Brookings: Topics - Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear Arms: Obama Visits Berlin—and Returns to Prague

Steven Pifer — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:15:00 -0400

President Obama used part of his speech at Berlin’s historic Brandenburg Gate to return to the vision of reducing the role and number of nuclear weapons that he first articulated four years ago in Prague. In doing so, he outlined his arms control agenda for the remainder of his presidency. Let’s hope he makes progress. It would be good for U.S. and global security.

One year after his Prague speech, the president signed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with then-Russian President Medvedev. New START requires that the United States and Russia each reduce to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads by 2018, and the sides currently are well along in implementing those cuts.

The president has issued new guidance regarding the employment of nuclear weapons. We won’t see that document, which is highly classified. But he told his audience in Germany that the United States could reduce its deployed strategic weapons further—by one-third below New START levels.

This is a logical next step in the process of moving U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces to lower and more reasonable levels 20 years after the end of the Cold War. It would cut the nuclear threat to the United States, offer the prospect of future defense budget savings, and bolster U.S. diplomatic efforts with third countries to increase the pressure on problem states such as Iran and North Korea.

Some wasted no time in criticizing the proposed reductions as undercutting U.S. security. That is difficult to see. Even with an arsenal reduced to some 1,000 deployed strategic warheads—plus several thousand reserve strategic and tactical weapons—the United States could easily maintain a robust, effective and credible nuclear deterrent. Can the critics explain what new danger would arise or what country would act differently toward the United States? Would Pyongyang adopt an aggressive new course if the U.S. military had only 300-400 times as many nuclear weapons as North Korea instead of 500 times?

The main question is whether President Putin will engage. Moscow publicly has shown little enthusiasm for further nuclear cuts, but the Russians may have incentives—such as saving money on their strategic forces—to deal. We’ll get a better sense of this when the two presidents meet in Russia in early September.

Mr. Obama also called for cuts in U.S. and Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. It is high time for the nuclear superpowers to expand their discussion to include tactical weapons (and reserve strategic warheads as well). Getting the Russians to agree to talk about these will be hard, but Washington should press and not take nyet for an answer.

The president announced that he would extend the nuclear material security process that he launched in 2010. That brought together leaders of more than 40 countries to develop an action plan to ensure tight controls on stockpiles of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium in order to keep those essential components of nuclear bombs out of the hands of rogue states and terrorist groups. Significant progress has been made, but the president’s original four-year timeline was way too ambitious. Following next year’s meeting in the Netherlands, Mr. Obama will host another summit in 2016 to keep the nuclear security effort going.

The president stated that he would continue to work to build Senate support for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Gaining a two-thirds majority, particularly given the partisan nature of politics today, poses an enormous challenge. But ratification would serve the U.S. interest by bringing the treaty closer to entry into force.

The United States has built the capability to maintain confidence in the reliability of its nuclear arsenal without testing, and improved verification mechanisms mean that any militarily significant test would be detected. Moreover, Nevada fought tooth and nail against storage of nuclear waste at the former test site located 60 miles from Las Vegas; does anyone believe a resumption of testing would be feasible politically? Finally, the United States conducted more nuclear tests than the rest of the world combined and acquired a huge amount of data. Why let other countries have a chance to catch up?

Mr. Obama also reiterated his earlier calls for a treaty to end the production of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium. That would be an important action, though Pakistan so far has blocked consensus at the Conference on Disarmament on a mandate for such a negotiation. Perhaps it is time for Washington and other like-minded countries to explore an alternate venue for addressing this question.

When the president spoke in Prague in 2009, he laid out his ultimate vision of a world without nuclear weapons, albeit with a number of qualifiers. He mentioned that objective only in passing at the Brandenburg Gate, perhaps reflecting his understanding that, given the need to negotiate with other countries and Congress, achieving truly transformational nuclear reductions will be far more difficult than he might have hoped four years ago. He nevertheless laid out in Berlin a sensible agenda to move us toward a more secure nuclear future for the United States and the world.

Authors

Steven Pifer

Closing the Nuclear Trapdoor in the U.S.-Turkey Model Partnership: Opportunities for Civil Nuclear Cooperation

Jessica C. Varnum — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

In the first Turkey Project Policy Paper, Jessica Varnum examines the potential for nuclear cooperation between the United States and Turkey to enhance what President Obama has called a "model partnership."

Under this new series, the Turkey Project of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings will publish regular in-depth reports on a range of issues that are shaping U.S.-Turkish relations. The quarterly analysis papers are designed to encourage independent thinking and informed debate on how the United States should engage this pivotal country.

Varnum will discuss this policy paper at a June 20 event at 2:30 PM EST at the SEIU Building. Register to attend the event »

INTRODUCTION: WHY CIVIL NUCLEAR COOPERATION?

The strategic partnership between Turkey and the United States remains vital to both countries, but has struggled to adapt to a post-Cold War world. Under the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party), Turkey has developed an assertive and increasingly independent voice on the international stage, articulating views that do not always align with U.S. preferences. Recognizing the need for a new bilateral paradigm, in 2009 the Obama Administration called for a “model partnership” to broaden and deepen cooperation. Civil nuclear issues are currently a trapdoor in this “model partnership,” through which fall many unexploited opportunities for enhanced bilateral cooperation.

Given a plethora of common concerns—from free trade to the crisis in Syria—why focus finite resources on nuclear cooperation? Civil nuclear issues are uniquely salient to the health of the alliance, yet there is little positive bilateral engagement on these issues. In 2008, a U.S.-Turkey 123 nuclear cooperation agreement to enable bilateral nuclear trade entered into force, but so far very little cooperation has occurred. Meanwhile, some of the more serious bilateral disputes in recent years have involved so-called “peaceful” nuclear uses, because Ankara and Washington embrace separate and contradictory interpretations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Like many non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS), Turkey believes the NNWS possess an inalienable right under Article IV to nuclear fuel cycle capabilities, including enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technologies. The United States believes the NPT grants NNWS a right to peaceful nuclear applications, but interprets this to mean fuel cycle services, not technologies. Fundamental to Turkey’s perennial defense of Iran’s “right” to uranium enrichment is the precedent it might set for Ankara’s nuclear program. Although Turkey has no nearterm interest in ENR, it wishes to preserve all options. Accordingly, Ankara stood up to the United States in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to ensure the NSG did not pass what it saw as overly restrictive technology transfer rules. In light of these and other differences, the relative absence of positive civil nuclear engagement undermines U.S.-Turkey relations.

The U.S. government has good strategic reason to support Turkey’s nuclear energy ambitions. Doing so would benefit bilateral relations, and lend credibility to the U.S. claim that it supports the responsible spread of nuclear energy in accordance with the NPT. Ankara has demonstrated a consistently robust commitment to nonproliferation, as a party to all relevant treaties and regimes and a member of voluntary mechanisms such as the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Unlike those energy-rich countries considering nuclear power, whose motivations may seem questionable, Turkey needs nuclear power to address chronic energy insecurity; the country’s “increasing rate of demand for natural gas and electricity [which nearly doubled in the past decade] is topped only by China.” Prime Minister Erdoğan cites nuclear power as the key to transitioning Turkey from its staggering 72% energy import dependence (primarily on Iran and Russia), into a country with “…the potential to export energy.”

