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“Your association has taken a significant role in fostering public awareness of nuclear disarmament and has led to its advancement.”
– Kazi Matsui
Mayor of Hiroshima
June 2, 2022
The United States and the Americas

Bush, Kerry Square Off on Arms Control

Wade Boese

The vivid memory of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the steadily increasing number of U.S. casualties in Iraq ensure that national security issues will remain prevalent throughout the homestretch of the 2004 presidential campaign.

President George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, exchange barbs daily about who is better fit to serve as commander in chief and would make America safer.

To date, the campaign has not led to an in-depth discussion about how each candidate proposes to address the security challenges posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Based on what little the candidates have said, it is clear that Bush and Kerry do agree on a few things. Both consider the greatest challenge to U.S. security to be preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; and, taking their public statements at face value, the two rivals underscore the need to secure and eliminate nuclear weapons and materials in Russia and shut down the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs.

Still, even though they share some goals, they frequently disagree in tone and on strategy. Bush proudly touts his readiness to go it alone or patch together coalitions of the willing to counter potential threats. Although not disavowing unilateral action, Kerry speaks consistently of rallying international support and marshalling formal alliances to pursue a more peaceful world. The president prefers handshake agreements. The senator stresses the value of legally binding accords.

When Americans head to the polls Nov. 2, they will have a choice between two candidates who have staked out clear and often divergent approaches to dealing with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

Preventing Nuclear Terrorism


Bush’s answer to nuclear terrorism is to capture and kill terrorists and confront, eliminate, or isolate regimes that might supply them with nuclear weapons. The president repeatedly speaks of “taking the fight to the enemy” and stamping out threats before they do damage. Prior to the Iraq war, Bush invoked the specter of Saddam Hussein opening up his suspected stockpiles of terrible weapons to terrorists.

To deter individuals, companies, and governments worldwide from doing business with terrorists, the Bush administration proposed and won adoption in April of a UN Security Council resolution requiring all countries to adopt and enforce laws designed to prevent nonstate actors from getting weapons of mass destruction. It also has encouraged other countries to intercept suspected shipments of weapons at sea, on land, and in the air as part of its May 2003 Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which now counts 14 other countries as active participants.

Kerry’s mantra is “No material. No bomb. No nuclear terrorism.” In accordance with this theme, he prioritizes stepping up U.S. and international efforts to staunch production of new materials that could be used to build nuclear weapons, as well as to get rid of or take out of circulation as much of the existing ingredients as possible (see Nuclear Materials and Technologies Control and Threat Reduction sections below).

Kerry further asserts he will appoint a presidential coordinator to manage all U.S. resources and activities devoted to denying terrorists the weapons they seek. He has also outlined a new program to enable foreign scientists to seek refuge in the United States if they expose illicit weapons activities.

Nuclear Materials and Technologies Control

In a Feb. 11 speech, Bush said nuclear supplier nations should refuse to sell nuclear items to countries that do not grant international arms inspectors broader authority to carry out investigative work inside their borders. To achieve this, Bush is pressing all countries to approve an additional protocol to supplement their safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Safeguards, such as inspections and monitoring mechanisms, are designed to provide reassurance that a country is not covertly pursuing nuclear weapons. The president also urged that reprocessing and enrichment technologies not be shipped to countries currently lacking operational plants for such activities, which have both civilian fuel and military bomb applications.

Most recently, the Bush administration announced support for negotiating a fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT) to forbid the production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons (see page 44). A nuclear bomb requires one or the other. The administration is seeking a treaty without verification measures because it does not think the agreement can be “effectively verifiable.”

Kerry favors negotiating a verifiable FMCT. As a first step toward that goal, he would encourage all UN Security Council members to forswear making fissile material for weapons.

The Massachusetts senator also opposes the spread of reprocessing and enrichment facilities to countries without them and would push for creation of a consortium of states to supply nuclear fuel to countries in order to take away any energy or economic rationale for building such facilities. Adoption of an additional protocol by every country should be mandatory, according to Kerry.

To ensure that there are no weak links that terrorists could exploit, Kerry advocates establishing global storage and handling standards for nuclear materials. He also pledges to work toward making trade in WMD technologies an international crime on par with the prohibition against slavery.

Threat Reduction

In June 2002, the Bush administration committed to provide $10 billion over 10 years to secure nuclear materials and weapons scattered across the former Soviet Union. Bush called on other states to match the U.S. commitment, and so far, they have pledged roughly $7 billion. Threat reduction activities have been extended outside the former Soviet Union to Iraq and Libya, which publicly renounced its nuclear and chemical weapons program in December 2003. (See ACT, January/February 2004.)

In addition, the administration moved this May to speed up programs to retrieve U.S.- and Russian-supplied nuclear fuel, which could also be used to make bombs, from third-country recipients. The aim is to return all Russian-exported fuel to Moscow by 2010 and all U.S. fuel to the United States within a decade. In conjunction with these recovery programs, the United States is looking to convert some 30 foreign research reactors within the next five years into reactors running on alternative fuel. This would leave approximately 30 other reactors worldwide still operating on fuel that could be used to manufacture atomic arms.

Kerry is promising to secure all nuclear materials and fuel, including that being used in foreign research reactors, within four years. To hasten this work, Kerry says he will boost funding above current levels (without specifying exactly how much) and personally engage Russian President Vladimir Putin to overcome obstacles hindering progress in Russia.

North Korea

The Bush administration wants Pyongyang to “completely, verifiably, and irreversibly dismantle” its nuclear programs. Bush refuses to negotiate directly with North Korea, opting instead to conduct talks through the six-party process that also involves China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. At the latest round of these talks in June, the Bush administration offered for the first time a proposal holding out the possibility of resumed energy aid by other countries, a multilateral security agreement, and direct talks on the lifting of U.S. sanctions in return for North Korea scrapping its nuclear programs. Bush repeatedly voices confidence that the North Korean crisis can be resolved diplomatically.

Kerry labels ending North Korea’s weapons programs as a “top priority.” He argues that no option, including bilateral talks or military force, should be ruled out to achieve the “irreversible elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.”

Iran

The Bush administration has allowed France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to take the lead in negotiating directly with Iran, while pressing IAEA members to strongly condemn Iran for its clandestine nuclear activities and refer the matter to the UN Security Council. There, the Bush administration hopes to increase international pressure, including the possibility of sanctions, on oil- and natural gas-rich Tehran to shelve its nuclear programs, which the United States believes are for military purposes.

Kerry contends the United States should “get off the sidelines” and recommends that the United States join other countries in offering Iran access to fuel for nuclear energy purposes. If Tehran rejects the proposal, Kerry says its true intentions will be revealed. The aim, according to Kerry, is to get Iran to verifiably and permanently suspend its activities that could be used to develop the materials needed for nuclear arms. If these efforts are stymied, the senator advocates dragging Iran before the Security Council.

Missile Defense

During his 2000 presidential campaign, Bush repeatedly called for deployment of ballistic missile defenses to protect against rogue states and terrorists. After withdrawing the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty two years ago and allocating more than $32 billion over four years to developing missile defenses, Bush stands on the verge of declaring the initial elements of a ground-based, long-range missile interceptor system ready for action despite the lack of tests to prove it. Future plans include expanding the ground-based system, possibly including to Europe; adding sea- and air-based defenses; and exploring space-based weapons.

Kerry supports investing in missile defenses but alleges the administration is overspending on an unproven system to deal with one of the less likely methods terrorists might use to strike the United States. Earlier this year, Kerry voted to transfer $515 million in missile defense funding to nonproliferation and antiterrorism activities, although this proposal was defeated.

U.S. Nuclear Forces

Soon after taking office, Bush vowed to cut U.S. nuclear forces to the “lowest-possible number…consistent with our national security needs.” The administration unveiled in June a plan to cut by almost half the entire U.S. nuclear force, which currently numbers more than 10,000 warheads, by the end of 2012. At the same time, the administration is studying possible modifications to existing U.S. nuclear weapons to destroy underground targets better. It also won a repeal of a legislative prohibition against researching nuclear weapons with small yields, cut by half the amount of time needed to conduct a nuclear test, and is pushing construction of a facility to churn out new nuclear warhead cores. All of these initiatives are part of creating a “responsive infrastructure,” according to the administration, that would enable the United States to build up or reconfigure its forces to avoid being caught flat-footed by a new or resurgent foe or address technical failures that might emerge in existing warhead designs.

