Login/Logout

*
*  

“Right after I graduated, I interned with the Arms Control Association. It was terrific.”

– George Stephanopolous
ABC News
January 1, 2005
November 2009
Edition Date: 
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Cover Image: 

OPCW Chooses New Director-General

Oliver Meier and Daniel Horner

The Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) last month chose Ahmet Üzümcü of Turkey to succeed Rogelio Pfirter as the organization’s director-general.

The council made the decision by consensus during its Oct. 13-16 meeting in The Hague, according to an Oct. 16 OPCW press release. The 41-member council also accepted Libya’s request to extend the deadline for the destruction of its chemical weapons by five and a half months, until May 15, 2011.

Both decisions require formal approval by the Nov. 30-Dec. 4 conference of states-parties of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the annual meeting and highest decision-making body of the 188 CWC parties.

In addition to Üzümcü, six career diplomats had been put forward by their governments as candidates for the post of director-general: Benchaa Dani of Algeria, John Freeman of the United Kingdom, Peter Gottwald of Germany, Sudjadnan Parnohadiningrat of Indonesia, Aapo Pölhö  of Finland, and Anton Thalmann of Switzerland. (See ACT, September 2009.)

The director-general heads the OPCW Technical Secretariat, which implements the CWC. He is in charge of administering a €75 million ($105 million) annual budget and manages a staff of 500.

According to a diplomatic source close to the process, three straw polls conducted in the eight days before the Executive Council meeting quickly established Üzümcü as the front-runner. On Oct. 13, Pölhö  and Thalmann were the first to withdraw. Sudjadnan was next on Oct. 14, after a fourth secret ballot, the source said. These three candidates had consistently received the lowest number of votes in the initial polls, the source said. Shortly before a fifth vote Oct. 15, Freeman also quit the race, the source said. On Oct. 16, the last day of the council meeting, Gottwald and Dani conceded to Üzümcü, who was then unanimously appointed by council members, the source said.

Üzümcü, 58, is currently Turkey’s permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Previously, he held a variety of posts at the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as Turkey’s representative to NATO.

There had been fears that the election of a new director-general might be contentious, pitting the Nonaligned Movement against Western states. That was the case in the 2002 OPCW election of Pfirter and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) election this year of Japan’s Yukiya Amano as director-general. (See ACT, September 2002; September 2009.) Speaking privately, some observers said Üzümcü had been able to win only by securing the support of some key nonaligned states. Turkey is a member of the OPCW’s Western Europe and Other States group but is seen as a country with “one foot in the South and one foot in the North,” Paul Walker, director of security and sustainability for the environmental group Global Green USA, said in an Oct. 21 interview.

According to the observers, there was relief that a lengthy selection process and formal vote could be avoided. Pfirter, who is scheduled to step down in July when his second four-year term ends, emphasized in the OPCW press release that the consensus appointment of Üzümcü reaffirmed that the OPCW is “an example of successful multilateralism” and described the outcome as “a proud moment” for the organization. Jorge Lomónaco Tonda of Mexico, who is currently chairing the council and facilitated the selection process, said in an Oct. 16 interview that he had worked “relentlessly to make clear that this process was not about regions and not about North and South.” The decision has proven that the OPCW is able to operate on a consensus basis “even in complicated situations,” Lomónaco said. During the whole selection process, there was consistent cross-regional support for all candidates, and council members made “no distinction whether a candidate came from one region or another,” he said. In an apparent reference to the IAEA process for selecting Amano, he said the OPCW decision showed “a level of cooperation and the ability to work as a team you rarely see in other international organizations.”

Walker called Üzümcü “a very good choice,” citing his experience in arms control and multilateral organizations. Walker also noted that Üzümcü has had postings in Israel and Syria, which, with Egypt, are the Middle Eastern countries that have not ratified the CWC. In his July 15 presentation to the council, Üzümcü said the CWC members and the OPCW director-general should “vigorously pursue” the goal of “universal adherence” to the treaty. Although Turkey has good relations with all three of the Middle Eastern nonparties, “early progress” will be difficult, he said.

At the October meeting, the council, after some discussion, agreed to forward to the upcoming conference a request by Libya for an extension of its deadline for the destruction of its chemical weapons stockpile. Libya acceded to the CWC in February 2004. In December 2006, states-parties granted the country an extension of its original April 29, 2007, deadline, to Dec. 31, 2010. In an Aug. 24 paper submitted to the council, Libya requested that the deadline be moved again, to May 15, 2011. The Libyan paper was not released to the public, but according to an Oct. 7 OPCW report, Libya cited several reasons for its difficulties in meeting the 2010 deadline, “including certain logistical and financial problems that have arisen against the background of the global economic crisis, as well as strong opposition from civil organisations to the destruction of chemical weapons, prompted by fears about the potential harmful consequences of implementation of the destruction project.” According to diplomats, several delegations were unhappy with the Libyan explanations. During the meeting, “some delegations requested additional information on how Libya intends to use the additional time,” Lomónaco said.

In June 2007, Libya withdrew from a bilateral agreement with the United States on major U.S. assistance to the technically challenging and costly effort of eliminating chemical weaponry in the Libyan desert. In addition to destroying 23.6 metric tons of mustard gas, Libya must eliminate around 1,300 metric tons of precursor chemicals to comply with the convention. (See ACT, July/August 2007.) Libya has not yet begun destruction of the most dangerous chemical weapons, which were developed on the basis of chemicals listed in Schedule 1 of the CWC’s Annex on Chemicals. Schedule 1 lists chemical agents and precursors that were developed and manufactured for military purposes and have no significant commercial applications.

The Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) last month chose Ahmet Üzümcü of Turkey to succeed Rogelio Pfirter as the organization’s director-general.

China, Russia Agree on Launch Notification

Luke Champlin

China and Russia signed an agreement Oct. 13 to notify each other of impending ballistic missile launches. The agreement was part of a large package of economic and political deals signed during Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit with his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao. Putin called the agreement “a very important step towards enhancing mutual trust and strengthening our strategic partnership,” according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.

This agreement would be the first of its kind between China and Russia. Li Daguang of China’s National Defense University said the agreement “shows the special relationship between the two countries...as the launches of ballistic missiles are core state secrets rarely disclosed with other countries,” according to the Chinese newspaper Global Times.

In an Oct. 24 e-mail to Arms Control Today, Pavel Podvig of Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation praised the agreement for enhancing transparency between the two countries. Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project for the Federation of American Scientists, also welcomed the increased transparency. The pact “probably reflects a wish in both [countries] to avoid misunderstandings,” he said in an Oct. 27 e-mail.

The new pact is especially significant because China has traditionally avoided agreements, such as the Hague Code of Conduct, that affect its ballistic missile capabilities.

Prior to the agreement with Russia, China had not engaged in bilateral arms control measures with Russia or the United States. The official Chinese media took pains to distinguish the Chinese-Russian notification accord from “offensive agreements” in place between Russia and the United States, as the notification agreement does not limit the nuclear arsenal of either side.

The specific provisions of the new agreement have not been released. The agreement was signed by Russian First Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Kolmakov and Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army.

The new agreement builds on a precedent established by the first launch-notification regime concluded between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1971 at the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). That accord, known as the Accidents Measures Agreement, required each side to notify the other in advance of missile launches that resulted in missiles traveling beyond the country’s borders. These measures were expanded by the 1988 Ballistic Missile Launch Notification Agreement, which relied on Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers established in 1987 to exchange information in advance of all launches of ICBMs or submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).

START further codified and expanded this regime by requiring the sides to provide telemetry data from every ICBM or SLBM launch. This notification system has served as a confidence-building measure intended to prevent an accidental nuclear exchange. The agreement between China and Russia apparently is intended to serve a similar function, as China continues to improve the range and capability of its ICBM force.

 

China and Russia signed an agreement Oct. 13 to notify each other of impending ballistic missile launches. The agreement was part of a large package of economic and political deals signed during Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit with his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao. Putin called the agreement “a very important step towards enhancing mutual trust and strengthening our strategic partnership,” according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.

START Deadline Looms; Endgame Begins

Tom Z. Collina

One month away from START’s Dec. 5 expiration date, it is unclear that a replacement treaty will be ready for signature by that time, comments by administration officials and nongovernmental observers suggest. After months of U.S.-Russian negotiations and high-level visits, major areas of disagreement remain, the experts said. The talks are entering a pivotal phase and may need presidential involvement to overcome the differences, the experts said.

Efforts to close a deal are getting high-level political attention in both capitals. National security adviser Gen. James L. Jones traveled to Moscow Oct. 28-29 to meet with his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. After their talks, Lavrov said “intensive efforts” would be required to reach an agreement, and Jones said that the two had a “very good discussion on a number of bilateral issues,” according to the Associated Press.

In an Oct. 24 telephone conversation, Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama reiterated their intent to finish talks on schedule, according to the White House. The two countries held their latest round of talks in Geneva Oct. 19-30; the next round is scheduled to begin Nov. 9.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher, and Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation Rose Gottemoeller traveled to Moscow Oct. 13 to meet Medvedev and Lavrov for discussions on the prospects for replacing START. Medvedev “said that he thought we should lock our negotiators in a room in Geneva and not let them out until they had reached a new START agreement,” Clinton told an audience at the U.S. Institute of Peace Oct. 21. “We haven’t done that yet, but I’m glad to have his full concurrence if that turns out to be necessary,” she said.

In an Oct. 21 interview with Arms Control Today, Tauscher said that the administration would have a “stock-taking” at the end of October to determine which of the major unresolved issues need to be referred to “principals,” or top-level officials, for final decisions. Tauscher reaffirmed the U.S. “intention to be able to replace the START treaty when it expires.” There would need to be agreement on the major components by mid-November in order to leave sufficient time before Dec. 5 for drafting, translation, and final administration review, according to officials.

Because of the tight schedule and slow progress since the basic outlines of the new treaty were established in the presidents’ joint understanding document in Moscow July 6, speculation is growing that the talks might not conclude in time without personal attention from the two national leaders. At a briefing hosted by the Arms Control Association Oct. 19, arms control experts John Steinbruner of the University of Maryland and Sergey Rogov of the Institute for USA and Canadian Studies in Moscow agreed on that point.

Bridging the Gap

If negotiators succeed in reaching agreement by Dec. 5, the administration may seek a “provisional application,” according to officials. That approach would put the terms of the new treaty into place on a temporary basis pending a Senate vote, possibly in the spring. As concern grows that a new treaty will not be ready for signature by December, questions are increasing about what will happen to the verification and monitoring provisions of START once it expires.

If the two sides do not settle on a new treaty, the administration may seek some form of executive agreement with Russia to allow inspectors to stay and information to be shared in ways similar to those established under the current treaty while talks continue, The New York Times reported Oct. 20. Such an agreement, according to the Times, would not require Senate approval.

Some Republican senators apparently would prefer START contingency options that require Senate approval. The Senate Republican Policy Committee, chaired by John Thune (S.D.), issued a report Sept. 30 stating that if the treaty negotiations cannot be finished by year’s end, “the parties should either extend the treaty for five years as provided for [in the treaty], or amend the treaty to remain in force for a different period of time, to which the Senate should consent, while the parties continue to negotiate a new agreement.”

In the Oct. 21 interview, Tauscher said the U.S. plan is to “find an accommodation” to maintain START’s verification protocols in the period between the expiration of the current treaty and ratification of its replacement.

“We really haven’t developed contingency plans, to my knowledge, for what [to] do if we don’t get a START follow-on by Dec. 5,” Michael Nacht, assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs, said during a panel discussion at the Atlantic Council Oct. 7. “The Russians tend to have a negotiating style where they leave a lot of things for the last minute,” he said. “We are used to this.”

Senate Opposition

Meanwhile, some Senate Republicans are gearing up for battle on treaty ratification. Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.) said in a Senate floor speech Oct. 19 that Russia’s development of the new multiple-warhead RS-24 missile violates the current START. “In this case, it appears the Russians have cheated—if not in the letter of the START agreement, at least in its spirit—by converting one of their existing missiles, the Topol-M, to this new multiple-warhead variant,” he said. START prohibits “increasing the number of warheads attributed to an ICBM or SLBM [submarine-launched ballistic missile] of an existing or new type,” meaning that Russia cannot take the single-warhead Topol-M, rename it the RS-24, and deploy it with three warheads, but the treaty does not prohibit the testing of such missiles. Rogov said Russia was waiting to deploy this missile until December 2009, after START expires, to avoid any question of violating the treaty. At an Oct. 26 panel discussion at the U.S. Institute of Peace, former START negotiator Linton Brooks said the Bush administration had made it clear to Moscow during testing of the RS-24 that it did not have any objections.

The Obama administration is also feeling pressure from the Democratic side of the aisle. In a Sept. 29 letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a bipartisan group of eleven senators said, “As we have indicated to the president, we would strongly oppose a reduction below the current force structure of 450 missiles, divided into three wings of 150 missiles each. We believe this structure represents the optimal number of missiles and the optimal organization.” The group of signers includes Democrats Max Baucus (Mont.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Byron L. Dorgan (N.D.), and Mary L. Landrieu (La.).

U.S. ICBMs are currently based in Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming. The two Republican senators from Wyoming also signed the letter.

Endgame

According to knowledgeable sources, there are several major areas of disagreement that would need to be resolved in the next few weeks.

Missile defense. According to the July 6 joint understanding, the new treaty will include a provision on “the interrelationship of strategic offensive and strategic defensive arms.” The Obama administration has made clear that the START successor agreement deals with offensive weapons, not defenses, and wants to discuss defenses in a separate forum. Russian negotiators are seeking a commitment from the United States not to increase its strategic missile defenses beyond current levels, although the United States addressed a major Russian concern by canceling the deployment of strategic missile defense interceptors in Poland. (See ACT, October 2009.)

“The most important of these [START] principles for us is the inter-connection between strategic offensive and defensive weapons, linked to a U.S. program of creating strategic weapons with non-nuclear charges,” Lavrov said Oct. 27, according to Reuters. “On both issues, as we understand, the Americans heard our concerns, are ready to take them into account and promised that within days they would hand over their own proposals, addressing these problems,” he said.

