April 2024  
By David Goldfischer

Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer has educated a vast audience about a critical moment in world history. It also takes its viewers to a dark place, in which J. Robert Oppenheimer is punished for his effort to avert a nuclear arms race when he is stripped of his security clearance. As the movie expresses his thoughts, he had started then failed to stop “a chain reaction that might destroy the entire world.”

That might leave some viewers wondering how Oppenheimer hoped to prevent what he accurately foresaw as an unwinnable superpower nuclear arms race. Despite the personal struggles portrayed in the movie, he worked ceaselessly toward identifying a practical path toward that goal. Unfortunately, the answer he ultimately found has been all but forgotten.

His initial hope was for comprehensive international control of everything from uranium mining to deployed weapons. As reflected in his work on the 1946 Acheson-Lilienthal report, that approach was overtaken by the deepening Cold War and the 1949 Soviet atomic bomb test.¹

In that new context, Oppenheimer turned to a search for a nuclear policy that could contain the Soviet threat while avoiding capabilities for “exterminating civilian populations.” That phrase is from a majority report in 1949, which he authored, of the General Advisory Committee of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.² In it, he distinguished between atomic weapons sufficient for deterring attack and the development of a hydrogen bomb, whose almost limitless explosive power and “the global effects of its radioactivity,” would vastly magnify the nuclear danger. The committee’s call to suspend hydrogen bomb development while supporting work on low-yield tactical nuclear weapons reflected Oppenheimer’s emerging vision of minimally sufficient nuclear deterrence. Consistent with that approach and further antagonizing supporters of a nuclear airpower buildup, Oppenheimer participated in the military’s 1951 Project Vista, which argued that Europe could be defended with short-range tactical nuclear weapons rather than long-range strategic bombers.³

He next moved to consider whether efforts at population defense could contribute to the combined goals of deterring attack while avoiding civilian “extermination.” From the perspective of the U.S. Air Force leadership, his answer provided final proof of Oppenheimer’s treacherous “pattern of activities.”⁴ For those who shared his view that a nuclear arms race risked world destruction, however, his emerging policy approach represented a radical advance in how to reduce the nuclear danger. The “father of the atom bomb” was about to create the first coherent vision of superpower nuclear arms control.

A New Proposal

Oppenheimer’s new proposal, to put it simply, was for a superpower agreement that would avoid a buildup of bombs and bombers and instead direct Soviet and U.S. efforts toward defending their populations against nuclear attack. One might describe this approach as “mutual defense emphasis.”

It is understandable that his call for this arms control concept was left out of the film as peripheral to the high drama of its protagonist’s life and times. Yet, it also was ignored in the biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, on which the movie largely was based, and has received scant attention in most other histories of the nuclear age.

Because all scholars now agree that Oppenheimer’s banishment as an adviser on nuclear policy was unjust, it is worth examining whether the arms control concept that contributed to his downfall warrants reconsideration. That requires a look back at 1952, when Oppenheimer followed his work on Project Vista by joining a 1952 summer study at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, which assessed prospects for defending the U.S. homeland against nuclear-armed bombers.⁵

The study concluded that a full-scale continental defense could intercept 60 to 80 percent of enemy bombers and that technological advances promised far greater effectiveness. Based on those findings, Oppenheimer concluded that although defense against a Soviet “knockout blow” technically was achievable, it would require that the Soviets decide to limit their own buildup of nuclear-capable long-range bombers. Although formal agreements were unlikely in that Cold War climate, Oppenheimer envisioned a tacit understanding in which the superpowers would couple low levels of bombers with large-scale efforts at detection and interception. In that case, he concluded, deterrence could be based on mutual fears that few if any bombers would reach their targets.

At the time, the Soviet Union was focused on constructing a multitiered radar network and thousands of jet interceptors, while deploying no nuclear-capable intercontinental-range bombers, essentially the reverse of the initial U.S. reliance on a purely offensive strategy. Oppenheimer expressed the hope that, in return for being spared a buildup of U.S. nuclear airpower that was certain to overwhelm even the massive Russian defensive effort, Moscow might be prepared to make deep cuts in its conventional forces threatening Western Europe. Only such bilateral concessions could avert the threats that each side feared most.

