Could "Virtual Deterrence" Actually Increase the Chances of Nuclear War?

By Russ Wellen

Virtual deterrence, while not new, has gained some currency in recent years as a means to both avert nuclear war and expedite nuclear disarmament. "Virtual," in this instance, means abolishing nuclear weapons, which the United States maintains primarily to deter, or prevent, other states from attacking us with theirs. Instead, only the know-how and production capacity (as well as the fuel) to reconstitute them would be retained in case of a perceived national security emergency.

In its inability to signal a true commitment to nuclear disarmament, virtual deterrence is hardly ideal. But it sounds like a step in the right direction, right? In fact, the sad irony is that divesting ourselves of the hardware and retaining only the knowledge might actually increase the risks of nuclear war. Worse, it might hasten it.

In a paper that the Hudson Institute published in November titled Nuclear Weapons Reconstitution and its Discontents: Challenges of "Weaponless Deterrence", fellows Christopher Ford explains why as well as anybody. First, though, let's deal with a questionable claim he makes first.

The logic of reconstitution would seem to presuppose what the disarmament community often takes as axiomatic, but what is in fact a highly contested issue -- namely, that the only use of nuclear weapons is in fact for deterring the use of similar weapons by others.

He also alluded to this in a recent talk he gave on nuclear deterrence.

Discussions of nuclear deterrence, in some quarters, tend to presuppose what the disarmament community often takes as axiomatic, but which is, in fact, a highly questionable claim -- namely, that the only use of nuclear weapons is in fact for deterring the use of other nuclear weapons by others. This is a seductive idea [which seems] to offer a kind of "fast-track" to nuclear disarmament. . . . because nuclear deterrence is assumed not really to "touch" any of the other structures of our lives, it could simply be lifted up and tossed away. [But if] nuclear weapons turn out to be entangled in various ways with broader security or other issues . . . it is much harder to imagine them being surgically excised, and nuclear deterrence so cleanly disposed of.

Among the ways in which nuclear weapons are entangled in broader security is deterring the use of not only nuclear weapons, but a larger conventional army, a service nuclear weapons ostensibly performed during the Cold War in Europe versus the massive Red Army. Also, states seek to proliferate for reasons other than national security, such as prestige. Besides, like a national airline, it's just what a state often thinks it should do to show it's arrived on the international scene.

Nevertheless, it's a mistake to assert that disarmament advocates believe that deterrence is the only use of nuclear weapons. More likely, they were originally inspired to take up the cause and, for the most part, still are by the fear that states will use nuclear weapons offensively. It's hawks and realpolitik types who have homed in on deterrence.

In recent years replacement of the phrase "nuclear weapons" with "our nuclear deterrent" has become commonplace. It's as if not only is deterrence the primary reason that nuclear weapons are maintained by the United States, but nukes have no actual use in fighting a war. This phenomenon can be seen in the title of the most recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by Schultz, Perry, Kissinger, and Nunn (the Four Horsemen of the Un-Apocalypse): How to Protect Our Nuclear Deterrent.

I've been unsuccessful in discovering who "re-branded" nuclear weapons thusly. But this kind of "messaging" is an attempt to convey the notion that instead of the principal threat to life on earth (along with global warming), nuclear weapons actually make us safe.

We'll return now to how virtual deterrence can make us less safe. In his talk, Christopher Ford cites nuclear strategist Thomas Schelling, who expressed a concern that, if nuclear weapons are de-mobilized

. . . "every responsible government must consider that other responsible governments will mobilize their nuclear weapons base as soon as war erupts, or as soon as war appears likely." As a result, "there will be at least covert frantic efforts . . . to acquire deliverable nuclear weapons as rapidly as possible." Worse yet, there might be incentives for the country that acquired nuclear weapons first actually to use them preemptively. . . . employing a temporary monopoly upon nuclear weaponry. . . . in order to halt its opponent's analogous rush toward nuclear armament.

In short, Schelling

. . . suggests that a world without nuclear weapons would become one in which many countries "would have hair-trigger mobilization plans to rebuild nuclear weapons. . . . The urge to preempt would dominate; whoever gets the first few weapons will coerce or preempt. It would be a nervous world."

Hawks and realpolitikers both discount disarmament because the road to it is filled with potholes or, if it were a healthcare policy, gaps in coverage. But, even if one believes that proceeding down that path is more of a risk than retaining nuclear weapons, the balance of power that deterrence supposedly affords is an illusion. States that aspire to nuclear weapons aside, some that possess them, such as North Korea, Pakistan, and perhaps Israel, haven't given up the notion that they're just as essential for their offensive, first-strike capability than for deterrence.

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

Imagine Disarmament and Nonproliferation Talks That Reward the State With More Nukes

By Russ Wellen

Nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation are based in part on the premise that if the states with the most nuclear weapons dial down their numbers that those with fewer will do the same. Just as important, states without nuclear weapons will no longer be tempted to develop them. Sounds like a simple matter of leadership, right?

But today, not only conservatives, but generic realists, make the case that whether or not the United States makes significant strides toward global zero is of no concern whatsoever to states aching to scratch the nuclear itch. It's explained as well as anywhere in a 2009 paper for the Hudson Institute by Christopher Ford titled Nuclear Disarmament, Nonproliferation, and the "Credibility Thesis".

Personally, I cast my lot with those who call for global zero. But I can't help suspecting that conservatives and sundry, self-styled realists are correct when they claim that states that seem to aspire to nuclear weapons -- Iran, Syria, and Burma, for instance -- aren't impressed with disarmament. It's as if disarmament were an acquired taste.

Even more oblivious to calls for global zero are most of those states that acquired nuclear weapons without signing nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. The fourth, though, India, might respond to disarmament leadership on the part of the United States and Russia. As might another which signed the NPT, but, more and more is portrayed as a rival to the United States -- China, of course.

But Lavina Lee, author of a foreign policy briefing published by the Cato Institute in February titled Beyond Symbolism? The U.S. Nuclear Disarmament Agenda and Its Implications for Chinese and Indian Nuclear Policy, isn't so sure.

The Obama administration has elevated nuclear disarmament to the center of its nuclear agenda through the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty [among other things, and] expects that its professed goal of "getting to zero" has symbolic value and will encourage reciprocity in terms of disarmament and nuclear arms control by other nuclear weapons states, as well as cooperation on measures to limit nuclear proliferation. [But in] the case of the two rising powers of Asia -- China and India -- it is highly questionable whether either of these expectations will be met.

For its part, while

China has already responded favorably to the new START treaty [but it] is likely to be viewed in Beijing as merely a first, tentative step toward global zero. . . . In China's view, the United States and Russia, as "the two countries possessing the largest nuclear arsenals, bear >em>special and primary responsibility for nuclear disarmament" [Ambassador Li Baodong speaking] and should "further drastically reduce their nuclear arsenals."

Specifically, writes Ms. Lee

Given that the United States currently has 5,113 warheads in its nuclear stockpile . . . and China's nuclear capabilities are estimated at around 240 . . . it is unlikely that the Chinese will believe that the New START treaty has created anywhere near the "necessary conditions" to enable China to begin force reductions of its own.

Worse, from China's point of view (ostensibly anyway)

. . . given President Obama�s own admission that global zero is unlikely to be achieved in his lifetime, the Chinese have cause to question whether the United States and Russia will voluntarily relinquish their nuclear superiority any time soon. Under these circumstances, the United States will be waiting a long time for any Chinese reciprocity on nuclear force reductions.

Along with the token cuts in New START and U.S. adherence to missile defense, neither is the $85 billion that President Obama has committed to the nuclear weapons industry in the United States over the next decade likely lost on China. For India's part, since it doesn't loom as a supposed threat to the United States, it

. . . has little reason to view the continuing strategic nuclear superiority of the United States and Russia as a security threat. However, in keeping with its moral and political stance against nuclear weapons [say what? -- RW]. . . . Prime Minister Singh, while welcoming the New START agreement also called on "all states with substantial nuclear arsenals to further accelerate this process by making deeper cuts that will lead to meaningful disarmament."

But professing to support disarmament and putting the onus on the U.S. and Russia to show leadership is somewhat disingenuous on the part of India when what really determines its willingness to disarm lay elsewhere. Ms. Lee explains.