Conventional warheads. The joint understanding says the new treaty will cover “the impact” of ICBMs and SLBMs “in a non-nuclear configuration on strategic stability.” The issue is the deployment of conventional warheads on ballistic missiles that, up to now, could only carry nuclear warheads. The U.S. Department of Defense apparently wants to preserve this option as it is exploring technologies for Prompt Global Strike weapons that might be launched on short notice against faraway targets, such as a state’s missile launch or a nuclear material transfer to a terrorist group. The Pentagon had initially proposed using the Trident D-5 SLBM, counted under START as a nuclear delivery system, for this purpose. Congress declined to fund this program in 2008 out of concern that Russia might be unable to distinguish between a nuclear and conventional attack, increasing the risk of nuclear war. Russia wants the conventional-weapon option banned under the new treaty. “There are very few countries in the world that are afraid of American nuclear weapons, but there are many countries which are afraid of American conventional weapons,” Alexei Arbatov, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said in April. A possible compromise, according to Brooks, would be to count conventional warheads deployed on strategic delivery systems against the nuclear warhead limit under the new treaty.

Launcher numbers. The July 6 agreement calls for the number of strategic delivery vehicles to be limited to 500-1,100. Russia wants the low end and the United States the high end, as these limits reflect the number of delivery vehicles each side expects to deploy over the next few years. The U.S. number was developed using START counting rules, under which the United States declared in October it had 1,188 strategic delivery vehicles. Many of these are “phantom” weapons that no longer carry strategic nuclear warheads but still count under START, including 100 ICBM silos, 96 SLBM launch tubes on four Trident submarines, and nearly 150 bombers, according to the Congressional Research Service. If the counting rules are reformed to exclude launchers that no longer carry nuclear weapons, the United States could reduce the delivery vehicle limit from 1,100 to around 800, which is the actual number of launchers the United States is believed to have deployed today. Below that level, the Obama administration would need to retire operational nuclear systems, possibly including land-based ICBMs.

Even if the United States drops down to 800 delivery vehicles or lower under the new treaty, the Russians may still be concerned about “uploading”—the U.S. ability to take nuclear forces out of storage quickly and put them back in the field. “The uploading potential of the United States is 200 percent or more of what would be the ceiling for deployed weapons. For the Russian side, the uploading potential would be no more than 500 warheads, and this is a very optimistic assessment based on the plans for deployment of a new MIRVed ICBM,” said Rogov. He was referring to a missile that would have multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles.

To address the Trident D-5’s upload potential, which Russia finds particularly troubling, Rogov proposed reducing the number of launch tubes on each submarine, reducing the number of submarines, reducing the number of warheads that can be loaded onto each missile, and verifiably dismantling warheads taken out of service.

Brooks said it might be best to “kick the can” down the road to the next treaty if possible, given the difficulty of reaching agreement on uploading. If not, he said he would propose removing Trident SLBMs from submarines and either cutting up the subs to remove the launch tubes or otherwise rendering them unusable. He said that changing the warhead platform to allow fewer warheads to be loaded would be too expensive and verifiably dismantling the warheads would be too difficult to address in this treaty.

Warhead verification. An additional problem, according to Rogov, is that the United States wants to move away from the START practice of allocating, for counting purposes, a certain number of warheads to each type of missile. For example, under START the Trident D-5 missile is counted as having eight warheads; it can carry fewer than eight but not more. Instead of this approach, the U.S. side is proposing, according to Rogov, to allow on-site inspections so that each side can count for itself how many warheads are on the other’s delivery systems. The Russians are concerned that, without a set number of warheads per missile, what they find on one missile might not tell them enough about the total stockpile, Rogov said. The July 6 agreement calls for each side to maintain no more than 1,500 to 1,675 strategic warheads.

Other unresolved verification issues include the monitoring of missile production sites and mobile missile deployments.

 

One month away from START’s Dec. 5 expiration date, it is unclear that a replacement treaty will be ready for signature by that time, comments by administration officials and nongovernmental observers suggest.

Books of Note

Inside Nuclear South Asia

Scott D. Sagan, ed., StanfordUniversity Press, 2009, 281 pp.

Scott D. Sagan of StanfordUniversity’s Center for International Security and Cooperation has compiled the work of a number of South Asia experts who discuss nuclear proliferation in the region and offer alternatives to the common explanations for its occurrence. The first part of the book covers the causes of South Asian nuclear proliferation. The authors in this section focus particularly on three explanations for why India and Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons: domestic politics, issues of prestige and grievance, and external threats. For instance, Itty Abraham argues that different actors within India attached varied meanings to the nuclear program and that the nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998 were intended in large part to demonstrate the greatness and accomplishment of India as an independent nation. The second section focuses on the implications of the current regional nuclear order and offers reasons for pessimism about its long-term stability.


 

Preventing Catastrophe: The Use and Misuse of Intelligence in Efforts to Halt the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Thomas Graham Jr. and Keith A. Hansen, StanfordUniversity Press, 2009, 300 pp.

Thomas Graham Jr., former acting director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and veteran arms control verification expert Keith A. Hansen have written an authoritative and comprehensive survey of the way intelligence has been and can be used to support global nonproliferation objectives. The book has much to recommend it as a reference work or textbook for scholars and students, including concise summaries of historical events and key documents. The authors’ nonjudgmental prose and obvious sympathy for the challenges confronting the producers of intelligence may leave some readers hungry for tougher critiques of the intelligence community for its record during the debacle over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and for its use of controversial counterterrorism methods. Yet, exposure to the careful conclusions of experts such as Graham and Hansen in the context of their balanced presentation of recent history carries its own rewards.


 

Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security

Gregory D. Koblentz, CornellUniversity Press, 2009, 255 pp.

In Living Weapons, Gregory D. Koblentz thoroughly addresses the wide range of challenges that biological weapons pose to countries in the 21st century. He outlines the difficulties the international community faces in obtaining intelligence about biological weapons, verifying whether state or nonstate actors are developing biological weapons, holding state and nonstate actors accountable for biological weapons programs, and preventing the rise of biological terrorism. Koblentz explores these issues by weaving together historical information on Iraqi, Russian, South African, and Soviet biological weapons programs with analysis of the scientific and security challenges biological weapons present in the 21st century. Rather than developing any one solution in depth, he recommends several possible ways for countries to decrease, unilaterally and multilaterally, the threat posed by biological weapons.

 

Inside Nuclear South Asia,Scott D. Sagan, ed., StanfordUniversity Press, 2009, 281 pp.

Preventing Catastrophe: The Use and Misuse of Intelligence in Efforts to Halt the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Thomas Graham Jr. and Keith A. Hansen, StanfordUniversity Press, 2009, 300 pp.

Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security, Gregory D. Koblentz, CornellUniversity Press, 2009, 255 pp.

Dismissing Doomsday

Reviewed by Gerard DeGroot

Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism From Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda

By John Mueller

OxfordUniversity Press, 2009, 320 pp.

Every year, I teach a course on the atom bomb. At the end of each semester, I ask my students to tell me at what point the world came closest to nuclear Armageddon. The answers are usually predictable: the Cuban missile crisis, the Yom Kippur War, the Indo-Pakistani conflict. One year, however, I got a very different response.

It came from a student who was sitting in the far corner. Usually taciturn, he now looked ready to explode. “Thomas,” I asked, “do you have something to offer?” He hesitated, then spat, “NEVER! There’s never been a nuclear crisis. Nuclear weapons are stupid, and no nation would ever be stupid enough to use them.”

At the time, I dismissed the outburst as heartfelt but wrong. Someone had clearly not been doing his homework. Now, however, after reading John Mueller’s Atomic Obsession, I am not so sure. Mueller, professor of political science at OhioStateUniversity, has provided lucidity and logic to my student’s tirade. As Mueller argues, nuclear weapons are indeed stupid, and because they are, the risk of their use is tiny. Mueller’s argument seems at first recklessly glib, but by the end of the book, I found myself swayed by his devastating logic. This is one of those annoyingly convincing books that undermine one’s sacred truths. I am supposed to be an expert on this subject, but right now, I am questioning a lot of what I know. I may have to rethink my bomb course.

Mueller’s thesis, as his title suggests, is that we are held captive by a paralyzing obsession when it comes to all things nuclear. That obsession corrodes common sense, causing us to lose our sense of proportion. Take, for instance, the present crisis in North Korea. The fact that atomic weapons and ballistic missiles are being tested reduces otherwise sensible people in Washington to trembling panic. As Mueller indicates, the White House has, at various times in the recent past, seriously considered going to war to stop the North Korean project. Yet, such a war, experts predict, would result in a catastrophic loss of human life.

Would such a sacrifice be justified in order to prevent one nation from joining the nuclear club? Mueller shouts a resounding “no.” So far, he argues, the North Koreans have tested devices of pathetically low yield. As for their missiles, they have only managed to demonstrate a capacity to hit the Pacific Ocean. These meager results have been achieved amid insolvency and mass starvation. It is clearly beyond the capacity of the North Koreans to develop their nuclear capability to a point where they could genuinely threaten any other nation. As the sometimes mischievous Mueller indicates, given the crippling cost of a nuclear program, there might even be ironic logic in allowing North Korea to go ahead because that seems the best way to bankrupt the vile regime of Kim Jong Il.

Mueller dismisses as bogus the risk of North Korea transferring weapons, material, or technology to other countries. The safeguards against such an eventuality, he believes, are simply too strong. In any case, he argues, given the depths to which North Korea’s reputation has sunk, it seems unlikely that any state would risk universal opprobrium by making a Faustian deal with such a pariah. That seems, however, a bit like whistling in the dark, given that Syria has already made such a deal and Iran has also apparently cooperated with North Korea on missile development. Mueller takes solace in the assumption that provenance would be easy to trace, and guilt—not to mention punishment—would thus be shared.

Bang for the Buck

Suppose instead that Kim had invested his money in conventional weapons and traditional methods of delivery. The huge sums spent on his atomic project to date would have bought a lot of bombs and a fair number of bombers to drop them. Bombers, we need to remind ourselves, remain the most dependable method of delivering a payload. Failing that, the money could have been invested in heavy artillery because Seoul and other major cities in South Korea are easily within range. Had Kim taken either of these routes, he would have made his country a much greater threat to regional stability than it is now. One suspects that hardly anyone would have protested.

The bomb, in other words, is too often seen as an absolute weapon, when it is nothing of the sort. The term “absolute weapon” originated with Bernard Brodie’s book by that title and has been treated as gospel ever since.[1]

In impressively methodical fashion, Mueller dismantles the myths of an omnipotent leviathan. The imaginary monster, he feels, was brought into being by J. Robert Oppenheimer, who could not resist indulging in apocalyptic imagery after witnessing the first atomic test on July 16, 1945. “I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds,” he mused, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita. Making a dent in the New Mexico desert or even leveling a few square miles of Hiroshima is not, Mueller insists, the same as destroying a world. By pretending that it is, we misjudge the threat the bomb poses.

A sense of proportion is essential. Mueller rightly points out that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was no worse than the firebombing of Tokyo. The difference lay only in efficiency: one bomb achieved what elsewhere took thousands. We are constantly bombarded with grisly photographs of Hiroshima as proof of the bomb’s awesome power, but photographs of Tokyo, although rarely displayed, show virtually identical destruction. In other words, nuclear weapons are not uniquely terrible. The bomb is unique in delivering potentially lethal radiation, but that too, Mueller argues, has been exaggerated. The horror lies in war, not in the specific methods of waging it.

Granted, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had yields of around 20 kilotons, while weapons today are often measured in megatons. That would suggest that it is facile to compare atomic weapons with conventional bombs. Mueller answers that rebuttal rather cleverly. There are indeed thermonuclear weapons capable of immense destruction, but they remain in the stockpiles of powers unlikely ever to use them, at least not as a first strike. The weapons causing the most fuss in the world at the moment, namely those possessed by Pakistan or being developed by Iran or North Korea, are similar in size to the Hiroshima bomb or even smaller.

The danger posed by these weapons, Mueller argues, is minuscule. He bases his argument on classical deterrence—a dwarf nuclear power such as Iran will forever be prevented from using its weapons by the knowledge that, if it did so, the nuclear giants would deliver vengeance a thousand times greater. Granted, nuclear retaliation might not be certain, but the risks are too great to allow the leader to gamble. The basic principle that once kept the United States and U.S.S.R. from destroying each other still stands: no leader, no matter how unstable he might seem, would ever take action that might result in the utter destruction of his country.

Some readers might find cold comfort in the shield of deterrence. While reading this book, I occasionally felt uneasy about Mueller’s clinical logic, given that some world leaders are far from logical. That said, an argument could be made that nuclear weapons have forced leaders, even notoriously unstable ones, to act rationally. Some critics might argue that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran cannot be trusted to act rationally, but it is equally possible that the bomb will impose sanity on him. A case in point, Mueller argues, is China, a country once rather contemptuous of human life. In the 1960s and 1970s, China was in every sense a “rogue nation.” Yet, it never came close to using its nuclear weapons, despite Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s febrile boasts that he was prepared to allow one-half of his population to die in defense of communism.

Sowing Fear

Rather predictably, the Mueller train of logic moves relentlessly to the conclusion that Iran and North Korea should be allowed to pursue their nuclear projects. He sees the two nations as akin to spoiled children who will probably find that the toy they covet is not quite so attractive if it is granted without need of a tantrum. Clearly, the value of these weapons for Ahmadinejad and Kim lies not in their potential for devastation but in the abhorrence they inspire in the rest of the world. Once the weapons cease to sow fear, they lose their value as a tool of political extortion. Mueller also argues that the best way to insure that proper safeguards are applied to Iranian or North Korean weapons is to treat those nations like responsible members of the nuclear club. Although Mueller does not advocate simply abandoning all efforts to persuade Iran and North Korea to abstain, he insists that persuasion must remain in the realm of responsible dialogue. Threats of military action, he insists, will only encourage greater stubbornness. If a nation is labeled a rogue, it tends to behave in that manner.

