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"The Arms Control Association’s work is an important resource to legislators and policymakers when contemplating a new policy direction or decision."

– General John Shalikashvili
former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
April 2002
Edition Date: 
Monday, April 1, 2002

India Integrating Agni-2 Into Armed Forces

Alex Wagner

India’s medium-range, nuclear-capable Agni-2 ballistic missile has entered full-scale production and is being integrated into the Indian armed forces, according to a letter by Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes dated March 14. It is not known whether the missile has been outfitted with a nuclear warhead.

In a written reply to a query posed by a member of the Indian parliament, Fernandes confirmed that the missile, most recently tested in January 2001, had “entered [the] production phase and is currently under induction.” After last year’s test, the Indian Defense Ministry stated that the missile had reached its “final operational configuration.” (See ACT, March 2001.)

Although Indian officials had stated after the January 2001 test that the missile would be introduced into the Indian arsenal later that year, the Defense Ministry later amended that estimate, noting that the planned “induction” would occur during 2001 or 2002.

The road-mobile, two-stage, solid-fueled Agni-2 is New Delhi’s most advanced missile system. It is capable of delivering a 1,000-kilogram payload more than 2,000 kilometers, allowing it to reach targets throughout Pakistan and much of western China.

India’s most recent missile test occurred in January 2002, when it tested a short-range variant of the Agni-1 missile. (See ACT, March 2002.)

Bush Challenges North Korean Adherence to Nuclear Freeze

Alex Wagner

For the first time since North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear program in 1994, the White House indicated March 20 that it would not certify to Congress that Pyongyang is abiding by the terms of the deal, citing its resistance to open itself up fully to international weapons inspections.

Under the 1994 nuclear accord, known as the Agreed Framework, Pyongyang agreed to freeze and ultimately dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for two civilian nuclear power reactors. U.S. law requires the president to certify each year that North Korea is fully complying with the Agreed Framework before Congress can fund implementation of the accord, which obligates the United States to provide North Korea with 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil annually, pending completion of the first nuclear plant.

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said that President George W. Bush had accepted a State Department recommendation not to certify North Korean compliance, an action that would cut off U.S. funding for the deal. However, Fleischer also announced that Bush planned to waive the certification requirement, a step the president can take in the interest of U.S. national security, to maintain Washington’s support for the deal.

Fleischer called the move “a strong message to North Korea that they need to comply with their international obligations and agreements” although he acknowledged that “as a result of the waiver,” the administration’s action will not affect implementation of the Agreed Framework.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher emphasized that not certifying North Korea’s compliance was not tantamount to accusing Pyongyang of violating the deal. At a March 20 briefing, he said that the State Department’s recommendation was based on concerns that there was insufficient information about the status of the nuclear freeze and on Pyongyang’s resistance to permit comprehensive inspections. Boucher said that “the goal of this process…is to encourage North Korea to begin full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], as is required under the Agreed Framework.”

The framework commits North Korea to grant IAEA inspectors the right to visit any suspected nuclear-related site so that the agency can fully account for how much nuclear material Pyongyang produced before 1994 and determine whether it is hiding any such material today. However, North Korea is not required to provide such access until “a significant portion” of the first of the two nuclear reactors promised in the Agreed Framework has been completed—a milestone the United States acknowledges has not yet been reached.

Administration officials maintain that Pyongyang needs to allow inspections now because “a significant portion” of the first reactor is expected to be completed in 2005 and the IAEA needs three to four years to complete its accounting of North Korea’s past nuclear activities. North Korea has resisted because it doubts the Bush administration’s commitment to implementing its obligations under the framework, citing the rhetoric of long-time congressional and administration critics of the deal. Washington’s latest action is not likely to ameliorate Pyongyang’s concerns.

Certification of North Korean compliance with the Agreed Framework is only one requirement in the 2002 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, which provides funding for the deal. The law also requires that Pyongyang continue implementing the 1991 North-South Joint Declaration on Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula—to which the United States is not a party—and that the United States make “significant progress” on eliminating North Korea’s indigenous missile program and missile exports.

According to the State Department, Pyongyang has not satisfied these conditions either, although the latter appears to require U.S., not North Korean, action.

Although North Korea has continued its daily denouncements of U.S. nuclear policy and the Bush administration, it has yet to respond specifically to Bush’s decision not to certify its compliance with the Agreed Framework.

Bush Endorses Legally Binding Nuclear Arms Deal With Russia

April 2002

By Philipp C. Bleek

In the administration’s highest-level statement of support to date for a legally binding pact on strategic reductions, President George W. Bush said March 13 that he expects to sign an agreement that will “codify” nuclear cuts in May, when he is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Speaking at a White House press conference, Bush said he agreed with his Russian counterpart that “there needs to be a document that outlives both of us.” Administration officials indicated in February that two types of agreement, a treaty and an executive-legislative agreement, are under consideration, and Bush said that what form the pact takes remains under discussion.

In his press conference, Bush also repeatedly emphasized verification, calling it “the most important thing” in any prospective agreement. Bush indicated that the two sides still need to “develop and fully explore...how best to verify what’s taking place, to make sure there’s confidence in both countries.”

In announcing last November that he would cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 deployed strategic warheads, Bush said that a formal arms control pact with Russia was unnecessary. But the administration’s stance has shifted over the past several months, and the president’s recent statement echoes the calls for a binding agreement first made by Secretary of State Colin Powell in February. (See ACT, March 2002.)

Recently, U.S. legislators have also become more insistent on playing a role in any process that significantly alters the deployment of U.S. nuclear forces. In a March 15 letter to Powell, Senators Joseph Biden (D-DE), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Jesse Helms (R-NC), the committee’s ranking member, argued that there is “no constitutional alternative” to a treaty.

Observing that “with the exception of the SALT I agreement, every significant arms control agreement during the past three decades has been transmitted to the Senate” as a treaty, the lawmakers insisted on their constitutional prerogative to provide advice and consent. The senators also indicated that they “expect close consultation…as negotiations with Russia proceed.”

Differences Remain

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, who is leading a delegation in the ongoing negotiations with Moscow, said in a March 22 press conference that “a number of outstanding issues” have been dealt with but that there are still “a number of issues to resolve.” The undersecretary expressed optimism about reaching agreement in time for the May summit.

Bolton said that the United States and Russia have yet to agree on the manner in which warheads will be counted or on whether warheads removed from service must be dismantled. According to Bolton, there is not yet “complete congruence” on the issue of destroying downloaded warheads, but “the parties have reached an understanding that in order to reach agreement by the summit in May, we have to focus on…operationally deployed warheads.”

According to a Defense Department official, the United States is seeking to maintain a “responsive force” that would allow as many as 2,400 reserve nuclear warheads to be redeployed within three years to augment its planned operational force of 1,700-2,200 warheads.

Russia has long insisted that warheads removed from operation should be destroyed. Hinting that Moscow may be softening that stance, however, Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov said in a March 17 television interview that the issue of storing some nondeployed warheads was “negotiable” and that the key criterion was maintaining “strategic stability.”

Bolton also indicated that, in addition to a standard clause included in most arms control accords that would allow either party to withdraw from the agreement with six months’ notice, the administration is proposing a mechanism that would allow it to exceed the agreement’s numerical limits “without actually withdrawing from the treaty” if warranted by “international geostrategic circumstances.”

Bush Endorses Legally Binding Nuclear Arms Deal With Russia

Nuclear Terrorism and Warhead Control in Russia

Tom Z. Collina and Jon B. Wolfsthal

Since September 11, there has been unprecedented concern that the next terrorist attack against the United States could involve a nuclear weapon or radiological bomb. To respond to these threats, the Bush administration has placed radiation sensors at U.S. borders and put elite Delta Force commandos on high alert to seize control of nuclear materials. According to The Washington Post, after an October briefing on al Qaeda’s nuclear ambitions by CIA Director George Tenet, President George W. Bush “ordered his national security team to give nuclear terrorism priority over every other threat to the United States.”1

The most likely source from which terrorists might acquire nuclear material or a complete warhead is Russia, which possesses a vast nuclear complex containing hundreds of tons of fissile material (plutonium and highly enriched uranium) protected by inadequate or nonexistent security. In January 2001, a bipartisan commission chaired by Howard Baker, former Senate Republican majority leader, and Lloyd Cutler, former Clinton White House counsel, found that “[t]he most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation states and used against American troops abroad and citizens at home.”2

More recently, in February 2002 the U.S. intelligence community confirmed to Congress that “weapons-grade and weapons-usable nuclear materials have been stolen from some Russian institutes. We assess that undetected smuggling has occurred, although we do not know the extent or magnitude of such thefts.”3 According to Viktor Yerastov, who heads the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy’s Nuclear Materials Accounting and Control Department, “quite sufficient material to produce an atomic bomb” was stolen from the Chelyabinsk region in 1998.4 Commenting on that theft to The Washington Post, a U.S. official said that, “given the known and suspected capabilities of the Russian mafia, it’s perfectly plausible that al Qaeda would have access to such material.”5

Bush administration officials are fond of saying that, because the United States and Russia are no longer enemies, the size of the Russian nuclear arsenal no longer matters to U.S. security. But that sentiment—even if accepted at face value—completely ignores that the main risk posed by Russia is not from a deliberate nuclear attack but from the possible leakage of its nuclear weapons or material to would-be nuclear states or terrorist groups.

To address this highest priority threat properly, one would expect that U.S. policy toward Russia would place concerns about securing Russian nuclear weapons and materials above all others. But recent information about U.S. nuclear policy indicates that this is not the case. In fact, the Bush administration’s nuclear posture review exacerbates the threat of nuclear proliferation by encouraging Russia to maintain a large reserve of nuclear warheads and an artificially large nuclear complex. Given the weak security provided to Russia’s nuclear infrastructure—and the fact that terrorists are known to be targeting it—U.S. policy should instead aim to place Russian nuclear warheads and materials under adequate multilateral control and on the fast track to secure storage and elimination.

To do so, the Bush administration will need to abandon the idea of storing, for potential future use, the thousands of warheads to be removed from strategic launchers over the next decade. There is no compelling justification for a reserve of this size. Instead, Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin should agree at their May summit to eliminate excess nuclear warheads under strict verification and task their governments to negotiate by 2003 a binding agreement to that effect.

The Shell Game

Last November, President Bush announced that the United States would reduce its strategic operational nuclear forces from roughly 6,000 warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012. At the time, President Putin indicated that Russia would try to “respond in kind,” and he later said that Russia would reduce its nuclear forces to between 1,500 and 2,200 deployed strategic warheads. Although neither START I nor START II had called for the destruction of warheads, Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin had agreed in 1997 that a future strategic reduction agreement would address warhead dismantlement. It was therefore hoped that the Bush administration would pursue that goal with the aim of making the cuts as difficult to reverse as possible.

But the Bush administration wants the option to keep the roughly 4,000 warheads to be removed from land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers, as well as the delivery vehicles themselves (START I and II called for the dismantling of delivery vehicles). The Pentagon wants to store most of these warheads, including a “responsive force” of roughly 2,400 that it would be able to redeploy within weeks, months, or years. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 14, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith said that the United States “must retain these weapons to give [it] a responsive capability to adjust the number of operationally deployed nuclear weapons, should the international security environment change and warrant such action.”

