The Agonist - USA: Foreign Relations

Can Nuclear Terrorists Be Deterred?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:39:18 -0800

THE DEPROLIFERATOR -- As you no doubt know, deterrence is the product of a balance of power -- nuclear arsenals, in other words, that are roughly equal. Constrained by the eye-for-an-eye principle, but to the umpteenth power, states armed with nuclear weapons, such as the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and India and Pakistan today, keep their nukes holstered.

But terrorists, according to conventional thinking, are immune to deterrence. If they ever obtained nuclear weapons, they'd suffer few qualms about using them. First, they're secure in the knowledge that they're ostensibly stateless. It's unlikely that the state which they've attacked with nuclear weapons, such as the United States, would retaliate against the state which served as their command center for the attack. (Can't speak for another possible target, Israel, though.)

Second, not only don't they fear retaliation, were it to occur they'd welcome it. To terrorists, runs this line of thinking, an apocalypse is just an expressway to heaven for their martyred souls. Thus, according to these scenarios, turning their back on deterrence and mounting a nuclear attack is a win-win proposition for terrorists.

More likely, if terrorists were to obtain nuclear weapons, they would be as domesticated by their acquisition as states are that develop them. The better part of the power of nuclear weapons lies in their potential, not their kinetic energy. Intact, they can be used to bargain for goods, respect, and security.

For instance, Islamic terrorists might offer to turn over their nuclear weapons if Israel turned over its half of Jerusalem. Of course, when they're inevitably denied, they'll find themselves painted into a corner as sure as the United States and the Soviet Union did during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

We in the West think of terrorists, especially Islamic, as a homogeneous mass. But as with any such group, there are those on the margins of, say, al Qaeda or maybe Lashkar-e-Taiba (the Mumbai attackers), who are almost as crucial to their operations as those on the inside. Among them are individuals who provide transport and shelter; nuclear scientists and technicians, should their services be sought, fall under the same category. Since any ideological motivations on the part of the outsiders may be secondary to the financial, they may be more vulnerable to deterrence that threatens their families and people.

In fact, some believe, a deterrent to the command structures of terrorist groups does exist -- and it's self-imposed. . .

For terrorist organizations that would want to take credit for a nuclear event, failure, not discovery, is likely to be the main deterrent. … Present evidence shows that [they] prefer to carry out actions where the odds of success are high even if those actions are less destructive than they might prefer. [Emphasis added.]

That's from Nuclear Forensics: Role, State of the Art, and Program Needs, an undated (most likely 2007 or 2008) report by the Joint Working Group of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Wait, what does forensics have to do with a nuclear attack? Setting off a nuclear weapon isn't like stabbing a stranger in an alley. Isn't the perp even more self-evident than a criminal who has an ongoing beef with someone who turns up dead?

While that's true of a state, what makes a nuclear attack by terrorists unique is not that we wouldn't know who pulled it off or why. Chances are they'd be willing to be the bearer of both those glad tidings. Instead, the question becomes: "Who supplied them with the weapon?"

CSI: Ground Zero

Nuclear differs from criminal forensics in not only its emphasis on the chemical, but in that it's working for much higher stakes: attempting to prevent or solve the greatest mass murder in history. Specifically, according to the Joint Working Group paper, it determines questions such as:

Was the event really a nuclear explosion? What was the yield. … Were [substances] present, which would denote the presence of [shudder -- RW] thermonuclear reactions? … What can be inferred about provenance and history? … What was the most probable device design?

Much of this, the paper explains, depends on the creation of a "comprehensive international database of nuclear material fingerprints." Even better would be an international program for making "the nuclear materials more easily identifiable by tagging them with distinctive markers."

It's not easy to convince states that are understandably "hesitant to internationalize the most sensitive parts of their nuclear infrastructure" to take part in these programs. But those that don't would be the first towards which suspicious eyes were cast in the event of an incident.

An alternative means of encouraging reluctant states to cooperate could be the implementation of a "negligence" doctrine. In another work on the subject, "Nuclear Attribution as Deterrence" (not online) in the March 2007 Nonproliferation Review, Michael Miller reports on a writer named Anders Corr. He argues that the U.S. Cooperative Threat (Nunn-Lugar) program, which helps secure loose nukes in Russia, as well as dismantle designated Soviet era nuclear weapons, is a double-edged sword.