Oppenheimer then took this logic a step further. Should the day arrive when improved superpower relations revived interest in nuclear disarmament, he proposed that nationwide defenses would be a vital supplement to a verification regime. Although verification alone could not eliminate fears of hidden nuclear weapons and bombers, extensive defensive deployments could resolve that formidable obstacle to comprehensive offensive disarmament. As he explained in a 1953 article, a combination of robust verification measures and large-scale defenses could make “steps of evasion far too vast to conceal or far too small to have, in view of existing measures of defense, a decisive strategic effect.”⁶

That article became famous for its appeal to the American people for candor regarding the impending Soviet capability to destroy the nation’s “heart and life” even if the United States attacked first. In a nonpublic forum, Oppenheimer expressed hope that such candor would galvanize public support for a major effort to build a continental defense and negotiate a bilateral limit on offenses. Informed U.S. citizens, as a later advocate of this approach put it, would “prefer live Americans to dead Russians.”⁷

These ideas had been developed in meetings of the Oppenheimer-led Panel of Consultants on Disarmament during the waning months of the Truman administration. Its work included a stillborn “no first test” proposal for the hydrogen bomb, based on the argument that stopping at the brink of testing would prevent both sides from developing deliverable weapons while enabling a rapid response if one side broke the agreement.⁸ The first U.S. nuclear test occurred while the panel was still deliberating.

The panel’s report was delivered to newly elected President Dwight Eisenhower, who then heard direct appeals from panel members Oppenheimer, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and leading U.S. science adviser Vannevar Bush.⁹ Discussions within the administration embraced their call for a continental defense system while rejecting their accurate prediction that homeland defense would prove futile without an agreement to limit offensive forces. A year later, Dulles’ older brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, would announce the U.S. doctrine of “massive retaliation,” justifying the unfolding buildup to around 3,000 nuclear-armed bombers by the end of the 1950s.

A Bitter Attack

Oppenheimer’s case for mutual defense emphasis came under bitter attack by Air Force leadership, which regarded support for U.S. nuclear superiority as a litmus test of patriotism. A sample of the prevalent conspiratorial thinking was the testimony of the chief Air Force scientist, David Griggs, during the hearings that led to the revocation of Oppenheimer’s security clearance. “It was…told me by people who were approached to join the summer study that in order to achieve world peace…it was necessary not only to strengthen the air defense of the continental United States, but also to give up something, and the thing that was recommended that we give up was the…strategic part of our total air power,” Griggs said.¹⁰

It is largely forgotten that the original vision of nuclear arms control was based on restricting the offense to make strategic defense possible. In 1957 the arrival of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), demonstrated by the Soviet launch of Sputnik, would make that arms control approach appear foredoomed, and U.S. arms control supporters soon seized on a moment when shooting down ballistic missiles was literally impossible. In a radical shift from Oppenheimer’s arms control vision, these arms control supporters reasoned that the best outcome would be a superpower agreement to deploy ICBMs in large but equal numbers and protect them from nuclear attack by placing them underground in hardened concrete silos. Because neither side could hope to eliminate the other’s nuclear-armed missiles by striking first, the prospect of devastating retaliation against the aggressor’s population would freeze both sides in a state of stable mutual deterrence. The goal of arms control had shifted from the pursuit of offensive nuclear disarmament to the preservation of peace through an enduring “balance of terror.”

By the time the two sides developed plausibly effective defenses against missiles during the 1960s, this logic called for banning their deployment, and the United States proposed such a plan for “offense only” mutual deterrence to the Soviet Union in 1967. When Soviet leaders objected, arguing that it would be better to ban offenses and allow population defenses, the United States responded that it would simply overwhelm any Soviet anti-ballistic missile defensive system by expanding its ICBM force.

In 1972 the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty enshrined the principle of assured vulnerability to a nuclear holocaust, which has guided U.S.-Russian strategic arms control from then through the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). This approach soon became known as mutual assured destruction, a label created by Donald G. Brennan, who was also a supporter of mutual defense emphasis. He believed that the acronym MAD captured the insanity of entrusting safety to an arrangement based on forever avoiding accidental launches, miscalculation during a crisis, or a leader’s descent into insanity.