Arguing “we don’t need a world with more usable nuclear weapons,” Kerry says he would abandon current administration research into new and modified types of warheads and accelerate U.S. nuclear reductions.

Russian Nuclear Forces

Bush and Putin signed in May 2002 the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), which commits the United States and Russia to reduce their number of operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to less than 2,200 apiece by the end of 2012. The changing U.S.-Russian relationship obviates the need for any additional nuclear arms control agreements with Russia from the administration’s perspective.

Kerry denounced SORT as a “hollow treaty” and declares he would work to spur its pace of reductions and add provisions to check that each party is in compliance. During the Senate debate on the treaty, lawmakers rejected a proposal by Kerry that would have required an annual intelligence report on Russia’s nuclear reductions. In addition, he promotes reaching agreement with Moscow to destroy excess warheads rather than storing them as currently permitted. Kerry also supports “new arms control measures designed to eliminate each nation’s smaller, more portable, tactical nuclear weapons, thousands of which remain in Russia.”

Nuclear Testing

The Bush administration is adhering to a moratorium on nuclear testing and denies any plans to test. Yet, it also does not rule out the possibility of conducting a test and opposes the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Kerry voted for the CTBT when the Senate rejected it in October 1999. He has not said whether he would resubmit the treaty, which he previously described as a “critical component of broader U.S. strategy on nuclear nonproliferation,” for Senate reconsideration if elected.

Biological Weapons

In 2001 the Bush administration ended more than six years of negotiations to add a verification regime to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which bans germ weapons, on the basis that it would do little to prevent violations. As an alternative, the Bush administration has significantly boosted U.S. funding to develop new vaccines and increase U.S. preparedness to combat a biological weapons attack.

Reconstituting negotiations on strengthening the BWC is one of Kerry’s proposed responses to biological weapons dangers. He also says he would push the development of better emergency plans, vaccines, and detection technologies and name one person to be in charge of all U.S. government efforts to counter germ weapons.



 

 

911 Panel: WMD "Greatest Danger"

Matthew Cook

The “greatest danger of another catastrophic attack in the United States” comes from weapons of mass destruction (WMD), according to the July 22 report released by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States.

The report of the independent commission, informally known as the 9/11 Commission, said “maximum effort” is warranted to prevent further proliferation and recommended four basic strategies.

The 10-member bipartisan commission called upon the United States to work with other countries to develop laws and legal regimes that strengthen counterproliferation efforts. Pointing to the black market nuclear network set up by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan (see ACT, March 2004), the report urged the establishment of an “international legal regime with universal jurisdiction to enable the capture, interdiction, and prosecution of such smugglers.”

The commission report also called for the expansion of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), an international partnership created by the Bush administration to stop and seize shipments of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and related missile technology. The commission suggested PSI, which currently numbers 15 core participants, utilize NATO resources and encourage the participation of non-NATO countries, particularly China.

The report also recommended substantial support for the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which attempts to secure dangerous weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere.

Finally, as part of its proposed reorganization of the intelligence community, the report called for the creation of a national intelligence center on WMD proliferation.

  

News Analysis: Missile Defense: Deploying a Work in Progress

Wade Boese

Sometime over the next several weeks, most likely around Oct. 1, President George W. Bush or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will stride to a podium and announce that the initial elements of a missile defense system are now in place and ready for action. They will proclaim that the deployment fulfills the president’s promise four years ago to guard America against a rogue state or terrorist group armed with a ballistic missile.

The hyperbole has already begun. As the system’s first missile interceptor booster was placed into its silo in Alaska July 22, Major General John W. Holly, charged with developing the system, said it “marks the end of an era where we have not been able to defend our country against long-range ballistic missile attacks.” On a campaign stop in August, Bush proclaimed, “It’s the beginning of a missile defense system that was envisioned by Ronald Reagan.” He added, “We want to continue to perfect this system, so we say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world: You fire, we’re going to shoot it down.”

Yet, little evidence exists to suggest that the system could destroy a single ballistic missile fired at the United States. The last test against a real target occurred nearly two years ago and failed. In that Dec. 11, 2002, test, the two main components of the system’s interceptor—the booster and exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV)—did not separate as planned. Since then, a new high-speed booster has been developed, but it has not been tested to see if it would have any better luck with an EKV. All past intercept tests have relied on prototype and substitute components in scripted and unrealistic scenarios. Other key system elements, such as an advanced X-band radar, are still in development and will not be ready until at least late next year.

Pentagon officials acknowledge the testing limitations, but they tout the value of computer simulations and ground experiments in forecasting the system’s effectiveness. They further argue that more stressful testing only is possible after deployment. Moreover, they say, some capability, no matter how rudimentary, is better than nothing.

Rather than providing even a modest defense, as the administration claims, the system’s testing record and developmental history point to an unproven work in progress that falls far short of Reagan’s dream and Bush’s exuberant missile defense vision when he took office.

Setting the Agenda
In May 2000, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush outlined his national security agenda, promising to cut U.S. nuclear forces and build missile defenses. “America must build effective missile defenses based on the best available options at the earliest possible date,” Bush declared.

Although the Clinton administration initiated a 1996 program to build a defense against long-range ballistic missiles, Bush faulted it as “flawed.” He condemned it for consisting of a single site of ground-based missile interceptors. “Science is evolving; laser technology is evolving. There is a lot of inventiveness in our society that hasn’t been unleashed on this particular subject,” the future president argued. He added that space-based defenses also needed to be explored. Underlying Bush’s speech was a long-standing GOP belief that missile defenses had been stunted less by technological challenges than Democratic ideological opposition and fidelity to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which forbid Washington and Moscow from building nationwide defenses against long-range ballistic missiles. When accepting the Republican presidential nomination in August 2000, Bush declared, “Now is the time not to defend outdated treaties, but to defend the American people.”

Once elected, Bush wholeheartedly pursued his goal. He made missile defense the Pentagon’s top-funded weapons program. In four budget requests to Congress, Bush asked for $32 billion to support the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and its predecessor. All told, Bush has sought $5 billion more than President Bill Clinton sought in eight years. In June 2002, Bush withdrew the United States from the ABM Treaty. Six months later, he ordered the 2004 deployment of a missile defense system—the timing of which Democrats charged was politically motivated to match Bush’s re-election bid.

The Bush Deployment: Clinton Redux
Despite his criticisms of the Clinton deployment plan, Bush’s initial version differs little.

Clinton’s plan envisioned an initial 2005 deployment of 20 ground-based missile interceptors in central Alaska. Among several ancillary radars, a new X-band radar with the ability to pinpoint the real warhead from among decoys and debris was to be built on a remote Alaskan island.

Bush accelerated the initial deployment by a year. His plan calls for five ground-based interceptors to be installed at Fort Greely, Alaska, by this October. Another four interceptors are to be deployed this year at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, and 11 more are to be added at Fort Greely by the end of 2005. However, the X-band radar, which was shifted from being land-based to sea-based, will not be available until at least late 2005. Without such a radar, the system will have trouble distinguishing a warhead from other objects in the target cluster, according to a February report by the then-General Accounting Office (GAO), which prepares studies for Congress.

Bush’s deployment plan also foresaw up to 20 sea-based interceptors and an undisclosed number of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 systems to protect against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. The ABM Treaty permitted defenses against shorter-range missiles, and both systems had already been under development by the Clinton administration. Several months ago, the Pentagon halved the number of sea-based interceptors set for deployment because of problems with the component designed to seek out and collide with an enemy warhead.

To be sure, the missile system does differ in some respects from Clinton’s vision. The Department of Defense intends to deploy by the end of this year two ships with upgraded radars to try and track long-range ballistic missiles in an emergency—an action the ABM Treaty would have prohibited. The Pentagon intends to expand this force by eight additional ships next year. It also is exploring locations in central Europe for the establishment of a third ground-based missile interceptor site, construction for which could begin as early as 2006. (See ACT, July/August 2004.)

As for Bush’s interest in lasers and space-based systems, technical reality has intervened so far. The Airborne Laser program to arm a modified Boeing 747 jet with a laser has fallen some two years behind schedule. In addition, two complementary satellite constellations designed to detect ballistic missile launches and relay missile tracking data to the ground-based system so greatly exceeded cost and schedule estimates that the Pentagon ordered both overhauled.

