons. We can make further improvements in their delivery—both in accuracy and earth penetration—that would be significant. But as we have seen, even at the low-yield end of the repertoire, there will be major collateral damage because the blast will eject radioactive debris. Burrowing a few tens of feet into the earth will increase the damaging effects of the shock, but a large proportion of the fallout will still enter the atmosphere and be spread by wind.

Ratifying the CTBT

A further problem would arise if the need to develop “new capabilities…to defeat emerging threats,” as is called for in the Nuclear Posture Review, led the United States to resume underground nuclear explosive tests. As explained earlier, the United States has already designed and tested nuclear devices with a broad range of yields. Building better earth-penetrating nuclear weapons does not require resumed nuclear testing, as has been suggested by bunker-buster advocates who oppose the CTBT. It requires precise delivery with deeper penetration on accurately located targets. A resumption of underground nuclear explosive testing would have minimal technical benefits, but a major, harmful impact on the nonproliferation regime.

Many nations signed on to the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995 on the explicit condition that the nuclear powers would cease all nuclear-yield testing. This situation presented the United States and the other nuclear powers with a strong political and strategic incentive to formalize the moratorium on testing by ratifying and working to bring into force the CTBT. It is obviously one of the critical cornerstones of the NPT, which, as Secretary Powell said in his Senate testimony, “is the centerpiece of the global nonproliferation regime.”

A U.S. decision to resume testing to produce new nuclear weapons would therefore dramatically undermine the NPT. Conversely, a U.S. decision to ratify the already signed CTBT and lead the effort to bring the treaty into force would be an effective way of strengthening the NPT and, through it, worldwide nonproliferation and counterproliferation efforts. Bringing the treaty into force would have the added technical advantage of allowing for the full implementation of the international monitoring system intended to verify compliance with the CTBT. Implementation would add challenge inspection protocols that would further strengthen the verification regime and increase its transparency.

Many U.S. allies in NATO, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, have signed and ratified the CTBT, as have Japan and Russia. Others, including China, have indicated they will work to bring the treaty into force once the United States has ratified it. As of March 2003, 166 nations have signed the CTBT and 97 have ratified it, including 31 of the 44 “nuclear-capable states” that must ratify the treaty for it to enter into force. But the U.S. Senate refused to consent to ratification of the treaty when it came up for a vote in 1999, and the Bush administration has refused to reopen the question. The administration continues for the time being, however, to honor a moratorium on all testing that President George H. W. Bush established in 1992.

Why is the United States reluctant? In addition to the dubious need to develop “concepts for follow-on nuclear weapons better suited to the nation’s needs,” including nuclear earth penetrators against HDBTs, opponents of the CTBT have asked, “How can we be sure that many years ahead, we will not need to resume yield testing in order to rebuild the stockpile?” The answer is that total certainty never can be achieved. But it is possible to ensure that there is a strong program in place with the necessary support of competent engineers and scientists, who would sound a warning bell should a serious, unforeseen problem arise.

With the enhanced, multifaceted, science-based program of stockpile stewardship established during the past seven years, the United States can have confidence in its ability to understand the character of the stockpile and the way in which special bomb materials age. As a result of the stockpile surveillance program, a number of flaws have been reported and dealt with appropriately. The flaws thus far uncovered within the nuclear devices themselves are related to design oversights. That is, the flaws, or their precursors, were present when the weapons were put into the stockpile. In comparison, unexpected flaws due to the unknown effects of aging thus far appear to be minimal.

The United States can be assured that the CTBT is consistent with the ability to retain high confidence in the reliability of its existing nuclear force for decades. This conclusion has been demonstrated convincingly since 1995. Specifically, a number of detailed technical analyses by independent scientists working with colleagues from the weapons community, including leaders involved in creating our current nuclear arsenal, reached this finding. It was that determination that led the United States to negotiate the CTBT and sign it in 1996.

Most recently, in August 2002 the National Academy of Sciences published a comprehensive study on technical issues related to the CTBT. The study group, which included retired directors of weapons labs, bomb designers, and technical and scientific experts, concluded that the United States can maintain confidence in its enduring stockpile under a ban on all nuclear-yield testing, provided it has a well-supported, science-based stewardship and maintenance program, together with a capability to remanufacture warheads as needed. The study group also verified that the United States could monitor compliance by other CTBT signatories to standards consistent with its national security.

Two years earlier, a similar detailed analysis led by General John M. Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was conducted with government cooperation and authorization. It reached the same conclusion and affirmed that the CTBT “is a very important part of global non-proliferation efforts and is compatible with keeping a safe, reliable U.S. nuclear deterrent.” General Shalikashvili further added, “I believe that an objective and thorough net assessment shows convincingly that U.S. interests, as well as those of friends and allies, will be served by the Treaty’s entry into force.”