This paper therefore explores opportunities for the United States and Turkey to forge a new narrative of cooperation rather than conflict in the civil nuclear arena. Examining Turkey’s decades-long nuclear power ambitions, the paper finds that U.S.-Turkish civil nuclear cooperation has a lengthy but inconsistent history. For primarily commercial reasons, U.S. industry is not currently involved in Turkey’s first nuclear power plants (NPPs). U.S. industry disinterest is mistakenly perceived by many in Turkey, however, as evidence of U.S. distrust of Ankara’s program. This misperception contributes to a difficult official-level dynamic, often overshadowing bilateral cooperative programs on nuclear nonproliferation, security, and safeguards. As such, the paper first considers cooperation challenges and opportunities for the U.S. government, but concludes by examining unexploited opportunities for industry, universities and civil society organizations to lead new nuclear cooperation initiatives in support of realizing a true “model partnership.”

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Authors

Jessica C. Varnum

Image Source: © Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Reviving U.S. Foreign Policy: The Case for Putting America’s House in Order

Thu, 30 May 2013 15:30:00 -0400

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May 30, 2013
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

A rising China, climate change, terrorism, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a tumultuous Middle East, and a defiant North Korea all present serious challenges for U.S. foreign policy, but could internal factors actually pose the biggest threat to the United States, its security, and its position as a global leader? In his new book, Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order (Basic Books, 2013), Richard Haass argues that U.S. national security depends on the United States addressing significant internal issues: repairing its crumbling infrastructure, improving education, reforming its immigration policies and reducing its burgeoning debt. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, contends that these shortcomings directly threaten America's ability to project power and exert influence overseas; to compete in the global marketplace; to generate the resources needed to promote the full range of U.S. interests abroad; and to set a compelling example that can influence the thinking and behavior of other nations.

On May 30, Foreign Policy at Brookings hosted Haass for a discussion on the challenging issues facing the United States at home and their impact on the successful pursuit of U.S. foreign and security policies abroad. Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Kagan joined the discussion. Vice President Martin Indyk, director of Foreign Policy, provided introductory remarks and moderated the conversation.

North Korea’s Turn to Diplomacy: Resuming the Six-Party Talks?

Richard C. Bush III — Fri, 24 May 2013 12:14:00 -0400

As summer follows spring, so too does North Korea transition from provocative words and deeds to a seemingly statesmanlike desire for diplomacy and peace. Before, it threatened to hit the United States with nuclear weapons. Now it expresses a willingness to engage in dialogue, even to return to the Six-Party Talks.

But this is all part of Pyongyang’s playbook. We have seen these peace offensives before. The crucial question now is the basis on which North Korea might be willing to negotiate. Is it the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, which is the core of the Six-Party Talks and the stated objective of the United States, South Korea, Japan, and China? If so, there is a reason to engage – carefully. Or is it Pyongyang’s most recently enunciated point of departure – that Washington, et al., must accept it as a nuclear weapons state, with all the rights and benefits that that implies under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? That is a non-starter, because it is a recipe for instability in Northeast Asia and for prolonged tension in the U.S. alliances with South Korea and Japan.

The goal of American policy has not been to secure talks for the sake of talks. It has been to induce Pyongyang to understand that it can only have a normal relationship with the international community if it credibly undertakes a fundamental change in policy: regarding nuclear weapons, its relations with South Korea, its role in the region, and its domestic system. North Korea’s latest and predictable shift to diplomacy does not in any way guarantee that change in policy (it may indicate, however, that sanctions are beginning to work). After its recent belligerence and before anyone rushes to the negotiating table, it is up to Pyongyang to demonstrate to Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing that the leopard is indeed going to change its spots.

Authors

Richard C. Bush III

Image Source: © Reinhard Krause / Reuters

Lessons from America’s First War with Iran

Bruce Riedel — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:35:00 -0400

President Barack Obama has committed the United States to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran seems determined to acquire them. As the United States and Iran approach confrontation and possible war to halt Tehran’s nuclear program, it is useful to remember that America has already fought one war with the Islamic Republic of Iran. During the late 1980s, President Ronald Reagan intervened in the Iran- Iraq War in support of Baghdad and Saddam Hussein, ultimately leading to an Iraqi victory. The United States engaged in an undeclared yet bloody naval and air war, while Iraq fought a brutal land war against Iran. The lessons of the first war with Iran should be carefully considered before the United States embarks hastily on a second.

In hindsight, the central lesson of the war in the 1980s is that it is easy to start a conflict with Iran and very difficult to end it. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not easy to intimidate and is likely to retaliate asymmetrically. Another key lesson is to beware the advice of your allies, both Arabs and Israelis, who are prone to give irresponsible recommendations on how to deal with Tehran.

The Toll of the Iran-Iraq War

The Iran-Iraq War was devastating. It was one of the largest and longest conventional interstate wars since the Korean War ended in 1953. A half million lives were lost, and perhaps another million were injured. The economic cost of the war exceeded one trillion dollars.1 Yet, the battle lines at the end of the war were almost exactly where they had been at the beginning of hostilities. It was also the only war in modern times in which chemical weapons were used on a massive scale.

Although the war ended in 1988, it led to numerous aftershocks that rippled throughout the region including the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the liberation of Kuwait a year later, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The bloody U.S. war that President Obama recently ended in Iraq was the finale in this march of folly. The seeds of multigenerational tragedy were planted in the Iran-Iraq War. The world will live with its consequences for decades, if not longer.

There were no “good guys” in the Iran-Iraq War, only two brutal dictatorships. Saddam Hussein was a megalomaniac who built enormous, ugly monuments to his ambitions and dreamed of becoming the dominant power in the Persian Gulf, controlling the world’s oil supplies, and destroying Israel. At the end of the first Gulf War in 1988, Hussein waged genocide against his own Kurdish population. Ayatollah Khomeini created a theocracy in Iran which imprisoned and executed thousands of its own citizens, forced tens of thousands into exile, and even took American diplomats hostage.

U.S. Policy During the War

America had no natural partners in the Iran-Iraq War, but its interests dictated that the United States allow neither Saddam nor Khomeini to dominate the region and the world’s energy supply. For most of the war, it was Iran that appeared on the verge of victory, so Washington had little choice but to support Iraq.

For those who aspire to a national security policy built on the principles of the United Nations Charter or a moral high ground, Iran-Iraq was an immoral swamp. For American policymakers in the 1980s, there was a simple difference. When the war began, Iran held dozens of American diplomats hostage and even tortured some. Only after 444 days in captivity did Iran let the American hostages go. In contrast to Khomeini, many Americans hoped that the Iraqi leader was somehow redeemable and could be worked with as a difficult but manageable partner. We realize now that this was a mirage, but in the 1980s it was still a hope. Thus, America tilted toward Iraq, hoping it would hold back the “medieval fanatics” to the east from gaining control of the world’s oil reserves.