The word “if” does not, however, juxtapose comfortably with kiloton power. As Robert McNamara once argued, “[A] strategic planner…must prepare for the worst plausible case and not be content to hope and prepare for the most probable.”[2] That explains why it was considered necessary for the United States to spend $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons between 1940 and 1996.[3]  The same logic suggests that the best way to keep Iran from using an atomic bomb is to prevent it from ever making one. Thus, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has maintained that Iran must be prevented from getting the bomb “at all costs.” What does that mean? Would prevention be worth another war in the Middle East, one that would probably be even more destructive than the current conflict in Iraq? Mueller, an expert at keeping things in perspective, rightly points out that the danger of going to war with Iran and further inflaming Islamic opinion is far greater than the danger that could ever be posed by an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Mueller also does not grant much credence to what he calls the “cascadologists,” namely those so-called security experts who maintain that an Iranian or North Korean bomb would trigger relentless proliferation. As he points out, cascadologists have been crying wolf ever since the Soviets first exploded a nuclear weapon in 1949. If warnings uttered decades ago had proven correct, there would be about 40 nuclear powers today. Instead, most nations have proven remarkably reluctant to join the nuclear club, and some have even suspended their membership by getting rid of their weapons. This reluctance can be explained by the fact that the weapons have no military utility and are ferociously expensive. Even Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi eventually came to the conclusion that nuclear weapons are “crazy.”

Mueller rejects entirely the notion that the bomb is a tool of coercion, useful in frightening adversaries into doing what is wanted. As he points out, the fact that the United Kingdom had nuclear weapons did not prevent Argentina from invading the Falklands. Israel’s possession of atomic bombs did not frighten off the Egyptians on Yom Kippur in 1973; Israel would have been better off buying tanks. “The United States,” he adds, “possesses a tidy array of thousands of nuclear weapons and for years has had difficulty dominating downtown Baghdad—or even keeping the lights on there.”

Questioning Sacred Truths

Like a marksman at a fairground shooting gallery, Mueller carefully guns down the sacred truths of nuclear orthodoxy. “All radiation is dangerous.” Bang! “Atomic weapons were essential to the stability of the Cold War.” Bang! The ducks keep coming, and Mueller keeps shooting them down. He eventually arrives at essentially the same conclusion many arms control advocates have long advanced, namely that nuclear weapons should be abolished. He comes to that conclusion, however, from a very different direction. In his view, the weapons should go not because they are dangerous, but because they serve no purpose.

Mueller sees nuclear weapons as a massive misjudgment inspired by irrational fear. Worst-case scenario fantasists have exercised an iron grip on international sensibilities, he argues, forcing nations to spend money on weapons that they did not need. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, that same fear has prompted an obsession with nuclear terrorism, a danger Mueller also judges bogus. Addicted to fear, the doomsday merchants have turned to the terrorist because Russia could no longer provide a fix. The last section of his book aims at this new bogey, blowing it away with the same deadly precision. Central to Mueller’s argument is the assertion that terrorists are basically opportunists: they achieve success by keeping attacks simple. The complexity of a nuclear strike—the time, effort, risk, and expense—contradicts that ethic.

In examining the terrorist scenario, Mueller analyzes the process of funding, designing, building, transporting, and detonating a weapon and breaks the process down into 20 clearly identified tasks. As he stresses, the terrorist needs to succeed at each task, while those who wish to stop him require only one success. Even the very generous 50-50 odds that he gives for each stage in the process mean the accumulated likelihood of success is less than one in a million. Examined through that lens, a decision to pursue nuclear weapons seems ludicrous. It makes no sense for a terrorist organization to invest huge sums of money, time, and effort in such a risky enterprise because its purpose can be served much more easily by strapping a few pounds of gelignite to the body of a fanatic and sending him into a crowded train. For these reasons, Mueller is not greatly concerned by reports that al Qaeda has been seeking nuclear material and information for bomb-making.

Lurking ominously in our nuclear consciousness is the specter of Armageddon, a terribly inappropriate word that warps good sense. In popular perception, a nuclear explosion has wrongly come to be equated with the apocalypse. That in turn has demanded preparation for the worst-case scenario. Stripped of our sense of proportion, we cower in an artificial world of absolute danger, imprisoned by our fears. The steps we have taken to protect ourselves from an exaggerated danger are arguably more destructive than the danger itself, as has been potently demonstrated in Iraq.

Mueller’s achievement deserves admiration even by those inclined to resist his central thesis. The book is meticulously researched and punctuated with a dry wit that seems the perfect riposte to the pomposity of security experts who have so far tyrannized debate. Although by no means the last word on nuclear weapons, Mueller deserves praise for having the guts to shout that the atomic emperor has no clothes.

The biggest fault of the book is the way he attacks one obsession with another. He is clearly passionate about his topic, and that passion causes him to overplay his hand. For instance, the contention that radiation is less dangerous than we think is not necessary for his central argument. Likewise, his attempt to bring the destruction of Hiroshima into perspective seems occasionally callous. His insistence that atomic weapons are not as dangerous as they seem could easily be used by those prepared to think the unthinkable, those who have occasionally tried to construct scenarios in which nuclear weapons might conceivably be used. After all, deterrence is strengthened by a belief in Armageddon, even if that belief occasionally warps good sense.

This still very worthy book deserves attention and discussion. Its publication coincides nicely with a renewal of tension in Iran’s relations with the rest of the international community. Despite that inadvertent plug, I doubt the book will do very well, for the simple reason that, as Mueller admits, “ghoulish copy very commonly sells” while serene good sense does not. “Nothing is as boring as a book about how urgent something isn’t,” he says. Boring or not, and it is not, the book should nevertheless be packaged up and sent to Presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a simple message: “Please calm down.” While reading Atomic Obsession, I constantly heard President Franklin Roosevelt whispering, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

In his preface, Mueller wryly remarks that he wants his book to be a cure for insomnia. He sees no reason to suffer sleepless nights worrying about a danger that does not exist. The book does indeed have a soporific effect, not through dry prose but through devastating logic. Since reading it, I have felt a tiny bit better about the world my children will inherit.


Gerard DeGroot is a history professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He has written 12 books, including The Bomb: A Life (2004).


ENDNOTES

1. Bernard Brodie, ed., The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946).

2. John Cox, Overkill: Weapons of the Nuclear Age (New York: Crowell, 1977), pp. 96-97.

3.  Stephen I. Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit:The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1998).

 

A review of Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism From Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda By John Mueller.

Weighing the Case For a Convention to Limit Cyberwarfare

By David Elliott

Cyberattack is emerging as a new type of nonlethal weapon that can cause substantial harm to society, especially when used in its most advanced version by countries at war. It may be time to consider an international convention to limit the initiation of such use, particularly against targets that are part of critical national infrastructure and are basically civilian.

Cyberattack refers to offensive actions to alter, disrupt, deceive, degrade, or destroy computer systems or networks or the information or programs resident in or transiting these systems. Its purpose is to mislead or disable an important network-dependent activity. A passive form of attack is cyberexploitation, which gathers intelligence information. A flip side of cyberattack is cybersecurity, which undertakes, through procedural and technical means, to defend against cyberintrusions. The concern addressed in this article relates primarily to the offensive and destructive version of cyberattack by one state against another state’s critical infrastructure. There have been proposals to reduce the threat of cyberwarfare through an arms control agreement; some of the key issues underlying the pursuit of such an agreement are examined in this article.

The threat of serious cyberattack by state or nonstate actors has been on the U.S. security agenda for many years. There have been notable cyberattacks in recent years on the United States and other countries,[1] and President Barack Obama’s recent “clean slate” review of cybersecurity notes other serious international attacks.[2] All of these attacks have occurred against an essentially constant background of lower-level probes that are not publicized. A common attack mode is the distributed denial of service (DDOS) blitz, in which tens of thousands of unwittingly cooperating computers are combined into a network (botnet) to flood a target’s Web site and thereby disable it. The identity of the organizer and initiator of such an attack can be very difficult to determine, including, importantly, whether it is another government. The public reporting of events almost always speaks only of assumed or likely sources.

Attacks much more harmful than DDOS, with cascading effects, are technically feasible and are assumed to be under development, certainly at the state level. A characterization of the threat potential appears in a recent National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study of cyberattack as a weapon of war.[3] The threat, according to the study, is expected to grow in scope and sophistication.

As the United States continues to look for ways to protect its civil cyberdomain, it also has been actively pursuing, through its national security agencies, efforts not only to protect its own cyber-based military systems but also effectively to attack the cybersystems that are integral to a potential enemy’s military capacity. The focus of the latter is on military and military-relevant targets but also may include components of an enemy’s national infrastructure as a target of strategic information operations.[4] The U.S. offensive programs are very sensitive and thus never openly referenced in any of the last three presidents’ public reviews of cybersecurity. Yet, they will be a background factor, possibly an important one, as the United States seeks international cooperation in protecting its critical infrastructure against cyberattack. In discussions preceding Obama’s July meeting in Moscow, the Russians again raised the subject of an arms control agreement to restrict cyberwarfare. The United States did not support the initiative but urged the Russians to sign the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime as an important step in obtaining international cooperation in controlling the general threat.[5]

More than 10 years ago, the concept of an arms control agreement was examined as part of a broader government-sponsored program at StanfordUniversity[6] and reviewed at a conference on infrastructure protection.[7] Even though the United States might potentially be the greatest beneficiary of such an agreement, the idea was not pursued further for several reasons, detailed below. Later, a draft amendment to the laws of war was suggested to deal specifically with the effects of cyberattack,[8] but it also did not trigger government interest. The issue is likely to continue to be pursued, and a brief review of the conflicting factors facing U.S. decision-makers may be useful.

Such a review could be fairly wide-ranging because the targets potentially vulnerable to cyberattack are extensive and varied. This article will be limited to the major question of how an agreement might restrict cyberattack by one state-party against the critical national infrastructure of another and to the pros and cons of such restrictions from a U.S. perspective. For the purposes of this article, “critical national infrastructure” is defined to encompass those large cyber-dependent networks that are important to the efficient functioning of society, including its economy and civil governance. Frequently cited examples are the electric power grid, telecommunications, the Internet, the financial system, transportation management, and many government services, including air traffic control. Many of these systems and services are dual use, and although primarily built to support the needs of the civil sector, they are used by and important to the military sector to one degree or another.

Existing Legal Limits

Several studies have examined what restrictions the present laws of war and other, less directly applicable agreements would place on cyberattack, including one directed at critical national infrastructure.[9] There is no clear answer, and specific cases would turn on the details of the attack and arguments over the proportionality of anticipated military effect and civilian harm. The self-defense article of the UN Charter would lessen the need to demonstrate military necessity or obtain Security Council approval to carry out retaliation-in-kind and active defense in response to a cyberattack, although consideration of proportionality would remain a restraining factor.[10] Attempts to use the current laws of war to build a body of precedents for restricting cyberwarfare would be protracted, hopefully by the infrequency of wars, and have an uncertain outcome. Further, this approach would not have the normative value of an explicit agreement.

The NAS study examined whether peacetime cyberattack directed at components of another state’s infrastructure might be configured to fall below the threshold of an act of war (jus ad bellum). Such use would add to the United States’ limited options for effective coercion short of military action.

U.S. Needs

A central question is whether the United States believes it can adequately protect its infrastructure against interstate cyberattack through its own actions or, instead, finds it needs international cooperation to move toward that goal. In the latter case, might that cooperation include and possibly be predicated on an international agreement to restrict interstate attacks, with prohibition of first use being a minimum commitment? At the same time, is the United States willing to limit this particular means of visiting strategic damage on an enemy during wartime or to deny itself a tool for coercing others in situations short of armed conflict? The answers to these questions will require the U.S. government to weigh the gains and losses between two contrary and incommensurable policy choices.[11] The nongovernmental sector can contribute to this analysis and debate. However, because of the sensitive and fragile character of this particular military capability and the resulting security restrictions, only the government will be in a position to judge the trade-off fully. In assessing the trade-off, there are three important underlying questions.

•  Can the U.S. infrastructure be made robust enough to withstand state-level cyberattack, such that an agreement limiting offensive use would be unnecessary?

•  Can the United States devise reliable cybermeans to attack an adversary’s national infrastructure and predictably produce strategically important disruption?

•  Is the normative value of an international agreement that is at best self-verifying[12] worth the limitation it would place on the United States, and can other states-parties be expected to conform their offensive decisions to the restrictions of such an agreement?

Protection Without an Agreement

The cybervulnerability of various elements of critical U.S. infrastructure was first examined in detail in the mid-1990s.[13] Since then, efforts to make the infrastructure more resilient have included technical and procedural advances in system security, adoption of new standards and practices, and, importantly, recognition by the involved domestic constituencies of the need for coordinated remedial action. There have been national action plans announced by three successive presidents,[14] with contributions to the plans from government agencies, companies in potentially affected sectors, professional associations, and academia.

Unfortunately, no periodic national report card characterizes the state of the threat and assesses the overall progress being made in protecting the infrastructure, but the conclusion of the latest high-level review is that U.S. vulnerability remains acute.[15] Comparing President Bill Clinton’s public assessment of the problem with that of Obama nearly 10 years later, one would judge that the country is not making adequate progress. Part of that may well be due to the laissez-faire approach during much of the Bush administration, in which case the more directed efforts of the Obama administration may show better progress. Some impediments, however, are inherent to the problem. For instance, most of the critical infrastructure is privately owned, and businesses, unless required to do so, do not include or budget for measures to combat national security risks. They will shape their operations and invest in security against recognized nonstate threats to achieve dependable functioning of their enterprise but will be less willing to go beyond that. Moreover, some steps taken by private companies would require a number of legal exceptions to be made by governments. For example, businesses would need an exemption from antitrust laws to allow confidential joint planning and cooperation among competitors on cybersecurity matters. Companies also would need immunity from the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act’s prohibition on damaging actions as they attempted to neutralize an attack at its origin.

Given this history and this basic impediment, it seems unlikely, certainly over the medium term, that national measures alone can achieve a strengthened U.S. infrastructure that could confidently face an evolving state-level cyberthreat, particularly if the NAS study is correct that the ease of cyberattack is increasing for many kinds of infrastructure targets.

Cyberattack Capability

Do U.S. leaders have enough confidence in their capability to attack the critical infrastructure of other states, and in the effects of such attacks, that they should resist attempts to limit that capability through international agreement? Few people can even begin to estimate an answer to this question in detail, and they cannot participate in any public debate. However, there are some general characteristics of large networked, interdependent cybersystems that should be taken into account when considering the surety of the capability. These characteristics include:

•  Because the outcome of a cyberattack depends on the minute details of the target’s configuration at the moment of attack and cannot be reliably predicted, such attacks are not a first-line offensive tool.

•  Secondary and tertiary systemic and socioeconomic effects of an attack will often be more important than the initial effect. Because projecting these effects requires difficult-to-obtain specialized knowledge of the interdependence of the systems involved, such estimates will be unreliable. This latter consideration also makes it more difficult to project and control collateral damage.