This stance has raised major objections from Russian officials, especially within the Ministry of Defense. The U.S. flexibility preserved by the responsive force, they argue, provides no long-term confidence in the permanence of the arms reduction process and could undercut international nonproliferation efforts, which are predicated on the nuclear-weapon states’ commitment to an “unequivocal undertaking…to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”6 Igor Sergeyev, Putin’s military adviser, said February 19 that “real and irreversible liquidation of nuclear weapons will show the world community how reliable and serious the course for nuclear disarmament is.”7

The difference between the U.S. and Russian positions is that Moscow sees ongoing nuclear reductions as part of a binding process that provides confidence in the other side’s current and future capabilities. Washington, however, sees the new process of strategic reductions as the antithesis of traditional arms control—above all else, constraints are to be avoided and flexibility preserved. Speaking in Geneva March 22, John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said that the administration hoped to include a provision in any strategic agreement with Russian that would allow it to exceed the pact’s numerical limits without withdrawing if “international geostrategic circumstances” changed. The administration’s plan is, essentially, to move warheads from one place to another, with no guarantee that they will not be moved back.

The catch is that, if the United States keeps thousands of warheads in storage, Russia is likely to do the same, and Russia does not have security stringent enough to adequately control stored nuclear warheads and fissile material. The proliferation risk to the United States could thus increase because of its intention to maintain a responsive force. As Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in the February 14 hearing, “By failing to destroy nuclear warheads, the [Bush administration] would increase the threat of proliferation at the very time when the al Qaeda terrorist network is known to be pursuing nuclear weapons.”

Russian Complex Less Than Secure

The number of strategic nuclear weapons that Russia deploys will dramatically decline over the course of this decade regardless of whether an agreement is reached with the United States. Most of Russia’s missiles and submarines will reach the end of their service lives by 2007. Projections show that Russia could deploy as few as 300 missiles and perhaps 20 strategic bombers by the end of the decade, with no more than 1,350 strategic nuclear warheads.8 This means that about 3,500 warheads in Russia, containing roughly 84 metric tons of fissile material, will be removed from deployment over the next decade.9 The question from a nonproliferation standpoint is, what will happen to Russia’s warheads and fissile material?

Russia’s nuclear reductions to date have been supported by U.S.-funded cooperative threat reduction programs designed to secure warheads and fissile materials, as well as to downsize Russia’s nuclear complex and thereby reduce its ability to reconstitute its nuclear arsenal. These programs are needed because, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has been unable to fully account for or physically protect its nuclear material, creating an enormous proliferation risk.

Overall, these programs have made significant progress in securing Russian nuclear materials and establishing a set of incentives and facilities to ensure that Russian warheads are securely stored and dismantled and their nuclear materials eliminated. Despite these improvements, significant risks remain—risks that could be dramatically magnified if the United States chooses to store its warheads. Russia could respond with a decision to store rather than dismantle its warheads, maintain rather than dispose of its fissile material, and continue to operate rather than shut down its warhead-remanufacture plants.

Warheads

The risk of a complete nuclear device falling into the hands of terrorists or a would-be nuclear-weapon state is a nightmare scenario, but because of gaps in Russian warhead security, it is a possibility. According to the U.S. intelligence community, the Russian warhead-security system “was designed in the Soviet era to protect weapons primarily against a threat from outside the country and may not be sufficient to meet today’s challenge of a knowledgeable insider collaborating with a criminal or terrorist group.”10

Colonel-General Igor Valynkin, head of the military organization responsible for warhead storage in Russia, announced in October 2001 that security had been heightened earlier in the year after “Russian authorities had twice thwarted terrorist efforts to reconnoiter nuclear weapons storage sites,” according to the U.S. National Intelligence Council.11 Although the terrorists did not succeed in entering the storage sites, according to Valynkin, the fact that they tried is cause for alarm.

Moreover, according to U.S. intelligence, Russia’s warhead-security forces have suffered from wage arrears and shortages of food and housing. In 1997, one nuclear weapons storage site was closed due to hunger strikes by the workers. Although wages are now paid regularly, they rarely exceed $70 per month and it is difficult for spouses to earn second incomes because storage sites are usually isolated from cities. Acknowledging the potential vulnerability of its nuclear security personnel, Valynkin has said that “the greatest problem is the person who works with nuclear warheads. He knows the secrets, he has the access, he knows the security system.”12

The United States has been helping secure Russian warhead transportation and storage sites, as well as develop a modern accounting and warhead-tracking system. Fences, alarm systems, and response kits have been provided for 123 nuclear weapon storage sites, and cooperation with the Russian navy to secure warheads is ongoing. These efforts, however, are still in process and have not yet resulted in a secure system for storing Russian nuclear warheads. More than half of Russian warhead storage facilities may still lack basic modern security features, and the accounting and tracking systems are still in the early stages of deployment.

Fissile Material

Russia has produced the world’s largest stockpile of weapons-usable plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU), and security is worse for loose fissile material than it is for warheads. U.S. intelligence reports that “Russian facilities housing weapons-usable nuclear material…typically receive low funding, lack trained security personnel, and do not have sufficient equipment for securely storing such material.”13

These direct-use nuclear materials are stored in hundreds of buildings at dozens of facilities across the country, and as noted above, Russian institutes have lost weapons-grade nuclear materials in thefts. The United States has been engaged in efforts to provide quick security upgrades at all 53 facilities known to contain nuclear material, but the Energy Department estimates that even the most basic security upgrades will not be in place until 2006. Even when completed, these improvements will not meet the highest international standards for physical protection and accounting.

This bad situation will only be made worse as Russian warheads are retired and dismantled unless the system of security improves more rapidly and room is made within secure storage sites. The Bush administration, to its credit, is working to accelerate security upgrades and has proposed funding levels for 2003 well above its initial budget requests. However, it must be recognized that the only viable long-term solution to the risks presented by the Russian complex is the permanent disposal of excess nuclear materials.

For example, the United States and Russia are nearing completion of the Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility. The facility—due to open this year—was built to store nuclear materials from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons and required substantial political and financial investments from the United States. Up to 66 metric tons or 25,000 containers of nuclear material can be stored on-site, and a second, equally large facility is under consideration. To ensure that the materials will not be reused in weapons, however, the facility is not permitted to accept materials unless they are slated for elimination and placed under international inspection. If Russia wants to maintain fissile material for future weapons production, it cannot be stored at Mayak and will have to be kept in a far less secure location.

Warhead Remanufacture

Russia’s warhead maintenance poses other challenges for its security complex. Russian warheads were designed to be routinely remanufactured, and unlike the United States, Russia cannot store its active warheads indefinitely. Instead, the plutonium must be removed from these weapons and shipped to purification sites for later reuse. Thus, if Russia responds to U.S. policies by maintaining a large number of warheads in reserve, the result will be a greater amount of nuclear material in various stages of processing and in transport—the two most vulnerable points of the weapons complex to theft and diversion.

Furthermore, Moscow currently plans to close two of its four warhead production sites—Sarov, Seversk, Trekgornyy, and Zarechnyy—but concerns over the reversibility of U.S. reductions may lead Russia to keep these facilities open longer than currently planned. The warhead production facilities, which possess tens of tons of weapons-usable fissile material, remain one of the least secure elements of Russia’s nuclear complex because Russia has been hesitant to allow U.S. security upgrades at such secret facilities. Progress is being made, but it will take years before security at these sites meets even the most basic standards.

The cooperative threat reduction assistance provided by the United States was never intended to create permanent solutions—only to mitigate the risks of nuclear assets being stolen while the nuclear dismantlement process went forward. Nevertheless, the current strains on Russia’s nuclear weapons and material-storage complex are enormous, and glaring gaps in security remain. To avoid exacerbating an already dangerous situation, the coming glut of nuclear weapons and materials from retired Russian weapons systems must be moved quickly and securely through the dismantlement and disposition process. Prolonged storage of either warheads or fissile materials is simply not an acceptable long-term outcome.

Reserve Overkill

The United States has to make a choice between maintaining nuclear flexibility and ensuring the secure storage and elimination of Russian warheads. This should be an easy decision because, in addition to exacerbating proliferation dangers, a large nuclear reserve force provides no benefits for U.S. security.
The Bush administration plans to retain up to 2,200 deployed operational strategic warheads by 2012. This is more than the nuclear arsenals of China, France, the United Kingdom, India, and Pakistan combined. It is more than enough to deter any conceivable adversary. China’s nuclear force will pale in comparison to America’s, even if Beijing eventually deploys 100 warheads on long-range missiles, as projected by U.S. intelligence. The so-called axis of evil (North Korea, Iran, Iraq) could acquire at most a handful of nuclear weapons over the next decade, if any.14 Even Russia would be deterred by 2,200 warheads, but according to the Bush administration the size of Russia’s nuclear arsenal is no longer driving the U.S. force posture.

In his February 14 Senate testimony, Feith said a large reserve force would hedge against unforeseen threats and could, if necessary, make up for an imbalance in U.S. and Russian warhead production capacity. According to Feith, Russia can dismantle its warheads with little risk because it can quickly produce large numbers of new warheads if needed. But, says Feith, “the United States today is the only nuclear weapon state that cannot remanufacture replacements or produce new nuclear weapons,” and until it can, the United States must depend on stored weapons.

Aside from the fact that this rationale contradicts the Bush administration’s position that the U.S. arsenal is no longer sized to counter the Russian threat, Feith’s statements about U.S. capabilities are misleading. It is true that since 1989 the United States has not operated large-scale facilities that can produce new nuclear weapon cores, known as plutonium “pits.” But other warhead parts can still be produced at other sites in the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex. Moreover, U.S. plutonium pits can last significantly longer than those in Russia—perhaps 50 years or more.15 Thus, if the oldest warheads in the U.S. arsenal are now approaching 25 years in age (such as the W76 warhead on the Trident missile, the W78 warhead on the Minuteman III missile, and the B61 bomb), their pits should last at least another 25 years.

Furthermore, according to John Gordon, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Department of Energy still maintains the capacity to build 20 pits per year, with a surge capacity of 50 per year, and plans to produce new pits for the arsenal in about seven years. In addition, the Energy Department should have a modern pit plant built in about 15 years. Thus, the United States could produce new pits well before there is a “pit crisis.” The $5 billion stockpile stewardship program to certify the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons without testing is in place to detect any potential problems. And in the event that new pits are needed in an emergency, there are thousands of pits already in storage that could be reused.

A case can be made for keeping a limited number of warheads in reserve for reliability testing and to replace parts that are found to be defective. No reasonable justification, however, exists for keeping a reserve as large as that envisioned by the Pentagon. Moreover, there is no need to have any of these warheads in the “responsive force” (i.e., ready for rapid redeployment).

It is true that Russia continues to produce warheads, but it currently does so to replace older warheads, not to increase its stockpile. Moreover, the size of Russia’s offensive force is constrained because most of its missiles are nearing retirement. But if the Bush administration is truly worried about Russia’s warhead production capability, then it should work to reduce the size of Russia’s production complex and negotiate a cap on the number of warheads that Russia could produce in a year or agree to limit strategic nuclear delivery vehicles. However, because the administration claims that it is not sizing the U.S. arsenal to the Russian force and that Russia is our friend, it is not clear why this should be an issue.