But “our side” kept breaking the rules. First, Iraq was the aggressor in September 1980. Certainly Iraq had been provoked by Iranian actions along the border, but the main act of aggression was carried out by the Iraqi army in the form of a massive attack. As long as Iraq held Iranian territory, Washington did not call for the restoration of the status quo ante as would be the norm for most international conflicts; only when the tables turned did the United States call for respect for the international border. Then Iraq began using chemical weapons—first, in a piecemeal and largely ineffectual fashion, but by the war’s end, on an industrial scale and with decisive effect. The threat of Iraqi chemical warheads on long range missiles cleared Tehran of many of its inhabitants in 1988, and Saddam began using chemical warheads to systematically kill his own people. Rather than fall silent, the guns of war merely changed theaters with the 1988 cease-fire, as the Anfal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds began, an act of pure genocide by the government that the United States had supported during the war.

The conflict was not President Ronald Reagan’s finest hour. At first he tilted toward Iraq, sending the CIA to Baghdad with critical intelligence in 1982 to thwart Iran’s war plans. It worked. Then Reagan tilted toward Iran, sending sophisticated arms to Tehran in an effort to get American hostages in Lebanon freed. It didn’t work. A few hostages were released but more hostages were taken. Then Reagan tilted back toward Iraq and Washington’s undeclared war followed in 1987 and 1988. The principal architect of the policy was Reagan’s Director of Central Intelligence, Bill Casey, who died before the Iran scandal forced his resignation and possible indictment.

Lessons for Today

So what are the lessons of this war for America today? The first lesson is that we should expect to be blamed for all that goes wrong. Both Iraqis and Iranians came to believe the United States was manipulating each of them during the war. Ironically, and perhaps naively, the United States tried to reach out to both belligerents through the course of the war— in great secrecy both times—to try to build a strategic partnership. The disastrous arms-for-hostages policy, which came to be known as the Iran- Contra affair, convinced Iraqis rightly that the United States was trying to play both sides of the conflict. The result was that when the war ended, the Iraqi regime and most Iraqis regarded the United States as a threat, despite Washington’s support during the war. That support had taken the form of critical intelligence assistance to Baghdad, considerable diplomatic cover, and largesse from our Arab allies who loaned tens of billions of dollars to Baghdad to sustain Iraq’s war effort.

Iranians call the war the “Imposed War” because they believe the United States subjected them to the conflict and orchestrated the global “tilt” toward Iraq. They note that the United Nations did not condemn Iraq for starting the war. In fact, the UN did not even discuss the war for weeks after it started, and it ultimately considered Iraq to be the aggressor only years later, as part of a deal orchestrated by President George H.W. Bush to free the remaining U.S. hostages held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon.

Although the war had tragic consequences for Iran, by portraying the conflict as a “David and Goliath” struggle imposed by the United States and its allies, Iranian leaders managed to consolidate the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Revolution was fairly short in duration and its cost was miniscule in comparison to the Iran-Iraq War. For the generation of Iranians who are now leading their country, including men like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the war was the defining event of their lives and a major force in shaping their worldview. Their anti-Americanism and deep suspicion of the West can be traced directly to their understanding of the Iran-Iraq War. We should thus expect the next war to make Iran more extreme and more determined to get the bomb.

Another lesson of the first war is that Iran will not be easily intimidated by the United States. By 1987, Iran was devastated by the war, many of its cities had been destroyed, its oil exports were minimal. and its economy was shattered. But it did not hesitate to fight the U.S. Navy in the Gulf and to use asymmetric means to retaliate in Lebanon and elsewhere. Even with most of its navy sunk by U.S. Naval forces, Iran kept fighting and the Iranian people continued rallying behind Ayatollah Khomeini.

Iran fought a smart war, avoiding too rapid and too dangerous an escalation. As General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has noted, Iranian behavior is rational, not suicidal.2 Iran will not take steps that endanger the revolution’s survival; the country will look to exploit America’s vulnerabilities in Afghanistan and Bahrain, as well as Israel’s in Lebanon and the Saudis’ in Yemen. In the 1980s, Iran created Hezbollah in Lebanon to attack American, French, and Israeli targets as punishment for American support of Iraq. Hezbollah then tried to assassinate the emir of Kuwait to punish that country for being Iraq’s outlet to the Persian Gulf. In essence, Iran expanded the battlefield of the Iran-Iraq War to other countries where it could exploit security vulnerabilities. We should expect the same in a future war, one for which Iran and Hezbollah have had decades to prepare. Indeed, Iran and Hezbollah are already waging a low intensity terror campaign against Israel from Bulgaria to India, and they have reportedly used cyber warfare against Saudi and Qatari oil companies.3

Another lesson is that ending a future war will be a challenge. In 1988, Iran sued for a cease-fire only after suffering catastrophic defeat on the ground against Iraqi forces and after Saddam Hussein threatened to fire Scud missiles armed with chemical warheads into Iranian cities.4 Iranians feared they would face a second “Hiroshima” if they did not accept a truce; indeed many evacuated Tehran in fear of an Iraqi chemical attack. For Khomeini, accepting the truce was like “drinking poison.”5 No two wars are identical, but history suggests that Iran will not back down easily.

The final lesson is to always scrutinize the advice of allies. Ironically, in the 1980s the closest U.S. partner in the region, Israel, pressed Washington hard and repeatedly to essentially switch sides and offer assistance to Iran. Israeli leaders, generals, and spies were obsessed by the Iraqi threat in the 1980s just as they are preoccupied by the Iranian threat today, and they longed to restore the cozy relationship they had with the Shah in the 1960s and 1970s. Through the Iraq-Iran War, Israel was the only consistent source of spare parts for the Iranian air force’s U.S.-made jets.6 Israeli leaders, notably Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, brought considerable pressure to bear on Washington for an American engagement with Tehran, and Iran-Contra was in many ways their idea. American diplomats and spies deployed abroad were told to turn a blind eye to Israeli arms deals with Tehran, even when it was official U.S. policy (in the Washington euphemism of the day) to “staunch” all avenues by which the Iranians might obtain weapons or other material needed for their war effort.7

America’s Arab allies provided equally bad advice. Egypt’s President Mubarak, Jordan’s King Hussein, and Saudi King Fahd all urged support for Saddam and Iraq, while turning a blind eye to Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against his own people. Egypt sent arms, Jordan sent volunteers, and the Saudis bankrolled Saddam’s war, while telling America that he was a born-again moderate who could be worked with and trusted. It was not to be.