Assessing the Bush Deployment
The ground-based interceptors are at the center of the Bush deployment plan. A successful intercept of a long-range ballistic missile ultimately comes down to these ground-based interceptors, provided the system is able to detect and track an enemy missile in flight sufficiently. Whether the interceptors are up to the task is unknown because testing to date has not come close to resembling a real-world scenario. Ground-based interceptors have not been tested against a target since the botched December 2002 experiment, which dropped the intercept record to five hits and three misses. Since that time, several tests have been altered, cancelled, or postponed.

Then-MDA Director Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish said earlier this year that the primary reason for the intercept testing falloff is that MDA was working to develop a new high-speed booster to power the interceptor. MDA originally hoped to involve the faster booster in an intercept attempt in early 2001, but it has yet to do so. As a result, a less powerful, substitute booster has been used in all the intercept tests, meaning the interceptor is traveling at much slower speeds than what would be expected in an actual attack. In addition, the interceptor and target trajectories are plotted so an intercept happens at a lower altitude than what is representative of a realistic situation. This is done to avoid creating space debris harmful to civilian and military space assets.

U.S. Missile Defense Cooperation With Allies Growing

Wade Boese

The Bush administration’s campaign to boost international involvement in ballistic missile defenses is making gradual gains. Australia, Canada, Denmark, and Greenland are the latest countries to step up missile defense cooperation with the United States, although the nature of their support varies greatly.

Despite maintaining that it has not made a final decision to endorse or join in U.S. missile defense projects, Ottawa agreed Aug. 5 to allow the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to support U.S. missile defense operations. Established in 1958, NORAD is tasked with identifying, tracking, and countering air and missile attacks against U.S. and Canadian soil. The new agreement authorizes data gathered by NORAD to be relayed to U.S. missile defense systems. Canadian government officials portrayed the move as preserving Canada’s role in NORAD without committing Ottawa to active collaboration with Washington on its missile defense work, which is controversial in Canada.

Australia, a more fervent supporter of missile defense, signed an agreement July 7 establishing a 25-year framework for Australian-U.S. missile defense research. Specific programs were not spelled out, but near-term projects will focus on investigating advanced radar technologies to detect ballistic missile launches and modifying an Australian ship to defend against ballistic missiles.

Following parliamentary approval earlier this year (see ACT, July/August 2004), Denmark and Greenland Aug. 6 finalized an agreement to let the United States update an early warning radar on Greenland’s territory to track more effectively ballistic missiles launched from the Middle East. Denmark exercises responsibility for Greenland’s foreign policy after granting its former colony home rule in 1979.

The United Kingdom consented last year to a similar U.S. radar upgrade on its territory, and Japan earlier this year committed to acquiring defenses against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. U.S. missile defense cooperation with Israel, Italy, and Germany dates back several years, and the 26-member NATO alliance is in the midst of an 18-month missile defense feasibility study. In addition, several countries, such as the Netherlands, which previously acquired Patriot systems to defend against shorter-range ballistic missiles, are purchasing or considering purchasing the latest model. The Pentagon also is exploring building a missile defense interceptor site in central Europe. (See ACT, July/August 2004.)

In addition, none of the eight intercept tests were successfully conducted at night or in extreme weather even though the interceptors being deployed must be ready to perform 24 hours a day regardless of the conditions. In December 2001, MDA delayed a test two days because of poor weather.

Another presumed challenge for the interceptor is picking out the warhead in the target cluster. Adversaries may use countermeasures such as decoys to lure the defensive system into hitting the wrong target. Although there have been tests in which a mock warhead is accompanied by decoys, none of the tests have involved decoys that closely resemble the target. Moreover, MDA provides advance data on what the target looks like to the EKV, which is a 70-kilogram mass of sensors that is supposed to separate from the booster in space to zero in on and collide with an enemy warhead.

Outside experts charge that the countermeasure problem is an inherent weakness, if not the Achilles heel, of the ground-based system. MDA responds that near-term adversaries are unlikely to deploy sophisticated decoys and that it is pursuing additional defenses to destroy enemy missiles before decoys are released. The U.S. intelligence community assessed several years ago that countries developing ballistic missiles “probably would rely initially on readily available technology…to develop penetration aids and countermeasures” in response to U.S. missile defenses. These countermeasures could be ready by the time the countries flight-tested their missiles. Neither Iran nor North Korea—the two states seen as driving the missile threat—have flight-tested missiles capable of targeting the continental United States. Iran’s most recent test involved a missile with an estimated range of 1,300 kilometers, while North Korea last flight-tested a 2,000-kilometer-range ballistic missile in 1998. Both are believed to be working on longer-range missiles.

Before the interceptor can distinguish between a warhead and any decoys, it must first be guided to the general location of the target cluster. In testing to date, MDA equips the target with a C-band transponder. Data from this transponder is fed into the missile defense system, which then initially launches an interceptor to a point in space where the EKV is released. The Pentagon defends this practice as necessary because it does not have radar properly located to track the target’s early flight path.

Yet, Philip Coyle, who headed the Pentagon’s office in charge of weapons testing for six years, noted May 13 that, for a deployed system to be able to fire an interceptor to as precise a point in space as done in testing, the X-band radar and the two delayed satellite constellations would all need to be operational, which will not be the case for several years.

Coyle’s Pentagon successor, Thomas Christie, also has voiced concerns about the limited nature of the testing program. Christie, who supports the Fort Greely deployment for testing purposes, advised in a January report, “Demonstrations of EKV performance are needed at higher closing velocities and against targets with signatures, countermeasures, and flight dynamics more closely matching the projected threat.”

Several GAO reports have hit on the same theme. In April, GAO summed up system testing as being “constrained by range limitations…developmental in nature and…executed with engagement conditions that are repetitive and scripted.”

MDA downplays the significance of flight testing. Kadish told lawmakers March 11, “It is important to understand that in the missile defense program we use models and simulations, and not flight tests, as the primary verification tools.”

Neither Christie nor GAO agrees. “Due to the immature nature of the systems they emulate, models and simulations of [missile defenses] cannot be adequately validated at this time” Christie wrote. GAO reported, “Without sufficient test data to anchor MDA’s analyses, models, and simulations, the predicted effectiveness of the system will remain largely unproven when [it] is available in September 2004.”

Full Speed Ahead
From the Pentagon’s perspective, the lack of testing does not warrant holding off deployment, but argues for it. Rumsfeld mused Aug. 18, “I think there are any number of things that you benefit greatly by getting it out there, playing with it, working with it, testing it, evolving it, learning about it, showing people what it can do, learning what it can do and what it can’t do.”

Meanwhile, Pentagon officials have not shied away from making fantastic predictions about the system’s future performance. Kadish stated two years ago that he would have “high confidence” in the system’s ability to destroy a single North Korean ballistic missile launched at the United States by 2004. The following year, Edward Aldridge, then-undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, predicted the system would have a 90-percent chance of success in the same scenario. Christie, however, said this spring that the outcome is uncertain.

When exactly the Pentagon, which is still hashing out how to manage a system that is both on alert and undergoing testing, will declare the system operational is unclear. Rumsfeld denied setting Oct. 1 as a deadline. “I can’t imagine anyone who’s dumb enough to set a firm date,” the secretary said. However, Global Security Newswire reported Aug. 20 that Maj. Gen. William Shelton of Strategic Command said that was the notional date driving work. Further, The Washington Post reported a day earlier that Holly said he is aiming to make a “final” report on the system’s readiness by mid-September. Rumsfeld and both generals were attending a U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command conference at the time.

Deployment or Development?
The administration and its allies have followed a missile defense strategy that allows it to tell one thing to the American people and another to its congressional and scientific critics. While publicly claiming that the system affords an initial defense against ballistic missile attacks, it staves off Democratic pressure to subject the system to legally required testing of operational weapons by declaring that the system is evolutionary and must be deployed in order to be tested. In a June debate on the defense authorization bill, Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) advocated deploying the system but fended off a Democratic initiative to subject it to rigorous testing by citing a letter from Christie stating that it was “premature” to challenge the system with realistic tests. Democrats, including presidential nominee Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, claim to support the general notion of missile defenses but charge the administration is hastily deploying a system that has not been properly tested and is misallocating money and time dealing with a threat that is less urgent than a terrorist attack using means other than a ballistic missile.