The greatest influence over when India will begin nuclear force reductions remains . . . its nuclear armed regional competitors, China and Pakistan. . . . Any commitments India is likely to make on nuclear force reductions will be linked to both of these states doing the same.

Besides, Ms. Lee writes [emphasis added]:

The bottom line is that the short-term national security interests of both China and India are likely to have greater influence over the level of [disarmament] reciprocity that will be forthcoming [from them], given that global zero is still aspirational and the United States continues to maintain a high level of nuclear superiority.

Which means

. . . there are real opportunity costs associated with elevating disarmament to the center of U.S. nuclear diplomacy. Of concern here is the risk that that the United States will offer much with respect to nuclear disarmament and get little in return. In particular, placing emphasis on disarmament could inadvertently provide both states, especially China, with a reason to condition progress toward nuclear proliferation goals on even greater force reductions by the United States. . . . Linking disarmament to nonproliferation may have had symbolic value but may ironically have the effect of reducing U.S. leverage in achieving nonproliferation goals that are more immediately pressing and achievable. Because the United States has more to lose in getting to zero -- if that goal is achievable at all -- than either China or India, it would not be wise for America to dissipate its advantages without gaining significant concessions in return.

Even though I routinely read this kind of material for fun (alas, no profit), I found it necessary to read that paragraph over and over to worry some sense from it. With regards to the italicized sentence, why does the United States finds itself in a position to "offer much"? Because it has many more nuclear weapons to divest itself of than China. Thus, Ms. Lee advises the United States not "to dissipate its advantages" in weapons numbers "without gaining significant concessions in return." Those would include requiring China to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and join in creating a treaty on fissile material treaty before the United States agrees to give up a certain number of weapons.

The problem with maintaining that since China doesn't have the same approximate number of weapons to count down as the United States and Russia does, it must substitute agreeing to Western treaties is immediately apparent. In effect, it punishes China for its "failure" to have built as large a nuclear arsenal as those of the United States and Russia and for not having as many weapons to dicker down.

How shortsighted of China to have limited its arsenal when it should have foreseen the day when it would be required to reciprocally roll back its weapons with the United States and Russia! In effect, no matter how worthy a goal treaty ratification may be, handicapping a state for its head start in the disarmament race (if you can call a course that will likely require generations to negotiate a race) is no way to promote either disarmament or nonproliferation.

In the end, Ms. Lee's advice to extract concessions from China before we agree to disarm is yet another attempt by right and other realists to put the nonproliferation cart before the disarmament horse when traditionally disarmament was expected to lead the way.

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

Nuclear Disarmament Would Make U.S. Undisputed Arms Champ

By Russ Wellen

The Interpreter, the blog for Australia's Lowy Institute for International Policy, is hosting a debate on whether or not nuclear deterrence is still relevant (assuming it ever was). In his contribution, George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace made an extraordinary statement.

US interest in nuclear disarmament stems from the perception that a world without nuclear weapons would give it a greater advantage against others that might threaten it or its allies.�The others -- particularly China, Russia and North Korea -- recognize this! They see the Obama agenda as a means of strengthening the US advantage.�Hence they (and Pakistan) are likely to impede nuclear disarmament.�How does this weaken extended nuclear deterrence?

By "stems from," Perkovich seems to be saying that the elimination of nuclear weapons allows the indisputable supremacy of U.S. conventional weapons to assume pride of place in global security. Without the great equalizer of nuclear weapons, the United States, with all its might, would no longer be liable to ransom by an "irrational actor" -- from a North Korean dictator to a terrorist group -- possessing only one or two nuclear weapons while the United States still retains thousands.

Let's be charitable and assume that by "stems from," Perkovich doesn't rule out other motivations the United States might have for seeking the abolition of nuclear weapons -- like exponentially reducing the number of people it might lose in an attack. (Sorry, just don't have the time to comb through his writings to confirm that). But, considering his position in the mainstream arms control world, Perkovich's cynicism is eye-opening.

Yet, when it comes to nuclear disarmament, there are even more cynical depths to which one can sink. As is apparent to those who read him, this author believes that what passes for disarmament -- for example, New START -- is actually a smokescreen behind which the U.S. nuclear weapons program is retrenching for the long haul.

I believe that the eyes of China, Russia, North Korea, and especially Iran are also open to U.S. intentions. They're troubled by more than the notion that the United States seeks to abolish nuclear weapons because it makes states with nominal nuclear arsenals (if any can be referred to as such) theoretically equal to the larger, more "rational" nuclear-weapon states. Even more disturbing to them is the sight of a United States that talks a good game about disarmament but plans to spend $180 billion over the next decade on its nuclear industrial complex.

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

Does the Taboo Against the Use of Nuclear Weapons Only Increase Their Allure?

By Russ Wellen

It's only natural that highly charged words find themselves coupled with the word "nuclear." It's almost as if they're attracted by a magnetic force. Three examples spring to mind.

Holocaust: Most frequently, of course, it's used in reference to the slaughter of Jews in World War II. When appended to "nuclear," it describes an earth ravaged to within an inch of its life by nuclear war.

Apartheid: Originally, as we all know, it was the word for segregation in South Africa from 1948 to 1993. When preceded by "nuclear," it describes the perception of some states without nuclear weapons that those in possession of same are keeping them (as well as nuclear energy) for themselves. And yes, it is singularly sleazy, to link the word "apartheid" with nuclear weapons.

The first two phenomena are obviously less than fortuitous. The third word, in contrast, falls on the sunnier side of the street. "Taboo," from the Tongan tabu, is a ban or an inhibition born of a social custom and/or deep-seated revulsion. But plant "nuclear" before it and, along with deterrence (as conventional wisdom has it), it becomes, in the words of Nina Tannenwald, author of The Nuclear Taboo, a "normative prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons." (Norm -- "a standard, model, or pattern regarded as typical" according to a popular web dictionary -- is another word often heard in connection with a state's possession or lack thereof of nuclear weapons. Not as charged as the other three words, it doesn't qualify for inclusion in our list.)

In the fall of 2010, the Buddhist publication SGI Quarterly asked Ms. Tannenwald how the taboo developed.

I identify three primary factors: First is a global grassroots antinuclear weapons movement which made it impossible to think about nuclear weapons as just another weapon; the second element was antinuclear politics at the United Nations; and a third element was strategic pressures and the risks of escalation. I might add a fourth element, which is the conscience of individual leaders who really felt that nuclear weapons were morally repugnant and that we had to do something to delegitimize them. So, when you look at how this taboo arose--the change from 1945, when it was assumed that nuclear weapons would be used in war like any other weapons, to today, when nuclear weapons use by states is almost unthinkable--it reflects both morality and self-interest. That is, you have a convergence of realist interest and the moral interest--the sense that these are unacceptable, morally abhorrent weapons--and that creates a fairly large constituency, perhaps larger than we have had for a long time, for actually moving toward abolition.

While Ms. Tannenwald views the taboo as an agent of disarmament, the case can also be made that, by definition, taboos have a limited shelf life. For example, in the West, the veil has been lifted from topics that societal consensus once deemed unfit for discussion -- such as alcoholism, depression, homosexuality, and divorce.

The near-taboo on a wholesale U.S. intervention in foreign countries that had been in effect since the Vietnam War was superseded by the perceived threat of Islamist terrorism. In fact, it vanished into thin air as the United States committed significant numbers of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. Nothing like a perceived threat to make a taboo seem like little more than a social nicety.

The West frets about states such as North Korea and Iran developing nuclear-weapons arsenals. On the other hand, many in the field of international relations hold that when a state that heretofore has been rash in its foreign-policy decisions becomes nuclear-weaponized, it becomes a "rational actor." But if another kind of actor -- the non-state variety such as al Qaeda -- were the beneficiary of nuclear weapons, would its new status impel it to think like a state, or, in its case, a caliphate?

Chances are, steeped in taboos as Islamic extremists are, they wouldn't seek to take pleasure in breaking one. Even though fatwas have been issued against the use of nuclear weapons, it's likely that Islamic extremists would simply fail to acknowledge the existence of a taboo on the use of nuclear weapons. No, they wouldn't reflexively incinerate the infidels. Instead, they'd probably hold the West hostage to demands such as rolling Israel's boundaries back to before the 1967 War and a removal of all Western armed forces from the Middle East.