Looking back a quarter century after the war in 1988 is revealing and sobering. America accomplished its immediate goals in the first war: it halted Iran’s advance into Iraq, defended the tankers in the Gulf, and contained the war from spreading into the Arabian Peninsula. Khomeini did not conquer Basra and Baghdad and march on Jerusalem as he dreamed he would. But today, Iran is the dominant foreign power in Baghdad, thanks in large part to another war America fought in the Gulf. President George W. Bush toppled Saddam and ended his brutal dictatorship, but in doing so, Bush opened the door to a Shia majority government which is much friendlier to Tehran than to Riyadh or Amman, or Washington. These are sobering reminders of the unintended consequences of wars.

The first American war with Iran helped make Iran a more radical and extreme country. A second war may well do the same. Thus another war with Iran to stop its nuclear program may ultimately prove to be the catalyst that pushes Iran to acquire a dangerous nuclear weapons arsenal. Rather than stopping proliferation, it could incite it further.

History of course does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Lessons of old wars should be carefully considered before entering new ones. Many Americans have forgotten the lessons of our undeclared war in the 1980s. We have fought so many other wars since: in Iraq (twice), in Afghanistan, and in Libya. While it may be easy for Washington to forget, no Iranian has.

This article was originally published by The Fletcher Forum.

Endnotes
1 Janet Lang et al, Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979-1988 (Plymouth, Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), ix.
2 Fareed Zakaria, “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: We are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a ‘rational actor,’” CNN Pressroom, February 21, 2012.
3 Nicole Perlroth, “In Cyberattack on Saudi firm, U.S. sees Iran firing back,” New York Times, October 23, 2012.
4 Lang, 169.
5 Lang, 196.
6 Lang, 89.
7 Lang, 90.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Fletcher Forum

Image Source: © Morteza Nikoubazl / Reuters

Options for Reducing Nuclear Arms

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:00:00 -0400

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May 22, 2013
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Recent visits to Moscow by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and Secretary of State John Kerry appear to have injected a more positive tone to U.S.-Russian relations, as Washington and Moscow prepare for meetings between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin in June and September. Further nuclear arms reductions beyond those mandated by the New START Treaty, now in its third year of implementation, appear to figure high on the U.S. agenda. What sort of additional nuclear reductions, if any, should the United States now pursue?

On May 22, the Arms Control Initiative at Brookings hosted a discussion to explore the possibilities for further nuclear reductions, looking at the spectrum of possibilities. Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon moderated a discussion with Global Zero Co-Founder Bruce Blair, National Institute for Public Policy President Keith Payne and Brookings Senior Fellow Steven Pifer, co-author with O’Hanlon of the recent Brookings Focus Book, The Opportunity: Next Steps in Reducing Nuclear Arms (Brookings Press, 2012).

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What is Iran's Nuclear Red Line?

Steven Pifer — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:05:00 -0400

Tehran’s denials and protestations to the contrary, its nuclear ambitions clearly go beyond peaceful, civilian purposes. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is soon expected to issue a report stating that Iran has increased its capacity to enrich uranium but is limiting the most worrisome activity. This raises the question of how far Iran wishes to proceed down the nuclear path. The answer is important, as there is an important distinction between an Iran that has assembled (and perhaps tested) a nuclear weapon, and an Iran that has a latent nuclear capability but does not take the final step of pulling the pieces together to have a nuclear weapon.

The short answer to the question now is that we do not know. The U.S. intelligence community assesses that Iran wishes to have a nuclear weapons option but has not yet decided whether to build a bomb.

Concern about Iran’s nuclear intentions has grown as it has enriched uranium at facilities at Natanz and Fordow, facilities about which Tehran did not inform the IAEA until others revealed them. The Iranians conduct uranium enrichment operations to 3.5 percent, which they say they need for fuel rods for nuclear power reactors, despite the fact that Russia has contracted to sell Iran the fuel rods that it needs for its sole power reactor at Bushehr. More troublesome, Iran also enriches to 20 percent. The Iranian government claims that it needs 20 percent enriched uranium for fuel for the Tehran research reactor, though it is not clear that Iran has the technical capability to produce fuel rods for that reactor.

Although 20 percent qualifies as “highly-enriched uranium,” weapons-grade uranium is enriched to 90 percent or greater. Once uranium has been enriched to 20 percent, it is much of the way to 90 percent. Interestingly, while enriching to 20 percent, Iran has taken some of the resulting uranium gas (referred to as uranium hexafluoride) and converted it to uranium oxide, a solid powder. Iran thus has kept its stock of uranium hexafluoride enriched to 20 percent below the amount that, if enriched to 90 percent, would suffice for a nuclear bomb. Some see that as a signal that Tehran is sensitive to Western concerns. While the process of converting uranium hexafluoride to uranium oxide can be reversed, it takes time.

Of course, Iran must do more than have fissile material. Can it construct a deliverable nuclear weapon? Building a “gun-type” bomb is relatively simple (to the extent that the physics of nuclear weapons can be called simple). U.S. scientists in 1945 were so confident of the design for the bomb used on Hiroshima that they did not bother to test it. But a gun-type weapon would be large and bulky, probably weighing on the order of five tons.

Building a sophisticated weapon that could fit in a ballistic missile warhead—the delivery means of choice—poses a more demanding technical task. The weapon needs to be small and durable enough to withstand the dynamic and thermal stresses of ballistic flight. While the IAEA has questions about past Iranian weaponization activities, the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Iran in 2003 halted its nuclear weapons program (PDF), which it defined as weaponization work as well as enrichment.

As for the delivery system, Iran has an inventory of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. The Sajjil-2, currently under development, has an estimated range of 2200 kilometers. That puts the Gulf states, Israel and southeastern Europe in range, but Iran still has a long way to go before it could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.

So Iran has made varying degrees of progress down the tracks—enrichment, weaponization and delivery system—needed to have a viable nuclear weapon. How far will it proceed?

One option is to build a bomb and, to show the world its nuclear prowess, conduct a test. But that option poses real risks for the Iranian government. It would make Iran even more of a nuclear pariah and increase its international isolation. It would provoke huge concern in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, perhaps leading the Saudis—and others such as Egypt and Turkey—to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs. And it would indisputably cross the red lines that Jerusalem and Washington have drawn.

The second option is that Iran develops its enrichment, weaponization and missile technologies so that it has a latent nuclear weapons capability but stops short of putting the pieces together. In this option, Tehran might continue to limit its stock of uranium hexafluoride enriched to 20 percent by converting some to uranium oxide. Assuming that Iran does not have a covert enrichment facility (something Western intelligence services undoubtedly spend considerable time and effort looking for), we would know of an Iranian decision to enrich its uranium to weapons-grade, as the IAEA monitors its facilities at Natanz and Fordow. While experts differ regarding how much alert time the world would have, there would be tactical warning—currently measured in months—of a decision by Tehran to produce weapons-grade uranium.

