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“We continue to count on the valuable contributions of the Arms Control Association.”

– President Joe Biden
June 2, 2022
United States

US-Russia Nuclear Arms Control Talks `Without Preconditions’: Somebody Has to Make the First Move

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke to the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association on June 2, and as organization chairman, it was my honor to introduce him. Sullivan said just what needed to be said about the continuing risk of nuclear conflict: that the Biden administration would continue the long U.S. tradition of leadership in finding ways to reduce that danger. In particular, he said the United States is ready – “without preconditions” — to discuss with the Russian Federation how the two countries together could 1) manage nuclear risks, and 2) develop a new nuclear arms...

Defending the De Facto Nuclear Test Ban


September 2023
By Daryl G. Kimball

More than 30 years ago, citizen activists and independence leaders in Kazakhstan forced Russia to halt nuclear testing, prompting the United States, under pressure from U.S. activists and members of Congress, to adopt a nine-month testing halt in 1992. On July 3, 1993, U.S. President Bill Clinton extended that moratorium and announced plans to pursue negotiations on a global, comprehensive test ban treaty. After more than 2,000 deadly nuclear test explosions worldwide since 1945, including 715 Soviet tests and more than 1,030 U.S. tests, these developments marked the beginning of the end of the nuclear testing era.

The former Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in eastern Kazakhstan, looking toward the ground zero for the first Soviet nuclear weapon test explosion, which was conducted on Aug. 29, 1949. (Photo by Daryl G. Kimball)Since the conclusion of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which has been signed by 186 countries, nuclear testing has become taboo. All CTBT states agree that the treaty prohibits “any nuclear weapons test explosion, or any other nuclear explosion” no matter what the yield. The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization operates the fully functional International Monitoring System (IMS) to detect and deter cheating. Most nuclear-armed states that have not signed or not ratified the CTBT, including China, India, Israel, and Pakistan, are observing nuclear testing moratoria.

Although it has not yet formally entered into force, the CTBT is one of the most successful agreements in the long history of nuclear arms control and nonproliferation. Without the option to conduct nuclear tests, it is more difficult, although not impossible, for states to develop, prove, and field new warhead designs.

But as with other critical nuclear risk reduction, nonproliferation, and arms control agreements, the CTBT is under threat due to inattention, diplomatic sclerosis, and worsening relations between nuclear-armed adversaries.

After senior U.S. officials in the Trump administration in 2020 callously discussed having the United States resume nuclear testing to try to intimidate China and Russia, the Biden administration made it clear in 2021 that “the United States supports [the CTBT] and is committed to work to achieve its entry into force.”

But the Biden administration has done none of the outreach and education that will be necessary to secure treaty ratification by the Senate. Given that the United States has not conducted a nuclear test in more than 30 years and has no technical, military, or political reason to resume testing, the national security case for ratification and for strengthening the barriers against testing by others is even stronger than when the treaty was last considered by the Senate in 1999.

One salient issue that needs addressing is the recent U.S. charge that “during the 1995-2018 timeframe, Russia probably conducted nuclear weapons-related tests” at its former test site at Novaya Zemlya. The assessment provides no evidence and does not claim that the Russian activities were militarily significant. Russia, which ratified the CTBT, has denied the charge and repeatedly pointed to the U.S. failure to ratify the treaty.

China, Russia, and the United States continue to engage in weapons-related activities at their former nuclear testing sites. Although the IMS is operational and far more effective than originally envisioned, very low-yield nuclear test explosions still can be difficult to detect without on-site inspections, which will not be in place until after the treaty’s entry into force.

To address concerns about clandestine activities at former test sites, CTBT states-parties should adopt voluntary confidence-building measures designed to detect and deter possible low-level, clandestine nuclear testing by the major nuclear powers. In a positive move, Jill Hruby, administrator at the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, announced in June that her agency is “open to working with others to develop a regime that would allow reciprocal observation with radiation detection equipment at each other’s subcritical experiments to allow confirmation that the experiment was consistent with the CTBT.”

Meanwhile, Russia may be on the verge of further nuclear nonproliferation sabotage. Russian officials acknowledge reports that they are considering the self-defeating option of “unratifying” the CTBT to achieve symmetry with Washington in all areas of nuclear policy, but say no official decisions have been made.

Contrary to the perceptions of extremists in Moscow, “unratification” would not create leverage for Russia vis-à-vis the collective West. Rather, it would undermine Russia’s already shaky nuclear nonproliferation standing, alienate non-nuclear-weapon states, and set back the very popular and heretofore very successful CTBT regime. In 2016, Russia joined the United States and other members of the UN Security Council in supporting Resolution 2310, which strongly reaffirms support for the CTBT, and a statement from its five permanent members pledging that they would not take any action that would “defeat the object or purpose of the treaty.”

As diplomats from CTBT signatory states gather this month for the next conference on facilitating the CTBT’s entry into force, more energetic strategies must be considered not only to advance the treaty, but to strengthen the de facto norm against testing.

 

Although it has not yet formally entered into force, the CTBT is one of the most successful agreements in the long history of nuclear arms control and nonproliferation. But as with other critical nuclear risk reduction, nonproliferation, and arms control agreements, the CTBT is under threat due to inattention, diplomatic sclerosis, and worsening relations between nuclear-armed adversaries.

The Delusions and Dangers of Missile Defense


By September 2023
By Jaganath Sankaran

The U.S. doctrine and posture on missile defense are in rapid flux.

The proliferation of advanced missile systems to regional actors has triggered an expansion of missile defense systems. Furthermore, as arms control agreements fade away and great-power competition reemerges, long-standing principles undergirding the link between homeland missile defense and strategic stability are being challenged. For instance, the House of Representatives draft of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has argued for amending U.S. doctrine to declare that homeland missile defense systems are now vital “to maintain a credible nuclear capability as the foundation of strategic deterrence.”1 Such a declaration would constitute a massive departure from the prevailing understanding of the role or, more accurately, the denial of a role for homeland missile defense in securing nuclear deterrence against near-peer adversaries.

China’s large arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles, including this Dong Feng-26 (DF-26) intermediate-range ballistic missile, are among the threats driving the United States to invest increased spending on missile defense systems. (Photo by Xinhua/Cha Chunming via Getty Images)Historically, U.S. nuclear doctrine has insisted that homeland missile defense does not and cannot affect the strategic deterrent between major nuclear powers. For instance, the 2022 Missile Defense Review explicitly acknowledges that “the United States will continue to rely only on strategic deterrence” against Russia and China.2 Similar commitments have been consistently reiterated across administrations and by the U.S. Congress over several decades.

These doctrinal commitments are also enshrined in bilateral agreements, including the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which recognized the existence of an inverse interrelationship between strategic deterrence and homeland missile defense. That is to say, as an adversary state obtains more effective homeland defense, its ability to execute a disarming nuclear first strike increases. The treaty notes that
the “interrelationship will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced.”3

The attempt to upend the doctrine is a hawkish stance and, in all likelihood, will fail. The Biden administration recognizes that such a move would portend significant adverse effects on strategic stability among the United States, Russia, and China. The administration has objected to the amendment to missile defense policy, noting in a Statement of Administration Policy that the proposed policy change will undermine strategic deterrence with Russia and China and overturn “two decades of well-established” policy on homeland missile defense.4 Despite the political desire to preserve the “well-established” policy, however, growing U.S. attempts to build a technologically advanced architecture of missile defense systems directly undermine strategic stability even if the intent is not to do so.

A Growing Threat

Various regional missile threats pose significant challenges for U.S. troops and allied states. A 2020 report by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center and the Defense Intelligence Ballistic Missile Analysis Committee declared that cruise and ballistic missiles would be used as “instruments of coercion” by adversaries seeking to end a crisis or a conflict with the United States or its allies on preferential terms.5

Three states—China, Iran, and North Korea—lie at the core of U.S. concern. Iran has the largest rocket, missile, and drone arsenal in the Middle East. A 2019 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report notes that Iran developed its arsenal to dissuade its regional adversaries and the United States.6 In June 2022, top military officials from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia secretly met U.S. military commanders to discuss ways to “coordinate against Iran’s growing missile” arsenal.7 North Korea has amassed a large arsenal of missiles targeting U.S. regional and allied targets throughout the Asia-Pacific region. These missiles could inflict significant destruction and death on South Koreans and deployed U.S. personnel. China possesses a large arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles intended to generate “coercive political and military advantages in a regional crisis or conflict.”8 The bulk of China’s missile arsenal can reach regional airbases and port facilities that would be important in a regional military contingency involving the United States and its allies.

