Tom Z. Collina

NATO now has an “interim capability” for its U.S.-built missile interceptor system, the alliance announced at its May 20-21 summit in Chicago, but the future of NATO-Russian cooperation on missile defense remains uncertain.

The announcement of NATO’s capability, which is part of the so-called European Phased Adaptive Approach, was expected, as was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision not to attend the summit in protest. (See ACT, April 2012.) Russia had wanted the cooperation agreement to be worked out before NATO went ahead with the interceptor system.

When NATO leaders first endorsed U.S. missile interceptor plans for Europe in late 2010, NATO and Russia agreed to explore ways to cooperate on missile defenses. Since then, however, the two sides have been unable to agree on the specifics of that cooperation, with Moscow seeking binding assurances that the system would not undermine its security, which Washington refused to provide. Although there has been no agreement in this area, both sides say that the door to cooperation remains open.

According to a May 20 White House summary, “interim capability” means that, in a crisis, NATO could assume operational command of the U.S. missile interceptor system in Europe, currently composed of an Aegis-equipped ship with Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) IA interceptors in the Mediterranean Sea, an AN/TPY-2 radar in Turkey, and a command and control center in Germany.

The U.S. Department of Defense has been directed to transfer operational control of the radar to NATO, but SM-3-armed ships in the area would operate under NATO control only “when necessary,” the summary said. NATO designated its most senior military commander, U.S. Adm. James Stavridis, to oversee the missile defense mission, the White House said.

Future phases of the European system include increasingly capable SM-3 interceptor deployments at sea and on land in Romania (2015) and Poland (2018). The current interim capability would be followed by “initial operational capability” in 2015 and “full operational capability” in 2018, the White House said. Phase four of the system, including SM-3 IIB interceptors with some capability against long-range missiles, would be deployed in 2020.

“NATO will now have an operationally meaningful ballistic missile defense mission. It will be limited in the initial phase, but it will expand over time,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder said at a May 20 press briefing at the summit. “It will, as of today, provide real protection for parts of NATO Europe against ballistic missile attack,” he said. Daalder declined to specify which nations in southern Europe would be protected, explaining that “a wide variety of places” could be protected because “the ship can be moved.”

The next SM-3 interceptor to be deployed, the IB, hit its target in a May 10 test, according to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). Last September, the system failed in its first intercept test. This interceptor would be deployed on land in Romania by 2015 and on ships at sea.

Richard Lehner, an MDA spokesman, declined to say whether the test included countermeasures such as decoys that an enemy likely would use to try to overwhelm the defense. “We don’t divulge presence of countermeasures for any missile defense tests,” he told Reuters May 10.

Moscow’s Concerns

Russia has repeatedly expressed concern that the SM-3 IIB, which is supposed to be deployed in 2020 and is still on the drawing board, could fly fast enough to threaten its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) based in western Russia. At a May 3-4 missile defense conference in Moscow, Nikolai Makarov, chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, raised the possibility of delivering pre-emptive strikes against NATO missile defense systems if the alliance goes ahead with current plans. In addition, Russia tested a new ICBM on May 23 that the military said was designed to evade U.S. defenses.

In its declaration at the Chicago summit, NATO sought to reassure Russia by stating that “NATO missile defense is not directed against Russia and will not undermine Russia’s strategic deterrence capabilities.” The declaration said the allies regretted “recurrent Russian statements on possible measures directed against NATO’s missile defense system” and welcomed Russia’s willingness to continue dialogue “on the future framework for missile defense cooperation.”

In addition to the legally binding commitment that NATO missile interceptors would not be targeted at Russia, Moscow has been seeking limits on numbers, velocities, and deployment locations of SM-3 interceptors. In one of the Russian presentations at the Moscow conference, Col. Evgeny Ilyin said ship-based interceptors in the Baltic Sea or Norwegian Sea traveling at speeds greater than five kilometers per second would be “a real threat to the Russian deterrence capability.” Slower interceptors do not pose the same level of concern, Ilyin said.

