Hear that? Its the sound of norm disintegration...

Back in April, I remember hearing rumors around the water cooler that the Israelis were lobbying the Nuclear Suppliers Group for a 'Bush-Singh' type of nuclear trade agreement. At the time, I wasn't able to uncover any news items to confirm such talk, so I dismissed it as Pentagon gossip.

Well, it appears that the rumors were true. According to a piece in today's Post, Israel did lobby the NSG back in March and they are now taking a proposal to Capitol Hill:

The Israeli presentation, made in a "nonpaper" that allows for official deniability, was offered in the context of the NSG's debate over India's bid for an exemption, according to a March 17 letter by the NSG's chairman. Among the nations that have not signed the treaty, only India and Israel would qualify for admission to the NSG under the Israeli proposal.

David Siegel, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, said it would be "grossly inaccurate" to suggest that Israel is demanding an exemption or linking its efforts to any other issue, such as the India debate.

"Israel has never asked the NSG for any exemption to its nuclear supply guidelines, nor has Israel made any Israeli-specific request of the NSG," Siegel said. "Israel, recognized to be a full-fledged adherent to the NSG guidelines, has urged the NSG to consider adopting a generic, multi-tiered, criteria-based approach towards nuclear technology transfers." He noted that some NSG countries previously have suggested such an approach.

"Modification of the NSG guidelines, were it to take place along the lines proposed by Israel, would considerably enhance the nuclear nonproliferation regime," Siegel said.

The Israeli plan offers 12 criteria for allowing nuclear trade with non-treaty states, including one that hints at Israel's status as an undeclared nuclear weapons state: A state should be allowed to engage in nuclear trade if it applies "stringent physical protection, control and accountancy measures to all nuclear weapons, nuclear facilities, source material and special nuclear material in its territory."

If you look at the tenor of Bush administration nonproliferation policy, they should be inclined to agree with such a proposal. Prior to 2000, nonproliferation was about keeping the declared and undeclared portions of the nuclear weapons club as small as possible. Now, nonproliferation is about keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of 'tyrants' and 'terrorists.'

While I would be the last one to advocate for giving a 'tyrant' or a 'terrorist' a nuclear weapon, I would like to point out two flaws in the White House's logic: (1) What exactly are the criteria for applying either label to a nation or group? (2) How do plan on convincing all states with relatively mature nuclear industries to sign up to those definitions?

Right now, the answer to the first question looks a lot like 'those nations or groups who oppose U.S. foreign policy.' If the administration has an answer for the second question, I sincerely hope it does not have the word 'followership' in it. It wouldn't surprise me if it had the word 'U.S. sanctions' in it though.

Fortunately, I think the Bush administration will keep its distance from the Israeli proposal for fear of doing harm to their India deal. This is probably also why we are hearing about Israeli activity on Capitol Hill. If the White House was really receptive to the proposal, the first time we would have heard about it is when a final agreement was ready for signature.

A memo to Vlad and George

To:
George W. Bush, President of the United States of America
Vladamir Putin, President of the Russian Federation

From: The Robot Economist

Subject: Missile defense and arms control -- a grand bargain

It is clear that the United States and the Russian Federation are at an impasse over two issues related to the proliferation of missile technology and nuclear weapons. The first conflict is over the United States' plan to implement a missile defense system, some of which will be based in Europe. The second conflict is over the future of the U.S.-Russian arms control regime that evolved during the Cold War.

This impasse can be easily broken with a grand bargain designed to satisfy each nation's concerns and put U.S.-Russian cooperation on a strong, institutionalized footing. As part of the the bargain, the United States would agree to build both its planned interceptors and radar station within Russian territory. The Russian Federation will participate in managing the system's day-to-day operations, but will also allow the U.S. to protect sensitive technology in a U.S.-only facility on Russian soil. The Russians will also be given access to missile defense technology as part of a U.S.-Russian missile defense development program, but it will only be allowed to sell the resulting technology as part of U.S.-Russian joint ventures. The United States will reserve the right to expand its missile defense system outside of Europe.

