Login/Logout

*
*  

"In my home there are few publications that we actually get hard copies of, but [Arms Control Today] is one and it's the only one my husband and I fight over who gets to read it first."

– Suzanne DiMaggio
Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
April 15, 2019
The United States and the Americas

Top Military Brass Insists Missile Defense Ready to be Deployed

Wade Boese


Despite intense grilling from Senate Democrats and an acknowledgment that the system has yet to be fully tested, top Pentagon officials have not retreated from claims that a planned defense against ballistic missiles would be effective when it is deployed later this year.

“The analysis that has been done clearly shows that this will bring a capability, admittedly rudimentary and initial, but a capability that is of military utility,” Admiral James Ellis, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee March 11.

President George W. Bush declared Dec. 17, 2002, that the United States would begin operating the initial elements of a projected multilayered defense against ballistic missiles in 2004.

The president’s announcement came only six days after the proposed system had failed in its latest attempt to destroy a mock warhead in space. That failure dropped the system’s intercept record to five hits and three misses, and no similar tests have been conducted since.

Despite the system’s small number of intercept tests, the Pentagon is pushing ahead with plans to fulfill the president’s deployment order, which the Pentagon has since said would take place in fiscal year 2004, which ends Sept. 30.

Beginning as early as June, six ground-based missile interceptors are to be deployed at Fort Greely, Alaska, and another four interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. By the end of 2005, the ground-based force will include 20 interceptors. Another 10 ship-based missile interceptors designed to counter short- and medium-range ballistic missiles are also to be deployed by that time.

Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the official in charge of developing U.S. missile defense systems, told the armed services panel that the interceptors will be available for emergency use and testing purposes.

Kadish cautioned senators against predicting the proposed ground-based system’s future performance capabilities solely by its intercept record. He explained that MDA relies more extensively on models and computer simulations to gauge how the system will function and said that these tools suggest the defenses will work properly.

One Pentagon witness offered a less certain perspective under pointed questioning from Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.). Thomas Christie, the Pentagon official charged with overseeing final testing of U.S. weapon systems, said it was not clear that the system would be able to destroy a real North Korean missile because of the immature nature of existing models and simulations. A North Korean attack is what the Pentagon routinely postulates as the near-term threat that the system will face, although Pyongyang has yet to flight-test a missile capable of reaching the continental United States.

Christie defended the Pentagon’s current deployment plan as necessary so that the system could be subjected to more challenging testing. He said that system components had to be put into the field so they could be tested in ways that more closely resemble real scenarios and involve real troops as operators, or what the Pentagon calls “operational testing.”

However, when Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) asked whether the Pentagon had any operational tests planned, Christie said, “As of right now, there are no plans for that.” Both Christie and Kadish said that some tests have had operational aspects even though no dedicated operational tests have taken place or are scheduled.

Responding to questions from Arms Control Today, MDA spokesperson Rick Lehner stated March 19 that no plans currently exist to launch missile interceptors out of Fort Greely for testing purposes, although he noted such a possibility “will be considered in the future.”

In addition, a February 2004 report by the General Accounting Office, which does investigations for Congress, noted that the Pentagon has no plans to involve the primary land-based radar supporting the Fort Greely missile interceptors in a flight test scenario for another three years. The study further reported that “none of the components of the initial defensive capability to be fielded in September 2004…has been flight-tested in its deployed configuration.”

Opportunities to flight-test the system’s components have been cut back. MDA recently halved the number of intercept attempts it would conduct this year before the September deadline down to one. Since the summer of 2000, MDA has dropped seven intercept tests.

Christie admitted that he would like to see more testing done to increase confidence in the system, but he said that nothing in past testing suggests the system is bound to fail. “I see no technological issues that have jumped up that says we’re not going to be able to do this or that,” Christie testified.

At the same time, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has expressed concerns about the program’s schedule this year in a February report. OMB stated the system’s “cost, schedule, and performance targets are very ambitious and potentially carry a high degree of development risk.”

The aggressive deployment plan reflects the Department of Defense’s new thinking that it is better to put some capability into the field and improve it incrementally rather than keeping a system in development until it is perfected. Some Pentagon officials have described the rationale more simply as “something is better than nothing.”

Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) characterized the Pentagon’s new approach as “gross negligence.” Commenting on the proposed deployment, Dayton said, “It would be unthinkable by corporate prudence, by fiscal sanity, by government oversight, and by public common sense to be undertaking this.”

Further irking some Democratic senators is that the Pentagon’s current fiscal year 2005 budget requests funding for interceptors beyond the first 20. The Pentagon is seeking $470 million to begin preparing for a third set of 10 missile interceptors to be deployed beginning in 2006 and $35 million for another 10 missile interceptors that might be stationed at an undetermined third site. In his prepared testimony, Kadish wrote the third site would be “outside” the United States.

Levin warned Pentagon officials that U.S. law prohibits building weapons systems that have not been operationally tested at a rate surpassing what is known as low-rate production. The officials claimed that current interceptor production rates do not exceed that threshold. A weapons system will generally be produced at a lesser pace than what is possible (low-rate production) until a final commitment is made to procure the system, at which time more items will be manufactured at a greater tempo known as full-rate production.