House Pushes East Coast Site

Meanwhile, on May 18, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the fiscal year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, which would increase spending on the U.S. Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system by $460 million above the $903 million requested by the Department of Defense. Of that additional amount, the bill would authorize $100 million to study the deployment of missile interceptors on the U.S. East Coast by late 2015. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that this new project would cost $3.6 billion over five years.

Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), the chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee and the leading proponent of an East Coast site, based his position on a forthcoming report by the National Research Council, an independent advisory group to the U.S. government. However, a summary of the report states that the current West Coast interceptor system “has serious shortcomings” and would have to be completely redesigned, retested, and rebuilt before it could be installed on the East Coast, making the 2015 time frame appear unrealistic.

The main conclusions of the council’s report, called “Making Sense of Ballistic Missile Defense: An Assessment of Concepts and Systems for U.S. Boost-Phase Missile Defense in Comparison to Other Alternatives,” were made public in an April 30 letter from report co-chairs L. David Montague and Walter Slocombe to the chairman and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee.

The United States already has one site in Alaska and one in California, with a total of 30 deployed interceptors, to handle potential future attacks from Iran and North Korea. The GMD system has not had a successful intercept test since 2008, with two failures in 2010. Neither Iran nor North Korea has yet deployed long-range missiles that could reach the United States.

The Pentagon did not request funding for an East Coast site, and on May 10, the nation’s top military officer said there was no need for a third site. The current program “is adequate and sufficient to the task,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news briefing. “So I don’t see a need beyond what we’ve submitted in the last budget.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee, in preparing its version of the fiscal 2013 defense bill, did not authorize an East Coast site.

Oliver Meier

Leaders from NATO’s 28 countries, meeting at a May 20-21 summit in Chicago, adopted a report that confirms the basic tenets of the alliance’s nuclear posture and lays the groundwork for future confidence-building talks with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons.

It describes the contributions of nuclear and conventional forces as well as missile defenses and arms control and finds that nuclear weapons remain a “core component” of NATO’s deterrence and defense capabilities.

In 2009, Germany had triggered an extensive debate about the continued deployment of about 180 U.S. tactical nuclear weapons under NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey by promising to advocate withdrawal of U.S. weapons from Germany. (See ACT, December 2009.) At NATO’s Lisbon summit in November 2010, the allies launched the Deterrence and Defense Posture Review, primarily to resolve differences among them on the future role of nuclear weapons and to define the mix between NATO’s different defense capabilities. (See ACT, October 2011.) The seven-page document that the NATO heads of state and government formally adopted on May 20 is the result of that review.

The report finds that NATO’s “nuclear force posture currently meets the criteria for an effective deterrence and defence posture,” but the allies also pledge to “ensure that all components of NATO’s nuclear deterrent remain safe, secure, and effective for as long as NATO remains a nuclear alliance.”

A senior Polish official said in a May 23 interview that this statement “is related primarily to the replacement of aging delivery means,” a reference to nuclear-capable aircraft in Europe that are scheduled to go out of service this decade. The U.S. life extension program for B61 gravity bombs in Europe, which will lead to the deployment of newer and more capable nuclear weapons after 2019, “is of secondary importance in this regard,” he said.

The report calls on NATO members “to develop concepts for how to ensure the broadest possible participation of Allies concerned in their nuclear sharing arrangements, including in case NATO were to decide to reduce its reliance on non-strategic nuclear weapons based in Europe,” but a senior official from a western European country argued in a May 21 interview that this does not represent a significant departure from the existing perspective on nuclear sharing arrangements. That perspective is described in the 2010 Strategic Concept, which was adopted at the Lisbon summit.

A senior French diplomat said on May 22 that “France’s nuclear deterrent will not be directly affected by discussions on the possible reduction of tactical nuclear weapons but we still have to decide in which format such discussions could take place.” France does not commit any nuclear forces to NATO and does not participate in the alliance’s Nuclear Planning Group.