The distinction between these two options is important. While no one, particularly Israel, would be comfortable with a latent Iranian nuclear capability, that is vastly preferable to an Iran with even a small stockpile of nuclear weapons. It would pose less of a threat to the nuclear non-proliferation regime. It would leave time for international sanctions to intensify their impact on the Iranian economy and perhaps affect the calculations in Tehran. And it would give the UN Security Council Permanent Five plus Germany time to explore whether the Iranian government is prepared to consider a negotiated settlement that satisfies international concerns.

Authors

Steven Pifer

What Will Keep a U.S. Defense Secretary Up At Night Through the Next Decade?

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:30:00 -0400

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May 6, 2013
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM EDT

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Editor's Note: This book is available to download now on Kindle and Nook. Hard copy and other e-book versions can be ordered through the Brookings Institution Press.

In his new book, Star Spangled Security: Applying Lessons Learned Over Six Decades Safeguarding America (Brookings, 2012), former U.S. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown (under President James Carter) offers an insider’s view of U.S. national security strategy over service to ten presidencies and bridges it to current challenges facing the United States.

Dr. Brown currently sits on the Defense Policy Board and previously served as secretary of the Air Force under President Lyndon B. Johnson; director of U.S. research and engineering under President John F. Kennedy; president of Caltech; director of Livermore Lab; and a negotiator on the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT I and SALT II). He also led the development of the Polaris missile, nuclear ballistic missiles, the stealth bomber, and put the first GPS satellites in the sky.

On May 6, the Brookings Press hosted a discussion of Star Spangled Security. Drawing on his 60 years safeguarding America, Harold Brown discussed how to balance China’s ambitions with U.S. interests to avoid conflict; whose 3 a.m. phone call from the Pacific is most likely to trigger US military action; what strategic positions in the Middle East and in Africa will best serve American interests; what strategy might prevent rogue nations from using nuclear weapons; lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan that ought to shape response to Syria now; a new perspective on drones; and the best ways to cut defense spending and reform the Defense Department.

Vago Muradian, editor of Defense News, moderated the discussion with Brown.

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Lessons of the Syrian Reactor

Bruce Riedel — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:01:00 -0400

The office of the assistant to the president for national-security affairs in the West Wing of the White House is a spacious, well-lit corner room in a building where space is at a premium. It contains not only the national-security adviser’s large desk but also a table for lunch discussions and other small meetings as well as a couch and easy chairs for more relaxed discussions. In April 2007, this commodious setting was the scene of a remarkable meeting. Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser at the time, welcomed Meir Dagan, head of the Mossad, who came with a special briefing for his American host. Dagan revealed a secret nuclear reactor in the final stages of construction in the Syrian desert, developed with the help of North Korea. Knowledge of this project constituted a stunning intelligence coup for Israel.

Later that year, on September 6, 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Syria’s nuclear facility at Al Kibar along the Euphrates River. The mission emerged from more than two decades of comprehensive intelligence collection and analysis by American and Israeli intelligence services targeting Syria’s development of weapons of mass destruction. It was a dramatic demonstration of intelligence success—all the more so given the ongoing civil war that has devastated Syria since 2011. The world does not need to worry about a Syrian nuclear reactor under threat of capture by Islamic radicals. Israel took that concern off the table.

But the incident also demonstrated that once a policy-intelligence feedback loop becomes dysfunctional, as happened to the George W. Bush administration after it exaggerated and distorted intelligence estimates to justify the Iraq War, there are serious policy implications. Israel wanted America to take out the reactor, but Bush was constrained by an intelligence community unwilling to cooperate with another major military operation based primarily on intelligence data.

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Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The National Interest

Image Source: © Ho New / Reuters

A Possible "Off Ramp" in North Korea

James E. Goodby — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:04:00 -0400

At the Brookings panel discussion on North Korea on April 15, “North Korea and Policy Priorities for the United States,” several important points were made that suggest a connecting of the dots would be useful. First, the consensus appeared to be that Kim Jong-un is calling the shots. Second, there is a high risk of catastrophic miscalculation in the present situation. Third, we should pay attention to what the North Koreans are telling us, "in their own words." Fourth, Kim Jong-un would like to open a discussion with the United States but he has left himself no exit from the current confrontation.

It can be argued that Kim Jong-un has in fact left himself an exit in a variety of ways, of which the most commonly mentioned is that the ending of the current United States-Republic of Korea joint military exercise will permit him to ratchet down the rhetoric. There is one other "off ramp" strategy that is never mentioned at all, which is surprising, considering that it was presented in Kim's own words in a highly public manner. It can be found in Kim Jong-un's New Year's Day speech this year, an address that Kim must have seen as a major statement of his intentions but which has been almost totally ignored.

This is what he said: "All the compatriots in the north, south and abroad should launch a dynamic struggle to carry out to the letter the June 15 Joint Declaration and the October 4 Declaration, great unification programs common to the nation in the new century and milestones for peace and prosperity."

The June 15, 2000 Joint Declaration was signed by then-ROK President Kim Dae-jung and former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il at a summit meeting held in Pyongyang. It included some features from the 1992 Basic Agreement, including family reunification, but was much less sweeping in its reach than the 1992 agreement. Its emphasis was on an independent effort by North and South Korea to achieve reunification. The October 4, 2007 agreement was signed by then-ROK President Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang and was much more programmatic and substantive in content than the June 15, 2000 Declaration. Like the earlier summit declaration, the 2007 agreement stressed what it called "by-the-Korean-people-themselves." In the present crisis-filled atmosphere, paragraph 4 of that document can be read as either an anachronism or as a beacon of hope. This is what it said:

The South and the North both recognize the need to end the current armistice regime and build a permanent peace regime. The South and the North have agreed to work together to advance the matter of having the leaders of the three or four parties directly concerned to convene on the Peninsula and declare an end to the war. With regard to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, the South and the North have agreed to work together to implement smoothly the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement and the February 13, 2007 Agreement achieved at the Six-Party Talks.

Of course, both the Declaration in 2000 and the Agreement in 2007 were negotiated by leaders of a party that is now out of power in South Korea, and the North Korean leader has been succeeded by his son. Both documents have been gathering dust in the archives for years. But Kim Jong-un's reference to them gave them new relevance. This is the powerful leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea saying that he and all Koreans should live up to the letter of these documents and he was saying that on January 1, 2013.

As an off-ramp strategy, one can find flaws in it, especially in the possibility that it was intended by Kim Jong-un as an attempt to drive a wedge between new ROK President Park Geun-hye and the leaders of South Korea's allies. It also opens the door to economic cooperation and possibly renewed assistance, difficult to contemplate under today's circumstances, which include the shut-down of the Kaesong Industrial Complex. But skillful diplomacy should certainly be able to exploit for the good whatever good there is in it.

Authors

James E. Goodby

Image Source: © KCNA KCNA / Reuters

North Korea and Policy Priorities for the United States

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

April 15, 2013
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

This event was broadcast live on C-SPAN and cspan.org. Click here to watch online.