Oppenheimer’s defensive alternative to MAD had a remarkable if brief resurrection three decades later. President Ronald Reagan, facing widespread opposition to his 1983 call for a massive U.S. population defense known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, recast it from a nuclear victory strategy to a disarmament concept. Paul Nitze, Reagan’s senior arms control adviser, attended meetings of Oppenheimer’s 1952 disarmament panel as head of the Department of State’s policy planning staff. Now, as the Cold War waned, he embraced its call for a defense-protected disarmament regime, and Reagan approved his updated version of Oppenheimer’s arms control concept.

Presented to the Soviet arms control delegation in Geneva in January 1985, Nitze’s proposal called for a 10-year negotiated transition combining non-nuclear population defenses with complete offensive disarmament. His explanation of the need for nationwide defenses as a hedge against cheating verged on a verbatim repetition of Oppenheimer’s logic years earlier.

Nitze’s proposal initially was rejected by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who scoffed at Reagan’s vague promise to share U.S. missile defense technology. Yet, the Cold War had reached a turning point, and Gorbachev soon called for “a change in the entire pattern of armed forces” toward “imparting an exclusively defensive character to them.” In October 1991, weeks before his fall from power, Gorbachev announced that the Soviets were ready “to consider proposals…on non-nuclear anti-ballistic missile defenses.” The chain from Oppenheimer to Nitze to Gorbachev would extend to the first two leaders of the Russian successor state.

Back to the Past

On February 1, 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin called for a global missile defense system that would enable countries to slash or eliminate their nuclear arsenals.¹¹ If that proposal reflected the giddy idealism of a new era, including reliance on a non-existent space-based missile shield, the United States by then had lost any interest in exploring cooperative defenses with the weak Soviet successor state. Eight years later, in May 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush would stun new Russian President Vladimir Putin by withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, signaling a prospective U.S. ballistic missile defense buildup that a still floundering Russia would be unable to match.

Looking back at that moment in 2019, Putin’s views on that U.S. decision are worth quoting:

[I]f the US side…wanted to withdraw from the [t]reaty…I suggested working jointly on missile-defence projects that should have involved the United States, Russia and Europe. … Those were absolutely specific proposals. I am convinced that the world would be a different place today, had our US partners accepted this proposal. Unfortunately, this did not happen. We can see that the situation is developing in another direction; new weapons and cutting-edge military technology are coming to the fore. Well, this is not our choice.¹²

The world now finds itself confronted with the same basic problem that confronted Oppenheimer in the early 1950s, in which hopes for comprehensive arms control have yielded to major-power confrontation, including a race to incorporate destabilizing new weapons technologies. The United States, Russia, and China are pursuing improved offensive systems and defenses against aircraft and missiles of all types and ranges. Distinctions between offensive and defensive weapons and forces, crucial to all forms of arms control, are subordinated to whatever cost-effective blend of capabilities best advances war-fighting strategies. New START, already suspended in part over the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, will expire in 2026; and as China approaches nuclear parity with the original superpowers, MAD offers no formula for three-way assured-destruction force levels.

The world continues to live with Oppenheimer’s forecast that harnessing the destructive power of nuclear weapons will enable powerful nuclear states to overwhelm any adversary’s unilateral efforts to limit wartime damage. It also lives with his realistic fear that human survival cannot be entrusted permanently to what he called the “strange stability” of the resulting balance of terror.

Oppenheimer’s original arms control concept proved too idealistic for his time and place and may well be equally so today. From the perspective of all that has happened since, however, directing diplomacy toward achieving mutual defense emphasis may be less quixotic than current hopes to sustain the view that mutual assured vulnerability to annihilation is the best of all possible nuclear worlds. If the world manages to outlast the new cold war as it somehow survived the first, the door should not be closed to reconsidering, as Oppenheimer was the first to propose, that population defenses and offensive disarmament may be “necessary complements.”

ENDNOTES

1. Chester A. Barnard et al., “A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy,” U.S. Department of State Publication 2498, March 16, 1946, https://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/atomic/item/1236.