Those who had hoped that NATO’s renewed commitment to territorial missile defense might lead to a reduction of the role of nuclear weapons were disappointed. Ahead of the summit, newly elected French President François Hollande had made protection of the French nuclear deterrent a precondition of France’s support for missile defense. As a result, the posture review report states that “[m]issile defence can complement the role of nuclear weapons in deterrence; it cannot substitute for them.”

Arms Control Proposals

The report links changes in the alliance’s nuclear posture to Russia’s nuclear policy by stating that “NATO is prepared to consider further reducing its requirement for non-strategic nuclear weapons assigned to the Alliance in the context of reciprocal steps by Russia, taking into account the greater Russian stockpiles of non-strategic nuclear weapons stationed in the Euro-Atlantic area.”

Like NATO, Russia keeps the numbers and locations of tactical nuclear weapons secret, but is estimated to possess about 2,000 operational weapons.

In the report, NATO states that it wants “to develop and exchange transparency and confidence-building ideas with the Russian Federation in the NATO-Russia Council, with the goal of developing detailed proposals on and increasing mutual understanding of NATO’s and Russia’s non-strategic nuclear force postures in Europe.”

The western European official said that “NATO would like to enter into a dialogue with Moscow on this issue as quickly as possible,” but conceded that “realistically we might have to wait until after the U.S. elections. In the meantime, allies should try to elaborate the package of proposals they would like to bring to the table.”

The allies agreed to establish a new committee “as a consultative and advisory forum” on arms control issues, whose name and mandate will be decided by the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s highest decision-making body.

The Polish official predicted that the new arms control committee, which replaces the Weapons of Mass Destruction Control and Disarmament Committee set up in Lisbon, “will try to build its own identity and expand its role, including a general discussion of what role NATO can play in arms control and disarmament.”

The French diplomat, however, argued that the “added value” of the new committee is “to define the conditions for reciprocity of nuclear reductions.” He added, “We do not see a role for this committee in addressing the alliance’s nuclear posture or declaratory policy.”

Confusion on Nuclear Doctrine

Repeating language from NATO’s Strategic Concept, the report states that “the circumstances in which any use of nuclear weapons might have to be contemplated are extremely remote.”

Yet, in the report the allies attempted to reflect recent changes in the nuclear doctrines of the United Kingdom and the United States. Both countries pledged in 2010 not to use or threaten to use their nuclear weapons against members of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that comply with their nonproliferation obligations, although the specific conditions of these negative security assurances differ slightly between the two countries.

The western European official said that “agreement on declaratory policy was among the most difficult issues” in drafting the report. In the end, allies merely “acknowledge” the “independent and unilateral negative security assurances offered by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.”

The French diplomat said that “the agreement in the [report] was a useful step because NATO now recognizes the value of national security guarantees.”

Because France does not assign any of its nuclear weapons to the alliance, NATO’s nuclear planners draw only on British and U.S. nuclear weapons. The posture review report notes that “the states that have assigned nuclear weapons to NATO apply to these weapons the assurances they have each offered on a national basis, including the separate conditions each state has attached to these assurances.”

Most officials described the impact of these statements on NATO’s nuclear policy as marginal at best. In contrast, during a May 22 conference call with reporters, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder called it “a very significant step” that “the U.S. policy as enunciated in the [2010] Nuclear Posture Review is now recognized by NATO as applying to U.S. nuclear weapons deployed in Europe.”

The western European official predicted that discussions on declaratory policy “will be off the table for the time being” even though the United States and some European allies were willing to go further on negative security assurances. An Italian diplomat in a May 22 interview said Italy was “open to a discussion on a declaratory policy specifically addressed to the nuclear forces assigned to NATO.”

What Next?

Official and independent assessments of the posture review report differ markedly. The French diplomat said it “is the best possible agreement, nobody had to cross any redlines, and the fundamentals of nuclear deterrence, as defined in NATO’s Strategic Concept, remained untouched.” By contrast, former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), the co-chairman of the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative, argued in a May 21 statement that the report indicates “little progress in defining a clear strategy for changing the nuclear status quo and deserves, at best, a grade of ‘incomplete’.”