Some of its funding, Corr believes, is siphoned off for corruption. Thus, lest the flow dry up, Miller writes:

. . . there is very little incentive within [Russia] to actually secure material. [Corr advocates] a harsh form of deterrence where those who permit nuclear theft, especially the leaders of the state, would be held completely accountable. … A negligence doctrine dealing with nuclear weapons material is necessary for deterrence [lest] a negligent state. . . think that it will pay only a small price for 50 kg of lost HEU.

But, with a ploy straight out of a spy thriller, nuclear forensics could conceivably be thwarted. Here's the Joint Working Group on what it refers to as "spoof," though the term hardly does justice to its gravity:

States or terrorist organizations, for reasons that might range from protecting secrets to preventing attribution, may attempt to spoof any later investigation by mixing material from different sources.

Also, as Steve Hynd of Newshoggers points out, a spoof could conceivably by used by one state, such as Pakistan, to frame another, such as India (or vice versa), in order to invite retaliation against its enemy. Miller again:

How easily could [nuclear] signatures be falsified? It would be relatively simple for an expert nuclear weapons designer to create a weapon that looked improvised or that was made of reactor fuel instead of an alloy designed for weapons. The tradeoff would be settling for a larger chance of failure and a smaller yield.

Finally, to improve the odds that "the perpetrators of a nuclear terrorist act will fail and be apprehended and prosecuted," the Joint Working Group writes, credible forensic capability must be "demonstrated by successful attribution of intercepted materials." [Emphasis added.]

In other words, proving the provenance of interdicted nuclear materials can serve as a trial run that demonstrates how nuclear forensics might succeed in the event of a nuclear explosion. It's true that nuclear forensics suffers from staffing and funding problems. But the greatest obstacle to its effectiveness deterring states that are either careless about their nuclear materials and know-how or that are willing to trade them with terrorist groups may be a simple lack of publicity. Miller writes:

While recent academic treatments have begun to explore the technology, few government documents describe any of the specifics of post-explosion attribution. This may be intentional, to make the attribution more difficult to spoof, but it can also give the impression that the technology is less-than-ready. [But attribution capabilities] are probably good enough to publicize the technology with the aim of deterring state leaders.

Besides, "More important than technology [is its] perception. … Thus, rather than worry that the technology will not be successful, the United States should fear that it has not been demonstrated well enough."

In the long run, in tandem with international cooperation and spelling out exactly what retribution awaits the offending state, nothing is more critical than advertising the capabilities of nuclear forensics to determine the origins of a nuclear bomb.

The emergence of a sophisticated form of deterrence that doesn't rely on that most blunt of all forces -- "mutual assured destruction" -- is a hopeful development for the future of humankind. But, however encouraging nuclear forensics is, the sheer bulk of the infrastructure and apparatus dedicated to deterring or determining a perpetrator has come to resemble those surrounding domestic crime, which costs the United States over $100 billion a year.

Some day we may learn that it's a lot cheaper to make humankind economically and, thus, psychically secure. Perhaps then we'll stop looking for security in all the wrong places -- such as in weapon systems poised to blow up in our faces at a moment's notice.

First posted at the Faster Times.

'Afghan quagmire negates US-Iran war'

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:08:37 -0800

Nov 19

Jerusalem Post - The US is too bogged down in Afghanistan to engage Iran militarily over its nuclear program, an ex-CIA South Asia expert and current adviser to US President Barack Obama said in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

Bruce Riedel, a senior Brookings Institute and Saban Center fellow for political transitions in the Middle East and South Asia, addressed scholars and journalists at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies.

He warned that the US was fighting a losing battle against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, and that Washington would soon have to make difficult choices on beefing up troop levels there.

"Israelis need to understand that there's going to be a huge drain on resources, attention and capital, and that will have implications," Riedel told The Jerusalem Post before his talk.

He acknowledged that those implications would primarily affect the Iran question.