2. Atomicarchive.com, “General Advisory Committee’s Majority and Minority Reports on Building the H-Bomb,” n.d., https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/hydrogen/gac-report.html (accessed March 27, 2024).

3. David C. Elliot, “Project Vista and Nuclear Weapons in Europe,” International Security, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1986): 163-183.

4. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: Transcript of Hearings Before Personal Security Board and Texts of Principal Documents and Letters (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970), p. 749.

5. Director’s Office, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, “The Soviet Atomic Threat, Oppenheimer, and the Need for National Air Defense,” The Bulletin, October 23, 2023, https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/153173/2023-10-20-Bulletin-The%20Soviet%20Atomic%20Threat%2c%20Oppenheimer%2c%20and%20the%20Need%20for%20National%20Air%20Defense.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

6. J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Atomic Weapons and American Policy,” Foreign Affairs, July 1953, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/robert-oppenheimer-atomic-weapons-american-policy.

7. Donald G. Brennan, “The Case for Population Defense,” in Why ABM? Policy Issues in the Missile Defense Controversy, ed. Johan Holst and William Schneider Jr. (New York: Pergamon Press, 1969), p. 108.

8. “Memorandum by the Panel of Consultants on Disarmament: The Timing of the Thermonuclear Test,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, National Security Affairs, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v02p2/d49 (undated).

9. “Report by the Panel of Consultants of the Department of State to the Secretary of State,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, National Security Affairs, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v02p2/d67.

10. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, p. 749.

11. Michael Parks, “Yeltsin Calls for Worldwide Antimissile Defense System,” Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1992.

12. President of Russia, “Interview With the Financial Times,” June 27, 2019, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60836.

April 2024
By Shizuka Kuramitsu

India announced what it called a successful test of the country’s first domestically produced missile carrying multiple warheads with independent targeting capability, thus signaling progress in advancing a nuclear deterrent against China.

In a social media post on March 11, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi commended efforts by the national Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). “Proud of our DRDO scientists for Mission Divyastra the first flight test of indigenously developed Agni-5 missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology,” Modi wrote.

The organization released a press release on the same day stating that the test was carried out from Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Island in Odisha and that “[v]arious [t]elemetry radar stations tracked and monitored multiple re-entry vehicles.” The agency added that “[t]he mission accomplished the designed parameters.”

With the test on March 11, months before Modi faces a national election that could give him a rare consecutive third term in office, India joined a short list of states that are confirmed to possess operational missiles with MIRV capability: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

“While the Indian government may rejoice in its technical achievement, the proliferation of MIRV capability is a sign of a larger worrisome trend in worldwide nuclear arsenals that is already showing signs of an emerging nuclear arms race with more destabilizing MIRVed missiles,” Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda of the Federation of American Scientists wrote on their organization’s website on March 12.

“The capability to deploy multiple warheads on each missile is one of the most dangerous developments of the nuclear era because it is one of the quickest ways for nuclear-armed states to significantly increase their number of deployed warheads and develop the capability to rapidly destroy large numbers of targets,” they said.

One day later, in an interview with Fortune India, Kristensen added that “[a]lthough there are still technical challenges before MIRV [capability] becomes fully operational in India, Pakistan, and North Korea, the trend is that the MIRV club has doubled in the past decade.”

Developed in the early 1960s and operationalized in the 1970s by the United States and the Soviet Union, MIRV technology impacted the strategic calculus of deterrence by enabling a single missile to carry multiple warheads that each can hit separate targets.

This capability increases the effectiveness of an attack, making it more difficult for adversaries to defend against multiple warheads or decoys. From an adversary’s perspective, land-based missiles equipped with MIRV technology would be a prime target before their launch because they offer a chance to destroy multiple warheads at once.

Although the development and deployment of MIRV technology increases the proficiency of a first strike, it also can destabilize deterrence calculations and raise concerns about an accelerating arms race and the potential for rapid nuclear escalation.

Because Indian missiles already can reach all of Pakistan, analysts generally agree that India’s focus on expanding its MIRV capability, developing longer-range missiles and hypersonic weapons, launching an integrated rocket force, and advancing missile defense systems on land and sea is intended to deter China. (See ACT, December 2021.)