The United States will agree to at least a 15-year extension of both the Strategic Ordnance Reduction Treaty (SORT) and the inspection provisions of the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). In exchange, the Russian Federation will drop its threats to abandon the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and defer discussions of additional arms control agreements for at least 10 years.

This bargain delivers what each country desires most. The United States is allowed to have a missile defense system that can shoot down missiles coming from the Near East without threaten Russia. Russia gets to keep the Cold War-era arms control regime around for another generation.

It is by no means a solution to U.S.-Russian strategic relations. Instead, it is designed to tackle the one obstacle that prevents such cooperation, a lack of trust on strategic issues stemming from the Cold War. This lack of trust is an antiquated notion because the quest for national power is no longer a zero-sum game. It is both nations to realize that fact and build a relationship that will ensure both American and Russian strategic power for another generation.

It is March 1940 all over again

According to New York Times's David Sanger and Thom Shanker, the U.S. strategy has travelled back in time to March 1940:

WASHINGTON, May 7 — Every week, a group of experts from agencies around the government — including the C.I.A., the Pentagon, the F.B.I. and the Energy Department — meet to assess Washington’s progress toward solving a grim problem: if a terrorist set off a nuclear bomb in an American city, could the United States determine who detonated it and who provided the nuclear material?

That uncertainty lies at the center of a vigorous, but carefully cloaked, debate within the Bush administration. It focuses on how to refashion the American approach to nuclear deterrence in an attempt to counter the threat posed by terrorists who could obtain bomb-grade uranium or plutonium to make and deliver a weapon.

A previously undisclosed meeting last year of President Bush’s most senior national security advisers was the highest level discussion about how to rewrite the cold war rules. The existing approach to deterrence dates from the time when the nuclear attacks Washington worried about would be launched by missiles and bombers, which can be tracked back to a source by radar, and not carried in backpacks or hidden in cargo containers.

Among the subjects of the meeting last year was whether to issue a warning to all countries around the world that if a nuclear weapon was detonated on American soil and was traced back to any nation’s stockpiles, through nuclear forensics, the United States would hold that country “fully responsible” for the consequences of the explosion. The term “fully responsible” was left deliberately vague so that it would be unclear whether the United States would respond with a retaliatory nuclear attack, or, far more likely, a nonnuclear retaliation, whether military or diplomatic.

History Lesson

For those who were not history majors in college, the idea of nuclear deterrence was first outlined in a March 1940 memorandum written by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls. The original intent of this memorandum was two refute the fissile mass calculations made by Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard in the August 1939 letter they sent to President Roosevelt. Einstein and Szliard had originally asserted that an atomic bomb would require "large mass of uranium" that could be "...carried by boat and exploded in a port..." but "...might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air."

Frisch and Peierls argued that an atomic super bomb as small as 1-5 kilograms would release an explosive force the equivalent of 500-1000 tons of dynamite. They even roughly sketched out what would become gun-type explosive device design first used to build Little Boy. Besides the mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Frisch-Peierls memorandum is also famous for the following paragraph:

If one works on the assumption that Germany is, or will be, in the possession of this weapon, it must be realized that no shelters are available that would be effective and that could be used on a large scale. The most effective reply would be a counter-threat with a similar bomb. Therefore it seems to us important to start production as soon and as rapidly as possible, even if it is not intended to use the bomb as a means of attack. Since the separation of the necessary amount of uranium is, in the most favourable circumstances, a matter of several months, it would obviously be too late to start production when such a bomb is known to be in the hands of Germany, and the matter seems, therefore, very urgent.

This thinking would lead to Eisenhower's New Look strategy with its attendant doctrine of massive retaliation first outlined in NSC 162/2. Kennedy replaced massive retaliation with a doctrine of flexible response, which pretty much survived until the end of the Cold War -- despite the occasional debate over counterforce targeting, decapitation strikes, and fail-deadly strategies. Now that the Cold War is over and the U.S. and Russia have reigned in from the brink of precipice, the threat of loose nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism has come to the forefront.