During his address, Riedel referred to the US's commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said, "We've got two wars. You've got to be bold to say, let's start a war against a third party, particularly when the third party can hit you in the first two fronts."
The US has learned that it "can't fight two medium-sized wars simultaneously," he said (h/t Bernhard)

Despite law, corrupt African bigwig gains entry to U.S.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:04:08 -0800

Ian Urbina | Nov 17

NYT - Several times every year, Teodoro Nguema Obiang arrives at the doorstep of the United States from his home in Equatorial Guinea, on his way to his $35 million estate in Malibu, Calif., his fleet of luxury cars, his speedboats and private jet. And he is always let into the country.

The nation's doors are open to Obiang, the forest and agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its president, even though federal law enforcement officials believe that "most if not all" of his wealth comes from corruption. The graft is related to the extensive oil and gas reserves discovered more than a decade and a half ago off the coast of his tiny West African country, according to internal Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.

And the doors are open despite a federal law and a presidential proclamation that prohibit corrupt foreign officials and their families from receiving U.S. visas. The measures require only credible evidence of corruption, not a conviction for it.

Susan Pittman, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement in the State Department, said she was prohibited from discussing specific visa decisions. But other former and current State Department officials said Equatorial Guinea's close ties to the American oil industry are the reason for the lax enforcement of the law. Production of the country's nearly 400,000 barrels of oil a day is dominated by American companies such as ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon.

"Of course it's because of oil," said John Bennett, U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994, adding that Washington has turned a blind eye to the Obiangs' corruption and repression because of its dependence on the country for natural resources. He noted that officials of Zimbabwe are barred from the United States.

Report links donations, lawmakers' support of Cuba embargo

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:53:24 -0800

Lesley Clark | Washington | Nov 16

McClatchy - Supporters of the U.S. embargo against Cuba have contributed nearly $11 million to members of Congress since 2004 in a largely successful effort to block efforts to weaken sanctions against the island, a new report shows.

In several cases, the report by Public Campaign says, members of Congress who had supported easing sanctions against Cuba changed their position — and got donations from the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee and its donors.

All told, the political action committee and its contributors have given $10.77 million nationwide to nearly 400 candidates and members of Congress, the report says.

The contributions include more than $850,000 to 53 Democrats in the House of Representatives who sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this month opposing any change to U.S.-Cuba policy. The average signer, the report says, received $16,344.

The top five recipients of the embargo supporters' cash: Miami's three Cuban-American Republican members of Congress, 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain and New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, whose parents fled Cuba before his birth.

The report comes as defenders of the embargo fend off efforts to repeal a decades-old ban against U.S. travel to Cuba. Proponents of greater engagement with Cuba contend that they have the votes, and a hearing on the issue is scheduled for Thursday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Critics of U.S.-Cuba policy long have suggested a link between campaign contributions and policy. Public Campaign — which advocates for public financing of political campaigns — says the contributions raise questions about the role that money plays in lawmakers' decision-making.

duh

"The pressure they get to raise money plays heavier in their decisions than it ought to," said David Donnelly, the national campaigns director for Public Campaign. "We think this is a damning pattern. We think these are good people caught in a bad system. If members of Congress have to spend too much time raising money, they have to listen to people who give money."

The director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, Mauricio Claver-Carone, defended the contributions as support for lawmakers who side with Cuban-Americans who think that easing sanctions against Cuba will only benefit the Castro regime.

"I will not apologize for the Cuban-American community practicing its constitutional, democratic right to support candidates who believe in freedom and democracy for the Cuban people over business and tourism interests," Claver-Carone said. "Unions help elect pro-union candidates. The Chamber of Commerce helps elect pro-business candidates. AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) helps elect pro-Israel members. Who are we supposed to help? Pro-Castro members?"

Public Campaign looked at the Cuba committee because of a seeming disconnect between congressional votes and public opinion polls that suggest most Americans support lifting a ban on travel to Cuba, Donnelly said.

"On this issue there appears to be a clear distinction between what the American public appears to want and what some in Congress are advocating," Donnelly said, pointing to a World Public Opinion survey in April that found 70 percent of Americans support travel to Cuba.

Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who backs greater engagement with Cuba, said the report wasn't a surprise.

"I don't know how else you can explain how our current policy has survived for so long without yielding any meaningful results; it's all politics," Flake said.

The report says that at least 18 House members — including several from agriculture-rich districts — received campaign contributions from the PAC or its donors and switched their positions on Cuba, from voting in favor of easing travel restrictions to voting against any efforts to soften the embargo.