The Agni-5 missile has an expected delivery range of more than 5,000 kilometers and can strike most of China, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies Missile Defense Project. In recent years, a significant weight reduction enabled the missile to travel distances beyond 7,000 kilometers, Indian defense officials told India Today TV on Dec. 17, 2022.

India has invested in MIRV capability for more than a decade. (See ACT, October 2018.)

Pakistan also has been developing MIRV technology “to increase stability and deterrence by increasing the chances of penetrating of India’s emergent ballistic missile defenses,” according to an article published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in November, but the result of its latest missile test, in October, was described as unclear.

Reflecting on the latest Indian test, the U.S. State Department on March 12 told the Indian news outlet ANI that “[t]he United States and India share a vision for an Indo-Pacific region that is free, open, secure, and prosperous. We continue to work as partners with India and with other countries in the region to achieve this vision.”

Meanwhile, in a statement delivered at the Conference on Disarmament on March 14, Anupam Ray, the Indian ambassador to the conference, reaffirmed India’s doctrine of minimum credible deterrence and, as part of it, no first use of nuclear weapons. “India has espoused the policy of no first use against nuclear-weapon states and nonuse against non-nuclear-weapon states. We are prepared to convert these undertakings into multilateral legal arrangements,” he said.

April 2024
By Mina Rozei

The Islamic State group likely carried out an attack in Syria using chemical weapons nine years ago, according to international experts responsible for investigating the use of these banned weapons.

In a report on Feb. 22, the Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said that there are “reasonable grounds” to find the Islamic State group culpable for the attack in Marea on Sept. 1, 2015, in which 11 individuals showed symptoms consistent with exposure to sulfur mustard.

“The Secretariat of the OPCW has once again delivered on the mandate it has received to identify perpetrators of chemical weapons use in Syria,” OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias said when the report was released. “This is a stark reminder to the international community that nonstate actors like [the Islamic State group] have developed the capacity and the will to use chemical weapons.”

The report concludes a comprehensive year-long OPCW investigation into the attack in Marea.

Investigators found that the Islamic State group deployed sulfur mustard using one or more artillery guns, asserting that “no other entity possessed the means, motives, and capabilities to deploy sulfur mustard as part of an attack in Marea” on that date.

According to the report, 11 individuals who “came into contact with the liquid substance experienced symptoms consistent with exposure to sulfur mustard.”

The IIT was able to reconstruct the organizational chain of command that led to the attack and identify four individuals as perpetrators and two additional Islamic State members as primary drivers of the group’s chemical weapons program.

Using a finding of “reasonable grounds” to assign the responsibility to the Islamic State group is a “standard of proof consistently adopted by international fact-finding bodies and commissions of inquiry,” the report said.

The IIT relied on interviews, information from the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission, states-parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), and various forensic evidence and data to reach its conclusions.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, a primary nongovernmental organization providing the IIT with on-the-ground information, has documented five chemical weapons attacks by the Islamic State group and 132 casualties since the group emerged in Syria in 2013.

This case marks the first time that the IIT has established that a nonstate actor perpetrated a chemical weapons attack in Syria. Mozambique’s UN ambassador, speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on behalf of Algeria, Guyana, and Sierra Leone, declared that the findings “suggest that, henceforward, the Syrian chemical weapons program will be seen in a different perspective.”

The findings document the latest in a series of confirmed chemical attacks in Syria and underscore growing frustration that CWC states-parties are becoming less compliant with the treaty. “The absence of accountability for the use of chemical weapons continues to be a threat to international peace and security,” said Adedeji Ebo, director and deputy to the UN high representative for disarmament affairs, at a Security Council meeting on March 4.

The findings provoked a mixed reaction at the meeting. Some states, such as the United States, criticized Syria for failing to comply with the OPCW and pointed to the latest IIT report as proof that the OPCW remains impartial. France, Japan, and Slovenia also praised the OPCW’s impartiality and called on Syria to comply with the IIT.

Syria insisted that it destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile and is cooperating with the OPCW. Russia and Iran defended Syria and said the OPCW is being exploited by Western countries.