Certainly, the administration’s strategy is not designed simply for a domestic audience. It also aims to enhance U.S. security by planting seeds of doubt in the minds of potential foes that a missile attack might be successful. Rumsfeld has further argued that the lack of any defense will invite an attack. “The longer the delay in deploying even a limited defense against these kinds of attacks, the greater the likelihood of an attempted strike,” he said.

Even if making other countries think twice about their options might influence their behavior to the benefit of U.S. national security, a deployed defense might affect U.S. strategic calculations or decision-making for ill as well. An unintended consequence might be that U.S. policymakers begin to believe that the United States has a certain degree of invulnerability to long-range ballistic missile attacks and act more rashly in the face of danger.

Rumsfeld confidently declared at the missile defense conference, “By the end of this year we expect to have a limited operational capability against incoming ballistic missiles.” But the only empirical measure of any weapon’s capability until it is used in combat is its testing record. Over five years, the system has amassed a 60-percent record of success in scripted tests when the time of the missile launch, target trajectory, and target characteristics were all known in advance and the intercepts occured at a fixed point at lower altitudes and slower speeds than what would be expected in a real attack. Moreover, the interceptor model being deployed has not participated in a single flight or intercept test. These testing results do not add up to a defense but a system that is still in the early stages of development.

IAEA Envoy Nomination Held Over CTBT

Miles A. Pomper

The nomination of a key U.S. arms control envoy has been held up by opposition from Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), an outspoken critic of many arms control agreements.

Kyl, chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, has put a “hold” on the nomination of career diplomat James B. Cunningham to serve as U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. The hold comes just as U.S. officials are pushing the IAEA to put pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear program

Other Senate Republicans, such as James Inhofe (Okla.), as well as Department of State Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton are reported to back Kyl’s opposition to the nomination. But Cunningham has the support of top officials in the Bush administration, as well as the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar (Ind.).

At a nomination hearing in July, Lugar stressed the importance of having Cunningham in his new post. Cunningham most recently served as deputy permanent U.S. representative to the United Nations.

“If confirmed, Ambassador Cunningham would take his seat at the IAEA at a critical time for United States nonproliferation objectives, particularly in light of activities by North Korea and Iran,” Lugar said.

Yet, even a phone call from Secretary of State Colin Powell was not enough to convince Kyl to lift his hold before the August congressional recess, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

According to Congressional sources, Kyl has held up Cunningham’s nomination because he has not received a response to a 2003 letter to Powell regarding the administration’s interpretation of the legal status of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The United States signed the CTBT in 1996, but the Senate rejected its ratification in 1999. Kyl was a leading Senate opponent of the pact, which cannot formally enter into force without U.S. ratification.

As a signatory to the CTBT, the United States is obligated under a customary understanding of international law not to take action contrary to the “object or purpose” of a treaty it has signed until and unless the president makes it clear that the United States does not intend to become a party. Following Senate rejection of the CTBT, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sent an Oct. 18, 1999, letter to foreign leaders stating that the United States “will continue to act in accordance with its obligations as a signatory under international law, and will seek reconsideration of the treaty at a later date when conditions are better suited for ratification.”

The Bush administration opposes the CTBT but has refused to consider proposals that would alter its legal status. In 2001, Bolton asked State Department lawyers to prepare a legal assessment outlining the administration’s options. They concluded in a June 5, 2001, legal brief that, “once a treaty has been presented to the Senate…an affirmative vote to return the treaty to the executive is required to remove it from the Senate calendar.” The document further noted that the administration “has no plans to ask the Senate to do anything with the treaty.” (See ACT, September 2001.)

Later that year, senior Department of Defense officials forwarded recommendations on CTBT policy, which included repudiation of the United States’ signature. The recommendations were not formally considered.

In the meantime, the United States has been providing about 95 percent of its assessed share of expenses to the preparatory commission for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). Those funds are being used principally for setting up an international monitoring system to detect any nuclear tests. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have judged such information to be essential for U.S. intelligence purposes. However, the Bush administration has refused to provide support for activities related to on-site inspections, which could be conducted if the treaty enters into force. If confirmed, Cunningham would also serve as the primary U.S. liaison to the CTBTO.

Pentagon Gets $416 Billion From Congress

Wade Boese

President George W. Bush Aug. 5 signed into law the fiscal year 2005 Defense Appropriations Act granting the Pentagon $416 billion in new funding.

The spending measure provides $121 billion for the Pentagon to keep up its existing military hardware and software, $77 billion to buy additional weapons, and $70 billion to explore new arms and technologies. It also allocates $103 billion to pay and house U.S. troops.

Lawmakers, who overwhelmingly approved the appropriations bill July 22, allotted an additional $25 billion in emergency funding for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Early this year, the Bush administration said it did not plan to seek extra money for those two missions, but it bowed to congressional pressure to do so.

Although some legislators tried to boost support for the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program to help secure and dispose of weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, Congress only matched the administration’s $409 million request.

Top-funded weapons programs included the Joint Strike Fighter ($4.4 billion for development), F-22 Raptor ($3.6 billion for two dozen aircraft), F/A-18E/F Super Hornet ($2.9 billion for 42 jets), and the Army’s Future Combat System ($2.9 billion). In addition, a total of $11 billion was meted out to building new naval vessels.

Still, ballistic missile defense efforts received the most money: $10 billion.

The largest portion of the missile defense pot, $3.4 billion, will go toward the ground-based midcourse missile defense, the first elements of which the Pentagon is now deploying to counter long-range ballistic missiles. In July the Pentagon put the booster of the system’s first interceptor into a missile silo at Fort Greely, a remote Alaskan military base. The aim is to field six interceptors there by early next year for possible emergency use and for testing purposes, although no plans exist to test-fire the interceptors from the base.

How the Pentagon intends to fund and operate the new system is of some concern to Congress. Legislators demanded that the secretary of defense submit a report by early February detailing how the Department of Defense plans to “provide adequate resources necessary for the operation and maintenance…and manning” of the defense.

The Aegis ballistic missile defense program, which is a sea-based system scheduled for deployment in conjunction with the ground-based midcourse defense, was awarded $1.1 billion. Pentagon plans originally envisioned arming three ships with up to a total of 20 interceptors by the end of 2005, but problems with the interceptor’s component that seeks out and collides with an enemy warhead has led the Pentagon to scale down those plans by half. The sea-based interceptors are intended to defend against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.

A third missile defense system that received substantial funding ($833 million) was the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). Intended to destroy enemy warheads as they near the end of their flight, THAAD has been in redesign since 1999 and is scheduled to resume flight testing as early as this winter. The system’s primary capability is against shorter-range missiles, but there is some speculation that it could also protect against longer-range missiles.

Lawmakers also backed two troubled missile defense programs. They provided $599 million—an increase of $91 million over the Pentagon’s request—to the Space-Based Infrared System-high program, a satellite constellation for detecting ballistic missile launches worldwide that is now being overhauled because of its many problems.

Congress also added an extra $1.5 million to the Pentagon’s $474 million request for the Airborne Laser. Administration officials first projected that the first of the large aircraft armed with a laser to shoot down missiles would be ready by 2004, but that date has slipped until at least 2006.

The Pentagon did not get all of the missile defense funding it sought. Congress cut 80 percent of a $35 million request to begin preparing ground-based interceptors for a potential base outside the United States because the Pentagon has yet to choose a site. It is currently exploring locations in central Europe. (See ACT, July/August 2004.)

Another program that did not fare so well was the Pentagon’s new effort to build mobile land- and ship-based interceptors to destroy enemy missiles within the first minutes of their flights, a period known as the boost phase. Congress cut $163 million from the administration’s original $511 million request.

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency estimates that it will cost approximately $8 billion to develop and build its new boost-phase interceptors for initial deployment by 2010. However, the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a July study estimating that, over a 20-year period, boost-phase systems, including possible space-based interceptors, could cost between $16 billion and $224 billion. The CBO study also reported that the potential effectiveness of boost-phase systems would depend greatly on the type of enemy missile launched and the size of the country firing the missile. The faster the missile and the larger the country’s territory, the less likely an intercept could take place, the study concluded. A study by the American Physical Society arrived at a similar assessment last year. (See ACT, October 2003.)