Ousted president Zelaya accuses US of providing cover for coup

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:18:19 -0800

Tegucigalpa | Nov 15

DPA - Deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya has rejected any possibility of a deal to restore constitutional order in the two weeks before the next scheduled elections, local media reported.

Zelaya, who was ousted by the military on June 28, informed US President Barack Obama in a letter Saturday that he would not accept any proposal to return him to office temporarily 'to cover up the coup d'etat.'

'This electoral process is illegal because it conceals the military coup and the de facto state of Honduras that does not guarantee free and fair citizen participation,' he wrote.

'It is an anti-democratic electoral maneuver, repudiated by large parts of the population, to cover the material and intellectual authors of the the coup d'etat.'

Zelaya also accused the US government of modifying its initial opposition to the coup, noting that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had earlier told him the Obama administration would only recognize the new elections if Zelaya were restored to office first.

Did you ever wonder why the US ambassador to Honduras was never fired for not have any clue what was going on there?

China and US spar over currencies ahead of Obama visit

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:51:17 -0800

Nov 15

Reuters - The United States and China sparred over exchange rates at a meeting of Asia Pacific leaders today, pointing to tricky talks ahead for President Barack Obama when he flies to China to address economic tensions.

The discord surfaced at a summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Singapore when a reference to "market-oriented exchange rates" was cut from a communique issued at the end of two days of talks. An APEC delegation official said Washington and Beijing could not agree on the wording.

That underscored strains likely to feature when Obama flies to Shanghai later on Sunday following moves by Washington to slap duties on various Chinese-made products and a growing drumbeat of pressure on Beijing to let its yuan currency strengthen.

Chinese officials have grown testy about the pressure over the yuan. Chinese banking regulator Liu Mingkang told a forum in Beijing on Sunday that ultra-low interest rates in the United States were fuelling speculation in overseas asset markets and threatened the global economic recovery.

Obama pledged on Saturday to deepen dialogue with China rather than seek to contain the rising power, which is set to overtake Japan next year as the world's second largest economy.

But issues ranging from the yuan and trade tensions to human rights could complicate what many regard as the most important relationship of the 21st century.

The Great Atomic Film Cover-Up

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:26:28 -0800

Greg Mitchell | Nov 10 | Huff

Early this week, President Obama -- perhaps under new pressure as a Nobel Peace Prize winner -- said he would like to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki during his presidency. If he does, he will become the first sitting U.S. president to make that trip.

Yesterday, Veterans Day arrived, so here I'd liked to pay tribute to two of the most remarkable veterans I've ever encountered.

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan 64 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years, many newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited.

The general public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. I first probed the coverup back in 1983, and developed it further in later articles and in my 1995 book with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America and in a 2005 documentary Original Child Bomb. To see some of the footage, go to my blog.

As editor of Nuclear Times in the early 1980s, I met Herbert Sussan, one of the members of the U.S. military film crew. The color U.S. military footage would remain hidden until the early 1980s, and has never been fully aired. It rests today at the National Archives in College Park, Md., in the form of 90,000 feet of raw footage labeled #342 USAF. I have a VHS copy of all of it today.

When that footage finally emerged, I spoke with and corresponded with the man at the center of this drama: Lt. Col. Daniel A. McGovern, who directed the U.S. military film-makers in 1945-1946, managed the Japanese footage, and then kept watch on all of the top-secret material for decades.

"I always had the sense," McGovern told me, "that people in the Atomic Energy Commission were sorry we had dropped the bomb. The Air Force -- it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn't want those [film] images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child....They didn't want the general public to know what their weapons had done -- at a time they were planning on more bomb tests. We didn't want the material out because...we were sorry for our sins."

Sussan, meanwhile, struggled for years to get some of the American footage aired on national TV, taking his request as high as President Truman, Robert F. Kennedy and Edward R. Murrow, to no avail.

More recently, McGovern declared that Americans should have seen the damage wrought by the bomb. "The main reason it was classified was...because of the horror, the devastation," he said. Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.