The IIT report was released before the OPCW Executive Council met in The Hague on March 5-8 where its findings were discussed. Arias reported that Syria’s chemical stockpile declaration continues to have “gaps, inconsistencies, and discrepancies that remain unresolved [and] the Secretariat assess[es] that the declaration submitted by [Syria] still cannot be considered accurate and complete.”

April 2024

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) met Russian President Vladimir Putin last month to discuss the safety and security of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.

After the meeting in Sochi on March 6, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi described his conversation with Putin as “professional and frank” and said the situation regarding Zaporizhzhia remains “enormously fluid and precarious.”

Russia illegally attacked the nuclear power plant in the early days of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and continues to occupy the facility.

According to a press release from the Kremlin, Putin told Grossi that Moscow is willing to “do everything to ensure security anywhere [that Russia is] involved with nuclear energy.”

In early February, Russia’s state-run nuclear energy company Rosatom barred employees of Energoatom, the Ukrainian nuclear power company, from working at Zaporizhzhia. (See ACT, March 2024.) Grossi visited the nuclear power plant after that announcement to assess safety and security conditions there.

In a March 7 letter to the IAEA, Russia said the number of employees at Zaporizhzhia is enough “to carry out its safe operation” and scheduled maintenance. Russia said it is recruiting additional personnel and making “efforts aimed at improving the quality of life” for employees at the nuclear complex.

In a March 12 interview with Reuters, Grossi said the plant’s current staff “can do the job” but the “situation is not sustainable in the long term.”

The day after Grossi met with Putin, the IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution demanding the “urgent withdrawal” of all unauthorized personnel from the facility and calling for the nuclear power plant “to be immediately returned to the full control of the competent Ukrainian authorities.”

This resolution is the fourth that the board has passed condemning Russia’s illegal occupation of Zaporizhzhia.—KELSEY DAVENPORT

April 2024

Two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sweden officially joined NATO amid rising concerns that the war might spill into other European countries.

On March 7, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson handed over accession documents to the United States during a ceremony in Washington, culminating a process in which the allies unanimously approved the addition of the new member.

"Sweden is a safer country today than we were yesterday…. We have taken out an insurance in the Western defense alliance," he said.

The move is seen as a major blow to Russia, which long has opposed NATO expansion.

As a member, Sweden has pledged to adhere to NATO’s doctrine of common defense, by which allies agree to defend
any other NATO ally that comes under military attack by another country.

Now that it has joined NATO, Sweden is considering reinforcing Gotland, a strategic island in the Baltic Sea that is close to Russia and key to the defense of the Baltic states.

In an interview with the Financial Times on March 14, Kristersson confirmed that ways to protect Gotland are on the list of issues being discussed with the allies. He acknowledged that Sweden only has a “small” military presence on the island.

Sweden is the 32nd country to join NATO, following Finland, which formally became a member in April 2023. Both countries applied for membership in May 2022, abandoning their long-held neutrality, the hallmark of their Cold War foreign policy. Polls showed that public opinion on nonalignment shifted drastically after Russia invaded Ukraine.—CHRIS ROSTAMPOUR

April 2024

The U.S. House of Representatives on March 6 approved a $7 billion spending package that included funding to support updated versions of the Compact of Free Association with the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia that will govern relations with these island nations for the next 20 years. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on March 8.

The extension of the compact with the Marshall Islands, and earlier compacts with the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau, guarantees the United States exclusive military rights over large areas in the Pacific region, including a missile test facility in the Marshall Islands and a high-frequency radar system being built in Palau. It also guarantees a continuation of federal services and rights for citizens of the island nations. The Compact of Free Association packages will provide economic assistance of $3.3 billion to the Federated States of Micronesia, $2.3 billion to the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and $889 million to Palau through 2043.

The agreement with the Marshall Islands also will update and expand U.S. financial and technical assistance to the island nation, including for the ongoing health and environmental damage caused by the 67 atmospheric nuclear test explosions conducted between 1946 and 1958. (See ACT, March 2023.)—DARYL G. KIMBALL

April 2024
By Michael T. Klare

Diplomatic activity concerning the regulation of autonomous weapons systems is accelerating. The United States convened a conference on the subject in March, Austria has scheduled one for April, and the UN General Assembly plans a debate on the topic at its fall meeting.