All these threats drive the impulse of U.S. policymakers to invest more in missile defense. The Biden administration has requested $29.8 billion for missile defense systems in the fiscal year 2024 budget, an increase of $5.1 billion from the previous year.9 The request includes $3.3 billion for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) homeland defense system, which is aimed at limited rogue threats such as North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The other requests are directed at regional and theater missile defense, including $1.8 billion for the Aegis ballistic missile defense program, $574 million for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program, and $567 million for an integrated air and missile defense system in Guam.10

Yet, despite these investments, in reality the relative cost of defense is too high and favors the offense.11 It is much easier to innovate for the offense and defeat the defense with simpler tactics. The war in Yemen between the Houthi rebels and the Saudi Arabia-led coalition provides an illustration. The Saudis have relied on Patriot missile defense systems to defend against Houthi missiles. Each Patriot missile defense interceptor, however, costs approximately $1 million whereas the “flying lawn mowers” launched by the Houthis cost less than $10,000 each.12

Furthermore, the Houthis have found ingenious ways to defeat the Patriot systems by using drones to strike and damage the systems and then launching missiles before they could be fixed.13 A Saudi spokesperson has observed that “there is no country in the world being attacked with such amount of ballistic missiles.”14 The constant barrage of Houthi attacks has forced the Saudis to deplete their Patriot missile defense interceptor supply, requiring desperate efforts to replenish the inventory. Even for a wealthy state such as Saudi Arabia, missile defense systems offer short-term protection, not a long-term solution to missile strikes. Similarly, Russia’s never-ending use of missiles to bombard Ukraine demonstrates that missile defense can stall and weaken the thrust of the offense but cannot offer sustained protection.

The Perils of Unconstrained Missile Defense

The United States has spent more than $165 billion to experiment and produce the technological breakthroughs necessary to field an effective, limited homeland and regional missile defense system.15 Over the last two decades, the unconstrained experimentation has resulted in a globally distributed, technologically advanced architecture of missile defense interceptors, platforms, and sensors. Although these efforts have not shifted the advantage to the defense, they potentially can produce damaging consequences for strategic stability between major nuclear powers.

The Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block Interceptor, shown during a test over the Pacific Ocean in 2008, is among the systems being developed by the United States to defeat a threat from intercontinental ballistic missiles. (Photo by U.S. Navy via Getty Images)The architecture, in principle, portends the ability to realize a surprise breakthrough in strategic defensive capability against Russia and China. For instance, reacting to advances in North Korean ballistic missiles, the fiscal year 2018 NDAA mandated the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to test the technological feasibility of the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA interceptor to defeat an ICBM threat.16 These interceptors initially were designed to defend against medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. On November 16, 2020, the agency employed a ballistic missile defense-capable ship to launch an SM-3 IIA and intercept an ICBM-range missile.17 The use of these interceptors for homeland defense against North Korean ICBMs may now be de facto policy. In June 2021, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks reportedly authorized the transfer of 11 SM-3 IIA interceptors from research to deployment after the successful flight test.18

The technological evolution in the performance of interceptors is further reinforced by a separate dedicated effort to advance the state-of-the-art sensor technologies supporting missile defense missions. The SPY-6(V)1 radar, performing a variety of missions including missile defense, originally had a programmatic requirement for a sensor to be 30 times more sensitive than the current SPY-1 radar deployed on ballistic missile defense-capable ships.19 Yet, the SPY-6(V)1 radar has turned out better than expected and is “nearly 100 times more sensitive” than the SPY-1 radar.20 Alternatively measured, the SPY-6(V)1 could track objects with similar signatures at approximately three times the range of SPY-1 radar. U.S. advances in missile defense radars have progressed alongside technological gains in space-based tracking and cueing.

Each of these technological capabilities, in its individual capacity, originated as a way to defend against regional threats, but the summation of these accumulated technological capabilities has a much larger strategic impact than their individual parts. A three-fold increase in the tracking range of the organic radar sensors of ballistic missile defense-capable ships armed with interceptors capable of homeland missile defense missions significantly expands the capabilities of these platforms. Additionally, the MDA has proposed a layered homeland defense architecture consisting of the GMD system augmented by underlayers of SM-3 IIA and THAAD interceptors.21

Such a layered homeland missile defense architecture may rapidly expand the number of interceptors and opportunities for interception from the tens to the hundreds. It could provide, in principle, a significant capability for strategic defense against Russian and Chinese missiles. A homeland defense shield buttressed by a shoot-look-shoot GMD system that can pursue two distinct intercept attempts, followed by the SM-3 Block IIA interceptors as an underlayer and THAAD interceptors for terminal defense, cannot reasonably be claimed to be limited.22 Such a multilayered missile defense architecture would be viewed as highly destabilizing and catalyze an arms race.

Rethinking Missile Defense

U.S. missile defense efforts have produced a worst-of-both-worlds situation. On the one hand, against increasingly sophisticated regional missile threats, the efforts to deploy a robust regional missile defense shield appear improbable. At the same time, the growing pace of North Korean capabilities and systemic U.S. technical failures raises severe doubts about the viability of the GMD homeland missile defense system.23 On the other hand, the accumulation of a range of technological capabilities to support the missile defense mission undermines strategic stability.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, discussing U.S. fears of a Soviet technological breakthrough in missile defense systems in 1967, observed that it did not make “much difference what the evidence indicates…because I believe we must assume for planning” purposes that a system with the probable characteristic of a missile defense system can at some future point emerge as a capable defense.24 Throughout the 1960s, U.S. nuclear war planners espoused a greater-than-expected threat metric to offset any future Soviet technical breakthroughs in missile defense. Similarly, prudence requires Russian and Chinese analysts to assume any limited U.S. system is a stalking horse for a more substantial defense. If worst-case planning is the baseline to determine requirements for strategic deterrence, Russia and China could easily postulate imminent U.S. qualitative and quantitative breakthroughs.

A Russian Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launcher crosses Red Square during the Victory Day military parade in May 2022. (Photo by Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images)After the end of the Cold War, U.S. policymakers were willing to suspend the logic of strategic stability in the pursuit of missile defense. Yet, such a posture is no longer possible. The United States has declared the reemergence of great-power competition. The 2022 Nuclear Posture Review asserts the emergence of two major nuclear powers, Russia and China, as U.S. strategic competitors and potential adversaries. The review acknowledges “new stresses” on stability and deterrence.25 The pursuit of unconstrained missile defense systems is one of those stressors. U.S. efforts to maintain a viable homeland and regional missile defense have reached the point where the vector sum of the emerging capabilities of the various interceptors and sensors already surpass, in theory, the requirements of a highly capable homeland defense that could function against major nuclear powers.

A rethinking of the logic and purpose of the U.S. missile defense enterprise is urgently needed. First, the role of defensive and offensive forces against regional missile threats has to be reexamined in light of recent experiences, including the Russian war against Ukraine. Missile defense in a regional context may play niche roles, but it cannot be the essence of the U.S. deterrent and war-fighting strategy. Second, technology creep continues to erode the separation between regional and homeland systems. U.S. policymakers must institute clear limits to highlight the separation between these systems. Finally, policymakers also must explore arms control measures to constrain regional ballistic missile arsenals.

Although arms control diplomacy appears infeasible in the prevailing geopolitical environment, a treaty akin to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty constraining ballistic missile proliferation and missile defense systems simultaneously would address the concerns of the United States, Russia, and China. Such arms control efforts may become viable in the future, and Washington must be prepared to seize any opening.

ENDNOTES

1. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, H.R. 2670, 118th Cong.
(2023) (House engrossed version), https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hr2670/BILLS-118hr2670rh.pdf.

2. U.S. Department of Defense, “2022 Missile Defense Review,” October 27, 2022, p. 5, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.PDF#page=71.

3. Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, April 8, 2010, https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/140035.pdf.

4. U.S. Office of Management and Budget, “Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 2670 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024,” July 10, 2023, p. 4, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/H.R.-2670-NDAA.pdf.

5. National Air and Space Intelligence Center and Defense Intelligence Ballistic Missile Analysis Committee, “2020 Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat,” July 2020, p. 4, https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jan/11/2002563190/-1/-1/1/2020%20BALLISTIC%20AND%20CRUISE%20MISSILE%20THREAT_FINAL_2OCT_REDUCEDFILE.PDF.

6. Defense Intelligence Agency, “Iran Military Power: Ensuring Regime Survival and Securing Regional Dominance,” 2019, p. 30, https://www.dia.mil/Portals/110/Images/News/Military_Powers_Publications/Iran_Military_Power_LR.pdf.

7. Michael R. Gordon and David S. Cloud, “U.S. Held Secret Meeting With Israeli, Arab Military Chiefs to Counter Iran Air Threat,” The Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2022.

8. Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, “2019 Missile Defense Review,” 2019, p. v, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Interactive/2018/11-2019-Missile-Defense-Review/The%202019%20MDR_Executive%20Summary.pdf.

9. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller/Chief Financial Officer, “United States Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Request,” March 2023, p. 7, https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2024/FY2024_Budget_Request.pdf. For a comparison to the previous fiscal year, see Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, “Fiscal Year 2024 Defense Budget Request Briefing Book,” April 4, 2023, https://armscontrolcenter.org/fiscal-year-2024-defense-budget-request-briefing-book/.

10. Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, “Fiscal Year 2024 Defense Budget Request Briefing Book.” See also Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller/Chief Financial Officer, “United States Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Request, https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2024/FY2024_Budget_Request.pdf.