Rewinding the Clock

This Times piece suggests that U.S. strategy against nuclear terrorism is again somewhere between 1940 and 1953 -- scrambling to come up with a way to reliably cope with the threat of nuclear terrorism. It is not surprising that the notoriously pessimistic and lazy Bush administration would look to the well-worn idea of nuclear deterrence as a solution. The problem is that nuclear deterrence is an incredibly abstract concept that is only be applicable in a narrow set of conditions, many of which would not be true in a nuclear terrorism scenario.

Instead of going through all of the major issues, I would like to highlight three that the Bush administration will have tackle before forging the 'New New Look':

1. The decoupling of 'owner' and 'end user' -- Traditional nuclear deterrence is such a simple and universally-applicable concept because the 'owner' and 'end-user' of a nuclear weapons threat is always the same adversary. Nuclear terrorism deterrence must involve a two-level strategy that deters owners from intentionally transferring nuclear weapons, as well as deter the potential for end-user acquisition of nuclear weapons against the will of the owner. This will be especially difficult because the owner and end-user will probably have radically different centers of gravity and vulnerabilities. At the very least, the Bush administration has to solve the problem of targeting a non-state actor guilty of nuclear terrorism within an unwilling (and innocent) host state.

2. Marshaling the resources -- An incident of nuclear terrorism in the United States would undoubtedly have an enormous impact on the American people and the economy. Unlike traditional nuclear deterrence, however, it would not spell the end of the United States as a nation, nor is it as tangibly imminent as thousands of Soviet ICBMs standing ready on a continuous alert. How much will employing a nuclear terrorism deterrence strategy cost, in terms of dollars and diplomatic capital? How much will it cost to extend that strategy to our allies? Do our allies even want to be under such an umbrella? Most importantly, does the actual threat of nuclear terrorism justify the cost of its deterrence strategy and can such a rationale be reliably sold to the American voter?

3. Conquering context -- Like nuclear weapons states, terrorist groups seeking nuclear weapons have different political agendas. They are also willing to risk different degrees of punishment to pull off a nuclear plot. There is also the issue of how to deal with an intentional nuclear weapons transfer conducted by rogue elements of the government (or only part of a split government, i.e. Iran). Is it even possible to craft an abstract idea, such as deterrence, to deal with an incredibly complex issue that depends heavily on the context of each instance of nuclear terrorism

What happens to Prompt Global Strike when START stops?

So after Congress killed the Conventional Trident Missile, the U.S. Air Force has stepped up to plate with a "midterm solution": Conventional Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.

[Col. Richard Patenaude, chief of the deterrence and strike division for Air Force Space Command] said the missile may be based in the continental United States or abroad, and “may or may not” be considered an intercontinental ballistic missile under START Treaty counting rules.

In defending the Pentagon decision to move ahead with the conventional Trident, some defense officials have suggested a conventional land-based alternative could be problematic because Russia or China may misinterpret a launch as a potential nuclear threat to their nations.

Patenaude took pains to make clear the Air Force “has no plans to put conventional warheads on current operational ICBMs or [use] their silos.”

Other defense officials have described how a land-based missile could be configured so it is incapable of carrying a nuclear payload and use a trajectory to its target that would not threaten other nuclear weapons nations. It also could be inspected by the Russians under existing arms control regimes; based on a U.S. coastline in Florida or California so launch debris could fall in the ocean rather than on land; and made capable of being rapidly retargeted.

By contrast, critics have complained the Trident submarines would use a weapon virtually identical to its nuclear-armed twin; remain on patrol typically just off Russian coasts, potentially posing at least a debris threat to Russia; likely be closed to Russian onsite inspection; and possibly take hours or longer to receive target data and steam within range of nations where fleeting threats may appear.