The quickening diplomacy reflects growing worldwide concern over the faulty or unsupervised use of artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous weapons in combat, possibly resulting in unintended atrocities or conflict escalation, and differing opinions over how best to prevent such perils.

The intensifying concern over the deployment of autonomous weapons is perhaps best exemplified by the lopsided Dec. 22 vote on UN General Assembly Resolution 78/241, calling for a rigorous study of the topic. Some 152 states voted in favor of the resolution, with only Belarus, India, Mali, and Russia voting no. Another 12 states abstained.

Acknowledging unease over “the possible negative consequences and impact of autonomous weapon systems on global security and regional and international stability,” the resolution calls for a comprehensive review of the subject at the next UN General Assembly, scheduled to begin Sept. 10. To ensure that such an assessment is conducted in a thoroughly informed manner, the resolution directs the secretary-general to prepare a comprehensive report on the issue, incorporating the views of all key stakeholders.

Although there is widespread agreement about the potential risks posed by autonomous weapons systems, especially when they are deployed without adequate human oversight, there is considerable international debate over the best way to regulate them. Some nations, led by the United States, advocate the adoption of voluntary constraints. Another group, led by Austria, favors a legally binding prohibition on the deployment of fully autonomous weapons systems. To promote their contending perspectives, these key actors decided to organize separate international meetings.

The first of these dueling assemblies was convened by the U.S. State Department on March 19-20 at the University of Maryland. Without much fanfare, the plenary brought together some 150 participants from nearly all of the 52 countries that have signed the “Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy.” The declaration is a set of voluntary constraints on the use of autonomous weapons systems first released by the State Department in February 2023 and then rereleased, with slightly altered language, last November. (See ACT, April 2023.)

The declaration affirms that autonomous weapons systems can play positive as well as negative roles in warfare. It also asserts that states must adopt strict guidelines on their use in order to prevent negative outcomes. For example, the declaration posits that states “should take appropriate steps, such as legal reviews, to ensure that their military AI capabilities will be used consistent with their respective obligations under international law.” But this measure and others enunciated in the declaration are purely voluntary steps, entailing no legal obligation by signatory states to abide by them and carrying no penalties if they fail to do so.

Nevertheless, organizers of the U.S. event insisted that by convening representatives of signatory states and sharing experiences, they are helping to bolster international norms against the misuse of autonomous weapons systems. “We look forward to continuing to share lessons learned and best practices to build our collective capacities to implement these responsible measures,” Assistant Secretary of State Mallory Stewart told Arms Control Today. She said that participating states agreed to form working groups to discuss implementation of specific measures in the political declaration and that the entire group will meet again in annual plenaries such as the one held in Maryland.

By contrast, the assembly being organized by Austria, officially called the Vienna Conference on Autonomous Weapons Systems and the Challenge of Regulation, will consider legally binding measures along with voluntary ones.

To be held April 29-30, it will include representation from governmental and nongovernmental entities. Its aim, according to the official announcement, is “to increase international awareness of the topic of [autonomous weapons systems] and their legal, moral, ethical, and security policy challenges,” as well as to “build momentum…for the creation of an international legal and normative framework.”

Alexander Kmentt, director of disarmament, arms control, and nonproliferation at the Austrian Foreign Ministry, said the Vienna meeting is aimed particularly at stimulating international interest in UN General Assembly deliberations on autonomous weapons systems.

In addition to awareness-raising and momentum-building for the future regulation of autonomous weapons systems, the conference is linked to the report that UN Secretary-General António Guterres has been mandated to produce, Kmentt told Arms Control Today. The conference agenda is designed to achieve this outcome by soliciting “relevant substantive input by experts” and “by stimulating states to submit their views to the [secretary-general] as input for this report,” he added.

The groups assembled by the United States and Austria have many similar concerns about the battlefield deployment of autonomous weapons systems, but also have differences about the best approach to regulating these systems. These are sure to become more pronounced as states prepare for the General Assembly’s review.