 

 

 

 

Despite intense grilling from Senate Democrats and an acknowledgment that the system has yet to be fully tested, top Pentagon officials...

Congress Critical of Bush Nuclear Weapons Budget

Karen Yourish Roston


As they make their annual rounds on Capitol Hill on behalf of the president’s proposed budget, Bush administration officials are finding themselves in the hot seat defending President George W. Bush’s fiscal year 2005 request for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP). Lawmakers are also peeved that they have yet to receive the administration’s overdue nuclear stockpile report.

Arms Control Today reported last month that the president’s 2005 budget proposal lays out a five-year schedule for RNEP that foresees production of the new weapon by the end of fiscal year 2009. (See ACT, March 2004.) Administration officials maintain the program is still in the study phase and that no decision has been made to develop or produce the weapon, but they have not convinced key members of Congress.

“I find it really hard to conceive of any circumstances under which this country would even use a nuclear weapon again,” Rep. David Hobson (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, told Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham at a March 11 hearing. “Despite those constraints, [the Department of Energy] seems to think they should spend another half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ dollars to explore and test the concept of Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.”

During a March 23 hearing, Hobson’s Senate counterpart, Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), traditionally a staunch supporter of the Energy Department, told Linton Brooks, head of the department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), that he was “surprised” to see nearly $500 million provided for the RNEP in out-year funding.

Moreover, both lawmakers expressed frustration at the administration’s failure to deliver a nuclear stockpile plan to Congress.

“This kind of, quote, Money is no object, unquote, thinking might have been the norm for the nuclear weapons complex during the Cold War years, but I think it’s completely out of touch with the political and fiscal realities that we face today,” Hobson said. “[U]ntil we receive a revised stockpile plan from [the Department of Defense] that shows real change in the size and the composition of the stockpile, and until [the Energy Department] re-calibrates its planning, workforce facilities, and budget to support the smaller stockpile, I do not believe that we should spend our limited budget resources on expansion of NNSA’s nuclear weapons activities.”

Facing similar prodding from Domenici, Brooks responded that the report “is being worked on, literally, as we speak, but because of the importance, I think this will have to be personally approved by the president and I can’t predict how long that will take.”

Still, Brooks did clarify at a March 24 hearing before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces that, although the United States plans to "substantially" reduce its deployed strategic nuclear arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads as called for by the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), it will retain a significant number of additional warheads in storage. He said “sufficient warheads” need to be retained “to augment the operationally deployed force in the event that world events require a more robust deterrent posture.”

Signed May 24, 2002, by Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, SORT requires the United States and Russia each to reduce its number of deployed strategic warheads from today’s 5,000-6,000 to no more than 2,200 by the end of 2012, when the treaty will expire. The agreement requires that the warheads be removed from their delivery systems but does not require their destruction, permitting each side to keep as many warheads and delivery vehicles as they want for future use. Washington intends to store enough so it could field up to 4,600 warheads in as little as three years after the treaty ends. Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged in Senate testimony in July 2002 that the accord does not limit the amount of warheads either country can possess. “The treaty will allow you to have as many warheads as you want,” Powell stated. (See ACT, September 2002.)

Even as he battled over the stockpile plan, Brooks characterized RNEP as “the single most contentious issue in our budget.” He said the out-year projections are included in the budget request only “to preserve the president’s option,” should he decide to move beyond the study stage.

“[T]here is a clear military utility to this weapon,” Brooks stated. “[D]espite this obvious utility…we will move beyond the study stage only if the president approves and if funds are authorized and appropriated by Congress.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service noted in a March 8 report that the president’s 2005 budget plan casts “serious doubt” on administration claims that the RNEP is just a study.

Nuclear earth penetrator weapons, sometimes called “bunker busters,” burrow deeply into the ground before detonating, increasing their ability to destroy hardened underground targets. In May 2003, the Air Force began studying modifications to convert existing B61 or B83 nuclear bombs to an earth penetrator configuration.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, argued in a March 8 letter to Brooks that “the planning and budgeting for further steps in the…process in the next five years speaks to a clear intent to develop these modified nuclear weapons at a time when the feasibility study has not been completed and the Department of Defense has not submitted a request for this weapon.”

Some in Congress are more forgiving. Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, said during the March 24 hearing that the administration is “kind of caught between the rock and a hard spot.…[I]f you don’t put in the money, then somehow or the other they think you’re hiding it. If you do put in and you save for it, then you can be accused of trying” to move ahead with the program without congressional approval.

“I’ve looked at this figure, too, and that, obviously, sticks out there,” Allard continued. “But, on the other hand, I think we need to have some estimate in case we decide to move ahead with [RNEP] about where those future costs will be.”

Corrected online August 29, 2008. See explanation.

 

 

 

 

As they make their annual rounds on Capitol Hill on behalf of the president’s proposed budget, Bush administration officials are finding themselves...

Senate Passes Additional Protocol

Miles A. Pomper


The U.S. Senate March 31 unanimously approved an “additional protocol” to the U.S. safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), less than a month after President George W. Bush made a strong push for Senate passage of the pact.