We're under the gun: we need to make use of the nuclear taboo as a springboard to disarmament before its expiration date. But there exists another nuclear taboo -- against discussing in polite company the death and destruction caused by nuclear weapons. If we could do away with that we'd be in a better position to be heard and expand disarmament's core constituency.

We could then take advantage of the convergence about which Ms. Tannenwald speaks, between those motivated by realist, and those by ethical, concerns. There's still time to beat those who have no respect for the nuclear taboo to the punch and knock out nuclear weapons before they take us out.

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

Is "It's Not Fair" a Mature Response to Being Denied Nuclear Weapons?

By Russ Wellen

As recently as last month, the term "nuclear apartheid," in all its unsavoriness, reared its ugly head again. Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency denounced the IAEA's approval of a plan for a nuclear fuel bank as "nuclear apartheid" (because of the implied infringement on a state's own nuclear fuel production). For his part, back in 2005 President Ahmadinejad said of nuclear technology, "We're against 'nuclear apartheid,' which means some have the right to possess it, use the fuel, and then sell it to another country for 10 times its value."

When applied to nuclear weapons, the phrase may have been first used by Jaswant Singh, an adviser on defense and foreign affairs to former Prime Minister Vajpayee. In a 1998 Foreign Affairs article titled Against Nuclear Apartheid, he spoke out against nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) enforcement of a regime that, in effect, permits United Nations Security Council states to reserve nuclear weapons for themselves.

When we recall that the term "apartheid" originally referred to legalized segregation in South Africa from 1948 to 1993 and, by implication, the noble struggle to roll it back in the name of equal rights, we recoil at using it to refer to matters nuclear, especially weapons programs.

Nevertheless, applying the principle of equal rights to nuclear weapons is an issue to states that aspire to develop nuclear-weapons program. Singh made that crystal clear when, in defense of India's 1998 nuclear tests, he wrote, "India's nuclear policy remains firmly committed to a basic tenet: that the country's national security in a world of nuclear proliferation lies either in global disarmament or in exercise of the principle of equal and legitimate security for all."

On the surface, it's tough to argue with his premise: a nuclear-weapons program for any state that feels the need for one -- or none for any states. What's overlooked, though, is that the NPT came into force in 1970 after the UN Security Council permanent members (the United States, the Soviet Union, the Republic of China, England, and France) had already developed nuclear weapons programs. Unstated is the assumption that had the NPT been drawn up before the dawn of nuclear weapons, it might have prevented their development.

The NPT was an attempt to make the best of a bad situation by capping the number of nuclear states at five while guaranteeing all other states that signed the treaty access to nuclear energy, as well as obligating the nuclear states to gradually disarm (though some feel it only requires that they negotiate "in good faith," not actually disarm). What the non-nuclear states are witness to today is obstacle after obstacle being placed before a state, such as Iran, that signed the NPT and claims that it seeks to develop nuclear energy absent an allied weapons program.

Furthermore, those treaty members that possess weapons seem to be making no substantive steps to divest themselves of them. Does anyone really believe it escapes Iran's notice that New START, the token weapons reductions of which were primarily intended as a confidence-building measure for Russia, was ratified by the United States while it also committed to spend $185 billion on nuclear weapons over the next decade?

But isn't a state such as Iran being disingenuous when it cries nuclear injustice? practitioners of realpolitik, isn't that jejeune? After all, as Shane Maddock wrote in his 2010 book Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present, John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under President Eisenhower, said, "In the past higher civilizations have always maintained their place against lower civilizations by devising more effective weapons." All's fair in love and war, right?

In a recent paper for the Hudson Institute, Haves and Have-Nots: Unfairness in Nuclear Weapons Possession, Christopher Ford, one of its senior fellows, writes that the unfairness argument is "a cynical rationalization for the destabilizing pursuit of dangerous capabilities." Regarding the NPT:

"Have nots" have surely always coveted powerful tools possessed by the "haves," or at least wished that the "haves" did not possess them. It seems . . . to be a curiously modern phenomenon . . . for non-possessors to articulate such . . . envy and resentment in the moral language of "unfairness," and to assume that this presumed injustice should motivate the "haves" to change their behavior.

Ford places the issue in historical perspective:

If iron had threatened to offer the Vikings an insuperable advantage, would the Skraelings [indigenous peoples of Greenland and Newfoundland -- RW] have been justified in developing a . . . resentment that demanded either the sharing of iron weaponry or Viking disarmament in the name of achieving a global "iron zero"?

More to the point, he writes:

. . . the destructively "special" character of nuclear weaponry cuts against the "unfairness critique" in that it is this very specialness that seems to rob the "have/have not" issue of its moral relevance. . . . No prior technology held the potential to destroy humanity, making nuclear weapons [along with other WMD, a unique phenomenon] to which the conventional "unfairness" critique simply does not very persuasively apply.

Driving the point home, Ford writes that the "existential questions. . . . . utterly swamp the conventional playground morality of unfair 'have/have not' competition.' . . . moreover, it stands to reason that an 'unfair' outcome that nonetheless staves off such horrors is a perfectly good solution." In policy speak: "Questions of stability are far more important than issues of asymmetric distribution."

Closing the circle, Ford points out that:

. . . the hollowness of the "unfairness" argument as applied to nuclear weapons [is itself an argument for the legitimacy] of nonproliferation even if complete nuclear disarmament cannot be achieved. . . . Indeed, I would submit that we lose our moral bearings if we allow "unfairness" arguments to distract us from what is really important here.

Back in 2008, left met right in, surprisingly, an editorial at the British socialist website Workers' Liberty.

The argument that Israel has nuclear weapons and therefore, in "fairness", so should the Arab states and Islamic powers like Iran is nonsense � an argument for the establishment in the region of a "nuclear balance of terror" such as that which existed between the USA and Russia for half a century.

It should be noted that card-carrying socialists, or progressives of any stripe, who espouse apportioning nuclear weapons should, by all rights, be stripped of their cards. To a true leftist, nothing, including injustice, justifies nuclear weapons.

So far, so good with the Workers' Liberty editorial writer. But one paragraph later he or she has fallen into a trap. See if it sounds familiar.

All this would be true whatever the character of the Iranian regime; but it is especially true given the nature of the regime that has ruled in Iran for thirty years. It is a clerical-fascist regime: its leaders are concerned more with their imaginary supernatural world than with this. It is not inconceivable that some of those at the heart of the Iranian state power might come to think of nuclear annihilation in the way that individual homicide bombers think of their own destruction in an explosion they themselves trigger � as a glorious and sure way to reach martyrdom and the martyrs' special place in Paradise.

As you can see, the author is compromising his or her socialist cred by repeating that element of the nuclear equal-rights argument that small states find most offensive. In other words, he or she asserts that only sane states -- "rational actors" -- need apply to develop weapons programs, or more accurately, retain the privilege of having their existing programs, developed outside the NPT, overlooked. Thus are Israel, India, and Pakistan (the sole claim of the last to rationality -- its status as a U.S. ally in The War on Terror -- rapidly eroding along with the structural integrity of its government) posed in opposition to Iran and North Korea.

As Jonathan Schell wrote:

The most dangerous illusion is that "we can hold on to nuclear weapons while at the same time stopping their proliferation to other countries. That is an absolutely unworkable proposition. It just cannot happen in the real world."

In the end, no matter the short term benefits to security, when the West severs the ties that bind disarmament to nonproliferation, it further undermines the trust of the developing world and long-term prospects for international security.

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

Thanks to New START, You Too Can "Ride Out" a Nuclear Attack

By Russ Wellen

When you think of a nuclear treaty such as New START, a decrease in the number of nuclear weapons naturally comes to mind. While that's been true in the past, New START leaves the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia more or less intact. In March 2010 Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists explained at it Strategic Security Blog that:

. . . the treaty does not require destruction of a single nuclear warhead and actually permits the United States and Russia to deploy almost the same number of strategic warheads that were permitted by the 2002 Moscow Treaty [thanks to, in part, a] new counting rule that attributes one weapon to each bomber rather than the actual number of weapons assigned to them. [In fact, this] "fake" counting rule frees up a large pool of warhead spaces under the treaty limit that enable each country to deploy many more warheads than would otherwise be the case. . . . Indeed, the New START Treaty is not so much a nuclear�reductions�treaty as it is a verification�and�confidence building�treaty.

(As well as -- anyone familiar with my writing knows -- a mechanism by which Republicans squeezed an $85 billion commitment from the Obama administration to shore up the nuclear-industrial complex over the next decade.)