Strengthening the NPT

Although it raises the question of the need for new nuclear weapons, the Nuclear Posture Review does not discuss nonproliferation efforts, nor does it discuss the potential impact of its initiatives on the strategic policy and weapon-acquisition decisions of other nations. This is curious because their nuclear weapons decisions are apt to have greater impact on the United States than ours will have on them. Rather than developing nuclear devices for new tactical missions, the focus of the U.S. nuclear weapons program should continue to be maintaining a credible strategic deterrent and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to more countries. A weakening or collapse of the worldwide cooperative effort to counter nuclear proliferation would hurt U.S. interests more than any gains from testing and building new low-yield nuclear weapons would help.

The nonproliferation regime is clearly under stress, and a significant weakness is the apparent failure of its verification provisions. Events since the end of the Cold War have made clear the urgent need for nations to join forces in an effort to strengthen the nonproliferation regime. In 1991, after Desert Storm, the international community was surprised to find that Iraq, a signatory of the NPT, was well on the way to a nuclear capability. Similarly, in the 1990s the United States learned of the North Korean program to produce plutonium for a nuclear weapon, and it recently confronted Pyongyang over its attempts to enrich natural uranium.

Recognizing the limitation of its verification abilities under current arrangements, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna has been engaged in ongoing negotiations to strengthen the NPT’s compliance provisions. Until the early 1990s, the IAEA was not used to discover and frustrate secret nuclear weapons programs because its member states had not agreed to that goal. Rather, the IAEA was used to see that agreed safeguards were applied to installations declared to be engaged in peaceful uses of nuclear materials. Thus, the agency did not go beyond the inspections of installations declared as nuclear by the inspected states, such as Iraq. This deficiency can be fixed by giving the IAEA the power to inspect suspect sites that are not reported by member nations as nuclear installations. A protocol proposed by the IAEA—and supported by the Bush administration and others—would correct this situation. A diplomatic campaign should be mounted to secure its ratification.

Greater care also needs to be taken with export controls. Under the NPT, nuclear-weapon states were encouraged to provide the non-nuclear states all that they needed to reap the peaceful benefits and uses of nuclear energy. That was the basic deal that caused non-nuclear weapons states to accept the limitations of the NPT. The sovereign rights of buyers or sellers of exports relevant to nuclear facilities were limited by an understanding among supplier countries that, in effect, prohibited the transfer of technology useful for fabricating a nuclear weapon. But dual-use technology always presented a problem. It is now up to the nuclear suppliers to agree to and police even stronger restrictions on the sale or transfer of items that could be used for weapons production by non-nuclear countries. Unless these types of transactions can be stopped, the whole nonproliferation effort will be seriously undermined.

These are tough problems and require more international cooperation than has been mustered to date. Rather than moving to develop new nuclear weapons, the United States should push to strengthen the nonproliferation regime through example and through stronger compliance measures directed at those who flout its basic purposes.


Sidney Drell is professor emeritus of physics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. James Goodby was an adviser to President Clinton on the CTBT and is diplomat-in-residence at Stanford University. Raymond Jeanloz is a professor of Earth and planetary science at the University of California at Berkeley. Robert Peurifoy was a vice president of Sandia National Laboratories.

 

Nuclear Weapons Activity Surges in Energy Department Budget

Christine Kucia

Amid speculation about the Bush administration’s plans for the development and use of nuclear weapons, the Department of Energy (DOE) requested $6.38 billion for its nuclear weapons-related activities in fiscal year 2004—an increase of $532.2 million from 2003’s request, according to budget documents released February 3. DOE’s anticipated nuclear weapons work includes an increase in nuclear test readiness and research into earth-penetrating nuclear weapons.

While continuing to observe the moratorium on nuclear testing, DOE will begin to prepare the Nevada Test Site to conduct a nuclear test within 18 months of a presidential order, as recommended in a fiscal year 2002 Enhanced Test Readiness Cost Study. For fiscal year 2004, the agency’s test readiness budget will jump 39 percent to $24.9 million as DOE transitions from the current testing readiness window of 24-36 months. The final decision to move to an 18-month readiness posture, however, is contingent upon the outcome of a DOE report on the optimal time period for U.S. test site readiness. The report was mandated by Congress in the 2003 Defense Authorization Act and is expected to be completed within the next year. (See ACT, December 2002.)

In addition, the Energy Department’s budget request proposes further research on a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP). In November 2002, Congress authorized $15 million a year for three years to conduct RNEP research, which will examine modifying existing B-61 and B-83 nuclear warheads to penetrate hardened and deeply buried facilities that might house weapons of mass destruction. The RNEP research will fall under the purview of the department’s Advanced Concepts Initiative. Under the budget request, that program would receive an additional $6 million “to conduct preconceptual and feasibility studies,” Energy Department spokesman Bryan Wilkes said February 26.