Before the treaty becomes national or international law, however, Congress must first pass implementing legislation, a process that could take several months as the administration’s proposed language has yet to be considered by the relevant House and Senate committees.

All non-nuclear-weapon states-parties to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) have safeguards agreements with the IAEA that require detailed declarations of nuclear activities and allow IAEA inspections to ensure that those activities are not being used for illegal military purposes. As a recognized nuclear-weapon state under the NPT, the United States is under no legal obligation to accept such safeguards but has, as a matter of policy, voluntarily permitted them, albeit with broad “national security” exemptions.

The additional protocol agreement approved by the Senate is based on the 1997 Model Additional Protocol. The IAEA, after its failure to detect Iraq’s pre-1991 crash nuclear weapons program revealed weaknesses in the agency’s inspections and monitoring procedures, developed the protocol to strengthen the agency’s ability to detect clandestine nuclear activities. For example, the protocol allows agency inspectors to conduct short-notice inspections of undeclared facilities and requires states to provide more information to the IAEA about their nuclear activities. The IAEA cannot actually implement these measures in a particular country unless its government has concluded its own version of the Additional Protocol.

The U.S. version of the Additional Protocol, signed in 1998, would provide the IAEA with nonmilitary information on U.S. research, development, enrichment, and reprocessing activities; locations and capacity of fissile material production sites; export and import of nuclear material; and uses of fissile material and waste products.

The agreement, however, allows the United States to invoke a provision called the “national security exclusion” to deny the IAEA access to “activities with direct national security significance…or to locations or information associated with such activities.” The United States has the “sole discretion” in determining whether it can invoke the exclusion. In the event that it does allow IAEA inspectors into a facility, the United States will be able to use “managed access” to limit the inspectors’ activities. Washington can also employ “managed access” to protect “proliferation-sensitive” and “proprietary or commercially sensitive information” in military and commercial nuclear facilities.

Senate approval of the additional protocol came after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had voted 19-0 on March 4 in favor of a resolution of ratification. In the same markup, the panel also approved legislation reauthorizing spending for the Department of State that includes several important nonproliferation efforts.

The Senate panel also unanimously approved a fiscal year 2005 State Department authorization bill, laying down policy markers and spending ceilings for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 The bill would authorize $485 million for the “Nonproliferation, Anti-terrorism, Demining, and Related Programs Account”—$70 million more than Bush requested.

The legislation would also authorize funding for several new initiatives designed to improve foreign countries’ abilities to deal with proliferation threats from radiological to biological weapons. These include fellowships for multidisciplinary training on nonproliferation issues; programs to train “first responders” such as doctors and police officers to cope with an attack by a radiological, or “dirty,” bomb; and programs to improve public health facilities and expertise overseas to detect the use of biological weapons better.

In addition, the bill calls for the president to submit an annual report to Congress summarizing U.S. policy and actions regarding arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament, with input from all of the major national security agencies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The U.S. Senate March 31 unanimously approved an “additional protocol” to the U.S. safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), less than a month after President George W. Bush...

U.S. Delegation Visits North Korea

Questions Remain Over Pyongyang's Weapons Claims

Paul Kerr

The January visit of an unofficial U.S. delegation of arms control and North Korea experts, including senior Senate staff aides, to North Korea’s nuclear facilities at Yongbyon resolved some uncertainties concerning the status of Pyongyang’s nuclear program but left other questions unanswered. The delegation members were the first foreign observers to visit the site since North Korea ejected UN inspectors in December 2002.

One of the most important revelations about the visit came when delegation member Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jan. 21 that North Korean officials allowed him to handle a jar containing what appeared to be plutonium metal, although he explained that he lacked the proper instruments to verify that claim absolutely. Plutonium metal is used to form the explosive core of one type of nuclear weapon.

North Korean officials claimed that the fuel came from reprocessing approximately 8,000 spent fuel rods from its five-megawatt nuclear research reactor. Those fuel rods had been kept intact in a cooling pond and closely monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under the now-defunct 1994 Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea. The IAEA is the agency charged with monitoring compliance with the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which North Korea signed in 1985 and from which it withdrew in January 2003.

As part of the Agreed Framework, Pyongyang also agreed to shut down the Yongybyon reactor and related facilities, as well as halt construction of two larger reactors, and to allow the IAEA to monitor its compliance. North Korea restarted the reactor in February 2003.

According to a statement from the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said Jan. 10 that North Korean officials showed the delegation its “nuclear deterrent.” North Korea has said it possesses nuclear weapons, and the CIA told Congress in August that North Korea “has produced one or two simple” nuclear weapons and “validated the designs” without explosive testing. (See ACT, December 2003 and January/February 2004.)

However, Hecker stated that he told the North Koreans they had only produced evidence that they knew how to form plutonium metal, not that they either had nuclear weapons or the ability to design, build, and deliver such weapons. He also told the Senate panel that, even if the plutonium metal sample was authentic, it might not have been made from the spent fuel rods restricted under the Agreed Framework, but from an earlier batch. IAEA officials and intelligence analysts have long believed that Pyongyang might have reprocessed enough plutonium to build one or two bombs before that accord went into effect.