The confidence-building to which Kristensen alluded is an element of the treaty to which many conservatives objected. With nostalgia for the Cold War still running high among them, they bridled at the extent to which New START signified a "reset" in relations with Russia. Thus, with hawks always willing to poke a stick into the hive of U.S.-Russia relations, it's folly to think that just because the Cold War ended that we've been inoculated against nuclear war with Russia. Especially since the chances of an accident are greater than ever, as I explored in a previous post.

Not to worry, though -- we can always "ride out" a nuclear attack. Ride-out is one of the president's two options in the event of a nuclear attack, neither of which is declared policy, though. First, the other: launch-on-warning. In that scenario, as soon as it believes that it has detected nuclear weapons headed towards it soil, a state mounts a retaliatory strike. In another words, the attacked state isn't waiting around for the decisive confirmation -- which detonation on its soil constitutes -- that the alarm wasn't false.

Ride-out is waiting until struck before retaliating, to keep from responding to a false alarm. Besides, to do otherwise would violate the spirit of deterrence, which stands in opposition to a preemptive attack. Of course, you're wondering if the United States would be in a position to counterattack after the initial nuclear strike on its soil. Not only will our missile silos have been targeted but the nuclear command and control infrastructure.

In a recent paper for the Hudson Institute, Christopher Ford, one of its research fellows, addresses this.

. . . analysts [have] wondered for years whether it was even possible to ensure sufficient nuclear force and C3I [command and control] survivability in the face of the enormous nuclear barrages that were possible at the height of the Cold War. Desmond Ball and John D. Steinbrunner, for instance, argued in the early 1980s that such survivability was, for practical purposes, a fool's errand. . . . As the Soviets put more and more warheads on their missiles . . . it seemed increasingly likely that no such system would be able to survive a full-scale attack.

Back in 2004, writing for his Center for Defense Information, neither was Bruce Blair too sanguine about riding out a nuclear attack.

The option to "ride out" the onslaught and then take stock of the proper course of action exists only on paper. . . . The bias in favor of launch on electronic warning is so powerful that it would take enormously more presidential will to withhold an attack than to authorize it.

Besides:

Military nuclear commanders designed the hardware and procedures of emergency decision-making to ensure that no president would actually deliberately opt to ride out a Soviet nuclear attack, even though U.S. nuclear policy [as stated above -- RW] endorsed second-strike retaliation � assured destruction � as the essential element of U.S. deterrent strategy. . . . They knew full well that the U.S. nuclear command system would collapse under the weight of such a Soviet first strike. . . . Riding out was not a practical choice in the real world, and so the operational system was geared so that presidential approval to unleash U.S. strategic forces before the first incoming Soviet missile reached America would be obtained.

But, in "today's post-Cold War context," writes Ford, C3I "survivability may be less Quixotic an aspiration." In other words, despite the incremental progress that New START represents, the number of nuclear weapons may now be low enough to enable us to ride out an attack. "It may now be possible," he explains, "for both sides to develop a credible 'ride-out' option � arguably for the first time in decades . . . simultaneously ensuring retaliation and reducing incentives to implement launch on warning."

The term "ride-out" implies a mutual decision about how many casualties are acceptable. Needless to say, no such consensus exists. One man's survival is another's "the living will envy the dead."

More from Ford: "Domestic U.S. civil defense preparations were . . . discontinued" at the height of the Cold War when arsenals were at their largest. The "Kennedy Administration had proposed an extensive civil defense program in 1961, but it soon became clear that most defensive measures could be far more easily and cheaply neutralized by the enemy than created in the first place."

Recently however, the Obama administration has revived the subject of surviving a nuclear attack if you're not at ground zero. On December 15, William Broad wrote in the New York Times:

The government has a surprising new message: Do not flee. Get inside any stable building and don't come out till officials say it's safe. The advice is based on recent scientific analyses showing that a nuclear attack is much more survivable if you immediately shield yourself from the lethal radiation that follows a blast, a simple tactic seen as saving hundreds of thousands of lives. . . .

Administration officials argue that the cold war created an unrealistic sense of fatalism about a terrorist nuclear attack. "It's more survivable than most people think," said an official.

That's if you hold to the prevailing doctrine that terrorists, not a nuclear state (the question of a state arming the terrorists aside), would be the likely source of an attack. The attack would presumably be a fraction of that mounted by a state such as Russia.

Whatever the case, the new emphasis on nuclear survival doesn't sit well with many. In an article for the Atlantic titled The Unexpected Return of Duck and Cover, Glenn Reynolds writes:

But now "duck and cover" is back, not as kitsch but once again as serious advice from the federal government. Faced with growing concerns about a nuclear attack on one or more major cities . . . authorities are once again looking to educate citizens about what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. And that advice sounds a lot like what they were saying in my grandfather's day: Duck and cover.

False hope, in other words. At Truthout, Ira Chernus also scoffed at the notion.

The Obama administration wants us to learn to accept the prospect of a major American city destroyed. Its report never even mentions the possibility of averting disaster by changing the U.S. policies that enrage people, whether abroad or at home.

In other words, "negotiating with terrorists" frightens Washington even more than a nuclear attack on American soil.

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

Does Prague Stop With START?

By Russ Wellen
"There's just been no talk about that right now, none whatsoever."

Thus spake John Kerry, who led the Senate campaign for New START ratification as reported by David Sanger of the New York Times when asked about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. At his famous Prague speech in April 2009 that buoyed the hopes of many in the disarmament community, President Obama said, among other things that he would seek U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (on nuclear-weapons testing).

Like many on the left we're usually less than sanguine about Sanger, with his tendency to bend to the prevailing winds, but this article is straightforward.

[New START] was initially envisioned as a speed bump on�President Obama's nuclear agenda, a modest reduction in nuclear forces that would enable him to tackle much harder issues on the way to his dream of eventually eliminating�nuclear weapons altogether.

It turned out to be a mountain. . . . his own aides acknowledge that the lesson of the battle over the treaty is that the political divide on national security is widening. . . . "If the Start treaty was this hard, you can only imagine how difficult the rest will be," said William J. Perry, a secretary of defense during the Clinton administration and one of the four former cold warriors who helped formulate the goal of a world without nuclear weapons that Mr. Obama has embraced.

Couple this with the $185 billion* for nuclear weapons which the Obama administration has proposed for 2011 (in part to win Republican votes for New START) and it's almost as if New START is the beginning of the end of the disarmament movement. Or at least of this second phase after the first phase of ban-the-bomb and nuclear freeze grassroots movements. In his recent paper for the Western States Legal foundation, The START Treaty and Disarmament: a Dilemma in Search of a Debate, Andrew Lichterman sheds some light on the current phase.

A recent U.S. Congressional Research Service catalog of U.S. arms control agreements begins with this statement: "Arms control and nonproliferation efforts are two of the tools that have occasionally been used to implement U.S. national security strategy." This reflects a far more realistic view of what arms control is than seems to prevail among NGO disarmament professionals today [most of whom] seem to have lost sight of the fact that. . . . arms control is little more than the pursuit of military advantage by diplomatic means. Working for disarmament, in contrast, means opposing destructive weaponry . . . without favoring the concerns of elites. . . .

Most who do [the] kind of professionalized interest group campaigning and advocacy [that passes for] disarmament work act as if this decline of civil society and the rise of an oligarchic politics . . . is inevitable, something to be adapted to rather than struggled against.

In July, at MRZine, Darwin BondGraham of the Los Alamos Study Group zeroed in on an example, the Ploughshares Fund, about which, he begins, "In spite of its name, Ploughshares' mission these days actually involves beating ploughs into swords."

Throughout the 1990s, but especially during the George W. Bush years, Ploughshares and its circle of foundations called the�Peace and Security Funders Group�increasingly narrowed the range of acceptable anti-nuclear activism, while simultaneously ghettoizing the field so that the work of various NGOs became less and less applicable to social justice and economic development issues, and increasingly focused on abstract global problems and hypotheticals, such as the possible use of nuclear weapons. In the process, discussions of the injustices of the global political economy and how nuclear weapons fit into it were silenced. Anti-nuclear activism became increasingly specialized, boring, and disconnected from issues that affect people's everyday lives. Arms control eclipsed abolition as the rallying cry. [Emphasis added.]