There are two big holes in your plan Col. Patenaude. First, the inspection provisions of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expire in 2009 and the Bush administration is doing little to renew it. In fact, the current STRATCOM commander, Marine General James E. Cartwright did a pretty smooth waltz around the subject when Arms Control Today brought it up in a June 2006 interview:

ACT: Speaking of treaties with Russia, the 1991 START, with its extensive verification and information exchange regime, is set to expire in December 2009. As a military commander, are you worried about losing that level of transparency and confidence provided by that regime, and would you like to see those mechanisms or measures extended or transformed in some way?

Cartwright: As a military commander, I would sure like to see them transformed; if not transformed, then to remain. I think you want something that is a little more responsive to the changes that occur in the world than the current treaty construct. That is someone else’s domain—the Department of State—to figure out. The attributes that you would seek are transparency, the ability to generate warning time, and confidence in what the intentions are of a counterpart. When talking about the United States and Russia before, I mentioned warning time. Warning time allows me to defend myself and not misjudge what it is that you are doing. A vehicle [for the attributes mentioned above] should allow the regime or protocol to keep up with the state of the technology in the future.

The State Department is working very hard on a Joint Data Exchange Center with the Russians. It has had some trouble getting its foundation laid down, but it looks like it is starting to move forward. This center would allow us to exchange information in real time and across more than just offensive weapons. We could start to look at missile defense, defensive weapons, and space sensors. There are any number of things that you could start to bring in to help create, like we did with warning time, better confidence of what each other is doing so misinterpretation becomes less of a problem. Whatever the construct is that we do with a treaty-like activity, you are trying to make sure that you can build confidence, understand the intentions of your adversary, and have time to react appropriately to those intentions. Usually, “appropriately” is defined as finding alternative ways to get out of a problem. You want to generate the time to be able to do that; the less time, the less options you have.

Treaty-like activity indeed. ACT gets the best interview quotes sometimes.

The second hole is that it may be impossible to gain international acceptance of the Prompt Global Strike concept. Even if the you could conclusively mitigate the potential for a mistaken nuclear attack, China and Russia still have cause to fear Prompt Global Strike because they couldn't defend against it. Does the military think that either nuclear power would accept the idea that the United State could launch a strike deep within its territory? The Bush administration feels so insecure about such a scenario happening to the United States that it is funding missile defense programs to the tune of $10 billion annually.

There are plenty of other reasons for other states to feel wary about conventionally-tipped long-range ballistic missiles. William Arkin correctly points out that the Prompt Global Strike concept occupies a fantasy land where the U.S. Intelligence Community incompetently misses all but the last minute warning signs of a catastrophic threat against the United States. The British-American Security Information Council argues that there is a very real chance the incredible time constraints applied to the system could lead to a 'shoot first, ask questions later' attitude. If anything, Russia should be wary of the slew of half-baked arguments that Prompt Global Strike advocates make to downplay the risk of misinterpretation over a U.S. launch. My favorite is "The Russians won't do anything because they know we're not after them."

Most importantly, military thinkers should realize that the Russians have been thinking about the implications of a long-range strategic strike capability for decades. Just check out this summary from Andrew Krepinevich's 1992 Office of Net Assessment study of Russian thinking on Military Technical Revolutions (the pdf version is down, I'm using a cached html version):

Strategic Strikes

It was observed that advanced technologies may provide the means for fielding an integrated group of networked systems (or architectures) that could execute conventional "strategic" strikes against an adversary. There has been some discussion, particularly in the Soviet/Russian literature, that this could occur through the employment of so-called aerospace operations, whereby airborne and space information (and perhaps weapon) platforms provide real-time targeting information to long-range precision-guided advanced conventional munitions, which may be land-, air-, or sea-based. If a sufficient information gap can be created , it may be possible to strike the entire range of enemy strategic targets comprising their center of gravity in a relatively short period of time,without first having to defeat the bulk of an enemy's military forces. Thus, strategic strikes would be expected to either coincide with, or follow on the heels of, operations to achieve information dominance, and perhaps air and space control as well. Strategic strikes would focus on a relatively small set of enemy targets—those comprising its center of gravity—i.e., those targets that, when disabled, will deny an enemy state the ability or the will to block an opponent from achieving its military objectives.