Congress also imposed constraints on a joint effort by the Air Force and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to investigate unpowered systems, known as common aero vehicles (CAVs), capable of being released from a missile in space and then gliding and maneuvering at hypersonic speeds to drop munitions against targets on earth.

Lawmakers ordered that research only be conducted into systems that would be able to deploy satellites, not weapons. “None of the funds provided in this Act may be used to develop, integrate, or test a CAV variant that includes any nuclear or conventional weapon,” legislators wrote in a July 20 document explaining their actions.

They further prohibited research into CAVs that could be paired with intercontinental or submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Congress indicated that it has concerns about how to reassure other countries, presumably China and Russia, that the future launch of a CAV system is not an attack directed at them. “The conferees are concerned that safeguards are not in place to guarantee that nations possessing nuclear weapons capabilities would not misinterpret the intent or use of the FALCON/CAV programs,” the July 20 document stated. FALCON stands for Force Application and Launch from the Continental United States.

Abraham Announces Nuclear Initiative

Wade Boese


The Department of Energy is making organizational changes and boosting funding to better keep global nuclear materials from falling into hostile hands, but two key projects with Russia remain stalled.

On May 26, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced a $450 million initiative to accelerate existing programs intended to end the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) as fuel for research reactors and to retrieve all U.S.- and Russian-exported HEU, which is one of two fissile materials that can be used to build nuclear weapons (plutonium is the other).

Formally dubbed the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, the new effort also urges stepped-up action to secure other nuclear and radiological materials that could be used to make a so-called dirty bomb, a conventional explosive mixed with radioactive material.

While extolling the administration’s record on reducing the threat posed by nuclear materials worldwide, Abraham said, “[W]e would be fooling ourselves and endangering our citizens to think that these past efforts are enough.”

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has charged the Bush administration with being too lax in its approach (see page 34).

The Global Threat Reduction Initiative

In 1978 the United States launched a program to convert research reactors to operate with low-enriched uranium (LEU), which is not suitable for making nuclear weapons, instead of HEU. But budget constraints, the technical complexity of the conversion work, and reluctance by some governments to switch types of fuel have hampered the program. Only about a third of the 105 research reactors slated for conversion have been modified.

The new initiative aims essentially to convert a similar number within the next five years. It leaves open the question of when the last third of the reactors might be converted because an appropriate substitute LEU fuel is not yet available for them.

Abraham suggested June 14 that the administration’s initiative represents the most that can be done. “I know some have implied that this work can be done quicker. But the people who make those assertions are simply ignoring the realities of science,” he stated. Abraham added, “Changing a reactor core is not like changing the battery in your car.”

The initiative further calls for picking up the pace of a 1996 program to retrieve about 20,000 kilograms of U.S.-origin enriched uranium, including roughly 5,000 kilograms of HEU, that have been exported to 41 countries. About 1,100 kilograms of HEU have been retrieved to date.

Acknowledging that the program “has had a long history of not performing as well as it should,” Abraham said that would now change. “I made it clear…that I want this job done as soon as possible,” he declared. The secretary pledged to complete the work in a decade.

As another part of the initiative, the United States finalized a May 27 agreement with Russia to assist Moscow in retrieving some 4,000 kilograms of HEU it exported to 17 countries. The goal is to finish this work by 2010.

The United States and Russia first explored repatriating Soviet and Russian HEU in the late 1990s. Operations during the Bush administration have recovered HEU from sites in Bulgaria, Libya, Romania, and Serbia. Prior to that, the United States helped remove HEU from Kazakhstan and Georgia. A research reactor in Uzbekistan is next in line.

Not all U.S.- and Russian-origin HEU is located in countries ready to return it. Iran and Pakistan are two notable examples. The United States, Russia, and the International Atomic Energy Agency are hosting an international conference this fall to discuss how to handle these more intractable situations.

In addition, the initiative commits the Energy Department to seek out any nuclear and radiological materials not covered by existing programs. “Once identified, we will secure, remove, relocate, or dispose of these materials and equipment in the quickest, safest manner possible,” the secretary stated. The Energy Department intends to pre-position equipment around the world to facilitate such missions.

A new office within the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration will manage the initiative.

Plutonium Projects Stuck in Neutral

Although seeking to speed up its efforts to reduce HEU threats, the United States is spinning its wheels when it comes to mitigating plutonium dangers. This inaction has upset some U.S. lawmakers.

At a June 15 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) questioned whether Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton was trying hard enough to overcome obstacles holding up a U.S.-Russian agreement for both countries to dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium.

Urging that the program be jump-started, Domenici, who oversees funding for the Energy Department as chairman of the relevant subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, argued, “If he can’t do it, somebody ought to…be put in his place that will do it.” Agreed to in principle in September 1998 and sealed two years later, the plutonium deal has been hampered by disagreement over accountability for any accidents.

“The issue that divides Russia and the United States at this point is whether we’re going to get liability protection equivalent to that which we’ve operated under for the past 12 years or whether we’re prepared to accept a lesser liability protection,” Bolton explained at the hearing.

Bolton’s testimony failed to satisfy Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.). “You’ve certainly illuminated the problems…but not really the solution,” Lugar remarked. Describing the situation as “very, very serious,” Lugar ventured that he and other senators might need to meet with the president to discuss the matter.

Lugar’s fellow Republican, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas, also had concerns with another languishing plutonium program with Russia and asked the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, to look into it. GAO reported in June that the program to shut down Russia’s final three plutonium production reactors is troubled.

Although Russia pledged in 1994 to cease operating the three reactors by 2000, it still has not done so. The deadline passed unfulfilled due to differences between Washington and Moscow over who should pay to provide nearby towns with the heat and energy that would be lost when the reactors shutdown. The Bush administration agreed in March 2003 to build one fossil-fuel facility and refurbish another to address Russian concerns.

However, GAO found widespread confusion between U.S. and Russian entities—17 total—over managing work on the replacement facilities and Russian fears about finding future employment for displaced reactor workers. GAO further noted that Energy Department officials are worried about Russia’s ultimate intentions because it has refused to reduce the amount of plutonium the three reactors produce and to add safety features in the meantime.

The projected date for when the last of the three reactors will be shut down has slipped from 2006 to 2011.

 

 

 

 

Congress Backs Bush's Defense Budget

Wade Boese

Bush administration nuclear weapons and missile defense funding requests are likely to emerge from Congress largely unscathed, with administration plans having only suffered modest setbacks after several weeks of debate. White House appeals for disposing and securing dangerous arms stockpiles worldwide have won bipartisan backing, although some lawmakers have complained they are too stingy.

In June, the Senate and House of Representatives wrapped up separate reviews of the administration’s proposed $400 billion-plus budget for military spending in fiscal year 2005, which begins Oct. 1. Later this summer, the two bodies will work to reconcile differences between their respective versions of the defense authorization bill and the defense and energy appropriations bills. Authorization bills set policy guidelines and spending ceilings, while appropriations bills more precisely itemize spending.

The Senate and House each approved roughly $416 billion in their appropriations bills, including $25 billion for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that was not part of the original budget submission.

"If we want a missile defense that works rather than one that sits on the ground and soaks up money, we should not shy away from realistic testing requirements."
— Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.)



"This is just another attempt to research missile defense to death and never build it."
—Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)

Nuclear Weapons Research Contested

As he did last year, Rep. David Hobson (R-Ohio) mounted the most serious challenge to the Bush administration’s nuclear weapons plans. The chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development turned aside administration requests to research modified and new nuclear weapons, lessen the time needed to resume nuclear testing, and prepare for building a new atomic bomb-making facility. Together, these initiatives would have cost $96 million. (See ACT, March 2004.)

Hobson implied June 9 that he viewed some nuclear weapons spending as excessive and wasteful. Complaining that the “weapons complex is still sized to support a Cold War stockpile,” he stated, “the NNSA [National Nuclear Security Administration] needs to take a ‘time-out’ on new initiatives.” The NNSA is the Department of Energy agency responsible for the nuclear weapons stockpile.

Hobson reserved his greatest scorn for administration proposals to continue investigating modified warheads to better destroy targets deep underground and new warheads with lower yields. A June 18 statement by his subcommittee deemed administration justifications for such projects “superficial.” It further charged that the NNSA’s “obsession with launching a new round of nuclear weapons development runs counter” to U.S. efforts to dissuade other countries to forswear nuclear arms. The NNSA repeatedly says that no decision has been made to develop new weapons.