In 2005, Editor & Publisher (where I am editor) broke the news that articles written by famed Chicago Daily News war correspondent George Weller about the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki were finally published, in Japan, almost six decades after they had been spiked by U.S. officials. But suppressing film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was even more significant, as this country rushed into the nuclear age with its citizens having neither a true understanding of the effects of the bomb on human beings, nor why the atomic attacks drew condemnation around the world. The common view abroad, and among many U.S. historians, is that Russia's entry into the war (long scheduled and carried out on August 8) would have forced a Japanese surrender long before any U.S. invasion took place. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower himself later said it was not necessary to hit Japan "with that awful thing."

US-Russia nuclear talks hit snag

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:47:04 -0800

Moscow | Nov 12

AFP - Talks between Moscow and Washington to replace a key nuclear disarmament treaty that expires next month have hit a snag over proposed restrictions on Russian missiles, a newspaper said Thursday.

The dispute threatens to derail high-stakes talks on a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which US President Barack Obama's administration hopes to replace before it expires on December 5.

The Kommersant daily, citing an expert familiar with the START talks, said Washington was seeking to keep a provision from the original treaty for monitoring Russia's arsenal of mobile ground-based missiles.

"They are offering to keep and even strengthen control over our mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) such as the Topol," the expert was quoted as saying by Kommersant.

Russia is against the proposal since the United States currently does not have its own mobile ground-based ICBMs and it is therefore of "unilateral character," he said.

The maximum number of "carriers" capable of delivering nuclear warheads remains another sticking point, the newspaper reported.

"In their package, the Americans stipulated a new ceiling for warhead carriers that we don't quite agree with," the expert told Kommersant, referring to proposals presented to Moscow last month by US National Security Adviser James Jones.

Besides ground-based ICBMs, the term "carriers" also encompasses submarine-launched missiles and heavy bombers.

Hiroshima hails Barack, but he's too busy to visit

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:09:37 -0800

David McNeill | Tokyo | Nov 12

The Independent - It was a speech Tsutomu Yamaguchi had waited 64 years to hear. Watching television at home in Hiroshima in April, one of Japan's most famous A-bomb survivors heard an American president call for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

"As... the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon," Barack Obama said that day in Prague, "the United States has a moral responsibility to act." Mr Yamaguchi was elated. "I feel he is the only one we can now rely on the end these terrible weapons," he said.

Mr Yamaguchi's words carry more weight than most people's. In 1945 he was exposed to the only two atom bombs ever used in anger, both Hiroshima's and Nagasaki's. Now 93, Japan's only recognised double survivor has been dealing with the horrific consequences all his life. He has lost his son and wife in the past four years, both to cancer. And with only months to live himself, he is hoping that President Obama will visit his city before he too dies. "That would be very important to us, and to the world."

Political pressure at home and tight scheduling during Mr Obama's first visit to Japan on Friday and Saturday make the chances of a presidential trip to either city almost zero. Mr Obama arrives in Tokyo amid a growing firestorm over the relocation of a controversial US airbase in the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. He is still trying to establish a rapport with the country's new Democrat government, which is withdrawing its support for the US war in Afghanistan and has hinted at wanting more independence from Washington. For decades, Japan has been one of America's most dependable allies.

Jesuits Breach the Perimeter! And "Negative Security Assurances"

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:39:22 -0800

THE DEPROLIFERATOR -- Nuclear disarmament is usually approached from three directions. They who pursue the middle way might, by definition, be capable of appreciating the charms of those following the two paths which diverge from it. But chances are that each of those parties -- one of which is an outlier; the other an in-lier -- views the other with a jaundiced eye.

An example of a group that approaches disarmament head-on is the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. In his most recent letter, its worthy president David Krieger writes:

The starting point for ending the omnicidal threat of nuclear weapons is the recognition that the threat is real and pervasive, and requires action. … We are called upon to end our complacency and respond to this threat by demanding that our leaders develop a clear pathway to the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

This straightforward faction seems to predicate its actions on the notion that not only is it speaking truth to power but on behalf of a sizeable segment of the public. As for the other two, the inlying group comprises realists, who, because many have worked in the government, military, or nuclear labs, operate on the assumption that they're capable of influencing policy. Before we examine its m.o., let's first review that of its opposite -- activists such as the Berrigan brothers, who in 1980 penetrated a nuclear weapons base and damaged warheads as well as pouring blood on documents and files.