11. Jaganath Sankaran, “Missile Wars in the Asia Pacific: The Threat of Chinese Regional Missiles and U.S.-Allied Missile Defense Response,” Asian Security, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2021); Jaganath Sankaran, “Missile Defenses and Strategic Stability in Asia: Evidence From Simulations,” Journal of East Asian Studies,
Vol. 20, No. 3 (November 2020): 485-508.

12. Gordon Lubold, “Saudi Arabia Pleads for Missile-Defense Resupply as Its Arsenal Runs Low,” The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2021. See also Ben Hubbard, Palko Karasz, and Stanley Reed, “Two Major Saudi Oil Installations Hit by Drone Strike, and U.S. Blames Iran,” The New York Times, September 14, 2019.

13. See Gordon, “Saudi Arabia Pleads for Missile-Defense Resupply as Its Arsenal Runs Low.”

14. Meg Wagner et al., “Trump Orders New Iran Sanctions After Saudi Attack,” CNN, September 18, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/trump-iran-sanctions-saudi-oil-attack/h_1c5f6b900fad932e5318dac5979b753b.

15. Justin Doubleday, “Ballistic Missile Defense Program Costs Rise to $164.9 Billion,” Inside the Pentagon, August 10, 2017.

16. Ronald O’Rourke, “Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Program: Background and Issues for Congress,” CRS Report, RL33745, April 1, 2022, p. 12.

17. Megan Eckstein, “MDA to Use Destroyer USS John Finn for Defense-of-Hawaii Missile Intercept Test,” USNI News, August 5, 2020, https://news.usni.org/2020/08/05/mda-to-use-destroyer-uss-john-finn-for-defense-of-hawaii-missile-intercept-test; O’Rourke, “Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Program,” p. 12.

18. Anthony Capaccio, “U.S. Navy Ships Close to Getting Interceptors That Could Stop an ICBM,” Bloomberg, June 22, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-22/navy-ships-close-to-getting-interceptors-that-could-stop-an-icbm#xj4y7vzkg.

19. Jason Sherman, “Navy Determines SPY-6 Radar Three Times Stronger Than Original Requirement,” Inside Defense, May 3, 2019.

20. Ibid.

21. Jen Judson, “Missile Defense Agency Director Lays Out Hurdles in Path to Layered Homeland Missile Defense,” Defense News, August 18, 2020, https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/2020/08/18/missile-defense-agency-director-lays-out-hurdles-in-path-to-layered-homeland-missile-defense/. See also U.S. Department of Defense, “Layered Homeland Missile Defense: A Strategy for Defending the United States,” n.d., https://media.defense.gov/2020/Jun/22/2002319425/-1/-1/1/LAYERED-HOMELAND-MISSILE-DEFENSE-FINAL.PDF.

22. In addition to these midcourse and terminal defenses, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency has developed and tested a variety of boost-phase missile defenses. See Jaganath Sankaran and Steve Fetter, “Defending the United States: Revisiting National Missile Defense Against North Korea,” International Security, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Winter 2021): 51-86; Jaganath Sankaran and Steve Fetter, “Reexamining Homeland Missile Defense Against North Korea,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Fall 2020).

23. Sankaran and Fetter, “Defending the United States.”

24. Lawrence Freedman, US Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 96 (citing press conference of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on April 3, 1967).

25. U.S. Department of Defense, “2022 Nuclear Posture Review,” October 27, 2022, p. 4, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.PDF#page=40.


Jaganath Sankaran is an assistant professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution.

     

The Enduring Impact of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative


September 2023
By Aaron Bateman

This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s unexpected call for U.S. scientists to use their talents to develop a capability that would make nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.”

President Ronald Reagan, in a March 1983 speech, unveils his Strategic Defense Initiative that was intended to develop missile defense systems that would make nuclear weapons obsolete. (Photo by Jean-Louis Atlan/Sygma via Getty ImagesLess than a year after that March 1983 speech, the White House established the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), more commonly and derisively known as “Star Wars,” to conduct research into a wide variety of advanced technologies that could be used for land- and space-based missile defense.

Immediately after Reagan’s call for an alternative to nuclear deterrence, the very prospect of a missile defense program became the source of intense controversy around the world. Experts questioned its technical feasibility and debated its potential impact on the superpower strategic balance. Moreover, SDI exacerbated anxieties about the arms race moving into outer space.

With growing access to thousands of relevant documents in the United States, western Europe, and the former Soviet Union, it is now possible to analyze more fully the origins and evolution of SDI and its relationship with arms control in the last days of the Cold War. In key respects, SDI emerged out of the intensifying militarization of space in the 1970s. Nevertheless, the prospect of space-based missile defense in the 1980s quickly became the primary obstacle to progress in the U.S.-Soviet strategic arms dialogue. Despite the fact that SDI never came to fruition, it was one of the most significant impediments to the establishment of new arms control limits in space. Four decades later, SDI continues to shape the international dialogue on strategic stability, and it is a key part of the genealogy of the present anxieties about spiraling insecurity in the cosmos.

Not a Sanctuary

In the decade prior to the establishment of SDI, transformations already were taking place in the way that the Soviet Union and the United States used space for military aims. Their long-standing commitment to the “peaceful use of outer space” did not preclude military and intelligence activities, such as reconnaissance, communications, and nuclear early warning. As détente emerged in the 1970s, space technologies served as a means of verifying arms control treaties and as a prominent symbol of the new turn in relations between Moscow and Washington. In 1972, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin and U.S. President Richard Nixon signed an agreement to cooperate in space, leading to the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission.

Astronauts and cosmonauts shaking hands in space after their Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft docked was intended to be the apotheosis of détente. Yet less than a year after that mission, the Soviet Union resumed testing anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons systems as détente appeared to be faltering. Concurrently, the Soviet Union and the United States had begun to integrate satellites more fully into military operations for functions such as precision targeting of enemy forces. Consequently, a special panel commissioned by President Gerald Ford concluded that “treating space as a sanctuary, [was] neither enforceable nor verifiable.”1 With this observation in mind, in his last 48 hours in office, Ford approved a new U.S. ASAT weapons program.

Upon entering the White House, President Jimmy Carter sought to prevent an arms race in space. He stressed to his Soviet counterparts that limits on ASAT weapons systems needed to be included in the ongoing arms control negotiations. To this end, representatives from Moscow and Washington in 1978 and 1979 went through multiple rounds of negotiations to limit these weapons, but disagreements concerning what should be constrained prevented them from being included in the second Strategic Arms Limitation Talks treaty signed by Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in June 1979. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December of that year, progress in arms control ground to a halt. Fundamentally, before Reagan even came into office, superpower competition in space was intensifying.

Seizing the High Ground

After his inauguration, Reagan began making space technologies a prominent part of his national strategy. His administration maintained that space projects would elevate U.S. prestige on the international stage and strengthen U.S. military power. In contrast to prior administrations, Reagan overtly highlighted the growing role of U.S. military activities in space. His first space policy, released to the public in 1982, discussed the need to deploy an ASAT weapons capability as soon as possible that would be used to “deter threats to space systems of the United States and its allies.”2

Disagreements over testing missile defense system components in space were a major focus of the 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, between U.S. President Ronald Reagan (L) and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)During his first two years in the White House, Reagan increasingly viewed space in militarily competitive terms. A White House space policy study initiated in December 1982 was based on the premise that “[t]he Soviet Union [had] initiated a major campaign to capture the ‘high ground’ of space.”3 After receiving an intelligence briefing on Soviet military space and strategic defense research, Reagan wrote in his diary that there was no question the Soviets were seeking military superiority in space.

In the context of these military space developments, the prospect for space arms control looked increasingly grim. Moreover, key figures in the Reagan administration were openly skeptical of arms control in general. The president had long been a critic of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which he believed had shackled U.S. technological advantages. Regarding ASAT weapons systems specifically, officials in the Pentagon argued that an ASAT arms control agreement could not even be verified. Regardless, between 1981 and the beginning of 1983, space remained a peripheral topic in the arms control arena. Soviet-U.S. disagreement over intermediate-range nuclear forces and the prospective deployment of U.S. Pershing II missiles in Europe were much more prominent and contentious issues.

Space was quickly thrust into the center of the arms control debate after Reagan made the speech in March 1983 calling on U.S. scientists to develop a capability to render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” Although that date is often identified as the birth of SDI, the program was not formally established until January 1984. Yet, in that nearly one-year period, space and strategic defense became issues in superpower and transatlantic relations. Within a few days of the speech, Soviet leader Yuri Andropov accused the United States of seeking to gain a first-strike capability against Soviet strategic forces. He further alleged that the United States sought to “militarize outer space,” ignoring the fact that space had long been militarized.

By the summer of 1983, the Soviet Union was showing greater enthusiasm for space arms control. Andropov told a delegation of U.S. senators in August that Moscow would enact an ASAT weapons testing moratorium, and he shared his wish that the Soviet Union and the United States would dismantle their ASAT weapons systems. His eagerness for ASAT weapons limits was in stark contrast to Soviet attitudes during the Soviet-U.S. negotiations in the late 1970s. Similarly, officials in Western Europe openly supported a superpower ASAT weapons arms control agreement.