•  Because the hardware and software subsystems and operating procedures of a complex network are not permanent, maintaining a reliable attack capability may necessitate periodic digital probing, with its risks of discovery, premature exposure of target vulnerabilities, and installation by adversaries of measures to defeat the capability.

The U.S. military notes that cyberattack planning may require longer lead times, greater intelligence gathering, and more target preparation than are needed for conventional attacks.[16] It also realizes that launching an infrastructure cyberattack would require concurrent high-level political authorization.[17] Hence, its use cannot be reliably integrated into coordinated-attack planning for operations. The NAS points out that, if the government authorizes an attack, it will either have to warn the operators of U.S. infrastructure, thereby eliminating the option of plausible deniability, or accept the impact of a retaliatory attack without U.S. infrastructure defenses being alerted.[18]

The NAS study notes the argument that it is too early to consider limiting cyberattack against infrastructure as a military option because the technique is in its developmental stages. The study observes, however, that this stage is also the time of policy flexibility before a significant internal constituency has formed, in the United States and in other countries, to resist limitations on national capabilities for cyberattack.[19]

Because these considerations collectively are inconclusive, the basic question remains open within the public debate.

A Cyberattack Convention

To be acceptable to the United States, a cyberattack convention likely would have to take into account the following considerations:

•  Military applications of cyberwarfare are useful and may become quite important. The United States would be unlikely to consider any limitations that would restrict the development, adoption, or use of this capability in general. Further, the development of measures to defend U.S. infrastructure will require threat characterization, to which an offensive program may be a major contributor. Such a program also would be the best source of knowledge for “red-team” testing.[20]

•  The United States should insist on the option for retaliation in kind, for its potential effect and its deterrence value. The United States should also insist on the right to thwart an anticipated cyberattack by cybercountermeasures, as part of an active defense of national infrastructure.

•  Barring a major breakthrough, compliance with any restrictions on use will be very difficult to verify in any reasonable time, owing to the considerable technical difficulty of forensic analysis and of tracing an attack’s origin. Furthermore, treating all levels of attack as possible violations would overwhelm any U.S. verification regime, given the certainty of continuing lower-level cyberattacks from a variety of sources.

Considering these factors, the most practical convention would be multilateral and directed at first use and intent. It would set thresholds on the scale, duration, and severity of attacks and stipulate that exceeding any of the thresholds constituted a violation of the convention; reinforce the requirement for proportionality in anticipated effect on civil society; and preclude assistance to others in conducting prohibited attacks. No cooperative verification measures should be attempted, other than agreement by all parties to cooperate in the investigation of a claim of violation. Such cooperation is vital because some of the pertinent information will reside in third countries.

Arms Control Models

Table 1 lists the five major multilateral arms control agreements in which the United States participates that prohibit first use. In each case, the strategic gain was judged worth the loss of a relinquished capability, the latency risk (an important factor explained below) was deemed manageable, the potential security and political import of a breach (abrogation, violation, or withdrawal) was acceptable, and uncertainty about other parties’ compliance was offset to an acceptable degree by self-verification measures.

Latency risk is a function of time. Given the estimated capabilities of a party, what is the time scale for that state to create, re-establish, or conduct the particular prohibited capacity or activity? High risk means short time. For example, the time from intention to action for a party to use incendiary weapons against prohibited targets (Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons [CCW]) is immediate. Based on available know-how, records, stored equipment, and the permitted prophylaxis or defense reserves, the time for Russia to reconstitute a significant biological weapon capability might be a year or two. The time scale to violate the Environmental Modification (ENMOD) Convention might be decades because the underlying capability does not exist. If there is undetected preparation, all times would be less than estimated. There are two sources of latency, from dedicated or related military programs and from unconnected but applicable civilian enterprises. Civilian latency is only a factor in a few agreements, but when present, it can be important, as in the case of the Chemical Weapons Convention, where the verification procedures involve the monitoring of certain private companies.

Table 1 also estimates the importance of a breach from a U.S. security perspective. In addition, there is the political import of a breach, and that would be uniformly high, as it should be to reinforce the normative value of arms control agreements.

Assuming a breach would necessitate some form of quid pro quo response, a state can offset high latency risk by devoting resources to maintaining a reasonable latent capacity itself. The decision to conduct such a response would depend on the importance of the particular breach at the time it occurs.[21]

The latency risk accompanying a convention to limit cyberattack directed at critical national infrastructure would be high. Special preparatory actions would be required for a specific attack, but the overall capability would exist in the agency responsible for information operations. There would be some capability at the technology level within the civil sector, but it would require a longer development time and hence have a smaller latency risk. The security and political importance of a breach would be high.

The agreements in table 1 are the most relevant models for a cyberattack convention because they all contain no-first-use commitments. In addition, four of the five agreements define the prohibited weapon, and the ENMOD Convention describes the proscribed techniques and effects by example. Other than the inferred laws of war protection of noncombatants, none except for the CCW, in two protocols, defines a protected class of target. Only the ENMOD Convention sets standards in terms of scale, duration, or severity of unacceptable damage and constrains parties from assisting others in conducting the prohibited actions. The latency risk varies among the five, as does the import of breach, although none have high import.

By adding a definition of a protected class of target, namely, specified components of critical national infrastructure, the ENMOD Convention may be the closest model for a limited cyberattack convention. The two differ in one important way: the latency risk and the security import of a breach are judged to be low for environmental attack, whereas both are high for cyberattack. Nevertheless, the ENMOD Convention model may be a useful starting point for negotiation of a limited cyberattack convention.

Conclusion

The United States must take steps to protect its critical national infrastructure against serious cyberattack. One step might be to negotiate a multilateral convention to limit such attacks by states, which are the most likely source of an attack at the level of greatest concern. Although verification of compliance would be difficult, the convention in and of itself might be worthwhile for its norm-setting value, to be a restraining factor in the offensive decisions of other states, and as a necessary step in obtaining fuller international cooperation in controlling the general cyberthreat.

On the other hand, the U.S. military believes that cyberattack in its own hands may be an important addition to its war-making capacity. It may be unwilling to limit that capacity, particularly as the understanding of cyberwarfare potential is still being formed.

Balancing these conflicting objectives will require a full debate and executive decision. This process will have to be carried out by a special high-level government group because of the sensitive and fragile nature of certain aspects of the information involved.

One model of a convention that could serve as a starting point would commit the parties to no-first-use of cyberattack directed at elements of another party’s critical infrastructure if the disruption from that attack was intended[22] to be widespread, long-lasting, or severe. One reason for these thresholds is to differentiate continuing, manageable lower-level attacks from those that constitute a serious violation by a state-party. All the terms in this commitment could be defined in an Understanding Annex, as in the ENMOD Convention, and would be the subject of negotiation. The convention would also preclude assistance to others in conducting prohibited attacks.

Because the cyberthreat is evolving rapidly and is difficult to define, any proposed solution is very unlikely to address the problem effectively for the long term or perhaps even the medium term. On the other hand, it may be important to constrain this form of warfare in the relatively early stages of its development. The type of limited convention described in this article strikes an appropriate balance by establishing some important initial parameters that could serve as the basis for more comprehensive agreements in the future.

Table 1: Multilateral U.S. Arms Control Agreements That Prohibit First Hostile Use
Agreement Subject

Cooperative Verification

Latency Risk Security Import of Breach
Mil. Civ.
Geneva Protocol Prohibits first use of poisonous gases and biological weapons None specified H None L/M
Biological Weapons Convention Bans use, development, acquisition, or possession of biological weapons and agents, except for prophylaxis or defense None specified M M M
Environmental Modification Convention Prohibits use of classes of environmental modification techniques to damage other parties Cooperation in investigation of claims of breach L L L
Chemical Weapons Convention Bans use, development, acquisition, or possession of chemical weapons and agents, except for defense Monitoring of destruction of existing agent and facilities and of commercial production of precursor chemicals; challenge inspections M M M
Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons Restricts use of fragment weapons, landmines, incendiary weapons, laser blinding, and remnants of war, with certain reservations by the United States None specified H None L
Key: H-high, M-medium, L-low, Mil.-military, Civ.-civilian. Assignments of values are the author’s. See Arms Control Models (below) for further explanation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

David Elliott is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at StanfordUniversity and a participant in its program on information security and policy research. He was a senior staff member and director for science and technology on the National Security Council during the Nixon and Ford administrations and was involved in the negotiation or ratification of several arms control agreements.


ENDNOTES

1. Mark Landler and John Markoff, “Digital Fears Emerge After Data Siege in Estonia,” The New York Times, May 29, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/technology/29estonia.html; John Markoff, “Cyber Attack Preceded Invasion,” Chicago Tribune, August 13, 2008, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/aug/13/business/chi-cyber-war_13aug13; Siobhan Gorman and Evan Ramstad, “Cyber Blitz Hits U.S., Korea,” The Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124701806176209691.html.

2. The White House, “Cyberspace Policy Review: Assuring a Trusted and Resilient Information and Communications Infrastructure,” n.d., www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/Cyberspace_Policy_Review_final.pdf (hereinafter White House cyberspace policy review); Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, “Remarks by the President on Securing Our Nation’s Cyber Infrastructure,” May 29, 2009, www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-on-Securing-Our-Nations-Cyber-Infrastructure/ (hereinafter Obama cyber infrastructure remarks).

3. William A. Owens, Kenneth W. Dam, and Herbert S. Lin, eds., “Technology, Policy, Law, and Ethics Regarding U.S. Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities,” National Research Council, 2009 (hereinafter NAS study).

4. Gregory J. Rattray, Strategic Warfare in Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001); Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “The National Military Strategy for Cyberspace Operations,” December 2006 (declassified), www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/ojcs/07-F-2105doc1.pdf.

5. John Markoff and Andrew E. Kramer, “U.S. and Russia Differ on a Treaty for Cyberspace,” The New York Times, June 28, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/world/28cyber.html.

6. Kevin Soo Hoo, Lawrence Greenberg, and David Elliott, “Strategic Information Warfare—A New Arena for Arms Control?” October 1996, http://fsi.stanford.edu/publications/strategic_information_warfare__a_new_arena_for_arms_control/.

7. Kevin J. Soo Hoo et al., “Workshop on Protecting and Assuring Critical National Infrastructure: Setting the Research and Policy Agenda,” October 1997, http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/10354/it5.pdf.

8. Davis Brown, “A Proposal for an International Convention to Regulate the Use of Information Systems in Armed Conflict,” Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Winter 2006): 179-221.

9. For a summary of this extensive literature and further development of the subject, see NAS study, section 7.

10. NAS study,

box 7.1
.

11. In an arms control agreement, a government typically decides to accept a reduction in some aspect of its military capability so that it can better protect its military personnel and assets, as a result of the other side’s comparable military reduction. Although such tradeoffs may be difficult to assess, they are generally less difficult than those, such as the type under discussion in this article, in which the reduction in military capability must be weighed against the benefits to civilian populations and infrastructure. A further complication in the case of assessing the value of a cyberattack agreement is that the level of civilian damage and the value of the forgone military capability are difficult to quantify at this stage of cyberattack development.

12. Self-verification means that individual states determine the compliance of another state without help from any international entity, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, or trustworthy cooperation from a suspected miscreant, but may include some input from an ally on a bilateral basis.

13. The White House, “Report of the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection,” October 1997, http://lccn.loc.gov/98113463.

14. The White House, “Defending America’s Cyberspace: National Plan for Information Systems Protection Version 1.0: An Invitation to a Dialogue,” January 2000,  http://clinton5.nara.gov/media/pdf/npisp-fullreport-000112.pdf; The White House, “The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace,” February 2003, www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/National_Cyberspace_Strategy.pdf; Obama cyber infrastructure remarks.

15. White House cyberspace policy review.

16. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Information Operations,” Joint Publication 3-13, February 13, 2006, www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp3_13.pdf.

17. John Markoff and Thom Shanker, “Halted ‘03 Iraq Plan Illustrated U.S. Fear of Cyberwar Risk,” The New York Times, August 2, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/us/politics/02cyber.html; Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Information Warfare: A Strategy for Peace, the Decisive Edge in War,” USGPO Doc. D 5.2:IN3, 1997, http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ada318379.

18. NAS study, pp. 1-25 – 1-26, 2-39.

19. NAS study, p. 10-6.

20. Red-teaming is a technique used in the development of military systems in which an independent friendly force undertakes to defeat a system and thereby identifies vulnerabilities that must be fixed. In the case of the Eligible Receiver project, government experts, using public information, analyzed and probed certain civil operational systems and found that many of them, thought to be secure from cyberattack, could be penetrated. See www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/eligible-receiver.htm; John Hamre, interview, Frontline, PBS, February 18, 2003.

21. A good example of sensitivity to the circumstances of a breach is Russia’s recent deployment of troops in violation of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty. That violation elicited little international response. If it had occurred during the Cold War, it could have been a casus belli.

22. U.S. intelligence analysts and the U.S. military would be expected to have some insights into an adversary’s intentions from its military manuals and journals and through military exchanges, observation of its military maneuvers, national technical means, and espionage.

 

Cyberattack is emerging as a new type of nonlethal weapon that can cause substantial harm to society, especially when used in its most advanced version by countries at war. It may be time to consider an international convention to limit the initiation of such use, particularly against targets that are part of critical national infrastructure and are basically civilian.

The Role of Nuclear Weapons: Japan, the U.S., and “Sole Purpose”

By Masa Takubo

On September 22, a day before President Barack Obama met with Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in New York, 13 nongovernmental U.S. security experts released an open letter calling on the two leaders “to support a U.S. policy declaring that the only purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter, and if necessary respond to, the use of nuclear weapons by other countries.”[1]

The letter was prompted in part by the coincidence of two events: the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which is supposed to be completed by December and delivered to Congress shortly after, and the victory of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in August. The nuclear policies of the DPJ appear to be markedly different from those of its predecessor, the Liberal Democratic Party, which dominated Japanese politics for more than 50 years.

A key element of the Japanese-U.S. security relationship has been the U.S. pledge to protect Japan against any attack. That pledge has been understood by the Japanese government as an offer of a “nuclear umbrella,” or extended nuclear deterrence, covering attacks on Japan with conventional, chemical, or biological weapons, as well as nuclear weapons.