For those who think that incident was of a time, it might surprise you to learn that the Berrigans' group, Plowshares Nuclear Resistance -- however long in the tooth its leading members are -- still pull off actions. In fact, though it garnered scant attention in the media, the most recent was November 2 at the Trident submarine base called Kitsap-Bangor near Seattle, Washington.

The base houses over 2,000 nuclear warheads -- more "than China, France, Israel, India, North Korea and Pakistan combined," reads the group's news release, which continues:

Bill "Bix" Bischel, S.J., 81, of Tacoma, Washington; Susan Crane, 65, of Baltimore MD; Lynne Greenwald, 60, of Bremerton, Washington; Steve Kelly, S.J., 60, of Oakland, CA.; Anne Montgomery RSCJ, 83, of New York, New York. … entered the Base in the early morning hours of November 2, 2009, All Souls Day, with the intention of calling attention to the illegality and immorality of the existence of the Trident weapons system. They entered thru the perimeter fence, made their way to the Strategic Weapons Facility. . . cut through the first chainlink fence [and] the next double layered fence. . . onto the grounds of [the facility, leaving] a trail of blood [not their own -- RW] and hammered on the roadways [and] fences [and] scattered sunflower seeds throughout the base. [All symbolic acts, they explained -- RW] They were then thrown to the ground face down, handcuffed and hooded, and held there for 4 hours on the wet, cold ground. [Bear in mind their ages. -- RW] They were. . . cited as of now, for trespass and destruction of government property, given a ban-and-bar letter and released.

Another excerpt gives us a glimpse into their mentality:

We walk into the heart of darkness. [The nuclear weapons] are sheathed in stainless steel and metal coverings that conceal the evil incarnate lying within. They are filled with death-dealing agents that tear apart humans and leave survivors scarred for life.

As you can see, to those using this approach, nuclear weapons teem with evil. Tolerating the possession of even a handful, whether for deterrence or out of political considerations such as reassuring our allies in Europe, is playing a devil's game.

For an example of how the mind of a nuclear realist works, watch one tackle the subject of whether or not the United States should continue to insist it has the right to nuclear first-use (a preventive or preemptive strike, that is). Turns out it's an even hotter topic than I knew when when writing about it last week.

The U.K. publication Survival: Global Politics and Strategy featured an article (subscription only) on the subject in its June-July 2009 issue by noted nuclear writer Scott Sagan. An excerpt from its summary reads:

Is the threat of the first use of US nuclear weapons still necessary to deter the use of non-nuclear WMD [as well as a] large-scale conventional military force? Or can Washington move toward a policy of no-first-use, limiting the role of nuclear weapons to deter the use of other states' nuclear weapons? … previous government and academic analyses have both exaggerated [its] potential military and diplomatic costs [as well as] underestimated its potential benefits.

The mind of the disarmament realist in question is the renowned Morton Halperin, who responded to Sagan's article with a letter (which is online) in the October-November issue of Survival. He notes the "serious domestic political storm a president [seeking a no-first-use policy] would confront."

Why? Because "Opponents of no first use. . . believe that. . . a no-first-use promise will increase the political cost of using nuclear weapons only for the United States, undermining the credibility of the US deterrent," for not only the United States, but Europe, too. Also, "There is no doubt that some allies" -- again, in Europe -- "would be nervous if the United States made a no-first-use pledge."

But isn't no-first-use integral to disarmament? To Halperin's way of thinking, "there are other proposals to pursue this objective which would be [as] effective as a. . . no-first-use policy and which might produce less controversy." He continues:

In his Prague speech. . . Obama committed himself in the short run to four other measures which. . . advance the same objectives as the no-first-use proposal: reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US national security. . . negotiating a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia. . . pursuing US ratification of the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), and starting negotiations to end the production of fissionable material [plutonium and enriched uranium] for weapons purposes. …

Seeking three treaties on nuclear arms control in his first term will not be easy. … Under the circumstances, no first use can and should be put off for another day.

How Can an Assurance Be Negative?

Instead, according to Halperin, the United States:

. . . should update and simplify the so-called negative security assurance. . . that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance issued in 1978. [It would read] 'The United States reaffirms that it will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon [states that have signed and are in compliance with] the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons'. … This would preserve the president's right to threaten or use nuclear weapons first against any state with nuclear weapons [and] also highlight the importance the United States attaches to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Halperin sums up: ". . . universal no-first-use. … is a good idea whose time has not yet come."