Furthermore, at some point in this revolution it may be possible, through the use of advanced simulations, to "test strike" a small subset of a target base, observe the effects—perhaps even matching the data obtained with simulations—and then deciding whether (and how) to continue eliminating the entire class of targets designated for destruction, or to identify more promising alternatives. There are two potential advantages to employing test strikes. First, they may allow a peer competitor to preserve time and resources critical to achieving its military objectives. The intent would be to avoid the situation the United States found itself in during previous strategic bombardment campaigns in World War II and the Vietnam War. In the former case, in the European theater the United States focused on several target sets (e.g., air frames)before finding Germany's weak point. During the Rolling Thunder campaign against North Vietnam, a progression of target sets was attacked (e.g., transportation, oil, electrical) without achieving the desired results. The importance of time and the high cost of advanced conventional munitions places a high premium on "getting it right the first time" in extracting the desired results from a chosen target set. Second, such an approach allows a peer competitor to avoid creating undesirable damage to the enemy state. Such unwanted damage may complicate war prosecution (one thinks here of the effect on domestic and world public opinion), war termination (will such damage stiffen the resolve of the target regime or its people?), and postwar plans (e.g., reconstruction).

In a war between peer competitors it seems clear that, unless an assured second-strike capability is established, the side that can execute its strategic strike operations first stands to benefit most, assuming that it retains sufficient information on the enemy target base, and overcomes active and passive defenses, to conduct its strikes effectively. This is an important point, since it is not yet clear that forces engaged in strategic strikes will have the requisite level of RSTA and battle-damage assessment (BDA) data, or that they will be able to negotiate successfully all enemy countermeasures. Therefore, in a war between peer competitors, it may not be possible to execute decisive strategic strikes,especially if the defender retains a sufficient level of its information structure intact to enable it to conduct an integrated, coordinated defense. As for nuclear weapons, they may become significantly more discriminate. Micronuclear weapons might be able to destroy targets with little collateral damage that conventional systems could not eliminate at an acceptable cost. While their employment may be useful in a purely military sense, there are obviously strong political factors and precedents for not employing nuclear weapons, save in extremis. However, nuclear weapons in the hands of radical regimes that possess ballistic or cruise missiles could emerge as the "poor man's" counter against peer competitor states.

But hey, I'm just crazy, right? Then again, I bet Bush didn't see Putin suspending Russian compliance in the CFE when he looked into his soul either...

Update: Dear readers, I apologize for all of the syntactical errors in this piece. Last Thursday was a lesson in why beer and blogging don't mix sometimes.

What nonproliferation means to them

Dr. Lewis over at ACW picked up on an article by Jofi Joseph in the National Endowment for Democracy's Democracy Journal [ed. Democracy Journal is actually different from NED's similarly titled Journal of Democracy publication. Thanks to Jofi for pointing that out.] about the intrinsic flaws of the Bush administration's approach to nonproliferation.

Joseph's article is even-handed and well reasoned. My only criticism is that he didn't thoroughly explore why the Bush administration's preference for strategic decisions and disdain towards coercive diplomacy. How does an administration that appears to be obsessed with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction willingly accept the cost of its 'tough guy' policies? How do policy makers on the National Security Council and in the President's cabinet deal with the fact their emphasis on the strategic decision is often the reason why their policies fail?

A Bush administration critic would probably point to negative qualities, such as a lack of creativity and flexibility or an undeserving sense of self-righteousness?