The security experts’ letter called for a policy of limiting the role of nuclear weapons to deterrence of only nuclear attacks.[2] The letter explained:

This policy would be consistent with President Obama’s [April 5] statement in Prague that he will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy, and urge other countries to do the same.

Such a change in U.S. policy will also strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—a goal of both nations—by reinforcing the negative security assurances the nuclear weapons states have made not to use nuclear weapons against states without nuclear weapons. It will also reduce the incentive for more countries to acquire nuclear weapons.[3]

The current Japanese-U.S. arrangement has come to function as a barrier to global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. Because of a fear in the United States and elsewhere of the perceived prospect that Japan might acquire its own nuclear arsenal if it came to regard the nuclear umbrella as unreliable, the arrangement in effect gives Japan significant leverage. It allows Japan to put pressure on the United States to avoid taking any significant steps to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in its security and military doctrines and thus impedes progress on freeing the world of nuclear weapons. Those in the United States who oppose narrowing the role of nuclear weapons could also use Japan’s position as an excuse for not changing the current U.S. policy.

Former Secretary of Defense William Perry, one of the four authors of Wall Street Journal op-eds calling for a world free of nuclear weapons, said in a recent meeting in Tokyo that he has also been calling on Obama to adopt a policy declaring that the “sole purpose” of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter the use of such weapons by others.[4] He said this “sole purpose” declaration would amount to a no-first-use declaration but that the latter is not acceptable in the United States because the concept is tarnished by its abuse during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union advocated no-first-use while, as was later discovered, it was preparing for first use.[5] Thus, in discussions today, the sole purpose, or “only purpose,” declaration is usually interpreted as a euphemistic substitute for a no-first-use declaration.[6]

Katsuya Okada, Japan’s new foreign minister, has been a staunch advocate of no-first-use, but bureaucrats in his ministry are resisting that idea and the sole purpose concept. According to the security experts’ letter and other accounts, these Japanese skeptics are playing an important role in the U.S. NPR. The letter said that “[s]ome Japanese bureaucrats want to preserve the status quo, and argue that such a change in U.S. nuclear policy could undermine Japan’s confidence in U.S. security guarantees.”[7] It warned that some Americans “remain mired in Cold War thinking, and cite these Japanese concerns to argue against changing U.S. policy, which they contend could lead Japan to build its own nuclear weapons.”[8]

In an October 18 speech in Kyoto, Okada noted the central contradiction in Japanese policy on nuclear weapons: “Hitherto, the Japanese government has said to the U.S., ‘We don’t want you to declare no first use because it will weaken nuclear deterrence.’ However, it cannot be said to be consistent to call for nuclear abolition, while requesting the first use of nuclear weapons for yourself.”[9]

The International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), co-chaired by former Foreign Ministers Yoriko Kawaguchi of Japan and Gareth Evans of Australia, is scheduled to issue its report in the coming months. Referring to the ICNND, which was meeting in Hiroshima the same day he spoke in Kyoto, Okada said, “As a general course, we should discuss what could be done to achieve no first use of nuclear weapons. I would expect that the Evans-Kawaguchi report would be along those lines. When the report comes out, I would like to discuss this no-first-use issue fully with the United States."[10]

Historical Background[11]

Why do some believe that Japan will seek a nuclear capability if the United States adopts a sole purpose policy? After all, Japan takes pride in having adopted three non-nuclear principles. Formalized in 1967 by Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, they specify a clear commitment not to possess or produce nuclear weapons or to permit their entry into the country.[12] Japan is a strong supporter of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the lead sponsor of a widely supported UN General Assembly resolution on nuclear disarmament that has been adopted every year since 1994.[13]

The answer lies in the history of Japan’s nuclear policy. When Japan adopted its three non-nuclear principles, it was, in Sato’s mind, part of a package in which protection by the nuclear umbrella of U.S. extended deterrence was a precondition.[14] The implication is that Japan will not seek nuclear weapons as long as the nuclear umbrella is regarded as reliable.

Sato raised the issue of the nuclear umbrella during a conversation with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on January 13, 1965. According to a summary, Sato said, “Please be careful about statements concerning bringing nuclear weapons onto the land. Of course, should a war break out, it would be a different story. We expect that the U.S. will immediately retaliate with nuclear weapons.”[15] These comments were made shortly after China’s first nuclear test, which took place on October 16, 1964.

In 1982 the Japanese government officially expressed its view that the U.S. nuclear umbrella provides for a first-use option in retaliation for an attack by conventional weapons. This explanation was given in response to a question raised by Diet member Takahiro Yokomichi on February 19, 1982, concerning a statement made the previous year by Eugene Rostow, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Rostow had said that, as with its extended deterrence policy for Western Europe, the United States would be prepared to use nuclear weapons if the Soviet Union attacked Japan with conventional weapons.[16] On June 25, 1982, a government official told the Diet that this understanding was implied in a 1975 press statement issued jointly by President Gerald Ford and Prime Minister Takeo Miki.[17] Referring to the joint statement, the official said, “We believe that in the sense that all the measures are included, it would mean that the nuclear deterrent or retaliation would not be limited to nuclear attacks against Japan.”[18]

Later, with the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union over, government officials and security experts in Japan started to consider the security implications of North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons, as well as China’s conventional weapons buildup. In 2003, for example, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Mitoji Yabunaka, director-general of the Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, filed a request with Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly “to make sure the United States does not again [as in 1994] promise not to use its nuclear weapons against North Korea if Pyongyang agrees to dismantle its nuclear development program.”[19]

More recently, when asked about encouraging the United States to adopt a no-first-use policy, Prime Minister Taro Aso told an August 9 press conference in Nagasaki that, “[i]n international society, there exist large arsenals including nuclear forces…. It could disturb the deterrence balance and undermine security to have a discussion separating nuclear weapons from other weapons.”[20] Reiterating what Masahiko Komura had said when foreign minister in 1999, Aso said, “Even if a nuclear power says it won’t make a pre-emptive strike, there’s no way to verify its intentions. I wonder if that’s a realistic way to ensure Japan’s safety.”[21]

Such assertions about the difficulty of verifying a no-first-use declaration might have been referring to China, which has maintained a no-first-use policy since 1964. That policy is often considered a piece of propaganda in Japan. The Japanese responses cited above intentionally or unintentionally confuse the no-first-use policies of an adversary, China, and those of an ally, the United States. Aso’s remarks were made in response to a question about U.S. policy, in the context of the United States perhaps being able to make a contribution to the efforts toward global nuclear disarmament by declaring a no-first-use policy. This declaration could reduce international tension and the role and value of nuclear weapons and perhaps prepare the way for further reductions in the number of nuclear weapons.

Japan is also said to be actively trying to influence other aspects of U.S. nuclear policy. In his Web log discussing nuclear-tipped Tomahawk land attack missiles (TLAM/N), Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists points out that Japan is being cited as the main reason for the potential life extension of the TLAM/N force, which has been virtually retired since the days of President George H. W. Bush.[22] The 2009 final report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, headed by Perry and James Schlesinger, says:

In Asia, extended deterrence relies heavily on the deployment of nuclear cruise missiles on some Los Angeles[-]class attack submarines – the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile/Nuclear (TLAM/N). This capability will be retired in 2013 unless steps are taken to maintain it. U.S. allies in Asia are not integrated in the same way [as NATO countries] into nuclear planning and have not been asked to make commitments to delivery systems. In our work as a Commission it has become clear to us that some U.S. allies in Asia would be very concerned by TLAM/N retirement.[23]

In testimony to the House Armed Services Committee May 6, Schlesinger said Japan “is the country that has perhaps the greatest leaning, amongst the 30-odd nations that we have under the umbrella, to create its own nuclear force, and therefore, intimate discussions with the Japanese, I think, are mandatory at this stage.”[24] Perry followed Schlesinger by saying that even if the United States does not see the need to deploy certain weapons, it should take into consideration the concerns of its allies. He said there still is “great concern in both Europe and in Asia about the credibility of our extended deterrence…. It is important for us to pay attention to their concern and not try to judge whether deterrence is effective by our standard, but we have to take their standards into account as well. And a failure to do this…would be that those nations would feel that they had to provide their own deterrence. They would have to build their own nuclear weapons.”[25]

The position of past Japanese administrations has influenced the deliberations of the ICNND, although the commission is an independent body. In addition to commission co-chair Kawaguchi, the advisory board has three Japanese members. Two are former high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who are strongly opposed to the idea of limiting the role of nuclear weapons to the sole purpose of deterring nuclear attacks, let alone a no-first-use declaration by the United States. The third adviser is the chair of the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission, who was presumably chosen in part to protect another aspect of Japan’s nuclear policy: Japan’s right to uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing.

When Evans came to Japan in May, he warned that Japan’s position on the need for the nuclear umbrella against conventional, chemical, and biological weapons was a major obstacle to the commission's approval of a recommendation to call on the United States to adopt a no-first-use policy.[26]

The Australian newspaper The Age reported September 4 that although “most of the 15-member commission, including Australia's co-chairman, former foreign minister Gareth Evans, plan to call on nuclear-armed states to change their defence doctrine and declare they will only use atomic weapons when faced with direct nuclear attack,” Kawaguchi opposed the idea.[27]

Later that month, Japan’s Kyodo News said the Japanese team opposed language in the draft report calling for U.S. statements on nuclear doctrine before the May 2010 NPT Review Conference. According to the article, the draft report said the ''sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter use of nuclear weapons against the United States and its allies and (possibly) that the United States is willing to consider moving in combination with other nuclear armed states to a clear no-first-use posture.”[28]

Overestimated Threat

How strong are Japan’s objections to U.S. adoption of a new policy on the role of nuclear weapons and deeper nuclear weapons reductions? Is it actually likely that if the United States adopted such a policy, Japan would violate its NPT obligations and seek to acquire nuclear weapons against the wishes of the United States and world opinion? There is a big difference between a theoretical possibility and a realistic probability that Japan will go nuclear. Also, a U.S. no-first-use policy does not imply the cessation of Japanese-U.S. security arrangements or a withdrawal of the U.S. nuclear umbrella against possible nuclear attacks. Furthermore, a Japanese nuclear-weapon program could in fact jeopardize Japan’s security arrangement with the United States and its position in the international community. Former Minister of Defense Shigeru Ishiba, who is known for his knowledge of nuclear and military affairs, recently said about Japan exercising the option to develop nuclear weapons, “That would naturally mean Japan withdrawing from the NPT. We would not be able to obtain nuclear fuel.... With dependency on nuclear power for about 40% of [our] electricity, we would experience a major decline in economic activities. Japan going nuclear would automatically mean the collapse of the NPT regime and there would be nuclear countries all around us.”[29] In a book published three years ago, Ishiba said, “In any case, the voters would not allow such a thing as possession of nuclear weapons.”[30] Japan would have to consider these realities before going nuclear, which so-called realists in the United States tend to ignore. Ishiba, a conservative, knows about these realities. If the United States adopts a sole purpose policy, can one really argue that Japan would believe that whatever benefits it might gain from going nuclear would outweigh the negative consequences?

The DPJ, which won a landslide victory in Japan’s August 30 election, declared its nuclear policy supporting no-first-use in 2000. Okada was the head of the team that developed this policy. Although the current official status of the document is not clear, on May 12, 2009, Okada, who was DPJ secretary-general at the time, told a Diet session that “a norm not allowing at least first use, or making it illegal to use nuclear weapons against countries not possessing nuclear weapons, should be established. Japan should be at the forefront of this effort as a leader.”[31] In an interview soon after, Okada elaborated on his position:

I believe that Japan should advocate the following three points: that the states possessing nuclear weapons, the United States in particular, should declare no first use; formation of an agreement that it is illegal to use nuclear weapons against countries without nuclear weapons; and, partly overlapping with these two, the initiative of a Northeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone.

If the United States declares no first use, that does not mean that Japan will be completely outside the nuclear umbrella. In a situation where nuclear weapons actually exist in this world, it would be natural that people feel worried about the nuclear umbrella going away.

I talk about going out of the nuclear umbrella halfway, where first use would not be exercised, but in the unfortunate case that Japan suffers a nuclear attack, we are not ruling out a nuclear response to it. We have such an assurance ultimately. So please understand that I am not just talking about an idealistic theory.[32]

He said, however, that “[w]e do not necessarily need a nuclear umbrella against the nuclear threat of North Korea. I think conventional weapons are enough to deal with it.”[33]

At the recent Tokyo meeting, Perry said that the combined conventional forces of Japan and the United States would be enough to deter nuclear attacks of North Korea and that those forces could cause devastating damage. North Korea’s leaders know that, and they are not suicidal, he said.[34]

Okada repeated his position in the inaugural Cabinet press conference on September 16, saying, “My own personal belief has been to question whether countries which declare their willingness to make first use of nuclear weapons have any right to speak about nuclear disarmament, or nuclear nonproliferation, in particular nonproliferation.”[35]

During an October 20 meeting in Japan with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Okada told Gates that the Japanese government currently is examining the no-first-use issue and that he would like to discuss it with the United States. Gates responded that the flexibility of deterrence is necessary.[36] Three days later, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen expressed his agreement with Gates while in Tokyo.[37] Thus, U.S. defense officials appear to be resisting adoption of a new policy advocated by a Japanese foreign minister, rather than the other way around.

Okada also has taken steps to investigate secret understandings between Japan and the United States, which include those related to the third non-nuclear principle of not permitting nuclear weapons to enter Japan.[38] The United States and Japan have not strictly adhered to this principle. Documents declassified in the United States show a secret agreement at the time of the 1960 revision of the Japanese-U.S. security treaty to allow port calls by U.S. ships carrying nuclear weapons.[39] On September 17, Okada ordered the Foreign Ministry’s top bureaucrat to investigate the issue of secret pacts. Because of the 1991 decision by Bush to withdraw nuclear weapons from surface ships and attack submarines, the port-call issue has been moot. Yet, the alleged request by Japan to put TLAM/N on attack submarines, which frequently stop at Japanese ports, would, if realized, lead to a situation necessitating secret pacts or abandonment of the third principle. The logical step for Okada is to investigate these “requests” and withdraw them officially if Japan is to come clean and keep the third principle intact. It would be rather difficult for Japan to tell the United States not to bring in any nuclear weapons, while demanding that the United States put tactical weapons on attack submarines that roam around Japan and keep open the option of using nuclear weapons in response to a non-nuclear attack on Japan.