Although the cuts he enacted might be partially restored when Congress fleshes out its final budget package, Hobson, at least for the moment, succeeded where Democrats failed.

Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.) led an unsuccessful bid to amend the authorization bill to shift funding for nuclear weapons research to conventional armaments, while Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) fell short in their effort to eliminate such research altogether. Tauscher’s attempt failed by just 10 votes on the House floor, and the senators lost by a slightly larger deficit of 13 votes in the full Senate.

Republicans fended off these Democratic initiatives by emphasizing that the budget only permitted research on and not development or production of new weapons, suggesting that GOP support for the administration’s nuclear weapons plans may have its limits.

Indeed, four Republican senators held off on introducing a proposal to mandate congressional approval prior to an underground nuclear test of a robust nuclear earth penetrator warhead only after receiving assurances that such a requirement already existed. The administration says it has no plans to test nuclear weapons, but it also refuses to seek ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the United States signed in 1996 and the Senate rejected in 1999.

Missile Defenses Trimmed

Democrats were able to whittle away at the Pentagon’s $10.2 billion request for missile defenses. Yet, the core of the program survived. Senate appropriators matched the administration’s request, while their House counterparts pruned it by roughly a half-billion dollars.

In general, both bodies shifted funding away from nascent projects to those further along in development. The House Appropriations Committee warned the Pentagon June 18 that it “appears to be rushing toward development of next-generation technologies without fully testing or developing the systems that comprise the current generation.”

The Pentagon effort to build an interceptor to strike enemy missiles during their first minutes of flight was treated with healthy skepticism. Senate appropriators more than halved the administration’s $511 million request for the boost-phase system, and House members reduced it by $113 million.

Democrats found themselves alone, however, when they turned their attention toward cutting or constraining more near-term missile defense activities.

These debates largely occurred in the Senate because House Republicans limited debate on what defense proposals legislators could discuss. Democratic senators launched what amounted to their largest offensive against missile defense programs in several years. Their efforts centered on subjecting proposed systems to tougher testing and limiting future deployments.

Current Pentagon plans call for fielding up to 20 ground-based missile interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, by the end of 2005. The Pentagon has also requested full funding for an additional 10 interceptors to be deployed in 2006 and preliminary funding for another 10 interceptors for possible deployment at an undetermined third site, which could be built in Europe (see story). House appropriators cut the funds for the interceptors associated with the potential third site, but their Senate counterparts did not, so it is not clear whether the Pentagon will get this funding.

Democrats charge that the defense will be little more than a scarecrow because it has not undergone operational testing, which is conducted under more realistic conditions than the developmental testing that the missile defense system has been subjected to so far. Democrats point out that the two major components of the interceptor have not been tested together and that past intercept testing has not been sufficiently stressing: a beacon on the target has helped provide initial tracking data to plot the interceptor’s flight path; the same flight trajectories have been repeated every time; and the target cluster has lacked decoys closely resembling the mock warhead, making it simpler for the interceptor to pick out what it should hit. The system has scored five hits in eight intercept attempts, the last of which failed in December 2002.

Republicans beat back by a 57 to 42 vote a June 17 proposal by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to require that the interceptors undergo operational testing before fielding. GOP senators asserted that the interceptors must be deployed first and then tested.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) proposed that the Pentagon develop an operational testing plan and establish cost and performance baselines for the system. Republicans rebuffed his initiative, saying that the system must constantly evolve and baselines and rigid testing plans would stunt its growth.

Moreover, Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), a staunch missile defense supporter, responded to Reed’s proposal by reading a May 17 letter from the director of the Pentagon’s office of operational test and evaluation, Thomas Christie. “Conducting realistic operational testing in the near-term for the [system] would be premature and not beneficial to the program,” Christie wrote.

Reed called the letter “extraordinary...It says basically this system is not mature enough to test, but we are going to deploy it.”

Instead, the Senate agreed to a counterproposal by the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner (R-Va.). It requires the system to be operationally tested by Oct. 1, 2005, but lets the secretary of defense, rather than Christie, define the criteria for what constitutes operational testing. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) argued to no avail that Warner’s move violates a long-standing law that weapons systems must undergo independent testing. A Pentagon spokesperson on June 25 declined to comment.

Reed made one last stab at imposing operational testing. He called on the Senate to withhold the $550 million allocated to interceptors beyond the first 20 until after the first round of deployment is subjected to operational testing.

Although a different tact, it had the same result. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) led the Republican rally against Reed’s effort. The 53-45 defeat of Reed’s proposal marked the closest tally of all the Senate votes on missile defense.

Levin also unsuccessfully tried to cap the deployment at 20 interceptors by proposing that the money allocated for the next 10 interceptors be redirected to nonproliferation and anti-terrorism programs. Republicans contended this would disrupt current production lines and jeopardize the system’s expansion. In addition, they charged it represented a false choice, claiming that the other programs were sufficiently funded.

Threat Reduction

Congress fully endorsed President George W. Bush’s request for $409 million—an amount about 10 percent smaller than that granted last year—for the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program to help other countries, particularly those of the former Soviet Union, guard and eliminate their excess weapons stockpiles. The CTR program accounts for about a third of U.S. funding devoted to dealing with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and related materials around the world.

While applauding the Pentagon’s recent handling of the CTR program, the House Armed Services Committee released a May 13 statement that it “continues to be alarmed by Russia’s weak commitment to the goals of CTR.” Led by CTR skeptic Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), the committee cited Russian strategic modernization efforts and ambiguities surrounding Moscow’s past chemical weapons program as reasons for concern.

Prodded by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who helped initiate the CTR program, Senate Republicans tend to be more supportive of threat reduction programs than their House colleagues. This year proved no exception: senators approved measures to remove the $50 million cap on CTR funds spent on countries outside the former Soviet Union and granted the president permanent waiver authority to continue funding Russian chemical weapons destruction activities, even if Moscow does not meet conditions to be eligible for such assistance. The House did not pass similar provisions.

Led by Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), the Senate also called on the Energy Department to establish a program to speed up efforts to secure and dispose of global nuclear materials. A week later, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced May 26 just such a program, the Global Threat Reduction Initiative. (See ACT, July/August 2004.)

Abraham said the new initiative, a consolidation and acceleration of existing programs, would require at least $450 million, but Congress has yet to approve any funds for it. Two separate attempts in the House to shift money to the program were soundly defeated June 25. Although he claimed to be “very supportive” of nonproliferation efforts, Hobson led the opposition against the two proposals, saying, “I view with great skepticism the large increases that are proposed by the National Nuclear Security Administration, particularly when these new initiatives are proposed outside the regular annual budget and appropriations process.”

Kerry Details Nonproliferation Agenda

Wade Boese


Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, used several June speeches to promise a more aggressive approach than President George W. Bush on keeping “weapons of mass murder” out of the hands of terrorists.

Describing the possibility that terrorists might acquire nuclear weapons as the “greatest threat we face today,” Kerry said June 1 that he would accelerate current programs aimed at controlling supplies of the two key ingredients for nuclear weapons—highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium. The Massachusetts senator also called for disposing of existing excess stockpiles and banning the future production of these materials for weapons purposes.

“No material. No bomb. No nuclear terrorism,” Kerry explained.

The Bush administration has dedicated $10 billion through 2012 to safekeeping and destroying bomb-making materials in the former Soviet Union and recently stepped up programs to do the same elsewhere. It has also won commitments by another 20 states to collectively try and match the U.S. $10 billion.

But Kerry argued these efforts have been insufficient. “We have done too little, often too late,” he charged.

Kerry stated his administration would remove all nuclear bomb-making material from inadequately guarded sites worldwide within four years as opposed to the 13 years he estimated it would take under current plans.

Kerry implied that this task could be accomplished, in part, by boosting funds but failed to put a price tag on his proposal. He also pledged to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end lingering bureaucratic disputes, such as assigning liability for accidents and gaining access to certain weapons sites, that have impeded some projects. (See ACT, June 2003.)