In the past months, North Korea has issued a series of threats and provocative actions, from testing a nuclear device and conducting a missile launch—in contravention of multiple United Nations resolutions—to cancelling the armistice ending the Korean War and threatening a new war against the United States and South Korea. Harsh rhetoric from North Korea is nothing new, but some observers feel that the recent threats represent real danger. Others claim that they reflect internal dynamics in North Korea and that the crisis will pass.

On April 15, Foreign Policy at Brookings hosted a discussion on the policy priorities for the United States in dealing with North Korea during and after the current crisis. Brookings experts debated the threat to the United States and its allies and analyzed steps that the United States can take to mitigate the danger, including sanctions, engaging allies and neighbors in the region, nonproliferation efforts and, if necessary, responding to aggressive actions by North Korea.

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North Korea and Policy Priorities for the United States

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20130415_north_korea_priorities_transcript

North Korea and Nuclear-Armed Missiles: Calming the Hyperbole

Steven Pifer — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

In recent weeks, the North Korean government has ratcheted up its rhetoric to ever loftier heights, even threatening to rain nuclear fire on the United States. That understandably has fueled concerns, but what can the North Korean military reliably do?

On April 11, a member of Congress cited a Defense Intelligence Agency report stating that DIA had “moderate confidence” that North Korea had mastered the ability to put a nuclear warhead on top of a ballistic missile. That triggered new concerns, followed by a rush of qualifications. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a statement saying “North Korea has not yet demonstrated the full range of capabilities necessary for a nuclear-armed missile.” A spokesperson for South Korea’s Ministry of Defense expressed “doubt that North Korea has reached the stage of miniaturization.”

So what’s going on?

In order to have a nuclear-armed ballistic missile, North Korea must master three challenges: it needs a nuclear weapon; it needs to miniaturize the weapon so that it can fit inside a ballistic missile warhead and withstand the stresses of flight; and it needs a ballistic missile to deliver the warhead. To provide a credible military capability, it must be able to do these things reliably.

As to the first question, North Korea has nuclear devices. It has conducted three underground explosions, although many judged the first two—conducted in 2006 and 2009—to be partial failures, particularly given their low yields. The 2013 test appears to have been more successful.

Jeffrey Lewis at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies notes that North Korea could take one of two approaches to developing a nuclear bomb. One route, which most other nuclear weapons states followed, is to first test a “simple fission device.” That’s big and heavy—no North Korean missile could carry it—and it produces a yield of 15-20 kilotons, much larger than any of the three North Korean tests. Lewis thus inclines to think the North Koreans are developing a miniaturized weapon, which would produce a smaller yield.

This gets to the second question: the need to fit a nuclear weapon inside a ballistic missile warhead that can withstand the stresses of launch, flight and reentry. North Korea may be working on miniaturizing a bomb to fit in a missile warhead. We do not know how successful, or unsuccessful, they have been. We do not know the size of the three devices they tested.

We do know that the North Koreans have not successfully flight-tested a ballistic missile warhead to a range greater than 1300 kilometers. They have tested and deploy Hwasong and Nodong missiles with ranges up to 1300 kilometers, but longer range missiles mean greater stresses on the warhead. For example, an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) warhead reenters the atmosphere at a speed of five-seven kilometers per second or 10,000-15,000 miles per hour. Higher velocity means more heat and requires more weight to protect the “physics package” of the warhead, which has to survive and function in a very stressful environment.

The third question has to do with ballistic missiles. North Korea is estimated to have 550-600 Hwasong-5 and -6 missiles, variants of the venerable Soviet SCUD, which was first flown in the 1950s and exported around the world. The Hwasong missiles have ranges of 300-500 kilometers, giving them the capability to target South Korea. North Korea’s Nodong missile is an enhanced SCUD. Some 200 are estimated to be deployed. With a range of 1000 to 1300 kilometers, they could reach targets in Japan in addition to South Korea.

For ranges beyond the Nodong, there are much more serious questions about the reliability of North Korean ballistic missiles. The Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile—two of which reportedly now sit on mobile launchers near North Korea’s east coast—is estimated to have a range of 3200 kilometers. However, the Musudan has never been flight-tested. As Greg Thielmann, a ballistic missile expert with the Arms Control Association notes, a missile that has not flown cannot seriously be called operational.

The Taepodong-1, with a range of 2200 kilometers, has flown once, in 1998 as a space-launch vehicle. Its third stage failed. Over the past seven years, the ICBM-class Taepodong-2 is one for five in flights, none of which demonstrated a warhead reentry capability. The one success, last December, was a space-launch variant called the Unha. All three stages worked, though the satellite apparently was left tumbling uselessly in orbit. Finally, there is the KN-08, reputedly an ICBM-class missile, which paraded through the streets of Pyongyang last year. Several theories address it, including that it is a developmental missile or just a fake. It has never flown.

This test history raises serious doubts about North Korea’s long-range missile capabilities. As a 2012 RAND report by Markus Schiller notes, the United States tested its Atlas ICBM 125 times before it became operational, while the Soviet Union tested the R-16 ICBM 90 times before making it operational. In the 1980s, when the United States had much more experience with ballistic missiles, it still conducted 30 developmental flights of the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile.

This is rocket science. Are North Korean engineers so good that they can glean from a handful of flight-tests—or no tests—the information needed to produce a reliable missile, when others conducted dozens of flights? The North Koreans undoubtedly are learning more about missiles (and about reentry vehicles and nuclear weapons), which is of concern. But as General Clapper said, they have not demonstrated the full range of capabilities.

The North Korean leadership bases a big part of its foreign policy on bluster. As an element of this, declaring unproven missiles to be operational makes sense. In such a strategy, it may be less important that the ballistic missiles work reliably—or at all—if one can bluff the outside world into fearing that they do.

Authors

Steven Pifer

Image Source: © KCNA KCNA / Reuters

Getting Kim Jong Un's Attention

Michael E. O'Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:19:00 -0400

Nothing about the international response to North Korea's third nuclear test in February or subsequent provocations has been unreasonable. The crisis is entirely of Pyongyang's making. But it is possible that the hard-line approach taken by Washington, Seoul and other capitals to the North Korean bluster, brinkmanship and bombast has been far less than optimal.

We need a firm policy. North Korea must pay a price for its irresponsible and dangerous behavior, and know that the world is united in standing against it. The resolve must begin with the U.S.-South Korean military alliance but extend to other nations, most notably China, North Korea's only ally and main benefactor.

But there are a couple of problems. One is that China is uneasy about jeopardizing stability next to its borders and only goes along with sanctions reluctantly. Indeed, one possible explanation for North Korea's behavior is that it is seeking to spook leaders in Beijing so severely that they will be even more averse to applying any further sanctions, perhaps after another North Korean nuclear test.

And the worse this crisis gets, the more it increases the odds of North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un, further entrenching himself in hard-line positions from which it will be difficult to backtrack later. Among other things, it would raise the odds that he will seek to accelerate and expand nuclear weapons production activities.