The picture should be clear to Obama. Okada’s speech in Kyoto and his explanation to Gates about the policy review taking place within the Japanese government should be interpreted as a message to the Obama administration to act boldly in its NPR process and adopt a sole purpose policy, if not a no-first-use policy.

Conclusion

The Guardian reported September 20 that Obama rejected a draft NPR because it was too timid. According to the report, Obama called for a range of more far-reaching options, including more radical reductions of nuclear weapons and a redrafting of nuclear doctrine to narrow the range of conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.[40] In his September 23 speech to the UN General Assembly, Obama appeared to provide a hint of his intentions when he said: “We will complete a Nuclear Posture Review that opens the door to deeper cuts and reduces the role of nuclear weapons.”[41]

The ICNND is expected to release its final report in a weakened form around January 2010.[42] The Japanese government should not wait until then to express its official support for a sole purpose policy. Japan also should encourage the United States to declare a clear no-first-use policy. However, Obama should not wait for Japanese action to make bold changes in U.S. nuclear policy.

The world now has an opportunity to make significant steps toward a nuclear-weapon-free world. Outdated and misunderstood policies should not stand in the way.


Masa Takubo is an independent analyst on nuclear issues living in Japan and operator of the nuclear information Web site Kakujoho. This article is based in part on a chapter on Japan’s attitudes toward nuclear disarmament in a forthcoming report by the International Panel on Fissile Materials.


ENDNOTES

Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the author’s.

1. Union of Concerned Scientists, “Letter Urges Obama, Hatoyama to Change Nuclear Policy,” September 22, 2009, www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/letter-urges-us-japan-nuclear-0285.html (hereinafter Union of Concerned Scientists letter).

2. This would mean adoption of “core deterrence,” defined by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on International Security and Arms Control as “the restricted form of extended nuclear deterrence in which coverage is intended against nuclear threats—and only nuclear threats—to one’s own country and to one’s allies.” See Committee on International Security and Arms Control, National Academy of Sciences, “The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy,” 1997, p.15, www.puaf.umd.edu/Fetter/1997-fun.pdf.

3. Union of Concerned Scientists letter.

4. William Perry, Remarks at “The Japan-US Partnership Toward A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” Tokyo, October 21, 2009 (hereinafter Perry remarks).

5. Ibid.

6. Some Cold War thinkers could interpret “sole purpose” to allow for a scenario for first use: a counterforce first strike for the purpose of limiting the damage when the enemy is considered to be about to attack with nuclear weapons. Therefore it will eventually be necessary to rule out this scenario by making a clear-cut no-first-use declaration. See Hans M. Kristensen, Robert S. Norris, and Ivan Oelrich, “From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence: A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons,” Occasional Paper No. 7, Federation of American Scientists and Natural Resources Defense Council, April 2009.

7. Union of Concerned Scientists letter.

8. Ibid.

9. Katsuya Okada, Remarks at “Atarashii Jidai no Nichibei Kankei” [Japan-U.S. relationship in a new era], Kyoto, October 18, 2009.

10. Ibid.

11. For more information, see Masa Takubo, “Japan's Challenges and Dilemmas Over Nuclear Disarmament,” Disarmament Diplomacy, No. 91 (Summer 2009).

12. The policy of the three non-nuclear principles was first expressed by Prime Minister Eisaku Sato at the Diet (House of Representatives Budget Committee) on December 11, 1967. See Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan [National Diet Library], Shugiin Kaigiroku Joho [House of Representatives minutes], December 11, 1967, http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/SENTAKU/syugiin/057/0514/05712110514002a.html.

13. See Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Adoption of Nuclear Disarmament Resolution Submitted by Japan to the 63rd Plenary Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” December 3, 2008, www.mofa.go.jp/announce/announce/2008/12/1185313_1080.html; UN General Assembly, “Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Paraguay, Philippines, Switzerland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Ukraine: Draft Resolution: Renewed Determination Towards the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons,” A/C.1/63/L.58, October 23, 2008, www.mofa.go.jp/policy/un/disarmament/arms/un0810.pdf.

14. Sato explained the relationship between the nuclear umbrella and the principles as follows: “What should Japan do about its security under the three principles concerning nuclear weapons: not possessing, not producing, and not bringing in nuclear weapons?… When I met President Johnson last time in 1965, and this time too, I said: ‘Could the Japan-U.S. security treaty defend Japan against any kind of attacks?’ In other words, is it useful against nuclear attacks? President Johnson said [that the U.S.] will clearly defend Japan against any attacks.” House of Representatives Budget Committee, December 11, 1967. See Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan [National Diet Library], Shugiin Kaigiroku Joho [House of Representatives minutes], December 11, 1967, http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/SENTAKU/syugiin/057/0514/05712110514002a.html.

15. “Sato Makunamara Kaidan no Omona Yaritori” [Main conversation at the Sato-McNamara meeting], Kyodo News, December 22, 2008, http://yamagata-np.jp/news_core/index_pr.php?kate=Detail&no=2008122101000153&keyword=. The summary was among the documents declassified last December by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

16. House of Representataives Budget Committee, February 19, 1982. See Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan [National Diet Library], Shugiin Kaigiroku Joho [House of Representatives minutes], February 19, 1982, http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/SENTAKU/syugiin/096/0380/09602190380013a.html.

17. “Further, they recognized that the US nuclear deterrent is an important contributor to the security of Japan. In this connection, the President reassured the Prime Minister that the United States would continue to abide by its defense commitment to Japan under the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security in the event of armed attack against Japan, whether by nuclear or conventional forces.” For the full statement, see “Japan-U.S. Joint Announcement to the Press (by Prime Minister Takeo Miki and President Gerald R. Ford),” Washington, August 6, 1975, www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~worldjpn/documents/texts/JPUS/19750806.O1E.html (hereinafter Miki-Ford statement).

18. House of Representatives Budget Committee, June 25, 1982. See Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan [National Diet Library], Shugiin Kaigiroku Joho [House of Representatives Minutes], June 25, 1982, http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/SENTAKU/syugiin/096/0380/09606250380022a.html.

19. “Govt Wants U.S. to Keep North Korea N-Deterrent,” Daily Yomiuri, August 23, 2003.

20. “Shusho Kaku Senseifushiyo niwa Hiteiteki” [Prime minister negative about no first use], Nihon Hoso Kyokai [Japan Broadcasting Corporation], August 9, 2009.

21. Ibid.

22. Hans Kristensen, “Japan, TLAM/N, and Extended Deterrence,” FAS Strategic Security Web log, July 2, 2009, www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2009/07/tlam.php. See Jeffrey Lewis, "Japan ♥ TLAM/N,” ArmsControlWonk Web log, May 8, 2009, www.armscontrolwonk.com/2284/japan-tlamn.

23. Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, “America’s Strategic Posture,” 2009, p. 26, http://media.usip.org/reports/strat_posture_report.pdf. The commission’s wording in this passage could be read to suggest that TLAM/N are currently deployed on the Los Angeles-class submarines. As discussed elsewhere in this article, that is not the case.

24. James Schlesinger, Statement before the House Armed Services Committee, May 6, 2009, http://armedservices.house.gov/hearing_information-jan-may2009.shtml.

25. William J. Perry, Statement before the House Armed Services Committee, May 6, 2009, http://armedservices.house.gov/hearing_information-jan-may2009.shtml.

26. Yumi Kanazaki,“Kakuno Kasa Kaishaku Saikowo” [Interpretation of nuclear umbrella should be reexamined], Chugoku Shimbun, May 28, 2009.

27. Daniel Flitton, “Australia, Japan in Nuclear Rift,” The Age, September 4, 2009, www.theage.com.au/national/australia-japan-in-nuclear-rift-20090903-f9yw.html.

28. “Japan Reluctant to Accept Proposal for U.S. to Reduce Role of Nukes,” Kyodo News, September 13, 2009, www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9AMDKV80&show_article=1.

29. Shigeru Ishiba and Kazuhisa Ogawa, Nhihon no Senso to Heiwa [Japan’s war and peace] (Tokyo: Bijinesu Sha, 2009), p. 284.

30. Shigeru Ishiba and Shinichi Kiyotani, Gunjiwo Shirazushite Heiwa wo Kataruna [Without knowing military affairs, do not talk about peace] (Tokyo: KK Best Sellers, 2006), p. 176.

31. House of Representatives Budget Committee, May 12, 2009. See Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan [National Diet Library], Shugiin Kaigiroku Joho [House of Representatives minutes], May 12, 2009, http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/SENTAKU/syugiin/171/0018/17105120018027a.html. LDP member Taro Kono argued in the Diet in 1999 for a Japanese-U.S. joint declaration for no-first-use. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, June 12, 1999). See Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan [National Diet Library], Shugiin Kaigiroku Joho [House of Representatives minutes], June 12, 1999, http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/SENTAKU/syugiin/145/0005/14506020005008c.html.

32. Katsuya Okada, “Interview: Ajia no Naka no Nihon toshite Anzen Hosho Seiseku wo Kochiku Shinakereba Naranai” [We should develop a security policy as Japan inside Asia], Sekai, July 2009, pp. 138-143.

33. Ibid.

34. Perry remarks. He also emphasized the importance of nonmilitary deterrence, including economic power.

35. Katsuya Okada, Remarks at ministers’ inaugural press conference, September 16, 2009. See Seifu Intanet Terevi [Government Internet TV], “Daijin Shunin Kaiken” [Ministers' inaugural press conference], September 16, 2009, http://nettv.gov-online.go.jp/prg/prg2758.html.

36. Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Press Conference by the Deputy Press Secretary (English),” October 22, 2009, www.mofa.go.jp/announce/press/2009/10/1022.html.

37. “Top U.S. Military Officer Warns Japan Against Reneging on Futemma Plan,” Kyodo News, October 23, 2009, www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9BGR3R84&show_article=1.

38. Tomoko A. Hosaka, “Japan launches probe of secret pacts with US,” Associated Press, September 24, 2009, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/09/24/international/i224839D04.DTL&feed=rss.business.

39. For related declassified documents, see www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb291/index.htm.

40. Julian Borger, “Barack Obama Ready to Slash US Nuclear Arsenal,” The Guardian, September 20, 2009, www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/20/barack-obama-us-nuclear-weapons.

41. Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, “Remarks by the President to the United Nations General Assembly,” United Nations headquarters, New York, September 23, 2009, www.whitehouse.gov.

42. “International Panel Calls for Nuke Disarmament After 2025 at Conference in Hiroshima,” Mainichi Daily News, October 21, 2009, http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20091021p2a00m0na016000c.html.

 

On September 22, a day before President Barack Obama met with Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in New York, 13 nongovernmental U.S. security experts released an open letter calling on the two leaders “to support a U.S. policy declaring that the only purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter, and if necessary respond to, the use of nuclear weapons by other countries.”

Pressing a Broad Agenda for Combating Nuclear Dangers: An Interview With Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher

Interviewed by Daniel Horner and Tom Z. Collina

Ellen Tauscher was sworn in June 27 as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. Before that, she represented her northern California district for 13 years in the House, where she served on the Armed Services Committee. From 2007, she chaired the panel’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee.

Arms Control Today spoke with Tauscher in her office October 21. The interview covered a range of issues in Tauscher’s portfolio, from strategic arms control to plans for an international fuel bank.

Shortly before the interview, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a high-profile speech at the U.S. Institute of Peace on arms control and nonproliferation. Tauscher and ACT refer to that speech at several points in the interview.

The interview was transcribed by Anna Hood. It has been edited for length and clarity.

ACT: You were recently in Moscow to discuss START, among other issues. On the START follow-on, there are a lot of unresolved issues and not very much time. What in your view are the most difficult issues to resolve?

Tauscher: Well, I’m not going to negotiate with myself, nor am I going to negotiate through the press. Let me just say that we have a very senior team in Geneva. [The Russians] have a very senior team in Geneva. The presidents, President Medvedev and President Obama, have agreed to have a legally binding follow-on to START in place for the expiration of START on midnight of [December] 4. We do have a number of issues to go through. These are complicated treaties, but at the same time, I think we really want to have a treaty that reduces our weapons, increases stability with our friends, the Russian government, and at the same time is working toward our nonproliferation objectives, and I think that we are on a path to go forward. We have a stock-taking at the end of [October] with our team to see where we are on the issues that are perhaps going to have to be raised up to different principals or moved forward in a more expedited way, but it’s our intention to be able to replace the START treaty when it expires.

ACT: And you’re still confident that you’ll have some agreement by December 5?

Tauscher: Well, keep in mind that this is very difficult. This administration came into office, had to get people confirmed, had to step up its engagement and reset our relationship with the Russians. And we think that we have done that in a very quick time frame. But at the same time, there’s no denying that this existing START treaty expires. We are working to get something that we can put into place that meets what the presidents have agreed to. It’s hard to do, but not impossible to do. We’ve got everybody that we need to have on it on it. The Russians have met us with both seniority and expertise on their negotiating side, and we’re pressing ahead.

ACT: Secretary Clinton said in her confirmation hearing that the administration “will seek deep, verifiable reductions in all U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, whether deployed or nondeployed, strategic or nonstrategic.” And President Obama said at the UN Security Council meeting in September that the U.S. “will complete a Nuclear Posture Review [NPR] that opens the door to deeper cuts.” Beyond the START follow-on, what will be the administration’s goals for the scope and scale of further reductions?

Tauscher: Well, we are finishing the Nuclear Posture Review that is due toward the end of the year to the Congress. And what’s clear is that we’re working under the scope of strategic offensive weapons in the START treaty and that there is an asymmetry between the United States’ stockpile, both strategic and tactical, and the Russian stockpile. What we’re looking for is a follow-on to the follow-on, where we will begin to deal with those issues. But one treaty at a time. So we’re congruent with what both Secretary Clinton said in her confirmation hearings about moving forward, after we’ve finished with what we’re doing, and certainly with the president’s ambitions too.

ACT: I realize that it’s one treaty at a time, but can you conceptually say where you’d like to get on issues like verification?

Tauscher: Well, let me just say that the underpinning of all of these agreements is verification. There is a level of confidence that is meant to be attained by these agreements. Although it is not trivial to take down weapons, that is not the only piece of this that we’re looking to attain. It is a sense of stability and confidence building, and the way to do that is through verification protocols.

ACT: One of the things that Secretary Clinton talked about that isn’t happening in the START follow-on is verified warhead dismantlement. You seem to be moving from the past, when we looked at monitoring the missiles, to monitoring the actual warheads in the future at some point. Is this something that is envisioned as part of the follow-on to the follow-on?