What accounts for the prominent emergence of ASAT arms control proposals in the wake of Reagan’s SDI announcement? Most importantly, limits on ASAT weapons systems would have constrained the development of strategic defense in the long term because they were dependent on many of the same capabilities. Donald Kerr, the head of Los Alamos National Laboratory, observed in 1983 that “many of the more advanced technologies that now are being considered for anti-satellite use are virtually indistinguishable from [anti-ballistic missile] technologies.”4 Consequently, the Reagan administration concluded that the Soviet Union wanted to use ASAT weapons arms control as a mechanism to kill SDI.

The Nuclear and Space Talks

It finally appeared that there might yet be hope for arms control in January 1985 when Soviet and U.S. officials agreed to three arms negotiation forums on strategic nuclear weapons, intermediate-range nuclear forces, and space and defensive arms, collectively known as the Nuclear and Space Talks. Unexpectedly, Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko, who had succeeded Andropov in February 1984, died on March 10, 1985, the day before the new arms control talks were set to begin. Shortly thereafter, a young party official named Mikhail Gorbachev took the reins of the Soviet Union at this critical juncture in superpower relations.

In December 1987, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (L) and U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in Washington but the Strategic Defense Initiative remained a source of contention. (Photo by Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)Tension over SDI remained at the forefront of Soviet-U.S. conversations concerning arms limits. By this point, Soviet defense and technical experts had completed a study on the feasibility of SDI and concluded that a leakproof defense was not possible. Nevertheless, key Soviet officials remained concerned about the implications of the U.S. program, which involved research into a wide variety of advanced technologies with missile defense and other applications. For example, more advanced command and control software and space-based sensors potentially would widen the information technology gap between Soviet and U.S. military forces. Moreover, some defense analysts in the Kremlin worried that even a partially functioning space-based missile defense could erode the credibility of the Soviet Union’s nuclear deterrent. Notably, there were a range of views on SDI within the Soviet government, and the lack of clarity about the future course of SDI research only created more anxiety in the Kremlin about the program’s long-term implications.

Because testing and deploying space-based defenses would have violated the ABM Treaty, the boundaries set in that treaty became the subject of visceral debate, with disagreement over testing missile defense components in space coming to a head at the Soviet-U.S. summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, in the fall of 1986. In multiple meetings, Reagan pledged to Gorbachev that SDI was only defensive in nature and that the United States ultimately would share the fruits of its SDI research with the Soviet Union. Gorbachev doubted the sincerity of Reagan’s promise to provide missile defense hardware to Moscow when the United States would not even share its milk factory technologies with the Soviet Union. Unexpectedly, the two leaders agreed that they could eliminate “all [U.S. and Soviet] nuclear weapons,” but Gorbachev added the contingency that SDI be confined to the laboratory.5 After Reagan refused to accept any limits on SDI, the two leaders departed Reykjavik without a deal in hand. Nevertheless, the meeting was an important step in improving superpower relations.

Around this same time, the Pentagon was putting together a concept for a first-phase strategic defense system that would include kinetic interceptors, housed in what were referenced as orbiting space “garages,” designed to destroy ballistic missiles in their boost phase of flight. Problematically, however, these garages would be sitting ducks for Soviet ASAT weapons. With these technical details in mind, Gorbachev pledged to Reagan that the Soviet Union would counter any deployed strategic defense system with asymmetric countermeasures, such as ASAT weapons and faster-burn intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Immediately after Reykjavik, the Politburo asked the Soviet Ministry of Defense to hasten work on countermeasures for a deployed strategic defense system.

To break the impasse in the arms control dialogue, Gorbachev made the historic decision in February 1987 to delink SDI from progress on negotiations concerning intermediate-range nuclear forces. He was motivated in large part to curb the arms race as an element of widespread economic reforms. Notably, pressure from SDI was not a significant factor in the delinkage decision. There were also technical factors at play. Advisers to Gorbachev had convinced him that asymmetric countermeasures would be a viable, cost-effective solution should the United States move forward with the deployment of a strategic defense system.

Gorbachev’s delinkage decision paved the way in December 1987 for the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which led to the elimination of an entire class of U.S. and Soviet ground-based missiles. Nevertheless, SDI remained a source of contention in the strategic arms forum of the Nuclear and Space Talks. In this context, Reagan offered a defense and space treaty that would allow specific kinds of missile defense tests in space and tried to convince Gorbachev to drop the linkage between SDI and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Yet, Gorbachev refused both of these proposals. Even with their military’s missile defense countermeasures, key Soviet officials still worried that a U.S. strategic defense system could undermine the Soviet nuclear deterrent and that SDI would have other applications that could widen the technology gap between the two countries. Due in large part to these disagreements concerning SDI, there would be no START agreement before Reagan left office.

Aside from constraints on strategic defense, a range of other limits on space activities was contemplated. The Soviet Union and the United States could have agreed to eliminate low-altitude ASAT weapons systems, as well as prohibit high-altitude ASAT weapons systems, which did not exist, that might be deployed to attack satellites used for nuclear command and control, among other functions. Additionally, there was U.S. interest in prohibiting space-to-earth weapons, which also did not exist. U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger vehemently opposed this initiative, arguing that “we ought not to give up any flexibility now.”6 In the end, Reagan would not accept any limits on military space activities due to their implications for SDI. Because space technologies were increasingly important for modern warfare, prospective limits on them were seen as undercutting an arena of distinct U.S. advantage.

SDI After the Cold War

When President George H.W. Bush came into office, the Soviet-U.S. relationship was in a remarkably different place than when SDI was established, and the changing geopolitical environment forced the program’s advocates to come up with a new justification for strategic defense. Significantly, as the Soviet threat diminished, it became difficult to continue spending billions of dollars on SDI.

In the late 1980s, SDI program managers adopted a new concept for space-based missile defense system called Brilliant Pebbles. Rather than housing interceptors in garages that were sitting ducks for ASAT weapons, Brilliant Pebbles comprised individual interceptors with sensors onboard that would allow them to track and destroy ballistic missiles. They were cheaper and more survivable than the original concept, at least in theory. Cost and survivability aside, deploying these weapons would still require revisions to or the elimination of the ABM Treaty.

The Soviet-U.S. arms control negotiations reached new heights after a September 1989 announcement that the Soviet Union would drop its requirement that an agreement be reached concerning SDI and the ABM Treaty before making progress on START. Moscow stressed, however, that if Washington moved ahead with space-based missile deployment in the future, it reserved the right to withdraw from START. Regardless, SDI was no longer an impediment to progress in nuclear arms reductions.

With the Cold War receding, SDI proponents tried to use the threat of missile proliferation to so-called rogue states as a new justification for space-based missile defense. To save SDI, these advocates proposed a scaled-down version of strategic defense called Global Protection Against Limited Strikes that would involve fewer numbers of Brilliant Pebbles weapons in orbit. Problematically for the Pentagon, between 1990 and 1992, there were three tests of the Brilliant Pebbles weapons system, all of which were deemed failures to varying degrees. Although there was bipartisan support for limited land-based missile defense systems, space-based interceptors were viewed as technologically immature and politically risky. Indeed, there was little appetite for moving beyond the ABM Treaty and potentially undermining the recent progress in nuclear arms control.

The death knell rang for space-based missile defense interceptors when Bill Clinton became president in 1993. Shortly after taking office, he reoriented U.S. strategic defense, now called national missile defense, toward land-based interceptors and cut funding for the Brilliant Pebbles program. A little more than a decade after its establishment, SDI was brought down to earth.

SDI’s Legacy

In contrast with his predecessor, President George W. Bush viewed missile defense as a critical tool for protecting the United States against “rogue regimes” that sought nuclear weapons. To this end, he withdrew the United States from the ABM Treaty in 2002, 30 years after the pact came into force. He also established the Missile Defense Agency, the modern incarnation of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization that managed SDI research and development. With the Pentagon’s resources soon focused on U.S. military operations in the Middle East, however, space-based missile defense would not be revived.

Presently, U.S. missile defense is built primarily around land- and sea-based interceptors with sensors in space for detecting missile threats. Due to the growing number of counterspace capabilities—systems designed to degrade or destroy satellites—the Department of Defense is now pushing for a larger number of missile tracking systems in orbit so that the overall missile defense architecture is more resilient.7 This concept for a larger number of tracking systems in space was a key part of the first-phase strategic defense system plans developed under SDI aegis in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Fundamentally, SDI is still here, although in a reduced form.

The ghost of SDI is ever present in the current international dialogue on space security as well. Today, there are growing fears about a space arms race as multiple countries develop kinetic and nonkinetic weapons for interfering with satellites. Concurrently, there is greater attention being devoted to developing responsible norms of behavior in space. These issues are not fundamentally new; rather, they were part of the arms control dialogue in the 1980s but left unresolved at the end of the Cold War and have become urgent again only in the past decade. The situation in space today is far more complicated, however, due to the growing number of governmental and commercial space actors.