A Better Way

The declining number of strategic weapons Russia deploys means that its nuclear complex is going to be further stressed in the coming years regardless of the U.S. decision to store its warheads, but a requirement to store and maintain—as opposed to dismantle and dispose of—its nuclear weapons would multiply this stress and increase the risk of proliferation. If, however, the United States were to give up its requirement for a massive reserve, it would allow Russia to do the same and free both sides to place a high priority on securely storing and eliminating Russian nuclear warheads and fissile material.

The answer to the warhead security problem is not, as some have suggested, to leave Russia’s warheads on its missiles. Although Moscow does appear to have better control over its deployed arsenal, it is clearly to the benefit of U.S. national security to have fewer warheads aimed at the United States and its allies. This is especially true given Russia’s deteriorating early-warning system and the danger that a false attack warning could lead to an erroneous Russian “retaliation.” The fewer warheads aimed at U.S. soil and the lower the alert status of these weapons, the better.

Nevertheless, we must be mindful of where these warheads go, lest they create new dangers. Instead of heaping additional security burdens on a Russian complex not up to its current task, the United States and Russia should expand cooperation to include a process to track the retired warheads and fissile material carefully from cradle to grave, while continuing to improve the immediate security situation. The fact that warheads must pass through various processes on the path to elimination does increase the near-term risk that fissile material could be diverted. U.S. security assistance and joint monitoring will reduce this risk, but verified nuclear warhead and material elimination is the only long-term solution to the problem of fissile material theft.

Much cooperative research has been conducted between U.S. and Russian experts on ways to monitor warhead elimination without revealing classified information. At the 1997 U.S.-Russian summit in Helsinki, Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin agreed that START III would include “[m]easures relating to the transparency of strategic nuclear warhead inventories and the destruction of strategic nuclear warheads and any other jointly agreed technical and organizational measures, to promote the irreversibility of deep reductions including prevention of a rapid increase in the number of warheads.” Presidents Bush and Putin should commit both countries to a binding agreement to eliminate warheads removed from deployment under an effective “chain of custody” from deployment to disposal.

This process would start with both sides formally declaring that the warheads will be removed and promising that they will not be returned to military service, thus starting a one-way trip to disposal. These warheads would ideally be placed directly into containers that would be “tagged” with unique seals at the deployment site as warheads are removed from missiles and bombers under joint monitoring. These tagged warheads could then be checked periodically during transit to secure storage sites in both countries. Warheads could be stored in existing or new facilities under joint or international monitoring.

Next, Russian warheads would be sent to one of Russia’s dismantlement plants which could be retooled to allow for greater transparency, while protecting warhead design secrets. Once a warhead is disassembled, the plutonium and HEU parts would need to be changed into unclassified shapes. The recast plutonium would be sent to the Mayak facility to await disposition. The HEU could be stored either at Mayak or at warhead dismantlement sites under monitoring. Nuclear components would be periodically checked during these transitions.

Finally, the fissile material must be disposed of or otherwise made unusable in weapons. For example, the United States is already purchasing 500 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium for use as civilian power-reactor fuel, and this amount should be increased as more material is released from warheads. Russia and the United States have also agreed to each eliminate 34 metric tons of excess plutonium by irradiation or immobilization. This agreement could also be expanded to accept the future addition of excess materials as arms reductions continue.

The key benefit to this chain-of-custody approach is that international inspectors, in addition to national monitors, could be involved every step of the way. In theory, the United States could have as much access over the process as it is willing to give the Russians over its elimination process.

Conclusion

For Russia to give the United States such access to its retired warheads, Moscow will want a reciprocal role in the U.S. system. This means that the Bush administration would have to agree to eliminate its non-deployed warheads under effective monitoring. When one compares the probability of nuclear warhead and material theft in Russia to the probability that the United States will need to double the size of its arsenal in the future, the choice is easy.

The Bush administration has made nuclear proliferation a top rhetorical priority. It now needs to ensure that this priority permeates all aspects of its efforts to improve U.S. national security. The improving nature of the U.S.-Russian relationship should expand to include effective, transparent, and reciprocal steps to ensure the safety and security of nuclear weapons as they wind their way toward eventual and permanent elimination.


NOTES
1. Barton Gellman, “Fears Prompt U.S. to Beef Up Nuclear Terror Detection,” The Washington Post, March 3, 2002, p. 1.
2. U.S. Department of Energy, Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, A Report Card on the Department of Energy’s Non-Proliferation Programs with Russia, January 10, 2001.
3. National Intelligence Council, Annual Report to Congress on the Safety and Security of Russian Nuclear Facilities and Military Forces, February 2002, p. 2.
4. Ibid.
5. Gellman, “Fears Prompt U.S. to Beef Up Nuclear Terror Detection,” p. 1.
6. Final document of the 2000 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference.
7. Sharon LaFraniere, “U.S., Russia Divided Over Iran After Talks,” The Washington Post, February 20, 2002, p. 12.
8. This projection assumes 200 SS-27s with three warheads each, seven Delta IV submarines with 112 SS-N-23 missiles with four warheads each, and 10 Bear and 10 Blackjack bombers with eight warheads apiece. See Jon Brook Wolfsthal, et al., Nuclear Status Report: Nuclear Weapons, Fissile Material, and Export Control in the Former Soviet Union, (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001), p. 35.
9. 3,500 x (4 kilograms plutonium + 20 kilograms highly enriched uranium) = 84 metric tons
10. National Intelligence Council, Annual Report to Congress, p. 2.
11. Ibid., p. 6.
12. Ibid., p. 7.
13. Ibid., p. 2.
14. Central Intelligence Agency, Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat Through 2015: Unclassified Summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, January 2002.
15. For example, the W89 warhead for the SRAM-II missile (cancelled by President George H. W. Bush in 1991) was designed to use pits from retired W68 Poseidon warheads. These pits were then at least 18 years old. Assuming the W89 was expected to have an average lifetime, the pits can be estimated to last about 50 years.


Tom Z. Collina is director of the Global Security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Jon B. Wolfsthal is an associate at the Non-Proliferation Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

 

UN Talks With Iraq Fail to Yield Progress on Weapons Inspections

Alex Wagner

Marking his first high-level discussions with Baghdad since May 2001, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with Iraqi representatives March 7 in New York but was unable to persuade them to permit the return of international weapons inspectors.

Although the talks produced no progress on Iraq’s refusal to readmit inspectors, in violation of Security Council resolutions and the terms of the 1991 Persian Gulf War cease-fire, Annan remained positive, calling the talks “a good start.” Speaking after briefing the Security Council March 8, Annan said he had continued to demand no conditions on inspections and unimpeded access to suspected Iraqi weapons sites.

After the March 7 meeting, Annan’s spokesman, Fred Ekhart, described the dialogue as “frank and useful.” According to another UN official, the “cordial” atmosphere of the talks was decidedly different than previous discussions, due largely to the personal style of Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, who led the Iraqi delegation. The official said that, although Sabri did not accept the terms of UN Resolution 1284, he did not reject them either.

Resolution 1284, passed in December 1999, created the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and charged it with completing Iraq’s disarmament. UNMOVIC succeeded the now-defunct UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), which was withdrawn from Iraq in late 1998 prior to U.S.-led air strikes.

Although apparently willing to allow some sort of inspections to resume, Iraq has reportedly demanded prenotification of inspection times and sites, as well as a predetermined timetable for how long inspections can continue—conditions that the United States considers unacceptable.

Perhaps most noteworthy about the dialogue was the willingness of the Iraqi delegation, which included Baghdad’s international weapons inspection liaison, Major General Hussan Amin, to meet for the first time with UNMOVIC chairman Hans Blix. In his March 8 remarks, Annan termed the presence of Blix and Amin “significant,” calling it “an indication” that Iraq is “taking this issue seriously.”

James Cunningham, U.S. deputy ambassador to the UN, was more pessimistic about the meeting, telling reporters that the secretary-general “did not get a positive response from the Iraqis.” Cunningham, however, commended Annan for keeping the focus “where it should be, properly,” that is, on implementation of Security Council resolutions as opposed to Iraq’s grievances with the 11-year sanctions regime.

Annan will meet again with Sabri in New York on April 18 and 19.

U.S. Intentions

The UN meeting came as Vice President Richard Cheney traveled to Middle East capitals in a quest to gauge support for U.S. military intervention against Iraq, but in a March 11 interview on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice stressed that Cheney was not seeking to warn U.S. friends and allies in the region about an impending attack.

Some analysts have suggested that the U.S. push for inspections, which it believes Iraq will reject, is being carried out simply to force a showdown that would facilitate military action. Washington, in making its case for regime change, has repeatedly emphasized the threat that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein poses to the world and to his own people. At a March 13 press conference, President George W. Bush said that “all options are on the table” regarding action in Iraq, calling Hussein “a problem” his administration was “going to deal with.”

Although he acknowledged that the Bush administration has “made very clear” that “the region would be better off with a different regime in Baghdad,” Cunningham disputed suggestions that the United States considered the UN dialogue with Iraq merely “a sideshow.”

Russia has taken issue with the “personalization” of the U.S. approach to Iraq. In a March 17 interview on Meet the Press, Russian Defense Minister Sergi Ivanov said that “the problem is not with Saddam Hussein…[but] with weapons of mass destruction.” When asked if Moscow would support a military operation to change the Iraqi regime, Ivanov said only that he hoped the United States would inform Russia if it made such a decision.

Breaking the Deadlock on Space Arms Control

James Clay Moltz

The Bush administration’s consideration of space weapons for both missile defense and anti-satellite (ASAT) purposes has reopened a domestic and international debate that was conducted in the late 1950s and early 1960s regarding military uses of space. At the dawn of the space age, controversy over placing weapons in space was settled by a temporary compromise: an international decision to ban some of the most harmful weapons-related activities (especially nuclear) but to leave the door open for more limited military programs.

Today, the arms control community and advocates of missile defense are renewing this debate in the face of emerging challenges, and the gap between their two positions seems insurmountable. Weapons supporters argue that U.S. vulnerability to ballistic missile attack and dependence on space for various military operations makes defensive measures necessary, particularly in the face of the growing number of states able to launch missiles and payloads (possibly including weapons of mass destruction) through space or into low-Earth orbit (60-500 miles above the planet). Meanwhile, members of the U.S. arms control community, supported by much of the rest of the world, argue that weaponizing space will be an unmitigated disaster, raising the chances of war, jeopardizing space commerce, and stimulating a costly and destabilizing arms race in an environment currently without weaponry.

Although the positions of some individuals are more nuanced, it is fair to say that, in general, the two sides in the U.S. debate are not speaking to one another. At the international level, there is a “dialogue of the deaf” between Washington and foreign capitals (even within NATO), combined with a deep freeze in negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva due to China’s opposition to U.S. views on space weapons. In the face of this stalemate, it is important to explore whether there is some workable solution that might bring both sides to the table and allow each to come away satisfied.

This article attempts to identify such a “middle ground” between the administration and the arms control community in the belief that the alternative to compromise is likely to be no agreement whatsoever. The current situation works to the ultimate detriment of both sides’ interests, as well as the interests of the much broader spectrum of space users (including the $125-billion-a-year space industry1 ) currently stuck in between them. Although the Bush administration is not ready for space arms control talks at present, the failure of the arms control community to develop alternative means of addressing military, congressional, and public concerns about possible U.S. vulnerabilities to missile attacks makes it easy for the administration’s most conservative members to paint space-arms-control supporters as out of touch with the national mood and as critics of all missile defenses. In this context, a cooperative effort to address future U.S. space security needs—perhaps including certain forms of missile defense in combination with strengthened treaties to protect safe access to space—could provide a very attractive solution to the U.S. public and a large portion of the U.S. Congress.