We need a more creative policy should there be another crisis or a substantial worsening of this one (beyond a firing of a medium-range missile, for example). More sanctions might be needed. But new sanctions should sunset automatically, say after two years, unless Pyongyang tests another bomb, expands nuclear production or carries out another aggressive act leading to loss of life.

The key sanctions that could still be imposed would affect basic trade and aid in basic consumer goods, largely what China and North Korea exchange. Most sanctions to date are on banking, technology and the assets of certain individuals.

Temporary sanctions accomplish several goals. They constitute a firm response themselves. But because they do not last forever, they provide an incentive for better North Korean behavior. They also give a nod to China's worry that strong-armed international action against the Kim regime, however justified, is risky. Chinese leaders may or may not be right, but there can be little doubt this is how they think.

At this point it is too late to turn existing, permanent U.N. sanctions into temporary ones without any North Korean concessions, as that would reward Pyongyang's behavior. But we do need to look for ways to de-escalate this crisis. We also need to look for ways to more generally contain the downward trajectory of Pyongyang's relationship with the outside world. As bad as things are now, they can get worse if the regime reactivates its plutonium-producing reactor or expands its suspected uranium enrichment, with the possibility that bombs could be sold abroad.

Although the U.S. position on key issues should stay firm, we should also be willing to talk with North Korea at any point. Beyond that, Washington needs to signal a willingness to engage in a much broader discussion leading to a road map for a comprehensive deal. Right now, Pyongyang shows little interest in internal reform. It needs to be encouraged to move in the direction that China, Vietnam and now Myanmar have taken: reform from within. And the U.S. should work closely with South Korea, Japan, China and Russia to develop a truly coordinated strategy to steer North Korea in this direction.

The regime need not commit up front to relinquishing every nuclear weapon for this kind of deal to begin. But if it is willing to stop producing nuclear arms, gradually scale back its military and begin to reform and ultimately dismantle its gulag system of labor camps and penal colonies, Washington should make it clear that U.S. and international help can extend to much broader economic and technical assistance as well as a comprehensive peace deal.

This may sound like strange talk in the middle of such an acute crisis. But it is partly because the U.S. has no clear strategy for navigating the relationship with North Korea that small crises can metastasize, and that Kim, listening to his hard-line generals, may decide that he has no option but to double down on the juche (self-reliance) Stalinist system that his grandfather and father have built, and on their extremely dangerous confrontational policies toward the West. We need to create a light at the end of the tunnel, even if the light will be very faint for some time to come.

Authors

Michael E. O'Hanlon
Mike Mochizuki

Publication: Los Angeles Times

Big Hurdles Ahead for Arms Control

Steven Pifer — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's note: This article was originally published by The National Interest.

Four years ago in Prague, President Obama announced his desire to reduce the role and number of nuclear weapons in U.S. security policy and set an ultimate goal of a world free of nuclear arms. He returned to the Czech capital one year later to sign the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). The president has said he wants to do more: cut nuclear weapons further and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Those are worthwhile goals, but achieving them will require overcoming significant challenges.

The New START Treaty limits the United States and Russia each to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads on 700 deployed strategic missiles and bombers. That is a good step, but do those weapons levels make sense twenty years after the end of the Cold War? New START, moreover, covers only a part of the total nuclear arsenals of the superpowers; non-deployed (reserve) strategic warheads and non-strategic (tactical) weapons remain free of any constraint.

The superpowers each have total stockpiles numbering 4,500–5,000 nuclear weapons, more than fifteen times larger than the next nuclear weapons state. Washington and Moscow could easily reduce their arsenals by half and retain robust deterrents—and they would clearly remain top dogs in the nuclear-arms world.

In his January state of the union message, Mr. Obama stated his intention to “engage Russia to seek further reductions in our nuclear arsenals.” Press reports in early February suggested the administration was nearing a decision on reductions to no more than 1,000–1,100 deployed strategic warheads and a total of 2,500–3,500 total nuclear weapons. The administration could pursue this in different ways.

One option would seek to negotiate a U.S.-Russian treaty covering all nuclear weapons. It might limit each side to 2,500 total weapons, with a sublimit of 1,000 deployed strategic warheads. That would reduce the New START level by 35 percent and, more significantly, for the first time cap reserve strategic and tactical nuclear weapons.

Negotiating such an agreement would get into new territory; for example, the sides would need to develop agreed definitions, counting rules and verification measures to apply to the classes of warheads not previously limited. None of that would be easy and would take considerably longer than the eleven months it took to finish New START.

The Obama administration might conclude that it lacks time to finish such a treaty before the end of his second term. It thus might consider a fast deal to reduce New START’s limits. That could be as simple as just negotiating new numbers, for example, a limit of 1,000 deployed strategic warheads in place of 1,550. New START’s definitions, counting rules and verification measures would apply equally well to the new numerical limits. As for reserve strategic and tactical weapons, Washington could seek to engage Moscow in a process beginning with transparency and confidence-building measures and ultimately leading to a negotiation of legally binding limits. However, getting to that negotiation, and then concluding it, would take far longer than agreeing to change the New START limits.

Pursuing either approach would encounter challenges. The first and most critical: is Moscow prepared to engage? President Putin and the Russians have shown little enthusiasm recently for further nuclear arms cuts. They may choose not to play.

Perhaps not, but it is too early to close that door. The Russian government could have incentives to negotiate. For example, while the U.S. military can easily maintain its forces at New START levels, the Russian military must build new missiles to keep to the levels. Lowering New START’s limits could provide an attractive cost-saving measure for Moscow.

National Security Advisor Donilon travels to Moscow next week, and presidents Obama and Putin plan to meet in June and September. Those encounters provide opportunities to sound out the Russians’ readiness to deal.

Verification will pose a special challenge for limits on reserve and tactical nuclear arms. The U.S. intelligence community has high confidence in its ability to monitor New START’s limits. But monitoring constraints on reserve strategic and tactical weapons—which are not deployed on large strategic ballistic missiles but sit in storage bunkers—will prove a tougher task.

In the end, the intelligence community likely will not have the same degree of confidence in its ability to monitor those limits as it does with New START. That will raise questions, particularly in the Senate, though the risk posed by less certainty in monitoring limits on reserve strategic and tactical weapons should be set against the current situation, in which there are no constraints of any kind on those weapons.

A third challenge waits on Capitol Hill. Senate turnover has meant the loss of considerable muscle memory on nuclear arms-control questions. Senate Republicans, moreover, tend to be skeptical about the value of arms control. And they feel that the Obama administration has not moved as fast on nuclear modernization as it promised during the New START ratification debate. So, any new nuclear-reductions treaty would face a stiff test in a ratification vote.

That has led the administration to weigh options other than a legally binding treaty. One could be to seek a political commitment by the U.S. and Russian presidents to cut deployed strategic warheads to one thousand on no more than five hundred deployed strategic delivery vehicles. The sides could use New START’s verification measures to monitor these politically binding limits as well as the legally binding limits of 1,550 and 700.