India’s anti-satellite weapons program, typified by this missile showcased at a 2020 military parade in New Delhi, grew out of the country’s missile defense program. (Photo by Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)The technological connection between missile defense systems and ASAT weapons systems remains a persistent problem in the space security arena. Due to this missile defense-ASAT weapons entanglement, the proliferation of advanced missile defense capabilities simultaneously means the proliferation of ASAT-capable systems. India’s recent ASAT weapons test, which grew out of its missile defense program, is a case in point. Just as in the 1980s, attempting to separate missile defense from space in any dialogue on arms control will be impossible.

For China and Russia, the memory of SDI looms large in their perspectives on current U.S. military space strategy. A recent study found that SDI is one of the most referenced U.S. military space programs in Chinese defense writings.8 Similarly, Russian military publications identify SDI as a core element of the alleged space superiority objectives of the United States.9 Fundamentally, SDI remains a significant factor in Chinese and Russian narratives about space security.

The U.S. commitment to freedom of action in space, due in large part to SDI, was a primary impediment to space arms control in the 1980s. From a military standpoint, it is understandable that the United States wanted to maintain freedom of action in an arena in which it had significant advantages. Moreover, it is unlikely that a new space arms control treaty would have forestalled the many security challenges in space today. Nevertheless, the lack of progress in space arms control in the 1980s eliminated the prospect for establishing a precedent that could have helped provide a framework for international engagement on the challenges associated with stability in space today.
 

ENDNOTES

1. Memo from David Elliot to Brent Scowcroft, Final Report of the Ad Hoc NSC Space Panel - Part II: U.S. Anti-Satellite Capabilities, November 3, 1976, Ford Library, 5.

2. National Security Decision Directive-42, “National Space Policy,” July 4, 1982, CREST, CIA-RDP88B00838R000300510026-0.

3. National Security Study Directive Number 13-82, “National Space Strategy,” December 15, 1982, CREST, CIA-RDP85M00364R000400550064-1.

4. Donald Kerr, “Implications of Anti-Satellite Weapons for ABM Issues,” George Keyworth Files, RAC Box 14, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

5. Memorandum of Conversation (3:25-4:30pm and 5:30-6:50pm), Reagan, Gorbachev et al., October 12, 1986, FRUS, 1981-1988 Volume V, Soviet Union, March 1985-October 1986.

6. Minutes of National Security Planning Group Principals Meeting, “Arms Control - Shultz Meeting in Moscow,” April 3, 1987, FRUS, 1981-1988, Volume XI, START I.

7. Rachael Zisk, “The National Defense Space Architecture (NDSA): An Explainer,” U.S. Space Development Agency, December 5, 2022, https://www.sda.mil/the-national-defense-space-architecture-ndsa-an-explainer/.

8. Alexis A. Blanc et al., “Chinese and Russian Perceptions of and Responses to U.S. Military Activities in the Space Domain,” RAND Corp., 2022, p. 9, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA1800/RRA1835-1/RAND_RRA1835-1.pdf.

9. Ibid., p. 13.

 


Aaron Bateman, an assistant professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University, has published widely on intelligence, transatlantic relations, military space policy, and arms control during the Cold War. His book Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative is scheduled for publication next year.

 

 

Four decades later, SDI continues to shape the international dialogue on strategic stability.

The Oppenheimer Legacy


September 2023

The film Oppenheimer, about the physicist who spearheaded the Manhattan Project, landed in theaters at an apt moment. After two decades during which many people thought the nuclear weapons genie had been tamed, the risks seem graver than ever and the public, at least for the time being, is engaged. Russian President Vladimir Putin, having launched a full-scale war against Ukraine, also has threatened to actually use nuclear weapons against states that might intervene in the conflict. Putin and the film have provoked a new debate with endless permutations. In the collection of essays below, Stephen J. Cimbala explores the ambiguities of nuclear weapons, Chantell L. Murphy remembers the human beings erased by the film and Lisbeth Gronlund recalls the physicists who worked to limit the catastrophic weapons that their colleagues unleashed. This is a teachable moment if people can be made to understand the enduring danger of the nuclear weapons that J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team created and the need to restrain, and ultimately, eliminate them.—CAROL GIACOMO

The film Oppenheimer, about the physicist who spearheaded the Manhattan Project, landed in theaters at an apt moment.

Atoms and Ambiguity


September 2023
By Stephen J. Cimbala

The release of Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer, about the physicist who created the first atomic bomb, takes viewers back to the origins of the first nuclear age and to the moral and political conundrums faced by politicians, scientists, and military planners ever since.

Image labeled ‘0.053 Sec’ of the first nuclear test, codenamed ‘Trinity’, conducted by Los Alamos National Laboratory at Alamogordo, New Mexico, July 16, 1945. (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images)The two-sided character of atomic and nuclear weapons, in terms of their impacts on strategy and history, were not immediately clear to government officials in the latter 1940s and early 1950s. Some felt that the atomic bomb and, later, thermonuclear weapons should be used just as any other explosive device for military purposes. As arsenals grew and the implications of massive nuclear use became clearer, the concept of employing nuclear weapons primarily or exclusively for deterrence as a means of war prevention took hold. Nuclear deterrence could be made reliable and stable if states possessed a secure second-strike capability, guaranteed to inflict unacceptable retaliatory damage against the forces and society of the attacker.

If fired in anger, nuclear weapons would cause unprecedented and morally repugnant levels of destruction to military and civilian targets. On the other hand, nuclear or large-scale conventional war could be avoided if deterrence was effective. To make deterrence effective, however, a state had to make clear its willingness to inflict unprecedented and unacceptable damage in retaliation once having been attacked. This moral and strategic ambivalence with respect to nuclear weapons continued throughout the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union deployed many thousands of nuclear weapons of various ranges and yields, but these weapons were used for deterrence of nuclear or large-scale conventional warfare and for coercive diplomacy and bargaining over various political matters.

The two Cold War nuclear superpowers came closest to an actual nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, yet this dispute also was resolved without crossing the line from nuclear threat to actual use. Dangerous as they were, nuclear weapons helped to stabilize the Cold War by avoiding egregious military missteps that would have created not only a nuclear war, but also a large-scale conventional war in Europe or Asia with casualties in the hundreds of thousands and the potential to go nuclear.

During the Korean War, some U.S. political leaders and military professionals called for the use of atomic weapons against North Korea and, if necessary, China in order to reverse adverse conditions on the battlefield. The United States did not take this step for a number of reasons, including the fact that its intervention in this conflict was a limited war for limited political objectives. The use of atomic bombs in Korea could have led to vertical and horizontal escalation on the part of China and the Soviet Union, prolonging the war and making it more costly in terms of military and civilian lives lost. By 1949, the Soviet Union also had tested successfully its own atomic bomb.

The demise of the Soviet Union left post-Cold War Russia with an abundance of nuclear weapons, and these weapons have served to keep Russia in the military superpower class along with the United States. Yet, Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine beginning in February 2022 illustrates the two-sided nature of nuclear armaments. On one hand, Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened repeatedly to use nuclear weapons if the vital interests of Russia, as he defines them, are threatened. On the other hand, Russia recognizes that the first use of nuclear weapons in wartime since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be a world-changing event, not just a tactical maneuver.

Even if Russian first use of nuclear weapons took place on the territory of Ukraine and avoided any targets on the territory of a NATO member state, the alliance immediately would be engaged in a competition in risk-taking that would have no obvious endpoint. In other words, the actual use of nuclear weapons would devalue their prior utility as deterrents and open the door to a potential World War III in Europe with globally catastrophic consequences.

Going forward, the question is how long states can play the game of nuclear political coercion but remain short of actual nuclear war. In part, this depends on the rate at which nuclear weapons spread and to whom. States dissatisfied with the existing international order or new members of the nuclear club with grievances against neighbors are obvious candidates for nuclear mischief. In addition, states ruled by impetuous, unrestrained dictators, such as North Korea, or governments caught up in a conflict spiral with inadequate skills in crisis management, as in the case of the great powers immediately prior to World War I, could unbottle the genie. Even experienced nuclear powers, thus far restrained, could fall prey to seductive sirens of controlled or limited nuclear war, entertaining nuclear first use as a means to “escalate to deescalate” an ongoing conventional war.

If J. Robert Oppenheimer were still alive, what would he say about his legacy? Perhaps, “I left you with a Faustian bargain, and it’s worked so far. Deal with it.”

The good news is that, since Oppenheimer passed from the scene, the world has witnessed less nuclear proliferation than pessimists feared.

The bad news is that this is no guarantee for the future. The two-sided nature of nuclear danger is not unlike that posed by the maturing of artificial intelligence: will we work smarter or outsmart ourselves?


Stephen J. Cimbala is distinguished professor of political science at Penn State Brandywine.

If J. Robert Oppenheimer were still alive, what would he say about his legacy?

The People the Oppenheimer Film Erased


September 2023
By Chantell L. Murphy

Not a single ponderosa pine can be found in the new film Oppenheimer, about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The locations chosen for the Manhattan Project that he led played a pivotal role in the story of the atomic bomb. Not casting the landscape accurately erases an important detail from the film’s portrayal of the development of the world’s most lethal weapon.