I think there is a logical explanation for Bush administration policy that goes beyond personalities and simple partisan arguments. The key is taking all of the elements of Bush nonproliferation policy together at once (they are arranged in no particular order):

+ The 'Axis of Evil' statement

+ Torpedoing the Biological Weapons Convention implementation talks

+ Abandoning the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

+ Fielding national missile defense

+ The Moscow Treaty

+ The Proliferation Security Initiative

+ Rolling on Congressional pressure for the Reliable Replacement Warhead

+ The Bush-Singh nuclear deal

+ Strategic decision-based policy towards Iraq and Iran's nuclear programs

+ Foot-dragging on renewal of the START verification process

There appear to be a few common themes here. The most glaring one is a belief that weapons proliferation is inevitable. Another is an emphasis on the maintenance of U.S. preeminence instead of U.S. leadership in the international community. Quite possibly the most significant theme is a rejection of the classical notion of nuclear stability through mutual vulnerability.

Preparing for a more proliferated world: If you take together the Bush administration's push to field national missile defense (and acceptance of the RRW), its willingness to 'blow a ginormous hole' in the NPT for India while simultaneously allowing the most significant nuclear confidence building measure ever lapse, and its clear preference for the conclusiveness of military action over diplomatic negotiations, I think the White House's proliferation pessimism becomes pretty clear. Each one of these characteristics have been carefully crafted to maximize the flexibility and relative strength of the U.S. in a more proliferated world.

U.S. preeminence instead of U.S. leadership: This idea dates back to Condi Rice's "Promoting the National Interest" from the January/February 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs and extends all the way through the run-up to the Second Persian Gulf War to today. The goal of U.S. nonproliferation policy is not to prevent proliferation by establishing norms and constraints on would-be proliferators. Instead, it is a more subtle policy calculation that values enhancing U.S. advantages against proliferators more than improving the disincentives for proliferation. The Bush administration's different approach to each member of the 'Axis of Evil' epitomizes this theme.

No more MAD: There are three key examples of this characteristic. The first is the Bush administration's willingness to field a national missile defense before most of the components are even ready. The second is the 2002 revision of the Nuclear Posture Review, which put nuclear weapons on the same footing as conventional capabilities. The third was early Bush administration initiatives to enhance the 'usability' of nuclear weapons, including very small yields, 'reduced collateral damage' warheads and the robust nuclear earth penetrator.

In the context of these three themes, every policy initiative listed above certainly seems logical. The problem is that these policies convey the deep proliferation pessimism and skepticism they are based on to the international community. As the most powerful state in that community, Bush administration policy has the potential to become a self-fulfilling prophecy if it continues to cast off the vestments the arms control and nonproliferation institutions built between the Cuban missile crisis and September 11th.

These institutions were not perfect, but they were definitely successful. Is the long-term cost of continuing to abandon them over the next few years really worth the short-term victories the Bush administration seeks?

Note: Sorry about the reformatting. Feels like I've been using right-align too often.

Overinflating the Chinese nuke threat

Mark Helprin may be a gifted writer, but his column in the Sunday Post proves that he should be kept as far away from defense policy as possible:

This has led the United States unwittingly to encourage China to move toward nuclear parity. In the next five years, as we reduce our arsenal from 10,000 strategic warheads to 1,700, China's MIRV'd silo-based missiles and imminent generations of MIRV'd mobile and sea-based ICBMs will easily allow a breakout from warhead numbers now variously estimated to range from 80 to 1,800.

Once, the vast imbalance (in 1987, 500:1) might have discouraged China from such augmentation, but no longer. Our reductions and their growth provide fewer targets for more missiles and will create the possibility and therefore the temptation, however remote, of a first strike. As we have cut the stable sea-based leg of our nuclear deterrent from 37 ballistic missile submarines to 14, China works to build its own and a fleet that can provide protected bastions at sea as well as hunt down the small number of American boats on station.

All of the recent U.S. government estimates of the Chinese nuclear arsenal that I've seen generally place it between 100 and 200 warheads (FAS has a nice summary of government estimates located here). I don't know where this 1,800 warheads number comes from, but it definitely doesn't come from the intelligence community.