Hecker stated that the North Koreans claimed to have reprocessed all of the spent fuel rods between January and June 2003 and allowed the delegation to visit the pond that had contained the fuel rods. The delegation also visited North Korea’s reprocessing facility. Activity at the reprocessing facility had been frozen under the Agreed Framework. Hecker said the delegation observed that the fuel rods were no longer in the pond but could not confirm that North Korea had reprocessed the spent fuel as it had claimed.

Hecker also told the Senate that North Korea has indeed restarted the research reactor but that it is not rebuilding the smaller of the two incomplete reactors, describing that reactor as being in a “terrible state of repair.” The group was not able to observe the status of the larger reactor, Hecker said. North Korea has implied that it may resume construction of both reactors, which would vastly increase the number of bombs it might be able to build each year.

North Korean officials indicated that they viewed the visit as leverage in pushing the United States to hold and conclude additional talks on North Korean terms.

Hecker said that North Korea’s vice foreign minister, Kim Gye Gwan, told the delegation that an early resolution of the crisis is in the U.S. interest, arguing that delays in resolving the nuclear crisis have “not been beneficial to the U.S. side. With an additional lapse in time, [North Korea’s] nuclear arsenal could grow in quality and quantity.”

The delegation, which also included John Lewis, a professor at Stanford University, and Charles “Jack” Pritchard, former special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, visited North Korea’s nuclear facilities Jan. 8. During a Jan. 21 appearance on PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Pritchard speculated that North Korea invited the delegation to view its nuclear facilities in order to resolve ambiguities concerning its nuclear capabilities following its withdrawal from the NPT.

In addition, Pritchard said Jan. 15 that Kim clarified North Korea’s previous denials that it has a uranium-enrichment program by providing new details. Kim told the delegation that North Korea does not have any relevant equipment or scientists trained to run such a program. The recent crisis began in October 2002, when a U.S. delegation accused North Korea of pursuing a clandestine uranium-enrichment program—an alternate method for obtaining fissile material for nuclear weapons.

The United States continues to maintain that North Korea admitted to having such a program during that meeting, but North Korea has argued that it never made such a stark admission. Journalist Don Oberdorfer stated in November 2002 that North Korean officials informed him that an October 2002 KCNA statement contains the exact words used during the U.S.-North Korean meeting. The relevant portion of that statement reads, “The [Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea] made itself very clear…that the D.P.R.K. was entitled to possess not only nuclear weapon[s] but any type of weapon more powerful than that so as to defend its sovereignty and right to existence.” (See ACT, December 2002.)

According to Hecker, North Korean officials gave Lewis the Korean language transcript of the meeting, which Lewis gave to the Department of State.

Two Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff members also visited the Yongbyon facilities and had other meetings with North Korean officials, but committee sources told Arms Control Today Feb. 24 that their reports are still being prepared.

 

 

 

 

 

The January visit of an unofficial U.S. delegation of arms control and North Korea experts, including senior Senate staff aides, to North Korea’s nuclear facilities at Yongbyon resolved...

U.S. Will Not Join Landmine Treaty; Position on Fissile Material Cutoff Pact Uncertain

Wade Boese

The Bush administration has no intention of joining an anti-landmine treaty and is reviewing past U.S. support for negotiating an agreement to end the production of key nuclear weapons materials, Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker told Arms Control Today in a Jan. 21 interview.

Sworn into his post in August 2002, Rademaker serves as a chief deputy to the Department of State’s senior arms control official, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton. Like his boss and many other top Bush administration security officials, Rademaker, who worked for several years as a senior aide on the House Committee on International Relations, holds a skeptical view of multilateral arms control agreements.

In the summer of 2001, the Bush administration initiated a review of U.S. landmine policy. A key element was a May 1998 pledge by President Bill Clinton to sign by 2006 the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines (APLs) if the United States was able to find effective alternatives to such weapons. Rademaker said future U.S. landmine policy “will certainly not include signature of the Ottawa Convention.”

Rademaker’s comments mark the first official confirmation that this administration would not fulfill Clinton’s pledge. The administration subsequently announced its new landmines policy Feb. 27.

A longtime champion of ending U.S. landmine use, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) expressed disappointment Feb. 20 about the administration’s intention. “It is unfortunate, but no surprise, that the Bush administration will not join the Ottawa Convention,” the senator said. He added, “Ten years ago the Pentagon pledged to aggressively develop alternatives to landmines, but that turned out to be an empty promise.”

Despite remaining outside the Ottawa Convention, the United States did not use APLs in its invasion of Iraq last March. (See ACT, July/August 2003.) It is also the largest funder of mine action work, such as destroying landmines and helping landmine victims.

The United States is party to the amended mines protocol of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which limits how landmines may be deployed, and is pushing for negotiations on a new CCW protocol to regulate the use of anti-vehicle mines.