This first aerial photograph of Los Alamos, N.M., in 1949 shows old and new housing developments at the city, secretly created by the U.S. government to accommodate 6,000 scientists and other people involved in the Manhattan Project. The project forced native New Mexican families around Los Alamos from their land and subjected generations to cancer and other health problems, which the new film Oppenheimer failed to address. (Photo By The Denver Post via Getty Images)Scientists designed and built the world’s first atomic weapon in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Los Alamos sits on the Pajarito Plateau on the eastern edge of a volcanic complex1 called the Jemez Mountains at an elevation of about 7,500 feet. This is where ponderosa pines tower over Gambel oak and juniper and where the land dramatically drops off into steep basalt cliffs that roll into the Rio Grande River valley below.

The movie exceeds expectations with its captivating retelling of the events that led to the atomic bomb, including Oppenheimer’s desire for the project to be situated in Los Alamos, but the film failed to capture the reality of the environment and culture that so appealed to him. Director Christopher Nolan and production designer Ruth De Jong made an artistic choice to film exterior scenes at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico instead of Los Alamos to make it look like the “middle of nowhere with nothing around.”2 Instead of pine forest, the Los Alamos scenes are filled with panoramas of open desert, multicolored mesas, and sweeping grasslands.

This decision matters because while beautiful and vast, Ghost Ranch evokes an entirely different feel than the lusher forests around Los Alamos. The environments of Ghost Ranch, drenched in blazing sun and littered with chollas, evoke feelings of exposure and desolation. The film’s landscapes allow the audience to believe that these areas were uninhabited, but in fact, generations of Indigenous and land-based communities have lived on and cultivated Los Alamos for centuries. Selecting Los Alamos as the Manhattan Project site in 1942 forced about 30 native New Mexican families from their land without fair compensation, and many had to abandon their farming equipment, livestock, and animals.3 In Nolan’s portrayal of a singular narrative, the film concealed the environmental and cultural richness of New Mexico that was irrevocably altered by the Manhattan Project through inequitable displacement and the erasure of native voices and culture. Most perniciously, numerous incidences of cancer caused by exposure to radiation from the Trinity Test have persisted over generations and forever have linked New Mexico to the nuclear weapons complex.

When I started working in nuclear nonproliferation at Los Alamos in 2010 as a graduate research assistant, we did not learn about the history of the local and Indigenous communities. We learned about the brilliant male scientists, the excitement of the race to push applied physics to the limit, and the building of massive secret cities across the United States during World War II to create the most powerful weapon humanity
has ever seen.4 The story we were told about the bomb was about impossibility, glory, and terror, which the movie spectacularly recounted.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, protagonist of the new movie of the same name, is often called "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear weapon, and detonated it in the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico. (Photo by History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Yet, for all its focus on the characters in that story, the film fails to truly humanize them. If it displayed a beautiful sun-dappled forest in which the audience could imagine itself walking, then maybe viewers could feel a slight connection to Oppenheimer, and he would not seem like such an enigma. If the film depicted the native New Mexicans and Indigenous people who did housework in the homes of the scientists and performed janitorial services at the lab, then maybe filmgoers could relate more to the sacrifice that these Americans endured to make this weapon a reality.

The bomb and humanity became lost in the plot about politics, ego, and deception. Viewers were left feeling angry at Lewis Strauss rather than at the decision to proceed with the Trinity Test despite the proximity to communities in the Tularosa Basin that were not warned about the risk and today still struggle with cancer and other health problems caused by proximity to the bomb blast.5 Viewers were left feeling sorry for Oppenheimer for being cast aside by the government he served and not for the victims of the bombings in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. By failing to capture the New Mexico that Oppenheimer loved or present realistic narratives about the women and native people who were integral to the project,6 the film contributes to the abstract and idealized notion of nuclear weapons.

The film concludes with a foreboding message as Oppenheimer laments to Albert Einstein about setting off a chain reaction that would destroy the entire universe. Yet, there was a sign of hope in the movie with the mention of the need for international control of fissile material and for monitoring the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The International Atomic Energy Agency probably did not expect the subtle shoutouts from this huge summer blockbuster. By bringing fresh attention to the dangers of nuclear weapons, the film has created a moment for action, including the need to strengthen the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to assist New Mexico’s Downwinders population, which for too long has been excluded from the acknowledgment and benefits that other communities exposed to nuclear testing and uranium mining have received since 1990.7

 

ENDNOTES

1. Tewa Women United, “Oppenheimer - and the Other Side of the Story,” July 18, 2023, https://tewawomenunited.org/2023/07/oppenheimer-and-the-other-side-of-the-story.

2. Grace Jidoun, “Where Was Oppenheimer Filmed? Discover Christopher Nolan’s Authentic Shoot Locations,” NBC, July 28, 2023,
https://www.nbc.com/nbc-insider/oppenheimer-filming-locations.

3. Myrriah Gómez, Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2022).

4. Los Alamos National Laboratory, “The Town That Never Was,” 1980 (20-minute film), https://youtu.be/DGWmFTqXHoY?si=WqA7U4QuCeBeZbpR.

5. Karin Brulliard and Samuel Gilbert, “No ‘Oppenheimer’ Fanfare for Those Caught in First Atomic Bomb’s Fallout,” The Washington Post, July 29, 2023

6. Radhika Seth, “Justice for the Women of Oppenheimer,” Vogue, July 22, 2023.

7. Griffin Rushton, “Senate Approves New Mexico Downwinders’ Inclusion in RECA Amendment,” KOB 4, July 30, 2023, https://www.kob.com/new-mexico/senate-approves-new-mexico-downwinders-inclusion-in-reca-amendment/.


Chantell L. Murphy is a nuclear nonproliferation expert developing ethical artificial intelligence frameworks for international nuclear safeguards and founder of Atomsphere LC, an organization promoting nuclear awareness in the outdoors.

By omitting realistic narratives about the women and native people who were integral to the Manhattan Project, the film contributes to abstract, idealized notions of nuclear weapons.

Physicists Built the Bomb, Urged Restraint Too


September 2023
By Lisbeth Gronlund

As the film Oppenheimer documented, many Manhattan Project scientists were concerned that use of the weapons they built would lead to a U.S.-Soviet arms race. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who headed the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project, and his scientist colleagues repeatedly argued that the U.S. nuclear weapons monopoly gave the United States a unique opportunity to prevent a world-threatening outcome by briefing Soviet scientists and policymakers on their work and proposing a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons. On July 17, 1945, Leo Szilard and 68 other members of the Manhattan Project Chicago laboratory petitioned President Harry Truman directly, making the case against using these weapons on Japan because doing so would make the United States responsible for “opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.”1

University of Chicago professor Leo Szilard, shown testifying before the U.S. Congress in 1945, joined 68 other Manhattan Project scientists in writing to President Harry Truman to argue against dropping the first atomic bomb on Japan during World War II. (Photo from Bettmann Archives via Getty Images).Although none of these early efforts to influence the government was successful, during the Cold War and afterward, Soviet and U.S. physicists and other scientists, sometimes working together, repeatedly made a positive impact on international and national policies. Two cases in particular highlight the essential role of scientists: achieving limits on nuclear explosive testing and working to keep defenses against long-range nuclear-armed ballistic missiles from triggering an arms race. Academic physicists were particularly active and remain concerned about and engaged with nuclear weapons-related issues today.

Nuclear Explosive Testing

All five of the established nuclear powers (China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States) started out testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, releasing large amounts of radiation that spread around the globe and fell to the ground. Beginning in 1954, when the United States tested a very powerful hydrogen bomb—the 15-megaton Castle Bravo test that was equivalent to 15 million tons of TNT—in the South Pacific, there was an international outcry about the environmental and human effects. The Soviet Union and the United States, however, continued testing with abandon.

The UK physicist Joseph Rotblat, the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project on moral grounds after Germany was defeated, began researching the radioactive effects of nuclear testing in 1954. His calculations showed that the United States greatly understated the radioactivity released by these nuclear tests. Widespread media coverage of his findings increased public outrage.

Nevertheless, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the United States continued atmospheric testing until 1963, when they negotiated and signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, banning all but underground tests. Neither China nor France signed the treaty, and their last atmospheric tests were in 1980 and 1974, respectively. In 1957, chemist Linus Pauling started a scientists’ appeal for a complete ban on nuclear testing.2 Within two weeks, 2,000 U.S. scientists, including Albert Einstein, had signed. Within a few months, the list had grown to 11,000 scientists around the globe. Many U.S. scientists actively promoted the test ban. They engaged the public, met with their government representatives, spoke to the media, and several years later, could share in the treaty’s success.

Another significant development was the founding, also in 1957, of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (named after Pugwash, Nova Scotia, where the first conference was held) by Joseph Rotblat and the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. These international conferences continued until 2020 and brought together scientists, including some who advised their governments, and other experts.

They were the first contemporary Track 2 meetings, where participants interacted as individuals, not as representatives of their governments. In this Cold War environment, they could have open, frank discussions. These meetings influenced many international treaties and agreements, including laying the groundwork for the Limited Test Ban Treaty. They also facilitated strong personal relationships between Soviet and U.S. scientists and, eventually, Chinese and U.S. scientists, which proved essential to progress on arms control.