The Italian diplomat said that Rome is happy with the outcome because it “sets the stage for further debates on NATO‘s reliance on non-strategic nuclear weapons.” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, in a May 22 interview with Deutsche Welle, described the posture review report as “remarkable” because, “for the first time a security alliance like NATO has made disarmament a constituent part of its own strategy.” Daalder said the report represents “major progress” because “we now have an alliance firmly on record as wanting to reduce the reliance on nuclear weapons, wanting to find ways to shift the focus to other means of deterrence and defense and to do so on a consultative and reciprocal basis.”

Kelsey Davenport

A deal allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to pursue its investigation into the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program could be signed “quite soon,” IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said May 22.

Amano flew to Tehran on May 21 to continue negotiations with Iranian officials on a framework agreement for resolving the outstanding concerns raised by the agency in a November 2011 report to the IAEA Board of Governors. An annex to the report listed the agency’s suspicions over Iran’s suspected warhead development program. (See ACT, December 2011.) The board requested that the IAEA and Iran “intensify their dialogue” to clarify the “unresolved issues.”

During the visit, Amano met with several high-ranking officials, including Saeed Jalili, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator. Jalili characterized his meeting with Amano as “very good” and said that Iran and the IAEA would have “good cooperation in the future.”

Although Amano conceded that “some differences” remained, he said there was an “important development on the structured approach document” that the two parties had been negotiating. Neither Amano nor Jalili elaborated on the differences that remained to be negotiated or when the agreement was expected to be completed, but in a May 25 IAEA report on the status of Iran’s nuclear program, Amano invited Iran to “expedite final agreement on the structured approach.”

U.S. Department of State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on May 22 that the United States supports Amano’s efforts to resolve the IAEA’s areas of concern, but said Washington would be looking for “implementation” and for steps by Iran to “truly follow through and provide access” to agency inspectors.

Amano’s announcement that the IAEA and Iran were close to reaching an agreement came the day before Iran resumed talks on May 23 in Baghdad with the so-called P5+1, which includes the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany.

The IAEA and Iran have met on three previous occasions this year to discuss an agreement to allow further agency investigations into the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program. The most recent meeting was held May 14-15 in Vienna between Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, and IAEA Deputy Director-General Herman Nackaerts. Progress at the Vienna meeting is believed to have spurred Amano’s short-notice visit to Tehran. Before leaving Vienna, he said it was the “right time to reach agreement.” This was Amano’s first visit to the country since assuming the IAEA’s top position in 2009.

One of the areas of disagreement prior to Amano’s visit to Tehran was the IAEA’s request to inspect a building at the Parchin military complex where the agency was concerned that high-explosives tests may have been conducted. The IAEA asked to inspect the facility during visits to Iran in January and February of this year, but Iranian officials denied the requests. Tehran stated that a framework agreement must be in place before the IAEA conducts any visits to the site.

In the annex to the November 2011 report, the IAEA revealed that it obtained information that Iran had built a “large explosives containment vessel, or chamber” and installed it at Parchin in 2000. Such a chamber could be used for testing the explosives necessary to detonate a nuclear device. In the original work plan that the IAEA submitted to Iran on Feb. 20, Parchin topped the list of concerns that Tehran needed to address.

In the May 25 report, the IAEA indicated that it had obtained additional information on Parchin that “further corroborates” the evidence on explosive testing presented in the 2011 annex.

Tehran allowed the IAEA to visit Parchin twice in 2005, but the agency did not inspect the building that houses the chamber in question. Amano said that the agency’s interest in visiting Parchin was discussed in Tehran and would be addressed in the agreement, but he provided no specifics.

Although an agreement may be near, agency officials have expressed concern over the past several months that Tehran may be attempting to clean up evidence that could indicate the existence of a nuclear weapons program. Iranian officials dismissed the initial allegations that any such efforts were underway. In its May report, the IAEA formally documented its position. The agency said that, using satellite imagery, it had observed “extensive activities” around the areas to which it had requested access. The IAEA had not observed any such activities, which could interfere with “effective verification,” for a “number of years,” the report said.