The administration also would like to secure ratification of the 1996 CTBT. The Senate did not consent to ratification in 1999, primarily due to concerns about the reliability of the U.S. stockpile absent testing and the ability to detect cheating. Developments over the past ten years in the stockpile-stewardship program and advances in monitoring, such as improved seismic techniques, have largely allayed those two worries.

Bear in mind also how hard Nevada fought against storage of nuclear waste at the nuclear test site. With the population of nearby Las Vegas having tripled since 1992, the year of the last U.S. nuclear test, does anyone believe a resumption of testing would be feasible politically? Moreover, the United States carried out more nuclear tests than the rest of the world combined and learned more from individual tests. Why not freeze this American advantage?

Persuading Senate Republicans of the validity of these points nevertheless cannot be taken for granted. The administration will want to do a careful head count before making a CTBT ratification push, as a second negative vote in the Senate would be devastating for the treaty.

The president has said he wants to do more on cutting nuclear-arms levels and moving the CTBT closer to reality. Those are worthy goals that could cement his nuclear legacy and make America more secure. But major challenges stand before his agenda. President Obama has to engage personally, both with the Russians and the Senate, if he wants to overcome them.

Authors

Steven Pifer

Publication: The National Interest

The World of North Korea's Kim Jong-un

Kongdan Oh — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

In December 2011 the second generation leader of the Kim dynasty, Kim Jong-il, reportedly died of a heart attack at age 70. His father, Kim Il-sung, the founder of the dynasty, was a guerilla fighter who fought against the Japanese in China and later fled to Russia, where he became an officer in the Soviet army. Although he returned to the northern half of the Korean peninsula after the Japanese had surrendered to Soviet troops, he claimed credit for liberating Korea single-handedly, just as he falsely claimed to have defeated the UN coalition forces during the Korean War. This founding Kim set North Korea on the course that it now follows under the leadership of his grandson, who has consciously imitated his grandfather’s clothing, mannerisms, and “military-first” policy.

The Kim dynasty has successfully maintained a large measure of secrecy about how it operates. It is believed that for the last 20 years of Kim Il-sung’s reign, his son was running most of the country’s day-to-day affairs. When that son took over the leadership on his father’s death from a heart attack in 1994, he ruled in an even more secretive fashion than his father, sometimes not appearing in public for months on end. Throughout his lifetime, Kim Jong-il made only one public speech—of less than ten words—and that may have been due to a mistake made by a sound engineer. Now the world wants to know what is going on in the grandson’s mind as he publicly defies his erstwhile ally China and threatens destruction on South Korea, the United States, and Japan.

North Korea is in the news for two reasons: it has expanding nuclear weapons and missiles programs and it threatens to attack South Korea, the United States, and Japan. The nuclear program is hardly news. The Kim regime has been working since the 1980s on this program, and despite occasional denials of any desire to have nuclear weapons, it has forged ahead relentlessly, even during the days when it had reached a non-nuclear agreement with the United States. It is highly unlikely that the North Koreans were ever willing to completely abandon the program, no matter what incentives they were offered, and in recent years they have firmly renounced any interest in even discussing the program. In 2013 they officially stated that the program is their most important weapon and is not subject to negotiation. This should surprise no one, and it should also save other countries much time and effort that they would otherwise have put into trying to negotiate a new nuclear deal with North Korea.

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Authors

Kongdan Oh

Publication: Global Experts

Negotiating with Iran: How Best to Reach Success

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

April 1, 2013
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Negotiators from the P5 plus 1—Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States plus Germany—will sit down with their Iranian counterparts on April 5-6 for another round of talks regarding Iran’s nuclear program. These talks take place as concern grows in the international community that Tehran is nearing the point where it could acquire nuclear weapons capability, and against the backdrop of increasingly biting sanctions on Iran’s financial sector and broader economy.

On April 1, Foreign Policy at Brookings hosted a discussion to explore what lessons international negotiators should bear in mind when facing the Iranian delegation. Brookings Distinguished Fellow Javier Solana, who led the European Union’s negotiations with Iran in his capacity as EU high representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Gary Samore, who as National Security Council coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction had principal responsibility at the White House on the Iranian nuclear question, described their experiences in dealing with Iran’s negotiators and what factors might lead to a successful outcome. Senior Fellow Steven Pifer, director of the Arms Control Initiative at Brookings, moderated the discussion.

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Negotiating with Iran: How Best to Reach Success

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Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons, Policy and Arms Control: Issues for the United States, NATO and Russia

Steven Pifer — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's note: In a recently-released National Resources Defense Council report, From Mutual Assured Destruction to Mutual Assured Stability: Exploring a New Comprehensive Framework for U.S. and Russian Nuclear Arms Reductions, Senior Fellow Steven Pifer contributed a chapter on dealing with nonstrategic nuclear weapons. The chapter describes U.S., NATO and Russian policies regarding such weapons, discusses the issues they raise for arms control, outlines various arms control approaches, and concludes with recommendations for U.S. and Russian action.

Introduction

Nonstrategic nuclear weapons—also referred to as tactical or sub-strategic nuclear weapons—have long been elements of the U.S. and Soviet/Russian arsenals. Thousands of these weapons on both sides were eliminated as a result of the “presidential nuclear initiatives” in 1991 and 1992, and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty banned the sides’ groundbased ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5500 kilometers. Aside from the INF Treaty’s ban, however, nonstrategic nuclear weapons are not constrained by current U.S.-Russian arms control agreements.

The United States and Russia have different views of the roles of nonstrategic nuclear weapons (NSNW—the term in this paper is used to apply to warheads, not delivery systems, and covers all nuclear warheads except for those for strategic delivery vehicles). The U.S. government and NATO regard U.S. NSNW deployed forward in Europe as having only marginal military utility; their value is seen primarily in political terms, symbolizing the link between the United States and NATO Europe. NATO is currently reviewing its nuclear posture as part of its deterrence and defense posture review.

The precise role of NSNW in Russian military strategy is less clear. The Russian General Staff appears to assign them more of a military role in terms of offsetting what the Russian military regards as conventional force imbalances in comparison with NATO and, though it is rarely mentioned, China. The rationale for the large number is unclear.

Washington has stated that it wishes to include NSNW, along with non-deployed strategic warheads, in the next round of nuclear arms reduction negotiations with Russia. Moscow has said that other issues—such as missile defense, long-range conventional strike and the fate of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty—must be addressed before it would consider further nuclear reductions. Russians officials have also stated that the withdrawal of U.S. NSNW to national territory should be a precondition for any negotiations covering NSNW.

Should the sides agree to put NSNW into an arms control context, there are a range of options that they could pursue. These include confidence-building measures, unilateral steps and negotiated outcomes. They might choose some combination of these options as well.

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Authors

Steven Pifer

Publication: Natural Resources Defense Council