Manufacturing and certification of plutonium “pits,” the triggers of thermonuclear weapons, could also receive a significant increase in fiscal year 2004. DOE’s budget request includes spending $320.2 million—almost 36 percent more than in 2003—to manufacture and certify pits for W-88 warheads, which are mounted on U.S. submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Over the past several years, DOE has worked to establish a limited pit-production capability at Los Alamos National Laboratory to manufacture W-88 pits to meet stockpile maintenance requirements.

The fiscal year 2004 DOE budget request also includes money to construct a new facility to restart full-scale production of the plutonium pits for use in new or refurbished weapons. According to DOE, the Modern Pit Facility “will ensure a capacity of no less than 125 pits per year, with the ability to expand production to meet national security needs.”

Critics of DOE’s pit-manufacturing program and the new facility contend that plutonium pits are readily available from existing nuclear warheads that are not operationally deployed. DOE is also expected to have additional plutonium pits after warheads are removed from deployment under the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty negotiated between the United States and Russia in May 2002. The department argues that the increased pit-production capacity is necessary to sustain stockpile safety and credibility.

Amid speculation about the Bush administration’s plans for the development and use of nuclear weapons, the Department of Energy (DOE) requested $6.38 billion for its nuclear weapons-related activities in fiscal year...

Flawed Nuclear Treaty Up For Senate Review

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Senators Hold Key to Ensuring Authentic Arms Reductions

For Immediate Release: January 31, 2003

Press Contacts: Wade Boese, (202) 463-8270 x104; Christine Kucia (202) 463-8270 x103

(Washington, D.C.): With critical concerns and questions surrounding the U.S.-Russian Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) still unresolved and unanswered, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee should remedy the treaty's considerable flaws and weaknesses when it reviews the treaty next week, experts from the Arms Control Association (ACA) said today.

"Agreements to reduce American and Russian nuclear arsenals are welcome, but they should be permanent reductions that are verifiable by both sides, adhere to a clear schedule, and serve as a platform for future talks about further reductions," said Daryl G. Kimball, the Association's executive director.

Signed in May 2002, the agreement requires each side to reduce its number of deployed strategic warheads from today's 5,000-6,000 to no more than 2,200 by the end of 2012, when the treaty will expire. Under the treaty each side is expected to reduce its deployed strategic forces by removing warheads from missiles, bombers, and submarines.

However, because the accord does not require any warheads or delivery vehicles to be destroyed, the United States will have the flexibility to deploy approximately 4,200 strategic warheads in as little as three years after the treaty expires. Either party may withdraw from the treaty with three months' notice.

In addition, the United States and Russia have not yet agreed upon a common definition of how to count "deployed" warheads. Moreover, the treaty provides no new verification measures for either party to be confident that the other is carrying out its pledged reductions. As a result, the U.S. intelligence community has determined that the United States will not be able to verify Russian compliance with high confidence.

"The new treaty does not significantly alter the number of existing nuclear delivery systems and therefore only marginally affects the residual nuclear potential of the United States and Russia," observed Jack Mendelsohn, an ACA board member and former member of the U.S. Strategic Arms Limitations Talks and START negotiating teams. "It creates thousands of 'phantom warheads' undercutting its own verifiability, and it contains no reduction schedule, making it difficult to predict force levels over the next decade," he added.

"Since verification of the SORT reductions will depend on the framework established by the 1991 START I agreement, the United States and Russia must enhance and extend those mechanisms, which are slated to expire in 2009-three years before SORT is to be fully implemented in 2012," said Christine Kucia, Arms Control Association research analyst. "Congress should require that the President work toward an agreement with Russia on additional transparency measures so that both sides can be assured that the arsenals are properly safeguarded and are not a proliferation risk," Kucia added.

"Given that the SORT agreement will leave enormous numbers of deadly U.S. and Russian warheads and missiles intact, it is in the nation's interest for the Senate to condition ratification on the pursuit of additional reductions of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons," said Kimball.

The United States currently deploys approximately 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads on its strategic triad of land-based missiles, submarines, and bombers. Washington is also currently estimated to have approximately 1,000 tactical nuclear warheads and more than 5,000 total nuclear warheads in spare and reserve stockpiles. Russia currently deploys an estimated 5,500 strategic nuclear warheads on its strategic triad of land-based missiles, submarines, and bombers. Russia also deploys an estimated 4,000 tactical nuclear weapons and is believed to stockpile another 11,000 strategic and tactical nuclear warheads.

"It is imperative that the Senate address these shortcomings, or both sides will be left with a treaty that is flawed and amounts to little more than a gentleman's agreement between Presidents Bush and Putin," Kimball said. "We encourage the Senate to approve meaningful conditions on the treaty that help ensure that the weapons are dismantled and destroyed in a mutually verifiable way and to keep the door open for further, verifiable U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reductions," he added.

For more information on the SORT agreement and nuclear weapons, see the Association's Web site at http://www.armscontrol.org/subject/ussp/ or http://www.armscontrol.org/subject/sr/.

 

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The Arms Control Association is an independent, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies. Established in 1971,the Association publishes the monthly journal, Arms Control Today.

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