Such an approach need not force arms controllers to “give away the store.” As one Air Force space expert has pointed out, the weaponization of space “is not an ‘all-or-nothing’ affair.”2 For the arms control community, therefore, holding out for a “great” treaty banning all weapons in space may be preventing progress toward a “good” treaty banning the most threatening future systems. Given political realities and practical issues regarding existing weapons systems, an approach that includes limited weaponization while simultaneously closing loopholes in existing space treaties could be the most workable and the most politically sustainable means of moving forward with arms control for space.

The Early Debate Over Space

During the late 1950s, it seemed inevitable that the two superpowers would extend their arms race on Earth into outer space in very short order. To counter the expected Soviet threat in space, the U.S. military had initiated research into an ambitious array of weapons programs, ranging from nuclear-tipped ballistic missile defenses for use in low-Earth orbit (Nike Zeus and Nike X) to orbital satellites capable of dispensing 400-foot wire webs to “catch” rising ballistic missiles (part of the Ballistic Missile Boost Intercept system) to manned space bombers (the X-20 or Dyna-Soar project) to military space stations (Gemini Blue).

But it was the conduct of nuclear tests in space that proved most destabilizing. From 1958 to 1962, the United States carried out seven nuclear weapons tests in space, while the Soviet Union tested four weapons in space and one in the upper atmosphere. The second U.S. test series—Operation Fishbowl in the summer and fall of 1962—exploded nuclear weapons with yields up to 1.5 megatons to determine their ability to destroy ballistic missiles passing through space. Soviet tests mirrored these experiments. As U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk commented at the time, “There is an increasing danger that outer space will become man’s newest battlefield.”3

But the effects of these experiments gave pause even to space weapons enthusiasts. The explosions caused considerable damage to the Earth’s electromagnetic fields. In the United States, tests launched from Johnston Island in the South Pacific blacked out civilian radio and television communications throughout the West Coast and Pacific region for several hours following each test. One test unexpectedly shorted out the power grid on Hawaii. But even more sobering for the military was the disabling of several recently launched military reconnaissance and communications satellites. The Pentagon had, in effect, “blinded itself” and had to scramble to replace the precious assets it had destroyed.

Nevertheless, both countries tested nuclear weapons in space during the tense days of the Cuban missile crisis to show their mettle and to prepare for possible anti-ballistic missile warfare, flirting dangerously with the possibility that one of these experiments could have been misinterpreted as a nuclear attack.

Fortunately, following the Cuban missile crisis, the two sides took the opportunity to step back and take stock of their emerging competition in space. They faced a number of unsavory trade-offs if unrestricted military competition in space continued, as many officials felt was inevitable. The radiation from further testing in low-Earth orbit would cripple ambitious manned space programs on both sides, likely dooming President John F. Kennedy’s plan to go to the moon. Electromagnetic pulse radiation would put at risk further development of satellite-based communications for military and civilian purposes. Finally, the virtual treasure-trove of intelligence data on each side’s nuclear arsenal just beginning to come in from photoreconnaissance satellites would be taken away. Instead, space would likely become a surrogate battlefield, involving direct attacks of rival spacecraft and possible efforts by each side to claim the moon. With their emerging nuclear weapons programs, Britain, France, and China would likely follow the superpowers into space, exacerbating radiation and debris threats in low-Earth orbit.

Overcoming opposition and mistrust in both countries, President Kennedy and Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev opted instead to restrict military competition in space by including space in the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and reaching agreement that fall at the United Nations on a resolution on legal principles governing space, including national liability for damage caused by spacecraft and stipulations that the moon and other celestial bodies should not be subject to national claims.

The two sides soon began negotiations via the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space on a formal treaty for space. The adoption of the Outer Space Treaty in 1967 codified in a legally binding agreement some of the earlier UN resolutions, while adding new protections against the use or deployment of any weapons of mass destruction in orbit and the development of military bases on the moon or celestial bodies. These restrictions halted harmful space activities before they could be engaged in by competing states, thus making subsequent arms control in these areas unnecessary.

Other bilateral agreements, including the SALT I Interim Agreement and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, contained passages that prohibited interference with national technical means of verification (i.e., satellites) and banned development, testing, and deployment of space-based missile defenses.

This strategy allowed both sides to concentrate on civilian and commercial space achievements. Such an emphasis facilitated the moon landing, Skylab, and a tremendous revolution in space communications (greatly benefiting the U.S. military), while serving broader U.S. political interests. At the same time, this compromise strategy allowed the development of a reliable space-tracking and early-warning network, while creating protected conditions in which the U.S. intelligence community could quietly achieve dominance in electronic, signals, and photographic reconnaissance from space.

Despite some challenges in the late 1970s from Soviet ASAT weapons testing and in the 1980s from similar U.S. tests and laboratory research on a wide range of technologies associated with the Strategic Defense Initiative, this fledgling space regime remained intact through the 1990s.

The Debate Re-Emerges

With the increasing importance of space to the U.S. military and the U.S. economy, however, as well as the growing number of states that are capable of launching weapons into space, Pentagon planners have again begun to look at space as a possible environment of confrontation. This renewed interest in space coincides with the current push for missiles defenses, which may require certain space components.

Recent policy is being driven in part by policies enacted by hard-line conservatives in the Congress during the late 1990s (the Defend America Act of 1996 and the National Missile Defense Act of 1999), as well as the issuance of three major reports (two of them by Republican-controlled congressional committees). The first, the Rumsfeld Commission report in July 1998 on missile proliferation, supported conservative congressional claims about the severity of the rogue state missile threat and was bolstered by North Korea’s test of the Taepo-Dong 1 one month later. The second, the Air Force’s “Vision 2020” report, outlined Air Force expectations about the opening of a new theater of military operations and discussed an assumed future challenge to U.S. military space security. The third, the Rumsfeld Commission report of January 2001 on the management of U.S. space assets, spoke of serious vulnerabilities to U.S. military and commercial space systems and the likely need to deploy space weapons to counter this presumed threat.

Despite criticism of these reports from the arms control community for their exaggeration of foreign capabilities and their assumption of hostile intentions among other states, there are two undeniable truths in these documents: one, there is currently no means of stopping a ballistic missile traveling through space; and two, the United States lacks effective military means of protecting itself against a number of feasible threats to U.S. space-based assets, including co-orbital weapons and direct-ascent ASAT weapons. Current treaties (after the June 2002 expiration of the ABM Treaty) allow unlimited testing of conventional weapons and lasers in space, the stationing of such systems in space, and the use of space for the interception of ballistic missiles or satellites by a variety of ground-, sea-, air-, and space-based systems.

Thus, as capabilities to deploy these systems increase, either weapons will be needed or treaties will need to be expanded and strengthened. To date, the Bush administration has been effective in pushing the weapons option as the best means of overcoming these threats, even to the point of withdrawing from the ABM Treaty. Meanwhile, arms control supporters have failed to communicate an effective alternative strategy to the Congress and the American people. Most importantly, they have failed to open a dialogue with moderate Republicans to consider possible “mixed” strategies that might involve some weapons options but also strengthened treaties.

Fortunately, time is still on the side of a deal. Current funding requests from the administration show continued interest in two weapons for national missile defense that would be space based: the Space-Based Laser and a kinetic kill interceptor similar to the original Brilliant Pebbles concept. Both systems would be deployed in low-Earth orbit. Pentagon officials at the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) indicate that deployment of these technologies is at least a decade off. However, testing of the Army’s Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite (KEASAT) interceptor may begin much sooner. In addition, a considerable number of other missile defense technologies—the ground-based interceptor, the Theater High Altitude Area Defense system, and some of the sea-based interceptors—attack their targets and destroy them in low-Earth orbital space. These systems play a central role in the theater missile defense programs that have gained considerable bipartisan support in Congress. Some of these systems have been extensively tested and have developed some limited missile interception capabilities. Work on them will be accelerated and ramped up to faster missiles and more complex tests after June 2002.

Moderate Voices Within the Pentagon

Yet, support for space weapons is not the only view of what is best for U.S. security, even within the administration. Indeed, supporters of space weapons may actually represent a minority perspective within the Pentagon, where there are serious concerns about the long-run implications of weaponizing space. U.S. testing and deployment of orbital weapons could make using space for other military and commercial purposes more difficult, promote a false sense of security in expensive and hard-to-maintain space assets, and stimulate military responses by adversaries not currently interested in placing weapons in space. In fact, some senior officials within the MDA bristle at the aggressiveness of the new political appointees’ interest in space weapons, seeing this as distracting attention from near-term national missile defense technologies. One senior official derisively refers to the administration’s space weapons hard-liners as “ideologues” and implies that they have not done their homework in asserting that such systems would work.4

Representatives of such skeptical views within the military can also be found in the pages of the hardly dovish Aerospace Power Journal. A recent article by Major Howard D. Belote, for example, argues that “[pro-weapons] zealots tend to miss the big contextual picture” of U.S. space interests. He reminds readers of the sagacity of Eisenhower’s decision in the 1950s to emphasize civilian and commercial aspects of space and concludes that “the nonweaponization of space may be even more in the national interest [now] than in Eisenhower’s day.”5 Another article by Lieutenant Colonel Bruce M. DeBlois describes a range of technical reasons why space weapons are not likely to work as intended, including lack of “survivability” due to possible damage and the near impossibility of in-service repairs. Yet, DeBlois ultimately turns to core political factors such as international “reputation” in arguing against U.S. space-based weapons, stating, “The idea of putting weapons in space to dominate the globe is simply not compatible with who we are and what we represent as Americans.”6

Debris issues are another concern within the military. Although today’s tests of the ground-based interceptor against strategic ballistic missiles passing through space create debris fields that fall from orbit in a matter of minutes, testing of ASAT weapons against space-based targets would create orbital debris that would persist in space for months, creating serious navigational hazards for U.S. spacecraft and satellites.

Cost is an equally serious issue in Pentagon debates. Although September 11 boosted funding for anti-terrorism, missile defense supporters may soon have to choose among technologies that may be more or less effective in protecting troops engaged in the field. Putting too much of an investment on costly space defenses may sap other missions. Despite the best-laid plans of Pentagon planners, hostile countries could disable sophisticated defenses remotely by using electronic means to jam their signals or avoid space altogether by using alternate delivery systems. Alternatively, states could launch countermeasures, such as satellites that disperse sand into low-Earth orbit, destroying U.S. missile defense support satellites by high-speed collisions in space.7 In this context, treaties to prevent testing and use of such ASAT systems may be more effective deterrents than costly investments in ineffectual weapons. Even during the Reagan administration, the deputy head of NORAD’s Space Command, Vice Admiral William E. Ramsey, observed, “If we could outlaw weapons in space, it would be a damn worthy goal.”8 Such sentiments ring true among many military officers today.

Where Does Congress Stand?

The same Congress that boosted funding for missile defenses by 57 percent to $8.3 billion last year also cut significant chunks out of Bush proposals for space-based elements of national missile defense. Indeed, the final House-Senate conference committee eliminated $120 million from the president’s proposed $170 million appropriation for the Space-Based Laser. It also eliminated funds entirely for the Space Based Infrared System-low (SBIRS-low), a satellite-based early-warning system. These actions suggest that space weapons are vulnerable to congressional challenges.