Along with the landmine promise, the Bush administration inherited from the Clinton administration a policy calling for the negotiation of a fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT) to end the production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons purposes. During its first years in office, the Bush administration continued its predecessor’s promotion of the FMCT at the 66-member United Nations Conference on Disarmament, and administration officials repeatedly blasted their fellow members, particularly China, for failing to start formal talks on the agreement.

Over the past several years, China insisted that negotiations on a treaty preventing an arms race in outer space be conducted in parallel with the FMCT. That idea had been strongly rejected by Washington. As Rademaker explained, “It’s our view that there’s not an arms race in outer space so to negotiate a treaty prohibiting an arms race in outer space presumes a fact not in evidence.”

Near the close of the conference’s annual working session last fall, China offered to drop its insistence on parallel negotiations. (See ACT, October 2003.) Rather than seizing the apparent opportunity to start the long-awaited FMCT talks, however, Rademaker indicated the administration is now having second thoughts. “We are looking at the threshold question, does an FMCT make sense?” he said.

Rademaker contended that an earlier rationale for the treaty—to prevent a nuclear arms race from emerging in South Asia—is now outdated since both India and Pakistan are armed with nuclear weapons. Rademaker remarked, “This is a concept that’s been around for a long time and a concept that has not evolved while the context in which it exists has evolved.”

Rademaker said he did not know when the administration would come to a conclusion about the treaty. President George W. Bush made no reference to the FMCT in his Feb. 11 speech outlining seven U.S. nonproliferation initiatives.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing with Secretary of State Colin Powell the day after the president’s speech, Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) said that the FMCT would be “an essential supplement” to the president’s proposals. He described it as a “win-win proposition for the United States because we have more than enough fissile material ourselves, while countries of concern continue to seek it.” Powell replied that “some questions have been raised” about the proposed treaty and that the review was still ongoing.

Despite the administration’s uncertain FMCT position, Bush made clear that a top U.S. aim is to limit the spread of nuclear weapons-making capabilities. One of the president’s proposals held that countries not currently possessing working enrichment and reprocessing plants should not be allowed to get them. Enrichment and reprocessing facilities, which a government can legally possess under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) if they are open to international oversight, can enable countries to refine materials not suitable for nuclear weapons into key bomb-making ingredients.

Rademaker suggested that Iran, which claims to have suspended its recently exposed, illicit enrichment activities last November, must be denied the right to such capabilities even if done within the context of the treaty. “We certainly would want to make sure that Iran is out of the business of enriching uranium,” he declared.

Changing times and threats require revisiting past agreements and understandings, according to Rademaker. “I think there’s general recognition that we’ve got some problems with the existing arrangements and the desire in many quarters to reconsider some of these things,” he said.

The Bush administration itself has not hesitated to break with the past. Rademaker noted that the administration “walked away” from a seven-year process to add a verification protocol to the treaty banning germ weapons because “we didn’t like what we saw” and “parted company” with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty prohibiting nationwide defenses against strategic ballistic missiles because it “no longer made sense.”

Still, Rademaker insisted that the Bush administration has “a very good record on arms control issues.” As evidence, he pointed to the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, which entered into force last June and commits the United States and Russia to reduce their deployed strategic arsenals to less than 2,200 warheads each by the end of 2012. Some outside experts have criticized the treaty for not requiring the destruction of a single warhead or delivery vehicle and for its warhead limit expiring the same day that it takes effect, but Rademaker dismissed these criticisms. “We’ll match our strategic arms control agreement up against that of any other administration,” he said.

For a full transcript of the interview, please click here

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

The Bush administration has no intention of joining an anti-landmine treaty and is reviewing past U.S. support for negotiating an agreement to end the production of key nuclear weapons materials...

U.S. Announces New Landmines Policy

Wade Boese

On Feb. 27, the Bush administration announced that it would not join an international treaty banning anti-personnel landmines (APLs), but would limit the types of landmines its military forces may use in the future.

Under the new policy, the United States will work toward ending its use of anti-vehicle and anti-personnel landmines that are not designed to self-destruct and self-deactivate within a specified period of time. Such landmines are referred to as “dumb mines,” while those equipped with self-destruct and self-deactivation features are known as “smart mines.” The current U.S. landmine arsenal is comprised of roughly 15 million smart mines and 2.5 million dumb mines.

Nearly all U.S. smart mines are designed to destroy themselves if they are not set off within a span of four hours to 15 days after being put in place. If the self-destruct mechanism fails to work, the landmine’s battery will go dead within 90 days, effectively disarming the explosive. These features are intended to prevent landmines from maiming or killing civilians months or years after fighting ends.

Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Lincoln Bloomfield, who announced the new landmine policy, said that U.S. self-destruct mechanisms are extremely reliable. He declared such devices have never failed to work in more than 60,000 tests.

The new U.S. policy will be implemented in two phases. Between now and 2010, U.S. forces will be prohibited from using dumb mines outside of the Korean Peninsula unless specifically authorized by the president. After 2010, the exception for dumb mines in Korea will expire. U.S. forces will be free to use smart mines on battlefields.