While those in the other two camps might think that Halperin is turning no-first-use into a sacrificial offering for hawks, his desire to expedite disarmament can't be questioned. While one is tempted to assert that all three approaches constitute synergy, it's more likely that the realists and the blood-sowers cancel each other out. Meanwhile, the question of whether the disarmament race will go to the tortoise or the hare -- or end up clutched in the talons of the hawk -- remains open.

First posted at the Faster Times.

Three detained Americans entered Iran illegally: FM

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:03:10 -0800

Tehran | Nov 10

AFP - Iran said on Tuesday that three arrested American hikers committed the crime of entering the country illegally, even as they are also reported to be facing other possible charges.

"The crime they committed is of illegally entering Iranian territory. The other things are at the level of accusations," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters, indicating that the trio may not have been formally charged with spying as reported on Monday.

"The judiciary is examining their case... but what is important is the verdict which will be pronounced against them," Mottaki said.

Iranian forces in July captured Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27, near the border with Iraq.

On Monday, Tehran's chief prosecutor Abbas Jaffari Doulatabadi said investigations were continuing.

"The three Americans arrested near the border of Iran and Iraq are facing accusations of spying and the inquiry is continuing," he was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying.

** US trio 'entered Iran illegally'

Myanmar will no longer dictate ASEAN ties: White House

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:01:40 -0800

Washington | Nov 10

AFP - The United States said on Monday it would no longer allow its row with Myanmar to hold its ties with Southeast Asia hostage, as President Barack Obama geared up for his debut official visit to the region.

Obama is due to hold the first-ever meeting between a US president and leaders of all 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members, including Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein, on Sunday in Singapore.

"One of the frustrations that we've had with policy toward Burma over recent years has been that the inability to have interaction with Burma has prevented certain kinds of interaction with ASEAN as a whole," said Obama's top Asia policy aide Jeffrey Bader.

"The statement we're trying to make here is that we're not going to let the Burmese tail wag the ASEAN dog."

Nuclear-Power Fuel Too Close to Nuclear-Weapon Fuel for Comfort

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:27:14 -0800

THE DEPROLIFERATOR -- Recent statements by its chief representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency suggest that Iran may be backing away from an agreement to ship its low-enriched nuclear fuel to Russia for further enriching. Even, though, after agreeing to the deal, President Ahmadinejad, ever the master of the sweeping gesture, said the West had "moved from confrontation to cooperation."

Among reasons to hope that Iran relents is a fact of which many who proclaim Iran has a right to a nuclear program seem ignorant. Turns out that transubstantiating the fuel used for nuclear energy into nuclear-weapon fuel, far from a miracle, is all too commonplace.

The Hudson Institute's Christopher Ford explains (sorry, misplaced the link).

Reactor fuel production is worrisome enough all by itself, because in enriching uranium to LEU [low-enriched uranium] reactor fuel levels the Iranians would have already done most of the work necessary to enrich to weapons-usable HEU [highly-enriched uranium].

At Huffington Post, Bruno Pellaud, former deputy director general of the International Atomic Agency, adds some seasoning to Ford's remarks:

. . . [LEU] (some 4% enriched) is already a long way towards the weapon-relevant [HEU] (some 90%), much more than these two figures seem to indicate. In the physics of enrichment, it's like a pre-cooked cake, so well pre-cooked that a few minutes in the micro-oven suffices to bring it to the table.

Ford again (emphasis added):

. . . it takes a certain number of [Sleep-Inducing Technical Term, or SITT -- RW] to enrich uranium all the way to weapons-usable levels, but by the time one gets to [LEU] most of that work has already been accomplished. It takes fewer [SITT] to finish the job than to get to [LEU] in the first place, so possessing a supply of uranium that is already LEU makes it much easier to enrich to HEU levels [but] at a secret additional facility.