Also, the full impact of the change in the Senate’s leadership has not yet been felt. Key Democrats have come out in strong opposition to space weapons, including Senators Tom Daschle (SD), Joseph Biden (DE), and Carl Levin (MI). Except for the unprecedented budget unity brought on by the September 11 events, cuts would likely have been made in the missile defense budget for fiscal year 2002,9 forcing even harder choices regarding space defenses. Such debates are beginning for fiscal year 2003. Conservative Democrat Robert Byrd (WV) warned on the Senate floor against “a headlong and fiscally spendthrift rush” to deploy space weapons, concluding, “That heavy foot on the accelerator is merely the stamp and roar of rhetoric.”

In addition, a strong contingent within Congress still supports NASA and the International Space Station, which, despite problems, continues to resonate as a worthwhile endeavor with the American public. Introducing weapons into space is abhorrent to many Americans, raised to view space as the realm of the Apollo astronauts, the moon landing, and the shuttle missions. Even conservatives such as Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) have emphasized the continued importance of manned space research to the nation’s economy and the development of spin-offs for furthering our technological base. Despite Weldon’s support for missile defense, he and other NASA supporters may modify their stances when they recognize that aggressive deployment of space weapons could jeopardize other U.S. space priorities. Tests of ASAT weapons, for example, could create debris that might threaten astronauts on the International Space Station. They might also cause costly litigation in which commercial providers seek restitution from the U.S. military for damage caused to their satellites. Foreign claims could create international incidents harmful to U.S. foreign and defense policies, as well as commercial interests. Ten to 20 years down the line, multiple states responding to U.S. weapons in orbit could create an unlimited test range in low-Earth orbit, to the great harm of U.S. space interests, including for military assets.

It is not surprising, therefore, that risks associated with weaponizing low-Earth orbit do not sit well with many members of Congress, who want to see U.S. military, scientific, and commercial leadership in space protected. According to defense analyst Theresa Hitchens, U.S. satellite providers are already nervous about possible future U.S. government decisions to try to shut off foreign access to U.S. communications satellites in times of crisis and to shoot down U.S. and foreign satellites providing such access.10 They fear that this may lead foreign customers to develop their own satellite industries to ensure the availability of spares, thus stimulating competition and cutting into existing U.S. market share.

A liberal House Democrat introduced H.R. 2977 in fall 2001 and a revised bill (H.R. 3616) in January entitled the “Space Preservation Act of 2002.” This legislation would prohibit U.S. funds from being spent on space-based weapons, terminate all research associated with such systems, and instruct the president to participate in international negotiations toward completion of a treaty banning such weapons worldwide. Although the bill is unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled House, it does set down a marker of opposition to current administration policies.

More indicative of chances for creating a bipartisan consensus on limiting space weapons was a speech in late September 2001 by Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), a highly respected Republican foreign policy beacon. In an address to the National Press Club, Lugar rejected the idea of moving forward with a multitiered national missile defense and instead called upon the Bush administration to reorient missile defense programs to focus on the existing, short-range missile threat and to redouble efforts to fight terrorism and provide for homeland security. He argued that longer-range missile defenses and space systems should be put off indefinitely, suggesting a significant difference of opinion with the Bush administration. Other concerned Republicans are echoing such thoughts in this spring’s congressional budget debates, particularly as politically risky deficit spending looms.

Thus, although arms controllers may despair about current plans, there are good reasons to think that cooler heads can still prevail in the space weapons debate. Although missile defense of some sort may be inevitable, those who doubt the utility of space weapons represent a majority in Congress. This middle constituency is the one with whom the arms control community must open a dialogue. The problem today in trying to identify a defensible middle ground for space arms control is the lack of a formula to draw in these moderates, who do not want to be painted as “anti-missile defense.” Thus, a search to create new alternatives to the existing options and arguments must be undertaken.

Crafting a Compromise Proposal

The way to an agreement clearly lies in some sort of compromise, but what kind? Writing in the 1980s, nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty negotiator and arms control analyst George Bunn came up with the innovative idea of a possible split regime for space in which weapons might be allowed in lower regions of space (up to 2,500 miles above the Earth) but be banned from higher orbits in order to protect critical early-warning and communications satellites in geostationary orbit.11 Although today’s politics have changed, such a “mixed” approach may be worth exploring, although (for various reasons) with somewhat different parameters. Today, the importance of low-Earth orbital space has grown, due to the development of cellular networks, which use this region, and increasing U.S. military dependence on reconnaissance, tracking, queuing, weather, and communications satellites in the same area of space. Thus, any proposal for securing space would need to include protections for various activities in low-Earth orbit as well.

For good reasons, there are very few calls today for weapons above orbits of about 500 miles, even within the Pentagon. Indeed, there would likely be widespread U.S. and international support for a ban on all weapons above low-Earth orbit because higher-orbit satellites are harder to attack and also tend to serve less controversial civilian communications and military early-warning missions. Moreover, this region, especially out toward geostationary orbit (22,300 miles above the Earth), is poorly suited for the stationing of missile defenses because of its great distance from the flight paths of ballistic missiles. Thus, ruling out weapons entirely from higher orbits would be a useful starting point. But because low-Earth orbit is where most of the action is, it is the crucial area in which negotiation is needed.

Careful study of the various positions in the debate over national missile defense and space weapons suggests that there is room for a compromise on low-Earth orbit, at least among key constituencies such as the U.S. Congress, industry, and the Russian government, as well as the U.S. electorate, which, in the end, is going to pay for any of the near-term space systems being proposed. In practical terms, the core elements of Bush’s national and theater missile defense programs remain the direct-ascent systems, which use low-Earth orbital space as a point of interception but which do not require space-basing. Granting states the right to attack missiles traveling through space (as well as to deploy boost-phase missiles defenses that do not require space-based elements) but forbidding them from shooting from space or attacking permanent objects in space could provide a meaningful compromise approach. The core elements of such a compromise proposal on space weapons might look like this:

  • No use, testing, or deployment of weapons or interceptors of any sort in regions of space above 500 miles;
  • Permitted testing of ground-based, sea-based, and air-based interceptors in low-Earth orbit (60-500 miles) against ballistic missiles passing through space (although with frequency limitations per year/per state and possible restrictions on altitude and debris generation, which do not exist today);
  • No stationing of weapons of any sort in low-Earth orbit, including kinetic-kill vehicles, lasers, or any other weapons for use against space-, ground-, sea-, or air-based targets (to prevent destabilizing aspects of short warning times in space and to alleviate public fears of use of weapons from space against cities);
  • No testing or use of lasers from ground-, sea-, or air-based platforms against any space-based, orbital objects; and
  • No testing or use of other ground-, sea-, or air-based weapons against satellites or other space-based objects (chiefly a confidence-building and debris-reduction measure, because direct-ascent missile defenses would have some residual ASAT capabilities).

Although each of these provisions could be subject to further negotiation, the core elements could provide meaningful protections for parties desiring to preserve safe access to space while also allowing missile defenses to move forward.

Would such a treaty be perfect? It would not be when viewed from the perspective of both extremes in the debate. But, for the larger group of moderates—both domestically and internationally—this option could be very attractive. It would offer significant protections from weapons systems that are allowed under the current loophole-filled treaty regime, while also grandfathering a variety of missile defense technologies that are already fairly far advanced and whose development would be difficult to stop.

For the Pentagon, such a regime would entail some limitations in terms of ASAT weapons, but it would also create an environment in which other states would find development of hostile systems extremely difficult without detection. For Congress, space would be protected for high-profile, civilian manned missions and lucrative commercial applications. For the arms control community, this regime would set the world a short distance down the “slope” of weaponizing space by allowing the use of low-Earth orbit for missile defense purposes from the Earth, sea, and air. However, the slope would no longer be “slippery,” as it is today, but would instead be marked with clear barriers against further descent. Detailed negotiations would be needed on how many tests to allow each state per year in low-Earth orbit and what debris mitigation techniques to require. Although this would affect mainly the United States in the short run, it would create a powerful set of restrictions for future space-faring states as well, thus protecting U.S. commercial and passive military interests in debris-free low-Earth orbit. In sum, a number of key players would come away from the table with tangible benefits.

How to Get There From Here

Overall, the need for some settlement on the space weapons issue is clear. The decisions taken today will affect the future of international space activities not only in the military realm, but also in the scientific and commercial sectors, which are having a growing impact on the economies of leading developed and developing countries. The issue is particularly important when one considers the possible impact of multiple states conducting unlimited space-based weapons testing and deployments in the increasingly crowded realm of low-Earth orbit, where debris and the relative proximity of spacecraft and weapons suggest the need for at least some rules of the road. Given these factors, the issue of future space security is too important to be bottled up any longer within the stalemate at the Conference on Disarmament, where no action is likely under current conditions.

The background to today’s impasse at the international level can be traced to the fall of 1999, when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution unanimously calling for the prevention of an arms race in outer space. Only the United States and Israel abstained, seeing the resolution as an effort to limit missile defenses.

Subsequently, China sought to insert space arms control into the debate at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva as a condition for further disarmament talks. In June 2001, it offered a draft treaty on preventing the weaponization of outer space. The treaty would ban the testing and deployment of weapons based in space, as well as any weapon that could be used from the Earth, sea, or air for “war-fighting in outer space.” The United States opposed this effort, and talks have ground to a halt.

Could the proposal outlined in this article offer a face-saving way out for both sides? It could if the Chinese proposal’s definition of “war-fighting” does not include destroying ballistic missiles passing through space—a possible interpretation of the current wording. Moreover, Chinese officials might welcome the opportunity to begin some forward movement to stop the most threatening aspects of ballistic missile defenses: the look-down, shoot-down Space-Based Laser and the space-based, kinetic-kill interceptor. Thus, the new proposal might provide at least a starting point for discussions.

Russia is another critical player, given its extensive space program and military space capabilities. In a speech outlining his government’s priorities in space at the United Nations in September 2001, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov noted several key provisions central to his government for any new treaty on space security: (1) no placement by states of weapons in orbit; (2) no use or threat of use of weapons against space-based targets; and (3) establishment of a verification mechanism adequate to implement the new agreement. Notably, the speech did not specifically call for a ban on missile defenses or the use of low-Earth orbit for missile interception. Thus, there are firm grounds for believing that Moscow would be receptive to this initiative.

But a new forum is needed to allow the issues to be presented openly and discussed in the presence of all international parties interested in space. Such a process should begin whether or not all governments choose to participate at the present time. This forum could craft possible compromise proposals for later discussion at the inter-governmental level, when conditions are more favorable.

One analyst, Rebecca Johnson, suggests an “Ottawa process” approach for space, referring to the successful negotiation of the Land Mines Convention by a group of organizations and concerned states working outside typical intergovernmental channels.12 Such an avenue might be fruitful, but it must include key U.S. constituencies—such as commercial space users and representatives from both parties in Congress. It must also not be held hostage to “purist” approaches that rule out all forms of missile defense. Media representatives should be included in order to communicate the importance of these questions to the U.S. and international publics, which are currently virtually unaware of the security debates going on behind the scenes that will affect their futures. An alternative approach might be to let the commercial space community lead the negotiations,13 which could have the advantage of placing greater credibility and clout behind any eventual agreement in the eyes of national legislatures.