The senator further called for all countries permanently to cease production of HEU and plutonium for weapons, essentially capping the amount of nuclear bomb-making material worldwide. Although the U.S. government had long supported negotiating a treaty toward this end, the Bush administration initiated a review of the concept last year and has yet to announce any findings. (See ACT, November 2003.)

To better convince other countries to forgo nuclear weapons, Kerry declared the United States needed to serve as a better example by shelving its ongoing research into modified or new nuclear weapons. He contended that such activity “undermines [U.S.] credibility in persuading other nations” to give up their nuclear arms possessions or pursuits.

Two countries that Kerry, like Bush, particularly wants to persuade to abandon any nuclear ambitions are North Korea and Iran. But the Democratic challenger indicated that he would take a different approach in dealing with Tehran and Pyongyang, seeking more direct talks with each country. In the case of Iran, he said Washington should join with other capitals to call Tehran’s “bluff” by offering it nuclear fuel so it would have no excuse to produce its own.

Given the importance of preventing nuclear terrorism, the senator said he would name a single official to be in charge of U.S. policy on the threat. A similar position would be created for dealing with biological weapons dangers, Kerry said June 2.

Kerry does not disagree entirely with Bush. Like the president, Kerry stated that his administration would bolster rules and controls regulating nuclear trade and oppose the acquisition by any new countries of facilities useful for building nuclear weapons. Bush outlined several policy recommendations with the same aim in a Feb. 11 speech. (See ACT, March 2004.)

Even though many Democrats have been critical of what they deem as Bush’s undue emphasis on pre-emption, Kerry said June 3 that, if terrorists succeed in obtaining nuclear or biological weapons, he would “destroy those weapons before they are used.” In preparation for such a scenario, the senator said he would “build new forces that specialize in finding, securing, and destroying weapons of mass destruction and the facilities that build them.”

Still, Kerry said May 27 that he would work “to build an international consensus for early preventive action, so that states don’t even think of taking the nuclear road.” He did not specify what kind of actions he had in mind.

Acting in concert with other countries, particularly through alliances, is one of four foreign policy “imperatives” Kerry has outlined. Reshaping the U.S. military to counter and defend better against unconventional and asymmetric threats; relying on nonmilitary options, such as diplomacy, “early enough and effectively enough so military force doesn’t become our only option”; and ending U.S. dependence on oil imports from the Middle East are the other three.

 

 

 

 

Bush Plans to Cut Atomic Arsenal

Wade Boese

After a long internal debate, the Bush administration told Congress June 1 that it intends to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal in half by 2012. The United States currently deploys approximately 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads, out of a total nuclear force of roughly 10,000 weapons.

Approved by the president, the classified nuclear stockpile plan establishes the size and preferred state of readiness of all U.S. nuclear forces, not just those deployed.

Congress and arms control groups have been pushing for a detailed stockpile plan since Russia and the United States concluded the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) two years ago to reduce their operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads each by the end of 2012. But differences between the Departments of Defense and Energy over how many nondeployed warheads the United States should retain held up the plan. (See ACT, May 2004.)

In a public cover letter attached to the secret plan, Linton F. Brooks, who heads the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), told Congress that the plan will result in a U.S. nuclear stockpile that “will be the smallest it has been in several decades.” Brooks declined to provide a specific figure, but he has since stated the U.S. arsenal would be cut “almost in half.”

Even after the cuts, the United States will still possess a nuclear arsenal far surpassing any other country but its Cold War rival, Russia. Moscow currently fields about 5,000 strategic nuclear warheads and possesses an estimated 15,000 other nuclear warheads. The combined nuclear weapons holdings of all other countries, many of which are U.S. allies or friends, are estimated to be around 1,300 warheads at most.

One purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is to “dissuade potential adversaries from trying to match our capabilities or from engaging in strategic competition,” Brooks said in a June 21 speech at the Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference in Washington. Other goals include assuring U.S. allies that the United States can protect them, deterring future threats, and, if necessary, defeating potential adversaries.

In addition to having extra weapons available for routine maintenance work, the Bush administration contends a reserve force of nondeployed warheads is needed to provide a hedge against new threats as well as technical problems with deployed warheads that might demand wholesale replacements. This reserve force will be divided into two categories of warheads: those that are prepared for a relatively quick return to service and those stored in lower states of readiness.

Tentative Pentagon plans two years ago envisaged keeping up to 2,400 warheads in a so-called responsive force that could be redeployed from storage within weeks, months, or three years at most. Although the precise number of warheads the plan assigns to this category is not public, the number of warheads to be kept at higher stages of readiness reportedly is larger than those to be mothballed at lesser stages.

Also unclear is the dismantlement schedule for the thousands of U.S. warheads that will no longer be retained. Although warheads may be designated for dismantlement, it could take years for the work to be completed because the primary facility for disassembling warheads—the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas—is busy with ongoing warhead refurbishment projects.

The administration further remains undecided on how it will complete its SORT reductions. The current interim goal is to reduce current deployed strategic warheads down to roughly 3,500 by 2007, but there is no fixed plan on how to trim the additional 1,300 warheads to meet the treaty limit, which is only binding for one day, Dec. 31, 2012.

Preserving flexibility in how and when reductions occur is a key feature of the administration’s nuclear weapons policy. Warning that the future is uncertain, the administration contends the United States must be ready for a variety of contingencies that might require modifying or building up its nuclear forces.

Brooks explained that such options are being kept open by creating a “responsive infrastructure” based on three main initiatives: planning to build a new facility to make additional nuclear warhead cores, researching new types of nuclear weapons, and halving the amount of time required to initiate a nuclear test if the president chose to do so. The administration says it has no current plans to conduct a nuclear test.

If successfully developed, a responsive infrastructure would eventually permit the United States to “consider going much further in reducing the size of the reserve stockpile we must maintain,” Brooks stated June 21.

Still, some congressional Democrats, foreign governments, and former U.S. officials criticize the Bush administration’s hedging approach, particularly its unwillingness to forswear future nuclear testing by ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, as at odds with global nuclear nonproliferation efforts.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei gave the Bush administration plan qualified praise in a June 21 speech at the Carnegie conference. The plan “is encouraging, if the intention is to eliminate the warheads in question in a verifiable and irreversible manner,” ElBaradei said.

SORT did not require any warheads or delivery vehicles to be destroyed and hence did not establish any mechanisms or procedures for destruction activities to be verified.

 

 

 

 

News Analysis: Libya's Disarmament: A Model for U.S. Policy?

Paul Kerr


Ask Bush administration officials what they want countries developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to do and you hear, “Act like Libya.”

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi surprised the world last December by announcing that Tripoli would give up its nuclear and chemical weapons programs, as well as restrict its missile arsenal to international standards. (See ACT, January/February 2004.) Since then, U.S. officials have repeatedly said that they want countries such as Iran, North Korea, and Syria to emulate Libya’s behavior. This is understandable: Gary Samore, a former Clinton administration National Security Council (NSC) aide, described Libya’s decision as “the best nonproliferation deal ever made.”

Appreciation for Libya’s action has increased as Tripoli has followed through on its pledges and given U.S. and British inspectors unprecedented access to verify that it has done so. Moreover, since December, Libya has also ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention and agreed to more stringent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections. Libya’s turnaround has already ended its diplomatic isolation, eased U.S. sanctions, and opened the way for its reentry into the global economy.

Obviously, it would be ideal for other countries developing WMD to follow Libya’s example. But the factors that motivated Libya to give up its weapons, particularly the coercive elements of U.S. policy, do not easily translate into a broader nonproliferation policy.

A History of Sanctions and Diplomacy

Exactly what drove Gaddafi to renounce terrorism and his weapons programs is a subject of contention. Both sides in this debate agree that Libya’s desire to end UN sanctions and restore profitable economic relations with the United States was an important factor in Tripoli’s decision. But some former U.S. officials emphasize the importance of U.S. diplomatic efforts, as well as the sanctions’ impact. Current members of the Bush administration, by contrast, argue that Gaddafi was swayed as much, if not more, by the threat of U.S. force prior to the Iraq war and the interdiction of nuclear technology through a U.S.-led initiative.