This is nothing new, Ford explains in a previous paper. Describing the early U.S. nuclear years, he writes: "Thinkers of the period were painfully aware of what we might today call the problem of the 'latent' or 'virtual' nuclear weapons programs [which can be ramped up in case of a threat -- RW] afforded by possession of nuclear fuel-making capabilities. As U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson put it, the true 'measure of atomic armament'. . . was to be found less in what [a country] actually had 'put into a bomb'" than in the sum-total of its fissionable material.

Therefore, writes Pellaud:

For the time being, this shipment to Russia. . . eliminates the [risk of a nuclear weapons breakout]. Some would argue that Iran would only send to Russia part of its LEU stockpile and keep hidden any past clandestine production of LEU. Not so easy. The IAEA would indeed detect such dissimulation, [like it] kept track [of the] 350 tonnes of raw uranium that Iran had purchased from Namibia in the seventies.

Besides, wrote Andreas Persbo in March at Verification, Implementation, and Compliance, winner of the award for Highest-Traffic-Generating Blog Title three years running (not):

A break-out at this stage would be very risky for the Iranian government. The amassed low-enriched material is about right for one uranium-based weapon, but in order to get that processed into weapons-grade, Iran would need to reconfigure the cascade and run the material through the facility again. Then, the weapons grade material would need to [go through a Tedious Technical Process, or TTP -- RW].

How long will that process take?

… a minimum of two months. Add another four to five months to [endure yet another TTP] and we're up to half a year. Even if the Iranians have done their weaponization homework, they'll have to move from theory to practice for the first time. [What's more] they only have enough material for one weapon. It is literally a one-shot deal. …

If Iran really wants to acquire a nuclear weapon, the best strategy would be to bypass safeguards altogether and to build a clandestine enrichment facility.

Which, of course, it since did -- the Fordo facility near Iranian holy city Qom, from which an International Atomic Energy Agency inspection team just returned. "We had a good trip," said the mission head.

First posted at the Faster Times.

Hersh: In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:18:54 -0800

Seymour Hersh | Nov 16 Issue | New Yorker

Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a four-hundred-million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”

The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust. Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)

Seymour Hersh | Nov 16 Issue | New Yorker

In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.

Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”

Clinton’s words sounded reassuring, and several current and former officials also said in interviews that the Pakistan Army was in full control of the nuclear arsenal. But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.

On April 29th, President Obama was asked at a news conference whether he could reassure the American people that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could be kept away from terrorists. Obama’s answer remains the clearest delineation of the Administration’s public posture. He was, he said, “gravely concerned” about the fragility of the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. “Their biggest threat right now comes internally,” Obama said. “We have huge . . . national-security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.” The United States, he said, could “make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure—primarily, initially, because the Pakistan Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons’ falling into the wrong hands.”

The questioner, Chuck Todd, of NBC, began asking whether the American military could, if necessary, move in and secure Pakistan’s bombs. Obama did not let Todd finish. “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals of that sort,” he said. “I feel confident that the nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands. O.K.?”

Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a four-hundred-million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”

The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust. Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)

A senior Pakistani official who has close ties to Zardari exploded with anger during an interview when the subject turned to the American demands for more information about the arsenal. After the September 11th attacks, he said, there had been an understanding between the Bush Administration and then President Pervez Musharraf “over what Pakistan had and did not have.” Today, he said, “you’d like control of our day-to-day deployment. But why should we give it to you? Even if there was a military coup d’état in Pakistan, no one is going to give up total control of our nuclear weapons. Never. Why are you not afraid of India’s nuclear weapons?” the official asked. “Because India is your friend, and the longtime policies of America and India converge. Between you and the Indians, you will fuck us in every way. The truth is that our weapons are less of a problem for the Obama Administration than finding a respectable way out of Afghanistan.”

China condemns US trade action

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:51:55 -0800

Beijing | November 6

Al Jazeera - China has described as protectionist new US anti-dumping duties on steel pipes and demanded Washington's recognition that it is a market economy.

The reaction came a day after the US imposed preliminary anti-dumping duties ranging up to 99 per cent on $2.63bn in Chinese-made pipes used in the oil and gas industry.

The Chinese commerce department issued its preliminary decision on Friday, a week before Barack Obama, the US president, heads to Asia on a trip that includes stops in Shanghai and Beijing.

"China resolutely opposes the abuse of protectionist measures, and will take measures to protect the interests of our domestic industry," the ministry said on its website.