Tauscher: It is certainly envisioned to be in future opportunities, but, as I said, verification is a piece of what we’re looking for in all future negotiations. It is important, not only in the sense that you move past just the accounting for things and actually have the ability to reassure the two parties, multiple parties, the world community, that we are fulfilling our obligations. The NPT [nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] obligations of Article VI of disarmament are defined more than just… “Disarmament,” what does that mean? Does it mean you put it down? Does it mean you put it down, take it apart? Does it mean that you put it down, take it apart, put it on blocks in a garage? Or does that mean you put it down, take it apart, and make sure that you can’t ever use it again? We could disagree. I could tell you I’m disarming, but it could mean that I’m just putting things on blocks in the garage. So we have to have common agreement on what these definitions are, and we have to have verification.

ACT: Are there arrangements in place to continue the verification measures under START after December 5 if there is no treaty in place and in force? How is that going to be handledf

Tauscher: Well, our plan is to find an accommodation to manage, maintain verification protocols in between [expiration of the current treaty and ratification of the new one]. We’ve got lawyers looking at that, we’re talking to our Russian friends about how we do that. But as you can see, we have a significant accent on verification. So the key is how do we maintain it in the absence of a ratified treaty but a legally binding one. So, we’re looking at that.

ACT: Moving now to tactical weapons, how could the United States draw the Russians into a conversation about tactical nuclear weapons? Your adviser Robert Einhorn suggested at a meeting organized by STRATCOM [U.S. Strategic Command] in July that the United States, as an inducement to Russia, “should be prepared to reduce or eliminate the relatively small number of U.S. nuclear weapons that remain in Europe.” Is the United States actively discussing this possibility with its NATO allies?

Tauscher: Well, we are beginning to have conversations because the NPR clearly is an opportunity for us to get in and discuss these and bigger issues, missile defense and other things, with our NATO allies. So I was on the phone with Ambassador [to NATO Ivo] Daalder this morning on how we’re going to manage the narrative, as we call it, of the NPR and what that means for extended deterrence, tactical nuclear weapons, all of that. So we are formulating our positions on these things. We will safely say that there’ll be very large engagement on these issues.

ACT: Do those conversations begin with the assumption that tactical weapons still have a useful military role in Europe or that they are more symbolic weapons?

Tauscher: That’s what the NPR will answer. The narrative of the NPR is a transformational message. While the NPR is a lot about numbers and is about declaratory policy, doctrine, and posture, the narrative of those pieces of it [is] a significant policy statement of this administration. So it is very important that everything is done to prepare what that is. We have an agreement on that inside the Obama administration. Then, once we do that, we can start to begin to have conversations with our friends and allies, interested parties and those to whom we have extended our deterrence. So there is a direct link between what we’re doing in the NPR and these conversations that you have suggested, and there are lots of people that are interested for lots of reasons, and they will become part of the conversation. But we are still in the midst of the NPR review.

ACT: The secretary of state alluded to this subject in her speech this morning. At one point, she talked about providing reassurance to allies in a way that reinforces U.S. nonproliferation objectives. Can you explain what she meant by that and expand on that a little bit?

Tauscher: Part of the NPR is that it’s a policy and political document, and it is meant to articulate how the United States views the uses of nuclear weapons, what that says about the stockpile, what it says about our declaratory policy. But it also is meant to reassure both the people to whom we have extended our deterrence, our allies, [and to] make clear that we are—while the president has articulated a point on the horizon for nuclear zero and while it will take persistence and patience to get there, we may not get there in our lifetime, but we will maintain a credible deterrent, one that is reliable and effective, until the point where we take down our last weapon. So there is a balancing act there.

ACT: At the CTBT [Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty] Article XIV conference in September, Secretary Clinton said that the CTBT “is an integral part of our nonproliferation and arms control agenda, and we will work in the months ahead…to seek the advice and consent of the United States Senate to ratify the treaty.” Could you tell us a bit about how the administration plans to win Senate support for ratification and your time frame for that?

Tauscher: The president has set no specific timeline for achieving ratification. The vice president is very involved in the effort to seek ratification. There’s a lot of queuing and sequencing going on. Right now, we’re finishing negotiations on START. START needs to be ratified. In the meantime we’re conducting the Nuclear Posture Review. We’re going to have a [fiscal year 2011] budget submission. There are a number of pieces here that are important to the narrative for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. We have been living under the conditions of it since [President George H.W.] Bush.[1] So it’s been a very long time, and we have had advances in Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship. Secretary Clinton [in her October 21 speech] also talked about Stockpile Management and where that fits in. What we have is a commitment by the administration to advance the CTBT.

The CTBT is both about policy and about politics. This administration will not attempt to [seek ratification] unless we believe it can actually pass.[2] So there is a lot about this that is important to informing [the public and Congress] to gain [the Senate’s] advice and consent. Part of it is clearly a domestic campaign, and there is a lot of international interest because of the consequences of United States ratification for those eight Annex II countries,[3] its significance. The whole question of going into force is on the bubble.

From our point of view, we have a plan, but it is one that is about informing and advancing the different parts of the president’s agenda. But we do think that these information data points are very, very key to us getting the narrative right. There is clearly, for many senators, a need to thread the needle, find the sweet spot between the goal of a nuclear zero but the necessity to maintain a secure and reliable and effective stockpile until those conditions for nuclear zero are met. So there’s a need to be doing the things necessary to get to nuclear zero, which includes things that strengthen nonproliferation and the ability to maintain weapons in an effective way. Making those investments in the NNSA [National Nuclear Security Administration] stockpile stewardship management and the [U.S. nuclear weapons] complex itself. Then the things that you’re doing in a multilateral, bilateral way and through treaty obligations, either ones that you build yourself or ones that you have had long relationships with, like the NPT. So you’re doing it almost in a parallel effort. So we have the NPR, which is [expected to be released] in late December, early January, and then you have the February budget submission. There will be a number of senators looking to those two events for the congruity of their quest to be able to support the CTBT.

Now we also have the issue of having to ratify START. In a perfect world, perhaps we wish it was already done. We will go to the Senate for the ratification of [a] START [follow-on]; and then at the same time, we will bring up the conversation and the narrative of CTBT, which leads us into the NPT. We’re hoping, obviously, that on an FMCT [fissile material cutoff treaty], the program of work will go forward in the CD [Conference on Disarmament].[4] We join everyone in requesting that our Pakistani friends protest at the right moment but not now.

As you can see, these are all interrelated and interconnected. Next year is an election year. It’s a shorter year legislatively, so a lot of this is kind of wait-and-see. But we definitely have a plan to go forward.

ACT: If the CTBT is not ratified before the NPT conference, is the administration thinking about any steps short of that to show progress on the test ban in the NPT context?

Tauscher: Yeah, we’re very aware of—I think that part of our delivery in the short term will be the NPR and the budget submission. [We are] laying the groundwork for the support of a supermajority in the Senate, 67 votes—we think we understand where we need to be to attract persuadable senators and certain senators that have voted for it before, persuadable senators who have not voted on it yet. Part of it is also to get START done in a way where we have very good support. The fact is that these are interconnected and interrelated, and we have to do them somewhat in order because of circumstances like START expiring. We [will] have a very, very short window to talk about CTBT. But when we believe that we have the right conditions, we will begin to engage the Senate.

The NAS [National Academy of Sciences] study will be coming out in January-February,[5] so there are a bunch of data points that are coming forward. There are a number of things that we’re looking for to inform the debate and to provide the narrative and to provide the fact base and more current information. It’s been a very, very long time since the Senate considered this. At the time, it was only six and a half, seven years between the [start of the U.S. testing moratorium] and when the Senate considered it in ’99. We had a long record at the time of Stockpile Stewardship and Life Extension Program[s], but now we have 10 more years. You cannot trivialize the success of the Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship Program. But at the same time, I think that you also see that there are a number of senators that are looking for other kinds of reassurances, including what the budget is going to be and the financial commitment and the sustainability. So I think that the NAfS study is going to provide an independent, nonpartisan set of facts that can be used by anyone that wants to be informed on how we should go forward.

ACT: You talked about how the various issues are interrelated and many states around the world see the CTBT as a means to limit qualitative improvements in nuclear arsenals. The president made clear during the campaign that he would “stop the development of new nuclear weapons,” and you, as a member of Congress, were instrumental in defeating an earlier proposal to develop a so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead [RRW]. However, some have suggested that, to maintain the existing nuclear weapons stockpile, the nuclear weapons infrastructure and perhaps some warheads will need to be “modernized.” You were quoted in The Cable September 15 as saying, “I think there are a lot people that still hope for the return of [the] RRW [program] and they are going to be sadly disappointed.” Can you explain what you mean by that?

Tauscher: Well, it’s amazing how things happen. It’s like the tree falling in the forest. When I was still chairman of [the] Strategic Forces [Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee] in the winter and spring [of 2008-2009], we built the strategic forces component of the defense authorization bill, which included what’s called Stockpile Management. Let me just step back for a minute. RRW, when it was originally conceived by the [national laboratory] directors, was something that I supported. It was the ability to refurbish classes of weapons without [adding] any capability, changing platform, or requiring testing. It’s a life extension function; it is not to create a new capability or to boost capability or to enhance capability or to create a new weapon. It is to take the existing weapon portfolio and, as needed or required, refurbish that weapon class so that it survives, so that it is part of the stockpile that can give the assurance that Gen. [Kevin] Chilton, as the commander of STRATCOM, needs.

Unfortunately, in the previous administration’s hands, RRW became a new weapon, and it had to go away.

But the capabilities that were originally envisioned in RRW are still necessary. So we brought them back under life extension principles. The other problem RRW had was that it was out by itself. It was on its own. It looked like a whole new thing. Part of the problem was that it looked like an effort as opposed to a tool. So we created something called Stockpile Management, which effectively is the same kinds of abilities, tools under life extension programs, under stockpile stewardship. A tool called Stockpile Management, and the [congressional] authorizers say you can refurbish weapons but you may not refurbish weapons [in a way] that causes a question of certification. You may not use anything that cannot be certified that could cause you to test. You cannot do anything that is going to increase yield, change the characterization of a weapon, or change the platform. We put all these fences around it. That exists now, in the [fiscal year 2010] national defense bill. Until about three or four weeks ago, I still had people saying to me, “Don’t you think we need something to refurbish weapons?” or “Don’t you think we have to find a way to bring RRW back?” I’m saying we did. It’s called Stockpile Management. So they started looking at it, and they said, “Oh.” So we have a way to refurbish weapons.

You know, even Jim Schlesinger in that strategic posture [commission report] says that “modernize” is one of those kind of riddled terms.[6] It makes people ask, “What do you mean by that?” So talking about it has been very difficult for a lot of people because you don’t want to lead people down the RRW path, which is that you’re going to go and build new weapons.

The other thing we killed was RNEP [Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator]. So it wasn’t like [the Bush administration] got accused of this without any history of trying to do this stuff. I think this administration understands that we need a capability to refurbish weapons. But it’s a tool. You don’t go out and refurbish everything.

ACT: Some are concerned that, in the context of Stockpile Management, RRW, by which we mean new designs of warheads that may not have any additional characteristics or military value, will be brought be back under the NPR.

Tauscher: No. No.

ACT: There are these three proposed categories of stockpile maintenance—refurbish, reuse, replace—and the concern is that RRW is the “replace.” Can you tell us if that will be part of the NPR findings?

Tauscher: Well, I cannot speculate because we’re still working on it, but I don’t consider RRW to be anything other than something from the past. As a member of Congress and chairwoman of the subcommittee, I led an effort to kill the RRW. When I kill something, it stays dead.

ACT: President Obama and other members of the administration have argued that U.S. leadership on disarmament is critical to building support for measures to strengthen the NPT at the 2010 review conference. What are your hopes and goals for that conference, and what is the United States doing in the run-up to build support for the outcomes it wants and to deal with the likely challenges?

Tauscher: Well, we have a fabulous presidential envoy, Ambassador Susan Burk, who’s working full time on this. Susan is burning up the phone lines and racking up the miles seeing friends, allies, and others. We have a lot of friends and allies who have been not always cooperative in reaching consensus in the NPT. So we are doing everything we can to deliver a simple message: we need to have a consensus resolution in the NPT [review conference]. We need to understand that there are a number of issues that have become causes célèbres for certain countries in certain regions, and while we believe that those are very, very important, we cannot get stuck in the wickets here. We’ve got to get out and get something done because we don’t help anyone who is for the NPT by not making it stronger. That means delivering on the promise of a consensus resolution. So I think we have a good message, I think she is an amazing messenger, but it takes a lot of work.

We are a new administration that has got a much more, I think, vital vision for these things. I think it’s safe to say that President Obama has spoken more about [these issues] in the nine months [that he has been in office] than perhaps the previous administration did in [its eight years], but this is an issue that requires American leadership. This is the persistence and patience that the president is talking about. We have to give people a chance to know who we are and to know what these kinds of commitments mean. That’s why the secretary of state gave the speech today, [why] we were in Moscow last week. This is really a very, very significant agenda item. Not for once a month, not for once a week, but every day. And every day we’re doing something, and every day we’re trying to build consensus. We’re listening, we’re talking to folks that have had problems in the past reaching consensus, to find a way to satisfy the issues that they’re concerned about so that they will come to where we need them to be.

ACT: In terms of what’s being pursued, is UN Security Council Resolution 1887[7] a sort of a road map?

Tauscher: It was. It was. I meant to tell you that. Yes. 1887 is a road map.

ACT: How is the United States going about implementing it?

Tauscher: It was the beginning step to say that even people that in the past have not agreed can find a way to agree. Part of it is to listen, and so we are taking 1887 on the road, and we’re taking the principles behind that on the road, leading us back to New York in May, back at the UN for the NPT. I think we’re having significant bilateral conversations with countries that have expressed a lot of interest in working toward a consensus.

ACT: One thing the secretary mentioned today was nuclear security and the summit in April.[8] What are the aims and goals there, and how will that play into the work of the NPT review conference?

Tauscher: Well, this is an idea generated by the president; and the president is, I think, sufficiently agitated about the issue of nonproliferation not delivering on what everyone’s hopes are. Even with lots of people saying the right things and even supporting the right things, we live in a very dangerous world. So this is the president’s effort to get, at his level, at the head-of-state level, during just a one-day conference, to bear down on what these things are and to get international agreement on the kinds of efforts that we all have to support.