In conclusion, the arms control community would benefit from embracing such a process, which would put less emphasis on critiquing Bush policies and more on building a credible alternative. This effort could begin by reaching out to moderate members of Congress, Pentagon personnel, and commercial representatives. Planning with other actors for a secure future in space would require some compromises but need not involve damaging giveaways. Fortunately, the view of congressional moderates on space-based defense is closer to that of the arms control community than is realized. Providing a workable framework to address the key interests of this middle group (and its supporters in parts of the administration and among the broader public) may be the most effective way of uncovering the limited support behind most space weapons scenarios. With such an agenda in hand, the weight of public opinion on the U.S. Congress—supported by influential commercial actors—could eventually lead to changes in Bush administration policy or provide a ready-made space framework for his successor.


NOTES
The author thanks Phil Saunders and Charles Ferguson for their useful comments and suggestions.
1. Figure cited by Michael Krepon in “Lost in Space: The Misguided Drive Toward Antisatellite Weapons,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2001.
2. Lieutenant Colonel Bruce M. DeBlois, “Space Sanctuary: A Viable National Strategy,” Aerospace Power Journal, Winter 1998, p. 41.
3. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, address of June 16, 1962, U.S. State Department Bulletin, July 2, 1962, p. 5.
4. Interview with MDA official, January 2002.
5. Major Howard D. Belote, “The Weaponization of Space: It Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum,” Aerospace Power Journal, Spring 2000, p. 51.
6. DeBlois, “Space Sanctuary,” p. 46.
7. Ibid., p. 51.
8. Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 447.
9. On this issue, see Senator Carl Levin, “A Debate Deferred: Missile Defense After the September 11 Attacks,” Arms Control Today, November 2001.
10. Theresa Hitchens, “Rushing to Weaponize the Final Frontier,” Arms Control Today, September 2001.
11. George Bunn, “Satellites for the Navy: Shielded by Arms Control?” Naval War College Review, September/October 1985.
12. Rebecca Johnson, “Multilateral Approaches to Preventing the Weaponisation of Space,” Disarmament Diplomacy, April 2001.
13. The author thanks Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano for his suggestion of this idea.


James Clay Moltz is research professor and associate director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

 

Assessing U.S. Proposals to Strengthen the Biological Weapons

Jonathan B. Tucker and Raymond A. Zilinskas

The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which bans the development, production, stockpiling, and transfer of biological and toxin weapons, has been hobbled since it took effect in 1975 by a lack of formal measures to monitor and enforce compliance. Sporadic efforts have been made over the years to correct these shortcomings, but to no avail.

Strengthening the BWC has become all the more essential since the fall of 2001, when mailed anthrax bacteria spores killed five Americans, sickened more than 20 others, and terrorized millions. Yet even as the threats of biological warfare and terrorism have become more acute, multilateral efforts to bolster the convention have faltered. More than six years of effort to negotiate a legally binding inspection protocol for the BWC collapsed in July 2001 when the United States rejected the draft protocol and walked away from the talks, leading to their suspension.

Last November, at a review conference of the BWC held in Geneva, the U.S. delegation proposed an alternative to the now-defunct protocol: a package of nine measures that member states could take to strengthen the convention and combat the threat of bioterrorism. All of these measures would involve passing domestic laws or adapting existing multilateral mechanisms. The U.S. ideas were generally viewed as constructive, although several delegations argued that they did not go far enough. Some of the U.S. measures were incorporated into a draft of the conference’s final declaration, a politically binding document. On the last day of the review conference, however, the United States caused an uproar by proposing to terminate the multilateral forum that had negotiated the BWC protocol. This proposal was unacceptable to many delegations and made it impossible to reach consensus on the final declaration. To prevent the conference from failing completely, the chairman suspended it for a year.

Between now and the resumption of the review conference in November 2002, BWC member states have time to evaluate the U.S. alternative measures and decide if they are worth pursuing formally. The following analysis suggests that some of the U.S. measures could be effective in addressing the problems of BWC noncompliance and bioterrorism, but only if they are broadened and converted into legally binding multilateral arrangements.

Evaluating the U.S. Package

The first set of measures proposed by the United States relates to a provision in the BWC requiring each state-party to adopt national legislation prohibiting and preventing anyone from carrying out activities banned by the convention on its territory or anywhere under its jurisdiction. To date, however, few BWC parties have passed domestic legislation imposing criminal penalties on individuals who engage in illicit biological weapons activities. Even the United States waited until 1989 to pass the Biological Weapons Antiterrorism Act, which imposes criminal penalties up to life imprisonment on a U.S. national who acquires a biological weapon or assists a foreign state or terrorist organization in obtaining one.

Under the new U.S. proposal, BWC member states that have not already done so would be urged to adopt domestic legislation criminalizing the acquisition, possession, and use of biological weapons. As a key element of such legislation, each state-party would improve its ability to extradite biological weapons fugitives to countries prepared to assume criminal jurisdiction. Yet the drawback of relying exclusively on domestic legislation to address the illicit use of microbiology is that national laws are not an effective means of creating uniform international standards. Legislation criminalizing the possession and use of biological weapons could vary considerably from country to country, creating loopholes or areas of lax enforcement exploitable by terrorists. Moreover, if history is a guide, many BWC members will not pass such legislation at all, and of those that do, some will neglect to enforce it. As an alternative approach, the nonprofit Harvard Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation has developed a draft convention criminalizing the possession and use of biological weapons. This draft could serve as a starting point for the negotiation of a multilateral treaty setting legal guidelines for the prosecution of those who acquire and use biological weapons.1

The U.S. package also calls on BWC member states to adopt and implement strict national regulations on access to particularly dangerous pathogens, along with guidelines for the physical security and protection of culture collections and laboratory stocks. Within the United States, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began in 1997 to regulate interstate transfers of 36 particularly hazardous human pathogens and toxins, permitting such exchanges only between registered facilities that have legitimate reasons for working with these agents and that possess the necessary biosafety systems. The Department of Agriculture established similar regulations on transfers of dangerous plant and animal pathogens. In the aftermath of September 11, Congress has moved to strengthen the statutory framework relating to biological weapons by including an explicit prohibition on the possession (as well as transfer) of biological agents and delivery systems for other than peaceful purposes.2

Even so, tighter national regulations on access to dangerous pathogens, although desirable, will not significantly reduce the global threat of bioterrorism unless such controls are implemented internationally. Thousands of academic, government, and industrial laboratories throughout the world work with dangerous pathogens, and more than 1,500 microbial culture collections sell or furnish microorganisms for research purposes.3 Yet restrictions on access vary from country to country and, indeed, from facility to facility. For this reason, the United States should propose that the UN General Assembly adopt a “Biosecurity Convention” requiring countries to follow uniform guidelines for who is given access to dangerous pathogens, as well as universal standards of physical security for those institutions authorized to work with them.

Other U.S.-proposed measures to strengthen national implementation include oversight of high-risk genetic engineering experiments and a professional code of conduct for scientists working with dangerous pathogens. These steps, although useful for maintaining national biosecurity, are unlikely to have much impact on states’ compliance with the BWC.

The second set of measures in the U.S. package aims to strengthen provisions of the BWC that deal with assisting victims of biological attacks and promoting scientific and technical cooperation among member states. Proposed steps in these areas would require BWC parties to adopt and implement strict biosafety procedures for handling dangerous pathogens, based on those developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) or equivalent national guidelines; to enhance the WHO’s global disease surveillance and response capabilities; and to establish international rapid response teams that would provide emergency and investigative assistance, if required, in the event of a serious outbreak of infectious disease.

The primary purpose of establishing a global epidemiological surveillance and response system under WHO auspices would be to detect and respond to natural outbreaks of infectious disease around the world. Yet such a system could also help deter the covert use of biological weapons by increasing the probability that an outbreak arising from an intentional release of agent would be promptly investigated, recognized as non-natural in origin, and attributed to a state or terrorist organization; and by helping public health professionals to contain a deliberate epidemic at an early stage and thus reduce its military impact. Despite these potential benefits, it would be unwise to link WHO’s activities in the field of international health to the monitoring of state compliance with the BWC. The reason is that WHO epidemiologists can investigate disease outbreaks only at the invitation of host countries. Suspicion that the organization was serving as a front for BWC-related investigations would compromise WHO’s political neutrality and hence its ability to conduct field operations and studies. Thus, although the U.S. proposal to increase resources for global disease surveillance is welcome, such funds should be provided through a special contribution to the WHO budget.

The third set of U.S. proposals seeks to strengthen BWC provisions that address concerns over treaty compliance. One measure would establish a “voluntary cooperative mechanism” for clarifying and resolving compliance disputes by mutual consent, through exchanges of information, scientific visits, and other activities. Yet this mechanism would not be an improvement over the existing consultation procedure, in which BWC member states can meet to examine evidence presented by both sides in a compliance dispute and decide whether a breach of the treaty has occurred. The problem with relying on information provided by the contending parties is that the consultative process can easily become a propaganda circus. In 1997, for example, Cuba accused the United States of having deliberately released an insect pest, Thrips palmi, from an overflying aircraft to damage Cuban agriculture and requested a special consultative meeting to address the matter. Despite the Cuban allegation and the U.S. rebuttal, the lack of objective scientific and technical data made it impossible for the participating countries to come to a definitive judgment on the merits of the case. This experience suggests that a mechanism for addressing BWC compliance concerns can be effective only if it is implemented by an independent, objective, and competent third party.

UN Field Inspection Procedure

The most interesting measure in the U.S. package, and one of the few to address BWC compliance directly, is a proposal for conducting field investigations of the alleged use of biological weapons and suspicious outbreaks of infectious disease. To perform this mission, the United States proposes to adapt an existing but little-known procedure whereby the secretary-general of the United Nations can initiate investigations of alleged violations of the BWC, the 1925 Geneva Protocol (which bans the use of chemical and biological weapons in war), or “customary international law.” He can do so by assembling a group of experts from various countries and dispatching it to the site of a reported attack to conduct an objective scientific inquiry. In the late 1980s, the General Assembly and the Security Council empowered the UN secretary-general to launch such field investigations on his own authority, without first securing approval from a majority of member states. The main weakness of the current system, however, is that the accused or affected country is under no obligation to cooperate with the investigators. Accordingly, the United States proposes to strengthen and broaden the existing UN investigation procedure by authorizing the investigation of suspicious outbreaks of disease and by urging BWC member states to accept investigations on their territory without the right of refusal.

Because several UN field investigations have already taken place, the historical record offers some useful insights into the value of the U.S. proposal. Between April 1981 and July 1992, the secretary-general dispatched expert groups to investigate four cases of alleged chemical or toxin weapons use: by the Soviet Union and its allies in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan, by Iraq and Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, by the Mozambican National Resistance in Mozambique, and by Armenian forces in Azerbaijan.

Although the four cases all dealt with alleged chemical or toxin weapons use, the proposed investigations of biological weapons use and suspicious outbreaks of disease would involve similar procedures.

This historical record (see box) demonstrates that UN field investigations can yield useful findings if they are carried out shortly after an alleged attack and if the investigating team is granted full access to the affected sites and people. Under these optimal conditions, small groups of three to five experts can carry out field investigations rapidly and cheaply. Thus, the U.S. proposal has a workable foundation.