Back to Lichterman:

No disarmament movements capable of having even the kind of modest effects of the very large, visible Cold War-era anti-nuclear movements exist today. . . . Most who do [the] kind of professionalized interest group campaigning and advocacy prevalent in. . . . disarmament work act as if [the] decline of civil society and the rise of an oligarchic politics . . . is inevitable, something to be adapted to rather than struggled against.

What's to replace the current era of the disarmament specialist?

The requisite vision and analysis of cause and effect will not be developed in conversations among ambitious policy professionals with an eye to what moves them up the career ladder in Washington D.C. [Meanwhile, in] those instances [in the past] where pressure from disarmament movements may have played a significant role in obtaining arms control treaties, there was far more going on than lobbying campaigns backing the treaties. Instead, there were large movements with far more sweeping demands, from those who called for Banning the Bomb . . . to the international peace and disarmament movements of the 1980's [both of which] were intertwined . . . with other social movements.

Rebuilding such movements will require. . . . . a redirection of resources away from centers of corporate, political, and military power down to where the rest of us live, starting over again in the long hard task of building movements that can give us power and voice.

*$85 billion is for nuclear weapons R&D; $100 billion is for delivery systems over the same period. (Thanks to Andrew Lichterman for enlightening me.)

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

Are Nonproliferation and Disarmament, Once Joined at the Hip, Headed for Divorce?

By Russ Wellen

In the words of the old Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen song, as made famous by Frank Sinatra, nonproliferation and disarmament, like love and marriage, "go together like a horse and carriage." Nonproliferation -- preventing states that don't currently possess nuclear weapons -- works in tandem with disarmament -- states with nuclear weapons divesting themselves of same. "You can't have one without the other." Right?

After all -- continuing with the musical metaphor -- that's how the refrain goes in that old strain of a treaty, the NPT (nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). Let's all sing the sixth stanza (aka, article) together: "Each of the Parties to the�Treaty�undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control." (Actually, it would probably require a good rapper to do it justice.)

Yet many maintain that Article VI does not, in fact, commit nuclear-weapons states to a long-term divestment of those weapons. Christopher Ford of the Hudson Institute outlined this position as well as anybody in a Nonproliferation Review article that he wrote shortly after he left the Bush administration as its lead negotiator on the NPT. Negotiations toward that end in themselves, he wrote, are sufficient for a state to be in compliance with Article VI. In the years since, such as in a recent piece for his website, New Paradigms Forum, titled Disarmament Versus Nonproliferation?, he's written about how nonproliferation doesn't necessarily follow in the wake of disarmament.

For those who are believers in what I call the "credibility thesis" -- that is, the idea that a lack of progress in demonstrating disarmament "credibility" is the main "missing ingredient" that has helped ensure that the post-Cold War world has seen so little progress in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons -- this must have been a disheartening year.�. . . as I have outlined elsewhere, our disarmament push seems to have won us no real progress.

Before we address if and why it was a "disheartening year," we'll note that the "elsewhere" Ford outlined our lack of nonproliferation progress is yet another piece he wrote titled Nuclear Disarmament, Nonproliferation, and the "Credibility Thesis". It reads, in part:

First, [the credibility thesis] explicitly assumes that the commitment of the NWS [nuclear weapons states] to the ideal of disarmament lacks credibility, and implicitly assumes that the United States is both the most important locus of the problem and the key to its resolution. Second, it assumes that if this disarmament "credibility gap" is closed, it will be possible to meet today's proliferation threats much more effectively and with a much wider base of diplomatic support. [But the] postulated "catalytic effect" of disarmament progress in support of nonproliferation policy is usually described as being an indirect effect, and rightly so. With good reason, few people seriously argue that countries such as Iran and North Korea seek nuclear weapons simply because the United States or other NWS possess such devices themselves, and that proliferators' interest in such devices would accordingly diminish if only the United States reduced its arsenal further. It is sometimes alleged in disarmament circles that NWS possession of nuclear weapons, merely by making them "legitimate," encourages proliferation.

In the recent New Paradigms Forum piece, he wonders . . .

Where, one might ask, is the credibility-derived "payoff" in nonproliferation cooperation for U.S. progress and leadership in this field to date? And what reason do we have to believe, in its absence, that such a payoff will materialize in the future?

This usage of the term "credibility" is almost unique to Ford. The only other instance we found was by Joseph Gerson of the American Friends Service Committee, who, last spring, referred to a credibility gap between President Obama's disarmament vows and his actions. To put it another way, Gerson doesn't seem to believe that the United States is showing sufficient disarmament leadership, or setting a strong enough example, in following the letter of the law of Article VI, to convince states desirous of nuclear weapons that their covetousness is misplaced. He represents the view of not only much of the disarmament community, but the Non-Aligned Movement (an organization of states not aligned with major power blocs).

Ford acknowledges those agents in the recent article.

There will surely be those who will argue that the credibility thesis has yet�truly�to be tested -- that is, who will chalk up the world's failure to unite in solving all these problems to our failure to do more, and more quickly, in moving toward "zero."� A global united front in support of vigorous nonproliferation would�really have materialized, it will be said, if we had only done more�to disarm.

It must be acknowledged that not only does Ford understand disarmament advocates like few other conservatives, but, odds are, his judgment is sound when he asserts that whether or not we disarm has no bearing whatsoever on the plans of states that hope to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. Still, it behooves us to look at the issue from the vantage point of a small nation, to which 50 nuclear weapons is the stuff of daydreams. The 1,500 to which new START binds Russia and the United States (if ratified by the Senate, which looks less and less likely since the elections) still constitutes an arsenal unimaginable in its immensity.

Furthermore, to the "street" in those nations, the idea that not only can't you have nuclear weapons when others do, but that the nation with the most nukes is leading the call to deprive you of any, not only violates your sense of fair play at its most fundamental level, but is capable of inducing outright cognitive dissonance. In addition, while, deep down, the nation's statesmen likely share those sentiments, they may also feel that the reading of Article IV alluded to above is, at worst, counterintuitive; at best, legalistic.

That kind of hairsplitting scarcely becomes a superpower-slash-world leader in disarmament. Besides, as Jonathan Schell says, the most dangerous illusion is that "we can hold on to nuclear weapons while at the same time stopping their proliferation to other countries. That is an absolutely unworkable proposition. It just cannot happen in the real world."

What's more, attempting to enforce nonproliferation while you still retain 1,500 weapons plus for your personal deterrence is yet another reminder to a small nation of its second-class citizenship as a state. After all, prestige might even be the better part of nuclear aspiration. (Note to nuclear-weapons states: when it comes to throwing small states off the nuclear scent, sharing research in such cutting-edge areas as nanotechnology might, when combined with disarmament, work synergistic wonders.)

On top of everything else we've come up with an ingenious force multiplier for our hypocrisy -- the $80 billion Obama has committed to nuclear modernization over the next decade to win Republican Senate votes to raitfy START. We vastly underestimate Tehran if we think this is lost on the mullahs. In fact, they can be forgiven for perceiving new START as a smoke screen (however thin) for what really is more of a strategic retrenchment in our commitment to nuclear weapons than a rejection of them. Nothing says we're into nuclear weapons for the long haul better than watered-down treaties and the compromises we make to secure them.

Still, there's no denying the legitimacy of the conservative argument that the urgency of nonproliferation precludes waiting around for substantive disarmament which, if it's actually happening, seems to be unfolding over a timetable spanning generations. But proliferation, with nuclear Big Brother -- the International Atomic Energy Association -- looking over the shoulder of states like Iran, while the nuclear black market is a shadow of what it once was, is proceeding at a glacial pace as well. One reason that the American public is skeptical that Iran isn't close to developing nuclear weapons is that it can't understand what's taking a large state so long to get up to speed on a 60-year old technology.

Of course, nonproliferation can be enforced much more quickly than disarmament can be generated -- by attacking the offending state. But the military road to absolute nonproliferation is closed, in the case of Iran, for instance, because social norms on the part of the United States prevent it from mounting a massive enough attack (read: high civilian casualties) to keep Iran's nuclear program from rising from the ashes -- and, this time, unfettered by international constraints it would now disdain. Thus disarmament moves not much more slowly than nonproliferation.