The Bush policy announcement voids two May 1998 pledges by President Bill Clinton. Clinton said the United States would end the use of all APLs—smart and dumb—outside of Korea by 2003 and accede to the Ottawa Convention by 2006 if the Pentagon found suitable APL alternatives by that time.

The Ottawa Convention, which entered into force in March 1999, prohibits the use, stockpiling, transfer, and production of APLs. The treaty also applies to some mixed landmine systems that have both anti-personnel and anti-vehicle devices, but does not rule out the use of pure anti-vehicle landmines. More than 140 states, including all current U.S. NATO allies, are states-parties to the Ottawa Convention.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations Joseph Collins, who also participated in unveiling the new policy, explained that senior military commanders could not support joining the Ottawa Convention because it was impossible to predict whom and where the United States might fight next. He said APLs offer unique capabilities, such as denying an enemy the freedom to maneuver, that other weapon systems could not.

Despite the Pentagon’s reluctance to give up APLs permanently, it did not use such weapons during its conflict with Iraq last year. (See ACT, July/August 2003.)

As part of its new landmine policy, the Bush administration is also seeking to boost funding for global demining and landmine victim assistance to $70 million—a mark nearly double that from a couple years ago. Since 1993 the United States has contributed almost $800 million to such activities, making it the largest funder of landmine action in the world. Bloomfield claimed that such efforts have helped halve landmine casualties from roughly 26,000 annually several years ago down to 10,000.

Bloomfield said that Washington will also encourage other capitals to end the use of dumb mines and pursue an international agreement outlawing their sale and export.

 

 

 

 

 

On Feb. 27, the Bush administration announced that it would not join an international treaty banning anti-personnel landmines (APLs), but would limit the types of landmines its military forces may use in the future.

Top Pentagon Official Says Missile Defense Performance Questionable Without More Tests

Wade Boese

In an annual report to Congress, the Pentagon’s top official in charge of ensuring that U.S. weapons perform properly said he could not offer a final verdict on a proposed layered U.S. ballistic missile defense system because it has been only minimally tested.

The Bush administration is currently working to deploy the system’s initial elements—up to six missile interceptors in Alaska and four more in California—starting this June and ending in January 2005. The interceptors, part of the Pentagon’s ground-based midcourse missile defense (GMD) system, are intended to knock out a long-range ballistic missile warhead traveling through space after being fired from Northeast Asia.

Thomas Christie, director of the Pentagon’s Office of Operational Test and Evaluation, told lawmakers in January, “At this point in time, it is not clear what mission capability will be demonstrated prior to [initial defensive operations].”

Christie indicated that his uncertainty about the system’s future capabilities stemmed from the sparse testing conducted by the Pentagon over the past year. “Due to immature [missile defense] elements, very little system level testing was performed by the close of [fiscal year 2003],” Christie reported.

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has not conducted a GMD system intercept test since a Dec. 11, 2002, intercept test failed. That failure dropped the GMD record to five hits and three misses.

MDA is planning a GMD intercept test in May or June and another in July or August. Christie warned, however, that, “[e]ven with successful intercepts in both of these attempts, the small number of tests would limit confidence in the integrated interceptor performance.”

No intercept test has been conducted of the proposed interceptor’s two key elements—the booster and the exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV)—together. The booster lifts the EKV into space. The EKV is then supposed to separate from the booster and home in on an enemy warhead for a destructive collision.

In all eight intercept tests to date, MDA has used a slower surrogate booster after nearly three years of setbacks in developing a more powerful booster. Yet, MDA may have turned the corner on its booster development with successful, nonintercept flight tests of two different booster models in January. Although MDA plans to keep both models as part of the program, only the Orbital Sciences Corporation model will be used in this year’s intercept tests and deployment because of a shortage of the Lockheed Martin Corporation model due to accidents at a plant involved in its production. (See ACT, December 2003.)

The lack of a more powerful booster has resulted in previous intercept tests being done at lesser speeds than what would be expected in a real scenario, Christie indicated. He also stated that all the tests have followed the same pattern and that the system knows what the target looks like in advance. In a real attack, the system may not have such details.

Christie further reported that the Pentagon has no current plans to test a radar located on a remote Alaskan island against an actual target to see if it can track an incoming warhead. The radar, Cobra Dane, is intended to gather information to help pinpoint an enemy warhead for the ground-based interceptors.

Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee and an outspoken critic of the administration’s deployment plan, seized on Christie’s report, saying his findings “makes it clear that in a rush to win an ideological victory, President [George W.] Bush risks prematurely deploying a missile defense system by 2004 that is technologically unproven and will drain resources from other essential priorities.” Bush campaigned on the need for robust missile defenses and ordered the June 2002 U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to pursue a nationwide defense that would have violated the accord.

MDA spokesman Rick Lehner defended the pace of the GMD program following the release of Christie’s report. He said that, by the time deployment is underway, MDA will have proven that the system can detect, track, and hit a target. He added that the agency has “a great deal of confidence [in the interceptor], most of which comes from the many hundreds of modeling and simulation exercises we’ve completed as well as ground testing.”