Nevertheless, it is unrealistic to expect UN member states to accept international investigations on their territory in the absence of a treaty that provides legally binding rights and obligations. During the early 1980s, for example, Laos, Cambodia, and Afghanistan denied UN investigators access to the sites of alleged toxin attacks, with the result that the investigations could not be carried out properly and the findings were inconclusive. Further, when Iraq used chemical weapons against its Kurdish population in 1988, the Iraqi government denied the secretary-general’s request to launch an investigation. Because the accused countries were under no legal obligation to cooperate, the political consequences of their refusal were minimal. Thus, the historical record suggests that the existing UN field investigation mechanism could not be effective at enhancing BWC compliance unless member states negotiate a legally binding agreement requiring them to accept field investigations initiated by the secretary-general and to cooperate with the investigators.

One potential problem with negotiating such an agreement is that some of the more radical members of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM), such as China, India, Pakistan, and Iran, will attempt to link their acceptance of a strengthened UN field investigation regime with the demand that the industrialized countries grant the developing countries greater access to dual-use biotechnology equipment and materials. The radical NAM states also want to eliminate the Australia Group, an informal forum of 33 industrialized countries that coordinate their national export controls on chemical weapons precursors, microbial and toxin agents, and dual-use production equipment. Yet the United States and other Australia Group members are intent on preserving national export controls vis-à-vis countries assessed to have offensive biological warfare programs, including some BWC members. Recognizing this potential problem, the United States and other like-minded states should strive to keep the mandate of the proposed negotiation focused narrowly on strengthening the UN field investigation mechanism.

Another potential problem with the current UN procedure is the role of the secretary-general as the sole arbiter of whether to launch a field investigation. On the one hand, giving an authoritative individual the power to initiate a field investigation speeds up the deliberative process and makes it more likely that the investigation will be timely. On the other hand, it is possible that a future secretary-general could be influenced politically in a way that calls the integrity of the process into question. A secretary-general who is up for reappointment, for example, might decide whether to launch a field investigation based on the political support he would gain or lose. To address this problem, the Security Council should instruct the secretary-general to follow the criteria for launching an investigation that were developed by a UN expert group in 1989. In general, a field investigation should proceed if two questions can be answered in the affirmative: Did the alleged incident occur on the territory of a member state? If the alleged incident were to be confirmed, would it violate the BWC or the Geneva Protocol?

A further issue with strengthening the UN mechanism is that the financial resources of the UN secretariat are currently too limited to support extensive field investigations. Although in the past the secretariat was able to fund investigations with the help of cooperating governments, these efforts were small-scale and short-term. For investigations in Mozambique and Azerbaijan, the governments that voluntarily provided experts also paid their salaries. The United Nations covered the expenses of UN staff members who assisted the expert groups, and the secretary-general’s office (which has a small discretionary fund for unforeseen activities) paid for the experts’ travel and accommodation. In addition, the Swiss government provided a small Lear jet to transport the investigation team to and from Baku, Azerbaijan.

If, however, the occasion arose for the investigation of a major BW program on a scale of that of the Soviet Union or Iraq, or if a suspicious disease outbreak demanded an in-depth epidemiological analysis, it is unlikely that the UN secretariat would have the resources for the task. The sole branch of the secretariat possessing relevant expertise, the Department of Disarmament Affairs (DDA), has an annual budget of only about $7 million—less than what the UN pays for cleaning services at its New York headquarters—and has no discretionary funds for carrying out field investigations. Although DDA staff could approach UN member states and request special contributions to fund field investigations, it is far from certain that enough money would be forthcoming. Thus, if a country were to lodge a complaint that another state was violating the BWC, the secretary-general could probably not launch a field investigation unless the complainant nation was prepared to cover the costs.

To address this problem, sufficient funds should be assessed from member states to establish a small foundation within the UN to pay for field investigations initiated by the secretary-general. As a first step, the secretariat should prepare a rough estimate of how much it would cost to carry out five small investigations and two large ones. (A small investigation would involve an expert group of no more than five scientists working in the field for less than a week; a large investigation would involve an expert group of up to 10 persons working in the field for several weeks or months.) The funds required for this purpose would be deposited in the new UN foundation. If no field investigations were requested over the next few years, there would be no need for further contributions. If some investigations take place, however, their actual cost would become known and additional funds could be assessed to replenish the foundation’s assets.

Finally, although the existence of a mechanism to investigate allegations of use could help to deter BWC member states from employing biological weapons, it would do little to prevent violators from acquiring such weapons in the first place. Thus, it would be preferable not to have to wait until biological weapons have actually been used before the secretary-general can launch an investigation. The more ambitious goal of preventing acquisition as well as use would require granting the secretary-general the authority to investigate facilities suspected of developing, producing, and testing such weapons, an option that the U.S. proposal does not include.

Conclusion

Relying exclusively on domestic legislation and existing multilateral arrangements, as proposed by the United States, would not be sufficient to reinforce the international ban on acquisition and use of biological weapons or to address BWC compliance concerns. To put real teeth in some of the U.S. measures, such as restrictions on access to dangerous pathogens and an enhanced UN field investigation procedure, these steps should be made legally binding and broader in scope, and a workable funding vehicle established to pay for them. Only if these criteria are met will the U.S. measures offer an effective means of strengthening the global prohibition on biological weapons, at a time when it is increasingly under siege.


UN Field Investigations: The Historical Record

In the late 1970s, the United States claimed that Soviet-allied governments in Laos, Cambodia, and Afghanistan were employing chemical weapons against native resistance forces in these countries, including the H’mong tribesmen in Laos who had fought on the American side during the Vietnam War. Responding to U.S. political pressure, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in December 1980 asking the secretary-general to investigate the alleged incidents of chemical warfare in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan. The secretary-general agreed and dispatched a group of experts from Egypt, Kenya, Peru, and the Philippines, who conducted field investigations between April and November 1981 in both areas. The UN expert group’s findings were inconclusive, however, for three reasons: the long delay between the alleged attacks and the investigations, the refusal by the accused governments to cooperate with the United Nations by granting the investigators access to the alleged attack sites, and the unreliable and contradictory testimony of purported eyewitnesses. Dissatisfied with this outcome, the General Assembly asked the secretary-general to launch a follow-on investigation.

By this time, the United States had begun alleging that Soviet allies in Laos and Cambodia were using a mixture of fungal toxins (mycotoxins) known as “yellow rain” as a warfare agent against local resistance forces. In Afghanistan, the United States claimed that Soviet military forces were using both standard chemical weapons and mycotoxins against mujaheddin rebels. Taking note of the U.S. allegations, the secretary-general dispatched a second expert group to both regions in early 1982, including experts from Austria, Ecuador, Egypt, France, the Philippines, and the United States. Like the first expert group, the second group was denied access to alleged attack sites in Laos, Cambodia, and Afghanistan and had to rely on indirect evidence, such as interviews with alleged victims housed in refugee camps in Thailand and Pakistan. Accordingly, the findings of the second investigation were again inconclusive. In its final report, the second expert group wrote that, although it “could not state that the allegations had been proven, nevertheless it could not disregard the circumstantial evidence suggestive of the possible use of some sort of toxic chemical substance in some instances.”

The failure to determine whether chemical and toxin weapons had been used in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan demonstrated the need to launch an investigation shortly after an alleged attack, when the forensic evidence was still fresh, and to gain full access to the affected sites and attack victims. Accordingly, the General Assembly adopted a resolution in December 1982 requesting the secretary-general to investigate promptly all allegations brought by member states. This resolution also called on the secretary-general to compile and maintain lists of qualified experts and reference laboratories capable of analyzing environmental and biomedical samples and to develop detailed investigation procedures. In response, the secretary-general appointed an expert group to perform these tasks. The experts also developed criteria to guide the secretary-general when deciding whether to mount a field investigation. Two key criteria were that a complaint should be lodged soon enough after an alleged attack for an investigation to obtain “evidence of value” and that the complaint should include compelling evidence of the hostile use of a chemical or biological agent.

A second set of UN field investigations took place during the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988. In response to a complaint lodged by the Iranian government in November 1983, the Security Council (not the General Assembly) asked the secretary-general to investigate whether Iran’s forces had been subjected to Iraqi chemical attacks. In March 1984, the secretary-general duly dispatched to Iran a group of experts from Australia, Bulgaria, Egypt, France, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, and the United States. Iran granted the team full access to the alleged attack sites and victims. In April 1985, the secretary-general asked UN expert Manuel Dominguez of Spain to examine Iranian soldiers who had survived alleged chemical attacks and were hospitalized in Belgium, England, and West Germany. Later, in response to further Iranian allegations of Iraqi chemical weapons use, the secretary-general dispatched additional expert groups to Iran in February and April of 1986 and May and August of 1988. All of the investigations found that Iranian troops had been attacked at various times with aerial bombs or artillery shells containing mustard gas, nerve agents (tabun and sarin), and unknown pulmonary irritants.

In 1986, Iraq alleged that Iran was using chemical weapons against its troops and asked the secretary-general to initiate a field investigation. A UN expert group visited Iraq in April 1986 and concluded that Iraqi soldiers had been exposed to mustard gas and an unknown lung irritant. Two subsequent Iraqi allegations resulted in additional UN investigations, the last in July 1988. In all of these cases, the Iraqi government cooperated fully with the UN investigators. The international community, however, did not respond to the repeated violations of the 1925 Geneva Protocol by Iraq and Iran, and both sides continued to employ chemical weapons until the end of the war.1 This experience points out the need for the international community to respond to the positive findings of a UN investigation with strong political action, such as the imposition of economic sanctions.

Iraq’s cooperation with the UN ended abruptly in August 1988, when Iraqi forces began using mustard gas and nerve agents against dozens of Kurdish villages in the northern part of the country. At the request of 10 states, the UN secretary-general wrote a letter to the Iraqi government requesting permission to launch a field investigation of the alleged chemical attacks. But Iraq denied the request on the grounds that its treatment of the Kurds was an internal affair, and the UN did not pursue the matter further.2

In 1992, chemical weapons were allegedly used in conflicts in Mozambique and Azerbaijan. This time, the secretary-general, empowered by General Assembly and Security Council resolutions adopted in 1987 and 1988, acted on his own authority to launch field investigations. In January 1992, the government of Mozambique sent a letter to the secretary-general alleging that guerillas of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), a rebel organization established with the help of the Rhodesian intelligence service and supported by the apartheid government of South Africa, had attacked Mozambican government forces with chemical weapons. Mozambique requested an investigation of the incident, and on March 18, the secretary-general appointed three experts from Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, supported by two UN officers. This group visited Mozambique on March 23-27. In addition to conducting interviews with alleged victims, the experts visited the alleged attack site and collected biomedical and environmental samples for analysis. The team finished its work, including a written report, by March 28.

The UN experts concluded that the Mozambican victims’ signs and symptoms were “consistent with the use of an atropine-like chemical” but could also have been caused by severe heat stress. Moreover, analyses of environmental samples were negative for 20 common chemical warfare agents, although the extended lapse of time between the alleged attack and the sampling made it possible that chemical agents could have degraded to the point that they were no longer detectable. Still, the findings were sufficiently compelling to lay to rest most concerns about the alleged use of chemical weapons in that conflict.