Whether or not disarmament discourages proliferation is immaterial -- it's our only recourse. Besides, does anybody think the time will come when small states will actually pass the United States on the up nuclear escalator while it's on the down escalator to disarmament? The United States would push the emergency shut-off button to disarmament in a heartbeat.

In the end, what the chorus of the Cahn-Van Heusen song reminds us about love and marriage can also be applied to nonproliferation and disarmament: "Try, try, try to separate them, it's an illusion."

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

The Front Line of Disarmament: Blocking a Nuclear Facility Six Times the Cost of the Manhattan Project

By Russ Wellen

That is, six times the cost of the division of the Manhattan Project (to develop nuclear weapons during World War II) that was based in New Mexico. The heart of it -- what later became known as Los Alamos National Laboratory. Odds are, with the Cold War consigned to history, you couldn't have imagined that a nuclear weapons facility of such immensity was still on the table.

Greg Mello is the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG), which, since 1989, has been spearheading nuclear disarmament in New Mexico, and, consequently, the nation. Since 1999, it has concentrated on halting or, failing that, downsizing a building project at Los Alamos called the Chemical and Metallurgical Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR). The intended function of this facility is to increase the capacity to produce new plutonium pits. The actual site of the nuclear fission, they're the beating heart of the warhead.

The CMRR, writes Greg Mello in a press release, "was marketed to Congress as a $350 million building [but] has grown to an estimated $4.3 billion." The "per square foot of useful space has grown to�more than 100 times�what [Los Alamos's] existing plutonium facility cost in 1978, in constant dollars [adjusted for inflation]."

How, you're probably wondering, in these economic times, could we be embarking on an endeavor more vast than the Manhattan Project? If we were, shouldn't it be, instead of weapons, a flagship form of alternative energy?

Cognitive dissonance on our part aside, over the years, LASG devised a plan with the help of a law firm. Under the National Environmental Policy Act they filed suit to stop all funding for and work on the CMRR until a new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was prepared. Nor is this just a legal maneuver: a new EIS is sorely needed.

"The Los Alamos Study Group," reads the the original suit for an EIS (apologies for yet more abbreviations), "alleges that the DOE [Department of Energy] and NNSA [National Nuclear Security Administration] have violated the National Environmental Protection Act [NEPA] by preparing to construct [the CMRR] without an applicable [EIS]. . . . NNSA wrote an EIS for an earlier version of the facility in 2003. At that time the facility was to cost one-tenth as much, use one-fiftieth as much concrete, take one-fourth the time to build, and entail far fewer environmental impacts.

In fact:

Many of the project's difficulties can be traced to just a few major causes. . . . Changes . . . helped drive the proposed facility underground [not figuratively, literally] -- into a thick stratum of loose volcanic ash which cannot support it. [Especially since the] magnitude and frequency of earthquakes expected at the site has increased dramatically, requiring much heavier construction.

Said construction would entail (emphasis added):

� A new excavated depth of 125 feet . . . and replacement of an entire geologic stratum beneath the building with 225,000 cubic yards of concrete and grout;
� . . . 29-fold increases . . . in structural concrete and steel;
� Greatly increased total acreage, sprawling over many technical areas at LANL;
� Anywhere from 20,000 to 110,000 heavy truck trips to and from Los Alamos County;
� A decade-long construction schedule, up from less than 3 years

Bear in mind that the United States already has "approximately 24,000 . . . tested, stockpiled pits for each delivery system" and "these pits last essentially forever." LASG "believes there are many simpler, cheaper, faster, less risky, and less environmentally damaging alternatives to [the CMRR, which] let alone any other . . . is poorly justified from the nuclear deterrence perspective."

Has LASG's strategy proven effective? On November 15 Nuclear Weapons and Materials Monitor reported (emphasis added):

The National Nuclear Security Administration has suspended all procurements related to the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility while the agency updates the environmental analysis of the multi-billion-dollar facility. . . . The move . . . could jeopardize the laboratory's plans to complete work . . . for the project in 2011. . . .

Spurred in part by a push from New Mexico nuclear watchdogs including an ongoing lawsuit by the Los Alamo Study Group -- the NNSA announced in September that it was preparing a Supplemental [EIS] for the CMRR. [Said Supplemental] hasn't satisfied the Los Alamos Study Group, which is still pursuing its lawsuit and pushing for the NNSA to redo the EIS rather than simply update it. . . . But the [NNSA] study will also include an examination of the alternative of not building the project at all, but rather modifying the existing Chemistry and Metallurgy Research building.

The first highlighted phrase shows the effect that LASG is having on the NNSA. The second shows how pragmatic LASG's tactics are. Although total disarmament is its ultimate goal, it keeps its eye on the first line of defense: curbing expansion and waste at Los Alamos.

"The simple hallmark of good policy, is to spend less money"

I contacted Greg Mello and asked him to expand on LASG's strategy. To begin with, he states in one of his press releases:

CMRR . . . should not be desirable to weapons administrators because there are much better, less managerially risky, cheaper, and safer facility options for preserving U.S. nuclear weapons. [And we] have already developed a set of reasonable alternatives to this facility and anticipate working productively with the review team and with Congress.

I just wanted to hear Mello confirm in his own words that the underlying strategy behind the above statements is to walk the world back toward disarmament by working with the nuclear-industrial complex one step at a time. His reply, with my annotation and emphases, follows. Excuse the prejudicial statement, but let's hope that you find it as brimming with insight as I did.

Consider the matter from two perspectives: a) values, or timelessness, or eternity if you want to put it that way, or an ideal; and b) historical process, management reality, political decisions today, or realpolitik. [Most of our work] addresses both. We have to.

�

If we express only absolutist "positions" . . . we will play into the hands of the "antinuclear nuclearists,"* which is a militarist strategy designed in part to emphasize, or capitalize upon, an absence of realpolitik. We will be easily manipulated.

*Anti-nuclear nuclearism, as LASG defines it, is "a foreign and military policy that relies upon overwhelming U.S. power, including the nuclear arsenal, but makes rhetorical and even some substantive commitments to disarmament, however vaguely defined." Mello continues.

I think we must try to place ourselves in the position of those in government who make real decisions, and offer steps . . . to embody our values. . . . . We are not more pure than they are. . . . . They have a job to do and we have to help them or we are not doing our job.�. . .

At present, effective steps toward disarmament and effective steps toward more effective management of the nuclear enterprise can be the same. How? . . . NNSA believes it must modernize the arsenal, replace old weapons with newly-designed ones, and provide the capability for large-scale manufacturing. It is these goals which drive about one-third to half the existing budget, and all the budget increases proposed by Obama and demanded by Republicans. Wiping out these goals would wipe about about 60% of Los Alamos and most of Livermore.�Sandia would be affected much less, and the plants much less still.

��

Wiping out all this spending would bring us toward rationality overall and within NNSA.�We would [still] be dealing with an abusive, violent relative, to be sure, but he would not also be drunk.

Mello provides more little-known insights into the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Officially, NNSA has a goal of nuclear disarmament, since the [nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] was signed and entered into force. . . . It also has a goal of nuclear weapons sustainment.�[Significantly, though, it] does not yet quite have a goal of modernization, but is sidling there. NNSA ignores the disarmament side of its mission. It could decrease the dissonance by construing its [supposed] deterrence goal [even] in a conservative manner. That would help disarmament a lot.

We find that all parties who want to understand us (as opposed to those who seek to harm us, which are unreachable anyway), from the hard-core abolitionists, of which we are one, to active weapons managers, understand all this pretty well and respect our attempt to reconcile God and man as it were.

The golden road right now, the simple hallmark of good policy, is to spend less money. This is almost an absolute good, as I see it.�Money spent equals the value of nuclear weapons in society,�mas o minus.�The chief distinguishing characteristic of the co-opted is that they want to build up in order to build down. They want to build up the [Nevada Test site] budget or the Pantex [nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly plant] budget in order to increase the rate of dismantlement, for example.

Wrong.�Dismantlement eats into [life extension programs], at present, which is just fine. That's how it should be.�It's a real tradeoff. Why decrease the pressure on NNSA to choose? They want to build new factories in New Mexico, increasing the budget "in the short run," while there are perfectly good facilities elsewhere.�Wrong. The Weapons Activities budget is far too big and should decrease monotonically. . . .

What is real is effectively symbolic. What is merely symbolic is not real. (A dictum of ours this year.)