The United States first imposed sanctions on Libya in 1973 and placed it on the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1979. Further terrorism sanctions were added in the 1980s. The 1996 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, first passed by Congress in 1996, was the first major U.S. policy statement to address WMD concerns explicitly. That legislation—renewed five years later—allowed Washington to sanction foreign companies for certain investments in Libya’s oil and gas industries, as well as for providing goods or services contributing to Tripoli’s ability to acquire chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

The UN Security Council followed suit in 1992 after the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight en route from London to New York and a French flight over Niger in 1989. The Security Council suspended its sanctions in 1999 after Libya handed over two officials for trial in the first bombing and following France’s acknowledgement that Tripoli cooperated with French officials investigating the latter. The Security Council permanently lifted its sanctions in September 2003 after Tripoli agreed to compensate the Pan Am bombing victims’ families. (See ACT, October 2003.)

Libya then moved to address long-standing U.S. concerns that it was developing unconventional weapons. In March 2003 (prior to the Iraq war), Libya approached the British government, which had restored diplomatic relations in 1999, to discuss how it could resolve this issue.

Diplomatic forays designed to bring an end to Libya’s terrorism and weapons activities, however, started years earlier. Martin Indyk, former assistant secretary of state for the Middle East region during the Clinton administration, wrote in a March 2004 Financial Times article that the United States began secret talks with Libya in 1999 to persuade the government to resolve issues concerning its terrorist activities.

During those talks, Indyk said, Libya offered to end its chemical weapons program and open its facilities to international inspection, but the United States placed a higher priority on terrorism.

Indyk added that the Clinton administration made clear to Libya that resolution of the issues regarding the Pan Am flight would be sufficient for Washington to refrain from using its veto to block a Security Council vote to lift UN sanctions. However, he said U.S. officials informed Tripoli that Washington would not remove its own sanctions until Libya addressed its concerns about WMD.

Former Bush NSC official Flynt Leverett added to this narrative in a January 2004 New York Times op-ed. Leverett wrote that the Bush administration continued the Clinton policy regarding UN sanctions. In addition, the United States in March 2003 offered Libya an “explicit quid pro quo,” in which the United States would lift its sanctions in exchange for Libya’s “verifiable dismantling” of its weapons programs.[1]

Former Clinton NSC official Daniel Benjamin added in an interview that the Bush administration seems to have offered an additional concession to Libya in the area of terrorism. The Clinton administration, he said, had demanded that Tripoli cooperate with a further investigation of the Pan Am bombing “no matter where it led.” According to Benjamin, such an investigation would almost certainly have led beyond the two Libyan officials “to the highest levels of the Libyan government,” something Tripoli obviously did not want.

Current administration officials interviewed for this article did not dismiss the role of diplomacy but placed special emphasis on two events that have, in the words of a senior administration official, “projected a message that we mean what we say” when it comes to stopping proliferation. The first was the massive U.S. troop buildup in the Persian Gulf region prior to the Iraq war. Both the senior official and a Department of State official said that it was no accident that Tripoli approached London just when a U.S.-led coalition, citing WMD concerns, was about to invade Iraq.

Also crucial, they said, was an October 2003 U.S. interdiction of a German ship containing components for gas centrifuges, intended for use in Libya’s uranium-enrichment program.[2]

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton told the House International Relations Committee in March 2004 that Libya agreed to admit U.S. and British inspectors only after the October interdiction. The senior official added that Libya did not admit to having a nuclear weapons program until after the interdiction occurred, saying the discussions until that point were not “substantive.”

A Success Story, Not a Model


As a State Department official argued, one of the most important lessons from the Libya case is the importance of “shaping proliferators’ cost-benefit calculations”—with an emphasis on costs—to persuade them that possessing weapons of mass destruction is not in their self-interest. The senior official argued that Libya’s experience can demonstrate to countries such as Iran and North Korea the benefits of giving up their WMD programs.

The Bush administration has skillfully built on diplomacy inherited from its predecessors, which had produced a multilateral forum the United States could use to present a set of carrots and sticks to persuade Libya to give up its weapons. It is likely, however, that the United States will be dealing with countries such as Iran and North Korea under much different circumstances, which will significantly constrain coercive U.S. policy options.

Interdictions and Intelligence


Although the administration points to the October interdiction as decisive, Samore argued that the United States had intelligence about Libya’s programs that cannot be duplicated in the case of North Korea. Interdictions of illicit cargo are obviously valuable but require a degree of luck and international cooperation that limit their broad utility as a policy tool.
For example, the administration has touted its Proliferation Security Initiative—an effort to increase interdictions of WMD-related goods—as a way to contain North Korea’s shipments of missile components. However, this will not be easy; North Korea is a notoriously difficult intelligence target, and none of its three neighbors have agreed to join the effort.

Sanctions

By the time the Bush administration came into office, Libya had already been subject to several years of UN sanctions because of its terrorist activities. It also had begun to respond with positive overtures to the international community.[3] The international community also possessed substantial incentives and points of leverage, including two terrorism suspects under indictment.

It is unlikely that these conditions will exist with either North Korea or Iran. Pyongyang’s isolation and lack of significant economic interaction with the United States limit the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions. The demonstrated lack of willingness by North Korea’s neighbors, particularly China, to contain Pyongyang or support multilateral sanctions, presents another obstacle.

The situation with Iran is different and perhaps more difficult. Extensive international investment in and commerce with Iran would make persuading Western countries to impose sanctions on Iran difficult. Moreover, Iran’s close ties with Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, further diminish the prospect that the United Nations would take action. To be sure, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany have conditioned an important trade agreement on Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA’s investigation into its nuclear program, but this demonstrates a commitment to a different set of carrots and sticks, rather than multilateral sanctions.[4]

Military Force


The invasion of Iraq does not appear to have been the decisive factor in Libya’s decision. But even if it was, this is at best a fortunate byproduct of the war that does not provide a useful guide for future nonproliferation policy—the United States obviously cannot invade one country to scare another into disarming.

Additionally, Iran and North Korea present even less appealing military targets than Iraq. Further, current U.S. military woes in Iraq make it all but impossible to believe that Washington will soon be able to invade any other countries on WMD grounds or win international support for doing so.

Lessons

Apart from noting that policymakers should take advantage of opportunities to get others to disarm, are there any lessons from the Libya experience that can be used to confront other proliferation threats? Creating the conditions to be able to positively influence a country’s proliferation behavior is important, but it takes time and patience and the use of many different tools. There are, therefore, two main lessons we can draw from the Libya case.

First, use all available assets. A combination of sanctions, diplomacy, intelligence, and fortune helped to change Libya’s behavior. Obviously, these assets will exist in different combinations in other situations, but the United States should take advantage of all of them when it can.

A good example is the use of international weapons inspectors. Organizations such as the IAEA possess expertise and credibility that will be important for persuading other countries to stand with the United States against proliferation threats. These organizations, however, lack the military and intelligence capabilities that national governments possess. It is therefore important for national governments and international organizations to pool their respective capabilities to contain and prevent proliferation threats.

Second, smart diplomacy can work. This means setting clear rewards for good behavior and sanctions for bad behavior. In Libya’s case, the Security Council suspended sanctions for fulfilling some of its obligations and lifted them when it fulfilled the rest. The United States also used the leverage of its sanctions to persuade Libya to comply.

The lesson is that the current diplomatic efforts to solve the Iran and North Korea proliferation problems have promise. But the Bush administration to date has placed much greater emphasis on increasing the costs of retaining such programs than articulating the benefits of abandoning them. Because Washington’s ability to impose costs on both of these countries is limited, the administration needs to do more to make it clear to both of those countries that they can reap rewards from forswearing their weapons programs. So far, the administration has having only hinted at the benefits of cooperation.

The administration has done well in this case, but it will not be sufficient simply to tell other countries of proliferation concern to act like Libya. Instead, the United States must evaluate the factors that produced success in this case, especially the use of diplomatic incentives, and adapt them to other countries developing WMD.


ENDNOTES

1. Both a senior administration official and a Department of State official interviewed for this article said they were unaware that any such promises had been made or that any discussions regarding weapons of mass destruction were held before March 2003.

2. Gas centrifuges provide one method for enriching uranium, which can be used in civilian nuclear reactors when enriched to low levels and in nuclear weapons when enriched to higher levels.

3. It is worth noting that the UN sanctions did not result from Libya’s suspected weapons programs.

4. George Perkovich and Silvia Manzanero, “Plan B: Using Sanctions to End Iran’s Nuclear Program,” ACT, May 2004, p. 20.

 

 

 

 

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