The Limited Test Ban Treaty was followed in 1974 by the Soviet-U.S. Threshold Test Ban Treaty, limiting the yield of underground nuclear tests to no more than 150 kilotons. Concerns about verification stalled ratification until 1990 because the two nations did not agree on the means for verifying the treaty. The Soviet Union insisted that remote seismic measurements could determine the yield of a test explosion. The United States insisted on using an on-site method that required placing a cable in a shaft near the shaft to be used for the nuclear weapons test, which would measure the shock wave at close range.

In the late 1980s, a group of Soviet and U.S. physicists—Frank von Hippel at Princeton University; Evgeny Velikhov, director of the Kurchatov Institute; Roald Sagdeev, director of the Space Research Institute; and especially Tom Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council—were responsible for breaking the deadlock. They proposed that each country conduct a nuclear test whose yield would be measured by teams of scientists from both nations, with both teams using both methods of estimating the yield.

The governments agreed, and in 1988 they conducted the “Joint Verification Experiment,” which demonstrated that seismic verification was effective. The two countries subsequently ratified the treaty with verification provided by seismic monitoring and hydrodynamic monitoring under certain circumstances. It is not an overstatement that the efforts of a few scientists were responsible for ratification.

In 1994, negotiations began on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibits all nuclear explosive testing. Verification again stood in the way. It is more difficult to verify a yield of zero than one of 150 kilotons. Some U.S. opponents of the CTBT argued that countries could cheat by testing a small-yield explosive inside a large underground cavity, which would reduce the seismic signal by decoupling the explosion from the surrounding rock.

U.S. chemist Linus Pauling, who won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the Nobel Peace Prize, poses with his alpha-helix model in front of a chalkboard at the Linus Pauling Institute, Menlo Park, Calif., in 1983. In 1957, he started a scientists’ appeal for a complete ban on nuclear testing. (Photo by Janet Fries/Getty Images)Many U.S. scientists, especially seismologists, became involved in this debate. They debunked the large cavity argument and, as in previous cases, influenced opinion by engaging the public, policymakers, administration officials, and the media.

Finally in 1995, a study by the JASON group of high-level scientists that advises the U.S. government played an important role in resolving the CTBT debate. At that time, JASON members were mainly physicists. They considered the technical details relevant to the CTBT and concluded that there were no reasons that the United States should not sign a treaty of enduring duration, provided it included the standard statement that a nation could withdraw in the event that a nuclear explosive test was necessary to protect its “supreme national interest.”

This study had a large effect on President Bill Clinton’s decision to sign the CTBT in 1996. Although the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, the United States and 186 other signatories have continued to abide by it.

Long-Range Ballistic Missile Defenses

Throughout history, people have built defenses against armaments, so it is not surprising that the Soviet Union and the United States sought to protect their populations from nuclear weapons. Beginning in the late 1950s, the two nations deployed nuclear-armed intercontinental-range ballistic missiles, which hurl their warheads into space, which then fall to the ground under the influence of gravity. Shortly thereafter, both countries began deploying anti-ballistic missile interceptors. In 1962, the Soviet Union began placing such interceptors around Moscow. Because the interceptors were not accurate enough to destroy warheads with conventional explosives, they were armed with nuclear weapons.

In the late 1960s, the United States began preparations to deploy the Sentinel anti-ballistic missile system, which was billed as a limited defense against an accidental Soviet or Chinese attack, despite the fact that China had no nuclear-armed intercontinental-range missiles and would not for decades. The Sentinel interceptors carried megaton-level nuclear warheads. The Army’s decision to place 13 of the 17 planned interceptor sites near major cities enraged local populations, leading to large demonstrations in some areas.

After scientists at Argonne National Laboratory learned that one of the Sentinel sites was to be built near Chicago, they engaged very effectively with activists, providing fact sheets and other materials, giving numerous presentations, and talking to the media. When Department of Defense officials subsequently came to brief the local public about the project, they found an angry audience armed with facts and arguments provided by the Argonne scientists. These officials regarded the meetings as a disaster. Similar efforts took place in other cities, and in many cases, physicists played major roles in the opposition. Because of this widespread opposition, the Sentinel program was canceled in March 1969, after only 18 months.

Beginning in the 1960s, some U.S. physicists and other scientists understood that missile defenses against nuclear weapons were a terrible idea because building defenses would prompt an adversary to build more missiles and lead to a destabilizing arms race. Limits on offensive weapons would be possible only if defenses also were limited.

Initially, Soviet scientists did not embrace this logic. Their eventual acceptance was partly a consequence of meetings of the Soviet-American Defense Study group, which spun off from the Pugwash meetings in 1964 and consisted of a smaller select group of Soviet and U.S. scientists, some of whom advised their governments.

Soviet scientists also were influenced by a prominent 1968 Scientific American article by Hans Bethe, director of the theoretical division of the Manhattan Project, and Richard Garwin, who helped develop the H-bomb.3 It laid out the technical and political arguments against these defenses for the public and experts alike. It also discussed the myriad ways in which defenses could be defeated, making them useless and provocative.

Such activities by scientists led to the first Strategic Arms Limitations Talks treaty, which reduced offensive weapons to 6,000 for each country and was coupled to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The ABM Treaty prohibited essentially all missile defenses, but allowed research on defensive technologies, which ultimately led to its demise.

The beginning of the end came in March 1983 with President Ronald Reagan’s infamous “Star Wars” speech in which he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to deploy a defense using satellite-based interceptors and lasers that would render “nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.” This goal was absurd given the 6,000 intercontinental warheads that treaties allowed the Soviet Union and United States each to maintain.

The program infuriated the physics community, which characterized it as nonsensical. Around the country, physicists again became active and reached out to the public, policymakers, and the media. Their activities were key to creating a small but influential movement against the program.

The Case Against SDI

The case against SDI was first articulated by the influential April 1984 report “Directed Energy Weapons in Space” by Ashton Carter, a physicist working for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment who eventually became secretary of defense under President Barack Obama.4 The case was bolstered by the October 1984 Scientific American article “Space-based Ballistic-missile Defense,” authored by Bethe, Garwin, Kurt Gottfried of Cornell University, and Henry Kendall of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the latter two of which had helped found the Union of Concerned Scientists.5

Ashton Carter, who eventually became President Barack Obama’s defense secretary, wrote an influential report against the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1984. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)In 1985, SDI began giving grants to academics, declaring that “this office is trying to sell something to Congress. If we can say that this fellow at MIT will get money to do such and such research, it’s something real to sell.” The idea that the program wanted to use scientists to sell the program further enraged the physicists.

In response, physicists at Cornell and the University of Illinois-Urbana wrote a pledge of nonparticipation for scientists and engineers, stating that they would not apply for or accept funding from SDI program and why. By the time the pledge results were released in May 1986, it had been signed by 6,500 academic scientists and engineers around the country.6 The protest received significant media attention and hammered home that scientists believed the program was technically unworkable and unwise. Finally, the professional organization of physicists, the American Physical Society, released an authoritative study in 1987 on the science and technology of directed energy weapons, such as lasers, concluding that SDI was unworkable.

Politically wounded by this surge of expert opposition, SDI was canceled in 1993 by Clinton. The program never progressed beyond research and development, so the ABM Treaty remained intact.

Even so, interest in missile defense continued. Clinton’s Pentagon replaced SDI with the National Missile Defense (NMD) program, which relied on ground-based “hit to kill” interceptor missiles that would destroy an incoming warhead by slamming into it.

In response, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report in April 2000 titled “Countermeasures,” showing that even if this system worked perfectly, it could be defeated in numerous ways. Five months later, Clinton announced that he would not deploy the system, citing, among other issues, its vulnerability to countermeasures.

President George W. Bush changed the name of the program to the Ground-Based Missile Defense program and, to allow its nominal deployment, withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002. Nevertheless, scientists have continued to point out the system’s shortcomings and critique the intercept tests, with the result being that the system’s effectiveness is widely doubted.

Although Russian-U.S. relations are again strained and the only remaining arms control agreement, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), is teetering, the research and activities of these physicists and other scientists who have questioned and criticized U.S. nuclear and missile defense policies have mattered, sometimes quite a lot. For decades, scientists willing to challenge Pentagon programs and Washington orthodoxy helped produce stabilizing outcomes in U.S. nuclear and missile defense policy. There is still a CTBT, for instance, and the United States abides by it. Missile defense deployments are limited and widely viewed as ineffective.

Unfortunately, further progress has been hampered by the continuing U.S. commitment to deploying missile defenses. Some physicists and other scientists have remained actively engaged, but the expert technical analysis and engagement of the wider scientific community are needed more than ever in this time of growing geopolitical tensions.

 

ENDNOTES

1. “A Petition to the President of the United States,” https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/manhattan-project/petition.html (petition dated July 17, 1945).

2. Linus Pauling, “An Appeal by American Scientists to the Governments and People of the World,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 13, No. 7 (May 15, 1957).

3. Richard L. Garwin and Hans A. Bethe, “Anti-Ballistic-Missile Systems,” Scientific American, Vol. 218, No. 3 (March 1968): 21.