�

So who is the audience, you will ask?�That has to sort itself out. The masses are powerless, uninterested, and disengaged, so -- not them.

Politically, I think we must all recognize that we cannot push what we ourselves need to do onto some posited others who will not ever act politically in any meaningful way, just a sort of "pretend" activity aimed at the next foundation grant, etc.�There is a huge difference between reaching to others politically, for actual, effective political action, and reaching to others for mere legitimization of an elite perspective, career, or institution.

Which, in the end, is why LASG has demonstrated proven effectiveness -- as opposed to impotence on the part of certain disarmament organizations to which he alludes in the preceding paragraph.

In LASG's November 23 press release, Mello describes the cost and scale of the CMRR as "a bellwether for our society. At those unprecedented prices something -- our society or the project -- has to break. . . . That's part of the point.The folks planning this thing at LANL know perfectly well the sorry state of federal finance. Nevertheless they are bending every effort to make sure the federal government is fully vested in this project�before�the full crisis hits. Their primary consideration is to make sure they, and the rest of nation's nuclear establishment, end up on top.�Social needs, renewable energy, avoiding climate catastrophe, and in final analysis human survival -- all these are expendable goals, just like they have always been in the nuclear bomb business."

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

Republican Go-to Guy on Nukes Keeps Obama Administration Twisting in the Wind on New START

By Russ Wellen

Along with Richard Lugar (R-IN), Jon Kyl, the Republican Senate whip from Arizona, is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (KY) go-to guy on nuclear issues. We wrote yesterday at Focal Points:

After Republicans picked up six seats in the Senate earlier this month, prospects for the passage of the new START began to diminish (not that this�author minds). Barron�YoungSmith at the New Republic writes that last week "chief of staff to Senator Bob Corker -- a key vote on the treaty -- said that it�should not be considered�during the lame-duck Congress, and the Republican Policy Committee released a�memo�urging a similar delay."

Kyl is known as a staunch supporter of nuclear weapons who made his mark as a freshman senator in 1999 when he blew up passage of the Comprehensive (nuclear) Test Ban Treaty. But, writes YoungSmith in the article I cited yesterday, "bizarrely enough, he seems to want [new START]�to go through."�I continued:

Turns out, not so bizarrely.�Desmond Butler for the Associated Press�writes:

In a bid to win approval of [new START] before newly energized Republicans increase their clout in the Senate, the�Obama administration is offering to add billions of dollars in funding for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. [To wit] a boost of $4.1 billion . . . between 2012-2016 . . . that will go to maintaining and modernizing the arsenal and the laboratories that oversee that effort. The additional money comes on top of an additional $10 billion the administration had already agreed to over 10 years.

And that additional $10 billion, YoungSmith explains, is "on top of" . . .

. . . an initial�massive $80 billion appropriation�in Obama's 2011 budget proposal [that Kyl demanded be] guaranteed over ten years. [In the end] Kyl's proposal would pair New START with a huge cash bonanza for programs that would make it easier to maintain and upgrade our nuclear weapons in the future.

In other words, according to YoungSmith, Kyl "seems to think that securing long-term funding for nuclear modernization outweighs whatever qualms he might have about reducing our present arsenal."

Writing for Time, Massimo Calabresi is wary of Kyl, though. Of his perceived openness to New START, Calabresi writes:

Maybe. But if Kyl's primary characteristic as a Senator is subterfuge, his secondary characteristic is a tough devotion to his ideological positions. . . . And convincing Kyl to accept a large cut to the cap on U.S. strategic warheads runs counter to positions he has taken over 16 years in the Senate. That said, the administration has accurately identified something Kyl wants in exchange for accepting a "relatively benign treaty."

Nuclear modernization and missile defense, that is. Those issues aside, writes Kelsey Hartigan at Democracy Arsenal, New START will be "the first test of whether the GOP can be trusted to lead. [Sen. Lugar] recently wrote that 'the Republicans can't just be the Party of No.'�[And as] Robert Kagan recently explained to his fellow conservatives, ratifying New START is a 'good first step toward governing.'"�Besides, writes Hartigan, "Screw up New START and you can kiss your nuclear pork goodbye."

To what extent, should New START be shot down, remains to be seen. But we might find out. Yesterday at Politico, Laura Rozen reports that Kyl may be getting cold feet.

Seemingly shutting the door on one of the Obama administration's key goals for this lame-duck session of Congress, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday that he does not think the Senate should vote to ratify the START treaty before the end of the year.�. . .

"If the Republicans' lead negotiator says we shouldn't consider START during a lame duck, I think we have to take him at face value," a leadership aide told POLITICO Tuesday. "Having said that, we are going to continue to try and get it ratified in the lame duck."

Also, Kyl is due to speak with either -- reports vary -- Vice President Biden or Secretary Gates tomorrow. Remember: however pro-nuclear those opposed to New START may appear to be, they're voting against a measure that Secretary Gates and the Pentagon support. A no vote would also keep U.S. access to Russia's nuclear program via inspections closed as it has been for a year. More to the point, as Ms. Rozen reports, "The move could be a blow to the Obama's administration's 'reset' of relations with Russia, and for U.S.-Russian cooperation on countering Iran's nuclear program, among other areas."

In regards to Kyl's statement that the Senate should wait until after the lame-duck session to address New START, she writes:

"Issuing a press statement while sensitive private talks are ongoing strikes me as an act of bad faith," the nonproliferation hand said. "It only reinforces those who believe that Kyl is playing the administration for a fool, stringing out a series of concessions before abruptly calling the whole thing off."

The Obama administration: played by the Republicans again?

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

Republican Senate Rejection of START Could Actually Work in Disarmament's Favor

By Russ Wellen

The New York Times saw fit to provide valuable op-ed space to John Bolton and John Yoo on November 9. You'd think the latter, especially, best known for providing the Bush administration with legal justification for torture, would be reluctant to show his face -- or byline -- in public again. In this instance Bolton and Yoo are turning their collective wisdom to the new START treaty.

"The sweeping Democratic midterm losses last week raise serious questions for President Obama and a lame-duck Congress," they write. "Voters want government brought closer to the vision the framers outlined in the Constitution" -- laying it on a little thick, guys -- "and the first test could be the fate of the flawed New Start arms control treaty [which] awaits ratification. The Senate should heed the will of the voters and either reject the treaty or amend it so that it doesn't weaken our national defense."

In his November 8 column for the Week, Daniel Larison of (the libertarian) American Conservative also addressed the fate of new START.

After the Republican gain of six seats in the Senate, including Mark Kirk of Illinois, who will be seated immediately, the arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, known as START, has�much less of a chance of passing�during the lame-duck session before January. . . . After the start of the new Congress, the treaty will be as good as dead.

When he then warns that such a course of action will "harm U.S. security interests," he means something entirely different from Bolton and Yoo when they call for rejecting or amending new START in order that "it doesn't weaken our national defense." Larison is referring to the danger that "it will wreck the one mechanism available to the United States for verifying the nature and extent of Russia�s nuclear arsenal."

In fact, there's no love lost between this author and new START. For starters, as explained in April by Michael Bohm in the Moscow Times . . .

. . . Russia and the United States have agreed to apply "creative accounting" to pad the reductions on both sides to get to the much-desired 30 percent figure. . . . one trick was to count the 20 warheads on B-52 bombers as only one. At the end of the day, the real net cuts, according to Hans Kristenson of the Federation of American Scientists, will be only 100 U.S. deployed warheads and 190 Russian ones. [Another trick was revealed when] the two sides announced the final number -- 1,550 deployed warheads -- the key qualifier is "deployed." The roughly 2,000 non-deployed warheads stored in U.S. military warehouses were not included in the New START.

More to the point, if Republicans truly reject or further water down new START, what becomes of the $80 billion for the next 10 years that the Obama administration promised to the nuclear-weapons industry in part to win Republican votes for ratification? Not to mention funding for, as Greg Mello writes in the latest bulletin of the Los Alamos Study Group, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility planned for Los Alamos, the cost of which "per square foot of useful space has grown to more than 100 times�what [Los Alamos's] existing plutonium facility cost in 1978, in constant dollars." In fact, "it's the biggest project ever proposed for Los Alamos -- six times the size of the whole Manhattan Project in New Mexico," also in constant dollars. (I've still yet to digest that last revelation.)