For too long, responsibilities for the care, custody, and control of nuclear weapons, for nonproliferation, for cooperative agreements, for disarmament, have all been at the feet of the nuclear-weapon states. As the secretary has said, as the president has said, no one can be obviated from responsibility on these issues, everybody has something to do, everybody has responsibilities and things that they have to invest in, pay attention to.

And this whole issue of proliferation security. You could just be a transshipper, you could be completely out of any of the categories, but you have a global strategic situation where you actually might not even know that you are part of global transshipping proliferation regime.

I think part of the opportunity is to have the president say, “We’re doing our part. We’re doing very well, thank you very much.” Not that many people pay attention to the fact that we are disarming. We may not be going as fast as we want or as anyone wants it, but we need to take credit for that. We’re also attempting to deal with [NPT] Article IV considerations on civil nuclear [programs]. But at the same time, as the secretary said today, the right to have nuclear power, which we recognize as a sovereign right, cannot be seized without responsibilities. We’re trying to build international consensus for multilateral fuel banking and the kinds of safeguards and controls and inspections and IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] authorities and budgeting that cause us to say, “We don’t really want to worry about that country that perhaps has an immature democracy, or even a immature government, that can’t protect its own borders but wants a nuclear power plant.”

ACT: Are those countries accepting that as part of their responsibilities, or do they see this whole new security push as an added obligation that they’re being asked to assume?

Tauscher: What was made very clear is what this [nuclear security] conference isn’t. It isn’t a donors’ conference, and it’s not meant to overshadow the NPT. We’ve added this fourth pillar [nuclear security] because we believe that it is, unfortunately, what hit us on the head when we turned the corner on the 21st century. Part of it is the vestiges of the old A. Q. Khan network but [also] others, the unnamed networks that we don’t even know about, and the fact that we live in a very integrated world that’s not necessarily interdependent yet.

So there’s a lot of stuff happening that you don’t even know about, that you’re involved in. By either geography or by relationships or by circumstance, countries have got to have this brought up to them. The president decided that he wanted people at his level to understand it. President Obama isn’t the first president to talk about nuclear zero, but he is the first who pointed to a place on the horizon and said, “There it is.” He’s the first one to use his political capital and persuasion so early in his presidency. He’s using his popularity, his policy positions, his persuasiveness on this issue because he believes, he believes—this isn’t something that’s been brought to him—he believes that this is a threat and that it needs to be brought up to the level of heads of state so that they understand that it’s not just the nuclear powers that have these responsibilities; everybody does.

ACT: The United States and other members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group [NSG] have been trying to tighten the guidelines on the transfer of sensitive nuclear fuel-cycle technologies, that is, enrichment and reprocessing. In November, the NSG negotiated but failed to approve a draft proposal for criteria-based guidelines that would bar NSG states from transferring those technologies to non-NPT member states, and recently the Group of Eight agreed to adopt that proposal. What is the United States doing within the NSG to get the whole NSG to approve those guidelines?

Tauscher: We’re working with the NSG. We’re also working in the IAEA. We’re on the board of governors; there’s a board meeting [in November]. We want to be able to move forward on a fuel bank. We want there to be a fuel bank stood up. We are looking strongly at supporting the Russian Angarsk facility[9] because we want something up. These are not competing ideas; we don’t want them to be viewed as competing ideas. We want them to be viewed as “Let’s get something going.” So we’re looking to work with our Russian friends; I’ve been working with my counterpart on that. What we’re trying to do is to have people look across the expanse of opportunities and to knit together the things you have to have in order to get solutions to some of these problems.

You have a lot of countries that are critical about the P-5[10] record on disarmament, [saying that] we’re not doing enough. You have a number of countries that believe that the P-5 have denied them their sovereign right to have civilian nuclear power. From our point of view, and as the secretary laid out today, and as I’ve said and as the president’s said, they should not be in conflict. The idea of strong nonproliferation regimes in the NPT, and a number of other initiatives, NTI [Nuclear Threat Initiative],[11] Nunn-Lugar programs, all of the other things the president’s made a commitment to, holding a nuclear security summit in the spring, tying down fissile material within four years, all of these commitments, they are a basket that is porous, with a membrane between them. There’s a lot of things that go in between them, and they don’t contradict each other. It’s important on the civilian nuclear side that we make clear that you can have civilian nuclear power, but there has to be a way to ensure that having civilian nuclear power doesn’t create a proliferation risk.

How do you do that? How do you build international consensus to do that? What are the international regimes that you have to put in place? What are the incentives? How do you make sure that even for those of us who think that they’re climate neutral or even climate enhancing, whatever the reasoning is, how do you make sure that those countries understand that they’re going to have access to the fuel they need and maintain their reactors? We have a very good example in the UAE [United Arab Emirates] 123 agreement [in which the UAE said,] “We’re not going to do any enriching; we’re not going to do any reprocessing”[12]

ACT: What is the current U.S. policy on export of reprocessing and enrichment? There’s been some confusion about this.

Tauscher: None, we don’t do it.

ACT: You mentioned a fuel bank proposal, but that’s run into a lot of opposition. A lot of people had hoped it would be wrapped up by now, but the countries, the ones who would be using the fuel bank, are very suspicious; they see it as a way to deny them the capacity to enrich uranium. They don’t recognize the spread of enrichment as a proliferation concern. How do you address those really fundamental concerns that they have and move forward with this proposal?

Tauscher: Well, I think the truth is, above anything else, nobody can say, “Well, the last time I used that fuel bank, this is what happened to me.” We have to work to educate people, to a certain extent. There are two or three competing proposals right now. I think that in the end there could be one fuel bank, but I think that we need as many of them up and running as possible.

You have to find a way to create that safety and security. We have a 123 agreement with the UAE. Are we going to get other agreements like that? I don’t know, but the key here is to get agreement. That’s why we’re interested in supporting [the proposal for a fuel bank at] Angarsk. Right now, no one knows what would happen if they went to the fuel bank.

But you know part of it is that we have to get some confidence going, especially in countries that are very concerned about their ability to have a reliable bank that they’re going to be able to go to. But you know there’s always a cost for doing business. The bank is there so that there are alternatives to reprocessing and enrichment.

Well, it is the luxury that you don’t have, but what we’re trying to do is to make that luxury too expensive. We’re sin-taxing it. We’re saying, “Hey, if you want to do that, we’re going to make it really, really hard for you because we just really can’t afford to have outliers.” We have to make clear that we support expansion of nuclear power and are prepared to help countries gain access to nuclear energy, but in a safe and economical way that does not increase the risk of proliferation.

ACT: Thank you very much.

ENDNOTES

1. On September 24, 1992, Congress passed a spending bill that included the Hatfield-Exon-Mitchell amendment, which imposed a moratorium on U.S. nuclear testing. The Bush administration opposed the amendment but signed the bill into law on October 2, 1992. The United States has not conducted a nuclear test since September 23, 1992.

2. In 1999, the Senate voted 51-48 against CTBT ratification.

3. Under Annex 2 of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, 44 specified countries must ratify the treaty to bring it into force. China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United States are the countries that are on that list but have not ratified the treaty.

4. On May 29, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva agreed on a program of work that included the negotiation of a verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons. Since then, however, the conference was able to make little progress before adjourning for the year in September. The conference will have to adopt a new program of work when it returns next year.

5. The National Academy of Sciences is in the process of updating its 2002 report, Technical Issues Related to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty. The new report is expected to be completed in early 2010.

6. Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, “America’s Strategic Posture,” 2009, http://media.usip.org/reports/strat_posture_report.pdf.

7. For the text of the resolution, see http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N09/523/74/PDF/N0952374.pdf?OpenElement. See also Cole Harvey, “Nuclear Arms Resolution Passed at UN Summit,” Arms Control Today, October 2009, pp. 22-23.

8. For the text of the speech, as delivered, see www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/10/130806.htm. In the relevant section, Clinton said, “We must continue to strengthen each of the three mutually reinforcing pillars of global nonproliferation—preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, promoting disarmament, and facilitating the peaceful use of nuclear energy. And to those three pillars, we should add a fourth: preventing nuclear terrorism. Stopping terrorists from acquiring the ultimate weapon was not a central preoccupation when the NPT was negotiated, but today, it is, and it must remain at the top of our national security priorities.”

9. Russia has made a proposal to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to establish a fuel bank of two reactor loads of low-enriched uranium at the InternationalUraniumEnrichmentCenter at Angarsk. This proposal is one of several for a fuel bank, which would serve as a backup source of fuel for countries with good nonproliferation credentials. The aim of the fuel bank proposals is to give countries an incentive to refrain from pursuing indigenous uranium-enrichment programs. See Miles Pomper, “Russia Offers to Jump Start IAEA Fuel Bank,” Arms Control Today, October 2007, p. 41; Daniel Horner and Oliver Meier, “Talks on Fuel Bank Stalled at IAEA,” Arms Control Today, October 2009, pp. 24-26.

10. The term “P-5” refers to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Those countries also are the ones recognized as nuclear-weapon states by the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

11. See Horner and Meier, “Talks on Fuel Bank Stalled at IAEA,” pp. 24-26.

12. Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act requires the United States to have a nuclear cooperation agreement with any country with which it is engaging in nuclear trade. Under the terms of the U.S. “123 agreement” with the United Arab Emirates, the UAE “shall not”  pursue an indigenous uranium-enrichment or spent fuel reprocessing program. See Daniel Horner, “U.S., UAE Sign New Nuclear Cooperation Pact,” Arms Control Today, June 2009, pp. 34-35.

 

Ellen Tauscher was sworn in June 27 as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. Before that, she represented her northern California district for 13 years in the House, where she served on the Armed Services Committee. From 2007, she chaired the panel’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee.

Arms Control Today spoke with Tauscher in her office October 21. The interview covered a range of issues in Tauscher’s portfolio, from strategic arms control to plans for an international fuel bank.

Shortly before the interview, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a high-profile speech at the U.S. Institute of Peace on arms control and nonproliferation. Tauscher and ACT refer to that speech at several points in the interview.

Why We Don't Need To Resume Nuclear Testing

Daryl G. Kimball

Twenty years ago this month, the Berlin Wall came down, hastening the end of the Cold War. Less than three years later, Moscow and Washington agreed to halt nuclear testing. In 1996, after more than 2,000 nuclear test explosions, the world’s nations concluded the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in order to prevent proliferation and help end the nuclear arms race.

Today, a growing bipartisan majority of national security leaders and experts agrees that, by ratifying the CTBT, the United States stands to gain important national security benefits by constraining the ability of other states to build new and more deadly nuclear weapons that could pose a threat to U.S. security.

Since the Senate’s 1999 rejection of the CTBT, there have been significant advances in the Stockpile Stewardship Program and nuclear test monitoring that should address earlier concerns that led many senators to vote no. President Barack Obama has called for the reconsideration of the treaty and pledged to work intensively with senators so that they are fully briefed on the latest technical and intelligence assessments before the CTBT comes before the Senate sometime in 2010.

Unfortunately, some pro-testers are stuck in the past. In his October 21 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Why We Need to Test Nuclear Weapons,” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) relies on several old and misleading arguments against the CTBT. For instance, Kyl claims that “concerns over aging and reliability [of the U.S. arsenal] have only grown.”

In fact, confidence in the ability to maintain U.S. warheads is increasing through advances in computer modeling, new experimental facilities, and studies that show that weapons plutonium is not affected by aging for 85 years or more. Since 1994, each warhead type in the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal has been determined to be safe and reliable through a rigorous certification process. Life Extension Programs have refurbished and modernized major warhead types and, according to new independent studies, can continue to do so indefinitely.

Despite powerful U.S. national capabilities and a decade of advances in international monitoring capabilities, Kyl also repeats the age-old charge that clandestine tests cannot be detected with absolute certainty. This argument misses the point on verification and implies that low-yield tests are worth the high risk of getting caught. Those countries that are best able to conduct such clandestine testing successfully already possess advanced nuclear weapons of a number of types. Additional testing would do little to increase the threat these countries already pose to the United States. Countries with less nuclear-test experience or design sophistication would be unable to conceal tests in the numbers and yields required to master advanced warheads.

The United States’ capability to detect and deter possible cheating by other countries will be significantly greater with the CTBT and its global verification and monitoring network than without it. North Korea has provided two recent real-world tests of U.S. and global monitoring capabilities. In October 2006, the International Monitoring System easily detected Pyongyang’s relatively low-yield (0.6 kiloton) nuclear explosion at 22 seismic stations. Telltale radioactive gases from this test were also detected by South Korea and the United States, as well as one of the international monitoring network’s radionuclide monitoring stations 4,600 miles away in Canada. North Korea’s second test in May 2009 was detected by 61 seismic stations. Kyl has tried to suggest that because radionuclide particles from the second test were not detected, the monitoring system failed. In fact, the seismic evidence alone would have provided a firm basis and precise geographical information for on-site inspections.

Another misleading charge from Kyl and others is that because the treaty does not define “nuclear test explosion,” some states, such as Russia, believe very low-yield “hydronuclear” tests are permitted. Wrong again. The record is clear: the CTBT bans “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.” As the Russian government explained to the Duma in 2000, “[F]ull-scale and hydronuclear tests with the emission of fissile energy…directly contradict the CTBT.”

Ignoring years of evidence to the contrary, Kyl asserts that ratification of the CTBT has no relationship to U.S. nonproliferation efforts. Kyl, who argued for continued nuclear testing in the 1990s, overlooks the fact that the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) would not likely have been renewed in 1995 without the pledge from the United States and the others to stop testing and support the CTBT. If Washington does not follow though, its leverage to strengthen nuclear safeguards, tighten controls on nuclear weapons-related technology, and isolate states that do not follow the rules will be weakened.

It is time to finally recognize that nuclear testing is a dangerous and unnecessary vestige of the past. The Senate’s reconsideration of the CTBT should be based on an honest and up-to-date analysis of the facts and issues at stake.

Twenty years ago this month, the Berlin Wall came down, hastening the end of the Cold War. Less than three years later, Moscow and Washington agreed to halt nuclear testing. In 1996, after more than 2,000 nuclear test explosions, the world’s nations concluded the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in order to prevent proliferation and help end the nuclear arms race. (Continue)

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - November 2009