4. Ashton B. Carter, “Directed Energy Missile Defense in Space,” U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, OTA-BP-ISC-26, April 1984, https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk3/1984/8410/841001.PDF.

5. Hans A. Bethe et al., “Space-based Ballistic-Missile Defense,” Scientific American, Vol. 251, No. 4 (October 1984): 39-49.

6. Lisbeth Gronlund, et al, “A Status Report on the Boycott of Star Wars Research by Academic Scientists and Engineers,” May 13, 1986, https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/yzojaywaqq84tb0jj0g0a/SDI-Pledge-Report-1986.pdf?rlkey=vfuvznu8rg4buw9g8cx8hlwhr&dl=0


Lisbeth Gronlund is a visiting scholar with the Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering.

During the Cold War and afterward, Soviet and U.S. physicists and other scientists repeatedly made a positive impact on international and national nuclear policies.

U.S. Says Ukraine Gives Cluster Munitions Assurances


September 2023
By Gabriela Iveliz Rosa Hernández

Following months of internal debate, the United States approved the transfer to Ukraine of thousands of cluster munitions worth up to $250 million after Kyiv offered assurances regarding their use.

Firemen try to put out fire at Donetsk University of Economics and Trade in Russian-occupied Donetsk, Ukraine, on Aug. 5. The city’s mayor told reporters that Ukrainian forces used cluster munitions to attack the building. The United States recently provided Ukraine with cluster munitions, which are banned by more than 100 countries. (Photo by Victor/Xinhua via Getty Images)Cluster munitions are banned by more than 100 countries, including many U.S. allies, because they scatter bomblets across battlefields that sometimes fail to explode on impact and can kill or maim combatants and civilians who encounter duds long after the fighting ends.

The agreement between Washington and Kyiv on July 7 is classified. “The Ukrainian government has offered us assurances in writing on the responsible use of [cluster munitions], including that they will not use the rounds in civilian-populated urban environments and that they will record where they use these rounds, which will simplify later demining efforts,” Colin Kahl, U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, told a press conference.

When asked by Arms Control Today about the assurances, a U.S. State Department official referred to a tweet by Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov on July 7. The tweet read, “We will not be using cluster munitions in urban areas (cities) to avoid the risks for the civilian populations—these are our people; they are Ukrainians we have a duty to protect. Cluster munitions will be used only in the fields where there is a concentration of Russian military.”

According to another U.S. State Department official on Aug. 3, the assurances cover the batch of Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICM) approved on July 7, but likely would apply to the next batch as a baseline if the United States decided to approve another transfer. These weapons have a rate of unexploded ordnance higher than 1 percent.

Reznikov’s tweet said that cluster munitions would not be used on the internationally recognized territory of Russia and that Ukraine will keep a strict record of the use of these weapons and their locations.

Ukraine is to report such details to its partners to ensure the appropriate standard of transparent reporting and control. Following the expulsion of Russian forces from Ukraine's internationally recognized territories, these territories will be prioritized for demining efforts, according to Reznikov. According to CNN, Ukraine submitted its first report on cluster munitions use, including the rounds fired and the number of Russian targets destroyed, after a U.S. request on Aug. 9. Two weeks later, the Washington Post reported that the United States was satisfied with Kyiv's follow-through.

Asked by Arms Control Today to comment about the possibility of future cluster munitions transfers to Ukraine by allies who are not states-parties to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), the first State Department official said that the United States would not discourage or encourage such transfers and that such a decision would be a bilateral matter between the ally and Ukraine. But Washington would like allies to establish assurances similar to those already established with Ukraine on how the weapons will be used, the official said.

In January, U.S. allies such as Estonia also were weighing giving Ukraine cluster munitions, according to EER, an Estonian newspaper. Foreign Policy reported that Turkey allegedly sent similar munitions to Ukraine in November 2022, but Turkey and Ukraine denied that transfer. Meanwhile, Lithuania’s defense minister on Aug. 25 suggested that Vilnius should leave the CCM so it can “acquire and use” cluster munitions, the Lithuanian public broadcaster reported.

Ukrainian officials repeatedly have asked the United States for cluster munitions to defend against the Russian invasion. After finally agreeing, the Biden administration said the decision was not taken lightly. It assessed that the current monthly production of U.S. artillery rounds would not meet Ukraine’s needs. (See ACT, January/February 2023; October 2022).

“Ukraine is short on artillery, and being short on artillery, it is vulnerable to Russian counterattacks that could subjugate more Ukrainian civilians. That is the thinking behind our decision,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on July 7.

Kahl said that the cluster munitions delivered to Ukraine will consist only of those with a dud rate of less than 2.35 percent. “Compare that to Russia, which has been using cluster munitions across Ukraine with dud rates of between 30 and 40 percent,” he said.

But The New York Times reported that the cluster munitions sent to Ukraine are generally known to have a failure rate of 14 percent or more under real-world conditions. The newspaper identified the U.S. munitions as 155mm M864 weapons that can deliver 72 dual-purpose grenades to the target area.

During the first year of the war, Russia is estimated to have fired cluster munitions from a range of weapons, expending tens of millions of submunitions, or bomblets, across Ukraine. Ukraine also has used them to defend against Russia’s brutal assault, although far less often than Russia, according to Human Rights Watch.

Russia, Ukraine, and the United States have not joined the CCM, which prohibits states-parties from developing, producing, acquiring, using, transferring, or stockpiling cluster munitions, but 23 NATO members have.

Civil society groups condemned Washington’s decision to provide cluster munitions. “Beyond making the United States a global outlier, acting in contradiction to partner nations’ and NATO allies’ express ban on and statements against the transfer and use of these weapons could hurt the U.S. ability to forge and maintain coalitions that have been so crucial to supporting Ukraine, and undermines the United States’ ability to criticize other governments who use them. It would also harm efforts to promote other arms control agreements,” the U.S. Cluster Munitions Coalition said in a statement on July 7.

Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom reaffirmed support for the CCM. The U.S. cluster munitions transfer and other issues will be discussed Sept. 11-14 in Geneva during the 11th meeting of state-parties to the convention.

The United States transferred the weapons, which are banned in more than 100 countries, after Ukraine said they will be used against Russian forces, not in civilian-populated urban areas. 

 

Lawmakers Seek Overdue Justice for Nuclear Victims


September 2023
By Chris Rostampour

Renewed bipartisan efforts are underway to extend and expand a federal program that offers health care benefits and compensation to some victims of U.S. nuclear weapons production and testing.

Tina Cordova (L) and Laura Greenwood of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium demonstrate to call attention to the legacy of the U.S. nuclear testing program and urge federal medical and other compensation for those still suffering the disastrous effects of those tests. (Photo courtesy of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium)On July 27, a group of lawmakers led by U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) secured enough votes to advance legislation that would extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) for 19 years and expand its historical and geographical coverage.

The legislation, an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), passed the Senate by a 61-37 vote. It still must be approved by a House-Senate conference committee.

RECA originally passed Congress in 1990 with bipartisan support. It aims to provide compensation for some victims exposed to radiation during U.S. atmospheric nuclear testing and employees of the U.S. uranium mining industry. The program, which expires in 2024, has been revised multiple times, but several impacted communities and individuals suffering lingering health effects have never received recognition or assistance despite a decades-long struggle.

Communities that would be eligible for compensation for the first time include individuals in Missouri who were impacted by nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project and the Downwinders in New Mexico, who were affected by the 1945 Trinity Test. In addition, RECA would be amended to recognize new regions in Arizona, Colorado, Guam, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah among those affected by nuclear testing. Coverage also would be expanded to new categories of employees in the U.S. uranium mining industry, including former workers from 1971 to 1990.

Republicans and Democrats advocating for RECA’s expansion are working to keep the usual party politics of the NDAA process from scuttling the amendment.

Luján highlighted this collaboration on Aug. 9 as President Joe Biden visited Belen, N.M., as part of a tour of the U.S. Southwest.

“Mr. President, we’re fighting with everything that we have with members of the Senate and the House across the country in hopes that we can keep this in the National Defense Authorization Act and make sure that these families are seen and get the help that they deserve,” Luján said.

Biden responded that he is “prepared to help in terms of making sure that those folks are taken care of.”

The following day, Hawley issued a statement saying, “Compensating victims of government-caused nuclear contamination and negligence should not be a partisan issue. It’s about justice.”

According to the Justice Department, RECA since its inception has awarded more than $2.6 billion to more than 54,000 claimants.

For decades, advocates have tried to bring attention to the environmental and humanitarian impacts of U.S. nuclear tests, including 216 atmospheric tests at various sites around the country and in the U.S. territories in the Pacific Ocean.

New scientific research released in June revealed that the fallout from the U.S. atmospheric tests was significantly underestimated. The study, from Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, documented how 94 nuclear blasts in New Mexico and Nevada spewed radiation across the entire country and reached beyond the U.S. borders to Canada and Mexico.

Renewed bipartisan efforts are underway to expand a federal program offering health care and compensation to victims of U.S. nuclear weapons testing. 

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