Obviously concerned about losing that funding, Bolton and Yoo write, "Congress should pass a new law financing the testing and development of new warhead designs before approving New Start." If it's rejected or neutered, does the Obama administration plan to retract some or all of that funding? Unlikely, I know, but were that to occur it would look a lot more like disarmament than new START.

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

No Mean Feat: Justifying Israel's Nukes Without Acknowledging Them

By Russ Wellen

What's it like to be one of the principal keepers of "The Worst-Kept Secret" (as Israel bomb historian Avner Cohen calls it in his new book)? David Danieli, the deputy director general and head of the policy division of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, was recently interviewed by Yossi Melman for Haaretz. Some background: at this year's General Conference of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), the Arab states, along with Iran, sought to pass a resolution calling for Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In the process, Israel would place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards and, oh yeah, finally admit to possession of nuclear weapons. The resolution failed to pass as narrowly as it succeeded in passing last year (though obviously to little effect that time). First, Washington's response. Reuters reports . . .

Washington had urged countries to vote down the symbolically important although non-binding resolution, saying it could derail broader efforts to ban nuclear warheads in the Middle East and also damage fresh Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. "The winner here is the peace process, the winner here is the opportunity to move forward with a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East," said Glyn Davies, the U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).�

With its insinuation that they're less invested in the peace process than the United States and Israel, Davies's gloating is an insult to the Arab states. Worse, its suggestion that all it takes for the Middle East to be a nuclear-weapon-free zone is for the likes of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria to hold their heavy water makes him sound delusional. If Davies wants to pretend that Israel has no nuclear-weapons program, fine, but don't expect the Arab states -- or the citizens, if not the governments, of Western states -- to succumb to this mass hallucination.

Neither was Danieli the soul of graciousness when he told Melman: "This was definitely a very important achievement for Israel. . . . This is also an unprecedented decision, in light of the fact that there is an automatic majority against Israel in international organizations. Israel is not blessed with a lot of decisions in the international arena that defeat the bloc of Arab-Muslim states." In other words, it wasn't the peace process and the nuclear-free weapons zone in the Middle East to which he was referring, just sheer victory over the Arab states.

In fairness to Israel, it must be pointed out that when it comes to this, he has a case: "One of our more convincing arguments was asking why Israel should be singled out when the IAEA has never passed a resolution against any other country that is not a signatory to the treaty, such as Pakistan and India."

As for Israel joining the NPT . . .

Israel does not see fit to join the treaty as long as the current conditions in this region remain in place. . . . There are other weapons of mass destruction here -- chemical and biological [as well as] terrorist organizations that get aid from terror-supporting states like Iran and Syria [and] have tens of thousands of rockets aimed at Israel.

See what Danieli is saying here? Because of extenuating circumstances, Israel needs its nuclear weapons. But in the next breath he says: "Israel has a clear and responsible nuclear policy, and it has frequently reiterated that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East."

As you can see David Danieli has a thankless job trying to juggle Israel's nuclear lies. Unless his audience has undergone mass hypnosis, there's no way he can keep all those balls in the air.

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

Give Me Liberty or Give Me -- the Extinction of the Human Race?

By Russ Wellen

At his website, New Paradigms Forum, Christopher Ford recently hosted an email colloquy on the subject of nuclear deterrence between staunch disarmament advocate Steven Leeper, chair of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, and himself. The position of Ford, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and chief negotiator of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons for the Bush administration, can perhaps best be described as counseling extreme caution in disarming while other states still seek to develop nuclear weapons programs.

Leeper, who writes, "I have very little contact with people who think the way you do, so I am genuinely interested in what you have to say," sprays questions at Ford like a machine gun. But one evokes an elemental issue that seldom sees the light of day in dialogues about nuclear weapons. Breaking down his question into two parts, Leeper asks:

. . . which would be worse, for the whole world to be dominated by Russians, Chinese, communists, Muslims, Arabs and/or eco terrorists [not sure how that got in there -- RW] or for all human beings on Earth to die as a result of nuclear winter, radiation and/or environmental catastrophe? In this connection, have you ever believed it would be better to be dead than red?

Ford's response:

I'm not sure what to make of this question. You want me to posit a choice between being ruled by "Russians, Chinese, communists, Muslims, Arabs and/or eco terrorists"? And to weigh this choice somehow against species extinction? I don't know on what basis such a question would be intelligible, much less answerable. (Do you think these are choices that actually face us?) It sounds like you're fishing for a way to draw me out on "better dead than red" or "better red than dead" preferences, but those are bumper stickers, not policy choices or real options that face anyone.

Leeper doesn't help himself by harkening back to a scenario now obsolete. The likelihood of Russia threatening to attack the United States with nuclear weapons if it refuses to surrender to, say, Russia's attempt to conquer it, is nonexistent (and probably always was, even during the Cold War). In fact, that's what Ford is alluding to when he says, "Do you think these are choices that actually face us?"

The scenario's current unreality basically undermines the legitimacy of the question to Ford. Besides, realists operate under a set of assumptions that don't allow for the question that Leeper is struggling to ask. Which is, as I see it: if threatened with nuclear attack, should a state, especially one that characterizes itself as founded on a respect for human rights, threaten to retaliate, thus ensuring massive loss of life on its own as well as the aggressor's side? Or, should it refuse to retaliate and, instead, yield to the aggressor's demands, such as surrendering the reins of government? (For simplicity's sake, the subjects of a limited nuclear exchange and a large country held nuclear hostage by a smaller state aren't addressed in this post.)

However archaic the scenario, the image it evokes of untold numbers of deaths in mass warfare is always timely. But the question is a non-starter to national-security types, who find it na� to the point of touch-feely. In fact, to them it's a complete abnegation of national security since surrender means there is no longer a nation for which to provide security. It's also counterintuitive for any state, especially one that traces its origins back to concepts like "live free or die" or "give me liberty or death."

But when the cost of liberty is tens of millions of the enemy, as well as your own citizens, dead, it makes a mockery of the heroism implicit in those slogans. Before we consider an alternate strategy to nuclear retaliation, let's ask ourselves what kind of ethical and/or religious individual would take pride in being the citizen of a state that is not only partly responsible for but makes him or her complicit in the loss of so much life? Here's how some people of faith view this issue.

Tyler Wigg-Stevenson leads an evangelical disarmament movement, the Two Futures Project, that's gaining surprising momentum. In an op-ed for the Washington Post's "On Faith" section, he writes:

There's nothing wrong with a strong military. . . . But if we take seriously the whole witness of Scripture, we must also recognize that the unfettered pursuit of strength -- fearing mortal enemies more than God�s judgment -- in fact leads to an ungodly arrogance and idolatry. . . . we cannot simply take a secular utilitarian, value-less approach to security policy.

In other words, the sanctity of the state comes in a distant second to that of the Kingdom of Heaven. Meanwhile, in a testimonial on the Two Futures Project website, Tony Campolo, Professor Emeritus, Eastern University, wrote. . .

Fear of what other nations could do to us with their weapons is no justification for developing nuclear weapons ourselves. As Christians, perfect love should cast out that fear and allow us to take the risks that go with disarmament.

In the statement above and the one that follows, the words "humane individual" could be substituted for Christian. A commenter to the Washington Post piece, one Arancia12, sums it up best.

I do not believe in survival at any cost. . . . Death is not the worst thing that can happen to a Christian. Not living as a Christian is the worst thing that can happen to a Christian.

In other words, were communism still around, yes, maybe red than dead -- for the time being anyway. A Christian or a humane individual could contrive to lead a more ethical life under such conditions, no matter how trying, than in a state with an ocean of blood on its hands.

Meanwhile, a military alternative exists to nuclear retaliation. Bear in mind that, along with a nation's nuclear weapons sites and infrastructure (not to mention its civilian population), conventional weapons depots will be destroyed in a nuclear attack. Whereas, were we to surrender, they would instead be appropriated by the aggressor state. Why not devise a contingency strategy in advance with munitions cached around the countryside? Odds are, the U.S. government already maintains such a program. It need only be activated in the event of an attack or occupation.

As commenter Arancia12 wrote, there are worse things than death, such as -- and it bears repeating -- living in a country complicit in the greatest mass murder in the history of mankind. We may lose our immediate liberty by surrendering. But fighting for it is arguably at least as liberating as living under a liberty which today we take for granted and allow to erode anyway. But that's a post for another day.

First posted at Focal Points.