Later in 1992, the secretary-general launched a second investigation of chemical warfare, this time in Azerbaijan. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan and Armenia became embroiled in conflict over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave within Azerbaijan populated mainly by Armenians. In April and May 1992, Armenian irregular forces attacked the Azerbaijan army, and Azerbaijan sent a letter to the president of the Security Council charging that the Armenians had used chemical weapons. Armenia rejected the allegation and requested a UN investigation to clear its name.

On June 19, 1992, the secretary-general appointed three experts from Belgium, Sweden, and Switzerland, assisted by two members of the UN secretariat. The team arrived in Azerbaijan on July 4 and conducted its investigation on July 5-8, including visits to two alleged attack sites, interviews with purported attack victims, and consultations with Azerbaijani and Armenian officials. No samples were collected. In its final report, the expert group concluded that it had obtained “no evidence of use of chemical weapons” and that the contaminants that the Azerbaijanis claimed were indicative of chemical warfare, such as cyanide, were probably by-products of conventional weapons. These negative findings were sufficiently convincing to halt further allegations against Armenia. An interesting aspect of this case was that the country requesting the investigation was the accused party rather than the accusing one. This “role reversal” showed that disproving an allegation of use could have substantial political benefits.

The cases of Mozambique and Azerbaijan demonstrate that, under optimal conditions, UN field investigations of alleged use can be carried out rapidly and cheaply, yet provide meaningful results. Nevertheless, the failure of the UN investigations in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan in 1981-82, and the refusal of Iraq to accept an investigation of its chemical attacks against the Kurds in 1988, indicate that the existing mechanism can yield meaningful results if, and only if, the host government cooperates fully.

NOTES
1. Iran acceded to the 1925 Geneva Protocol on November 5, 1929, and Iraq acceded on September 8, 1931. Iraq ratified the protocol with the reservation that it would not be bound by the prohibitions toward any state that used chemical or biological weapons first. Iran did not attach any condition to its accession, but because the reservations made by other countries have effectively transformed the Geneva Protocol into a no-first-use treaty under customary international law, and because the protocol is in the form of a contract among the parties, Iran may have considered itself freed of its treaty obligations toward Iraq because it was attacked first.
2. James Bruce and Tony Banks, “Growing Concern Over Iraqi Use of CW,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, September 24, 1988, p. 715.


NOTES
The authors are grateful to Derek Boothby for useful comments and Erika Holey for research support.
1. Harvard Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation, “A Draft Convention to Prohibit Biological and Chemical Weapons Under International Criminal Law,” The CBW Conventions Bulletin, December 1998, p. 1-5.
2. Diana Jean Schemo, “Bill Would Require Laboratories to Adopt Strict Security,” The New York Times, January 25, 2002, p. 11.
3. William J. Broad, “World’s Largest Germ-Bank Union Acts to Keep Terrorists From Stealing Deadly Stocks,” The New York Times, October 23, 2001, p. B9.


Jonathan B. Tucker is director and Raymond A. Zilinskas is deputy director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

 

   

Richard Butler’s Fatal Choice

Wade Boese

Ambassador Richard Butler’s latest book, Fatal Choice: Nuclear Weapons and the Illusion of Missile Defense, is an easy-to-read and, at times, impassioned argument for why the world should work toward eliminating nuclear weapons and why the five legally recognized nuclear-weapon states, particularly the United States, must lead the way.

Butler, who headed UN efforts to dismantle Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs between 1997 and 1999, builds his case around three core beliefs: first, that nuclear weapons are horribly destructive weapons with no military utility and that they are the greatest current threat to world security; second, that as long as any country possesses nuclear weapons, other countries will seek to acquire them; and finally, that as long as nuclear weapons exist, they may be used either accidentally or intentionally and that that possibility only increases as more countries acquire them.

It is the second proposition that leads Butler to put the onus of nuclear disarmament squarely on the shoulders of those who currently possess nuclear weapons, the United States foremost among them. In Butler’s eyes, the five recognized nuclear-weapon states (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States) have deliberately shirked this responsibility, even though they are legally bound to fulfill it under the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

Although missile defense is featured in the book’s title, the NPT is at the heart of Butler’s argument. The NPT is based on a simple bargain: countries that did not possess nuclear weapons at the time of the treaty’s signing pledged not to seek them, while the five countries that already had such weapons committed themselves to work toward nuclear disarmament. This bargain, according to Butler, created a norm that “no state or person should possess nuclear weapons.”

To date, the five nuclear-weapon states, in Butler’s assessment, have done a feeble job of living up to their end of the deal, thereby undermining their credibility to influence Iran, Iraq, and North Korea to forswear nuclear weapons as they promised.

Although Butler describes these three countries as being the “embodiment of the worst nightmare” because of their covert and proscribed efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, he more frequently and fervently faults the disarmament failures of the nuclear-weapon states for the proliferation problem. For instance, he recounts that, when reporters asked him to speculate on the rationale behind India’s May 1998 nuclear tests, he told them to “start with the nuclear-weapon states.” He further explained, “India and many others had begun to despair at the failure of those states to keep their nuclear disarmament promises.”

Butler acknowledges that other factors may compel countries to seek nuclear weapons, but he also believes the world would support more forceful action to enforce the nonproliferation norm if the five recognized nuclear-weapon states took real, and not just rhetorical, steps toward eliminating their own arsenals.

For starters, Butler suggests the nuclear-weapon states should seek to bring into force the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the Senate rejected in October 1999. He also calls for Washington and Moscow to de-alert their nuclear weapons and reduce their arsenals to about 1,000 warheads apiece. Butler says the world should also ban production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons and strengthen the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards system to detect cheating on the NPT.

These suggestions are not new, however, and Butler does not offer any fresh proposals on how to bring about their timely enactment. He suggests that success is mostly a matter of the nuclear-weapon states, namely the United States, summoning the political will to act, but that problem has been identified for some time as well. The difficult question is how to generate political will.

Where Butler departs from existing proposals is his call for establishing an international Council on Weapons of Mass Destruction, which would be charged with implementing and enforcing adherence to nonproliferation agreements. Unfortunately, it is unclear how countries would make this body work, especially given that the impasse on finding an acceptable approach to deal with Iraq has lasted more than three years.

Implicit in Butler’s recommendations is that the solution to proliferation lies in bilateral or multilateral cooperation, not unilateral action, which brings the book to missile defense. Any effort to find a solely national solution to the problem of proliferation will fail, Butler suggests. The best defense against nuclear weapons, according to Butler, is their elimination.

Butler rejects the United States’ assertions that it has to build missile defenses because arms control has failed and that nuclear proliferation is too far advanced to reverse. “The decisions of rogue states to proliferate can be contained and progressively reversed first by eliminating the conviction that they will escape punishment for their actions,” Butler writes.

Effective enforcement, however, hinges on the enforcers having legitimacy, which is why Butler concludes, “If the history of nuclear weapons is to be brought to an end, it must start with those who possess them to decide to make it so.”

If the United States chooses not to take this path and opts to seek its security through unilateral measures, such as defenses, Butler believes it is making a fatal choice of condemning the world to live with nuclear weapons and the possibility that they will be used again.

In Bookstores
Author: Richard Butler

Title: Fatal Choice: Nuclear Weapons and the Illusion of Missile Defense

Publisher: Westview Press

Date: 2001

Pages: 178

List Price: $22.00

A Review of Fatal Choice: Nuclear Weapons and the Illusion of Missile Defense by Richard Butler

Foster Panel Calls for Reducing Nuclear Test Preparation Time

Philipp C. Bleek

A congressionally established panel presented its findings March 21, calling for the preparation time required before a U.S. nuclear test can be conducted to be substantially shortened.

Current test readiness time, defined as the period between a presidential order for a nuclear test and the time the Energy Department can actually carry out that test, is two to three years. But the Panel to Assess the Reliability, Safety, and Security of the United States Nuclear Stockpile—colloquially termed the “Foster panel” after its chairman, John Foster—says that test readiness should be reduced to between three months and one year.

The recommendation meshes with those contained in the Bush administration’s nuclear posture review, which said that the current test readiness time “may be too long.”

The Foster panel was established by the fiscal year 1999 Defense Authorization Act and tasked with preparing three annual reports assessing the state of the Energy Department’s stockpile stewardship program, which is intended to maintain the reliability and safety of U.S. nuclear weapons in the absence of nuclear testing. This is the panel’s final report.

Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Foster said the panel was unanimously recommending that the administration and Congress “support test readiness of three months to a year, depending on the type of test.” But Foster also noted that the recommendation was not driven by an “imminent” need to test, but rather “because prudence requires that every president have realistic options to test should technical or international events make it necessary.”

A congressional staff member close to the issue said the calls for shortening the test time were little more than “saber rattling,” saying that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to conduct a “meaningful test” within months. The staff member said that the administration should clarify its intentions and that recent “rhetoric” on the issue was “counterproductive.”

The Foster panel recommendation was foreshadowed in the panel’s previous report, which did not focus directly on test readiness but which suggested that a time “well below” one year was appropriate. (See ACT, April 2001.) The report also cited potentially serious shortcomings in the weapons complex and the stockpile stewardship program, issues that Foster indicated in his recent testimony had been at least partially addressed.

But Foster also warned that “major challenges remain,” citing an “atrophied” weapons complex and the “unprecedented technical challenge” of maintaining confidence in weapons as they are refurbished and modified.

The nuclear posture review says a revitalization of the nation’s nuclear weapons infrastructure is necessary “so that the United States will be able to adjust to rapidly changing situations,” including moves to “modify, upgrade, or replace” portions of the nuclear arsenal or to develop and deploy new weapons.

The posture review also hints at the need for a return to nuclear testing, stating, “Increasingly, objective judgments about [nuclear weapons] capability in a non-testing environment will become far more difficult.”

At the same time, administration officials have continued to emphasize that they do not foresee a return to testing in the near future and that the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile remains “safe, secure, and reliable,” as National Nuclear Security Administration head John Gordon told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee March 18.

Pentagon Researching New Booster For Missile Defense Program

Wade Boese

On March 4, the Boeing company, which is the lead contractor for the Pentagon’s ground-based midcourse missile defense program, selected Orbital Sciences Corporation to develop and test a booster rocket for possible use in the future system.

The booster is the part of the missile interceptor that carries the defense’s exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV) into space, where the EKV seeks out an incoming target and tries to destroy it through a high-speed collision. In current intercept testing, the system employs a surrogate booster that accelerates much slower than the one expected to be used in a completed missile defense.

Boeing is developing its own booster for use in the missile defense system but has been plagued by development delays and a recent test failure. Scheduled to take place in February 2000, the first test of the booster did not occur until August 2001, roughly 18 months behind schedule. Although that test was viewed as a success, a second flight test of the booster failed less than 30 seconds after launch on December 13 of last year.

Boeing is continuing work on its own booster, which is tentatively scheduled for another flight test this summer, and an Orbital spokesman said that the first flight test of its booster is scheduled for sometime next year. It is uncertain when either booster may be incorporated into an actual intercept test, although one may be included after about five more intercept tries using the surrogate booster, according to a spokesman from the Missile Defense Agency, which manages U.S. missile defense efforts.

Orbital will receive approximately $400 million between 2002 and 2006 for initial research and development, with the possibility of an additional $535 million contract if its booster is approved for production and deployment. A March 4 Orbital press release noted that current plans call for a total of about 70 boosters to be built during the next seven years.

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