Christie also assessed other U.S. missile defense systems. Although asserting that testing of a sea-based system against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles had become more challenging, Christie said the system will not have proven itself against separating or multiple targets before deployment of five of the sea-based interceptors scheduled for this year. The system’s five intercept tests to date involved a single target that stays in one piece.

The Patriot-3 (PAC-3) system, which saw action during the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, requires “significant improvements” to distinguish effectively between friendly and enemy targets, Christie wrote. While knocking out nine Iraqi missiles, Patriot systems—both PAC-3 and older versions—destroyed two friendly aircraft and targeted a third. Christie observed that his recommendation applies to all U.S. defense systems, not just the Patriot.

 

 

 

 

 

In an annual report to Congress, the Pentagon’s top official in charge of ensuring that U.S. weapons perform properly said he could not offer a final verdict on a proposed layered U.S. ballistic missile defense system...

Lugar Says Some Administration Officials Undermining Bush's Efforts on Additional Protocol

Paul Kerr

Although President George W. Bush reiterated his support for a bilateral U.S. agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last month, a key Senate leader has complained that some within the administration are not fully on board.

In a Feb. 11 speech at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., Bush urged the Senate to “immediately” ratify an additional protocol to the U.S. safeguards agreement with the IAEA. In his May 2002 letter of transmittal for the protocol, Bush called “universal adoption” of an additional protocol “a central goal of [U.S.] nonproliferation policy.” Officials from the Departments of State, Defense, Energy, and Commerce have also offered their support, arguing during a Jan. 29 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that U.S. adoption of the protocol would induce other countries to follow suit.

All non-nuclear-weapon states-parties to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) have safeguards agreements with the IAEA that require detailed declarations of nuclear activities and allow IAEA inspections to ensure that those activities are not being used for illegal military purposes. As a recognized nuclear-weapon state under the NPT, the United States is under no legal obligation to accept such safeguards but has, as a matter of policy, voluntarily permitted them, albeit with broad “national security” exemptions.

The agreement that the Senate is considering is based on the 1997 Model Additional Protocol. The IAEA, after its failure to detect Iraq’s pre-1991 crash nuclear weapons program revealed weaknesses in the agency’s inspections and monitoring procedures, developed the protocol to strengthen the agency’s ability to detect clandestine nuclear activities. For example, the protocol allows agency inspectors to conduct short-notice inspections of undeclared facilities and requires states to provide more information to the IAEA about their nuclear activities. The IAEA cannot actually implement these measures in a particular country unless its government has concluded its own version of the additional protocol.

The U.S. version of the additional protocol, signed in 1998, would provide the IAEA with nonmilitary information on U.S. research, development, enrichment, and reprocessing activities; locations and capacity of fissile material production sites; export and import of nuclear material; and uses of fissile material and waste products. The agreement, however, allows the United States to invoke a provision called the “national security exclusion” to deny the IAEA access to “activities with direct national security significance…or to locations or information associated with such activities.” The United States has the “sole discretion” in determining whether it can invoke the exclusion. In the event that it does allow IAEA inspectors into a facility, the United States will be able to use “managed access” to limit the inspectors’ activities.

In addition, Washington can also employ “managed access” to protect “proliferation-sensitive” and “proprietary or commercially sensitive information” in military and commercial nuclear facilities.

During the Jan. 29 hearing, administration officials emphasized repeatedly that Washington intends to limit the IAEA’s inspection powers in the United States. For example, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Mark Esper pointed out that the national security exclusion allows the United States to “exclude information and activities from declarations and deny access to IAEA inspectors anytime, anyplace.”

Despite these limitations, Assistant Secretary of State Susan Burk argued that IAEA inspections in the United States still have value because they serve a “political purpose of underscoring U.S. support for the [nuclear nonproliferation] regime.”

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) stated during a Feb. 12 hearing that “in coming weeks” the committee “intends to report the resolution of ratification...to the Senate.” A Senate aide told Arms Control Today Feb. 23 that the committee is working on the resolution and discussing it with the administration.

Bush transmitted the agreement to the Senate in May 2002, and the administration delivered the implementing legislation to Congress last November. Defense Department concerns over the extent of the protocol’s oversight provisions delayed an interagency agreement on the legislation, but the department now publicly supports the agreement. (See ACT, December 2003.)

During the hearings, however, Lugar alleged that some administration officials are still attempting to stall ratification, and he asked Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was testifying before the committee, to “inform the president that we are eager [to act on the protocol], and perhaps he can inform the rest of his administration to work with us.”


 

 

 

 

Although President George W. Bush reiterated his support for a bilateral U.S. agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last month, a key Senate leader has complained...

Congress Approves Syria Sanctions Bill

Karen Yourish

Congress has sent a bill to the White House that requires President George W. Bush to sanction Syria unless the country immediately halts development of ballistic missiles, stops producing biological and chemical weapons, ends its alleged support for terrorism, and withdraws from Lebanon. However, the bill provides the White House with broad authority to waive the penalties in the interest of national security. In acceding to the Senate’s version of the legislation Nov. 20, the House endorsed a more flexible measure that is supported by the Bush administration.

Representative Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the author of the original House bill, said after the 408-8 vote that the bill is “a fair approach to dealing with the threat that Syria poses to the stability of the Middle East and to American interests around the world.” Recognizing the watered-down nature of the measure, however, he urged the president to “strictly enforce this important legislation.”

The Bush administration was initially reluctant to impose sanctions on Syria, fearing it would make Mideast peace efforts more difficult. Administration officials changed their tune after warning Syrian President Bashar al-Asad, without success, that there would be consequences if Syria failed to stop its support for terrorism. (See ACT, November 2003.)

Ever the more cautious chamber, Senate leaders stressed the flexibility inherent in the measure. “The bill, as amended, adds to the tools available to the president to move Syria toward a more responsible course,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said on the floor prior to the Senate’s 89-4 vote on Nov. 11. He said the bill “provides the president with the ability to calibrate U.S. sanctions against Syria in response to positive Syrian behavior when such adjustment is in the national security interest of the United States.”

 

 

 

Congress has sent a bill to the White House that requires President George W. Bush to sanction Syria unless the country immediately halts development...

The Proliferation Security Initiative: An Interview With John Bolton

Wade Boese

On the wall of the reception room outside John Bolton’s State Department office hangs a Wall Street Journal profile entitled “Disarming America’s Treaties.” The accompanying illustration shows Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, cutting a handful of treaties in half with a pair of scissors.

Bolton, who prefers blunt talk to diplomatic niceties, is clearly proud of his reputation—and of his record. Since he assumed his post as the Bush administration’s top arms control official in May 2001, the United States has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, torpedoed a proposed addition to the Biological Weapons Convention, and disavowed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Yet, in recent months Bolton has slowed his assault on old accords, many of which he views as unacceptably constraining the United States while imposing no limits on those willing to cheat on their commitments, and turned his considerable energy and intellect toward promoting new checks on weapons proliferation. This change of pace, however, does not suggest a growing fondness for binding arms control measures.

The new project—the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI)—stems from what the undersecretary quickly declares are the failings of the existing web of national and multilateral export controls to end a “thriving black market in [weapons of mass destruction (WMD)] components, technologies, and production materials.” Bolton elaborated on the PSI, which he described variously as a “political arrangement” and an “activity,” in a Nov. 4 interview with Arms Control Today.

Despite press reports to the contrary following President George W. Bush’s May 31 unveiling of the initiative, Bolton says PSI is not about stopping illegal drug shipments or blockading North Korea. The initiative’s sole objective is interdicting “WMD trafficking at sea, in the air, and on land,” the undersecretary emphasized.

All WMD trade will not be targeted with the same vigor. Halting shipments to rogue states and terrorists will take priority because they “pose the most immediate threat,” Bolton said.

WMD-related cargo destined for Israel, India, and Pakistan—the world’s three unofficial nuclear-weapon states—is of secondary importance. Bolton explained: “There are unquestionably states that are not within existing treaty regimes that possess weapons of mass destruction legitimately. We’re not trying to have a policy that attempts to cover each and every one of those circumstances.”

To help deny rogue states and terrorists the weapons they desire, the United States has recruited 10 allies: Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. In addition to this core group, tens of other countries, including China and Russia, are being urged to aid or join in WMD interdiction activities.

Bolton described the responses as overwhelmingly positive and discounted reports of Chinese and Russian reservations about the initiative. He said Moscow reported it had “no objection” to intercepting WMD shipments, while Beijing claimed to “support the concept behind the initiative.”

Yet, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson offered a less enthusiastic view Sept. 4. “Quite some countries have doubts over the legality and effectiveness of the PSI,” Kong Quan said.

Although the core group of PSI participants is seeking to enlist as many willing countries to the cause as possible, there are no current plans to take the initiative before the UN Security Council to win its backing. Bolton implied that such a step now would be unnecessary, saying, “We think we’ve got plenty of authority as it stands now [to conduct interdictions].” He also stated that “there are essentially an infinite number of potential circumstances and variations and permutations where interdictions could take place.”

The initiative, Bolton emphasized, is not about painstakingly crafting new laws but taking advantage of each participant’s existing legal powers. He added that existing treaties, export control regimes, and customary international law together provide wide latitude to operate. If a scenario arises in which the authority to act is insufficient or ambiguous, Bolton said participants could seek additional powers, such as getting a “Security Council resolution that might give authority in certain circumstances.”

Some interdictions may occur in international waters or airspace where there are limits to permissible search and seizure activities, but “most [interdictions] will take place in national territory where national authorities are strongest,” predicted Bolton.

Yet, the public should not expect to hear about such seizures. Bolton said there have been successful interdictions since the initiative’s launch but that they have not been made public, nor will they be. He warned that too much publicity could impair the initiative. Presumably, the concern is that potential proliferators could become aware of how to avoid doing business with certain countries or could learn how to ship their goods without running afoul of PSI.

The full transcript is available online. 

 

 

 

 

 

On the wall of the reception room outside John Bolton’s State Department office hangs a Wall Street Journal profile entitled “Disarming America’s Treaties.”

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - The United States and the Americas