I also don't know where Helprin is getting his data on Chinese missiles being equipped with multiple warheads, but that generally isn't believed to be the case. Even if it were true, it would mean a vast reduction in the explosive power of the Chinese arsenal. The intelligence community believes that current single warhead on China's silo-based DF-5 has about 4 megatons of explosive power. If China were to MIRV the DF-5 with 3 250 kiloton warheads, it would actually reduce the overall power of the missile by 80%. The same thing happened to our land-based missiles when the U.S. switched from the Atlas (4 megaton warhead) and Titan (9 megaton warhead) to the Minuteman (3 300-400 kiloton warheads).

The U.S. compensated for this loss of explosive power by simply building more of the MIRVed missiles. Our land-based part of the arsenal went from about 100 Titan and 30 Atlas ICBMs in the 1960s to 500 Minuteman ICBMs by the 1980s. I'm not aware of any public reporting that bear out an increase in Chinese ICBMs that would be commensurate with the introduction of MIRVs into their arsenal.

As for nuclear submarines, China doesn't really pose much of a threat here either. They fielded two 12-missile Xia class submarines, but one hasn't ventured far from Chinese waters and the other has barely left dry dock.

Despite Halprin's poor grip on the facts, I was more surprised by the assertion made in the latter half of his column:

The danger lies not solely in quantitative instabilities but in potential nuclear strategies that technical evolution has elevated above Cold War paradigms. It is one thing for a few experts to foresee these strategies but quite another to obtain from a people no longer confident of its right to self-defense the political consensus, appropriations and authority to counter them. Consider just one scenario, highlighted by the recent successful test of China's anti-satellite weapon, part of a strategy to exploit technological asymmetries.

Given China's appetites and our alliances and interests, a war is not inconceivable in Taiwan, or in Korea. To remove American nuclear escalation from the equation, China would need not parity but only a deterrent such as it has long possessed. The Chinese, however, whose nuclear thresholds are dissimilar to ours, would have other options.

They know that every facet of America's economy, military and society depends on individual and networked electronic devices. Were these to fail all at once and irreparably, the nation would seize up, perhaps for years.

Faced with victory, or with loss, they might choose to -- and who would venture to guarantee that they would not? -- detonate half a dozen high-megatonnage nuclear charges in the mesosphere, in an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) strike perhaps not even in American airspace, cooking almost every circuit and semiconductor, rendering the American government blind, deaf and dumber than it is already and the country unable to resist the inroads that would surely follow.

Though we would undoubtedly respond in kind, China is not as technically dependent as are we. Nor, given China's sufficiency for a counterstrike, could we deter an EMP attack with the prospect of massive retaliation, especially because an EMP strike, with no immediate casualties, would seem as peaceful as snow in still air.

I don't buy his argument on the threat of a nuclear EMP attack from China. The Defense Support Program would catch the launch from space and the U.S. would be doctrinally-bound to launch a counterstrike against China before their missiles detonated. There would be no waiting to see if the Chinese only intend to pull of a EMP attack in the upper atmosphere versus an air burst attack a few hundred feet about Los Angles. There would simply be immediate and overwhelming retaliation on the part of the U.S.

The trick in nuclear strategy is to maintain stability by balancing potentials and thus to discourage events from converting the hypothetical to the actual. Required in this case -- only one of many -- is the electronic hardening, redundancy and redesign of essential systems and networks; and missile defense, which would not only close the first-strike window by shielding our second-strike capacity from destruction but protect against an EMP strike directly and dissuade China in the first place by making its deterrent less certain.

Were we to proceed along these lines, we could diminish the chances that China might in the not-so-distant future be tempted to win a nuclear war without fighting a nuclear war. But given that we have ignored explicit warnings of the congressionally chartered EMP commission, what are the chances that we will act on an opinion we dare not even form? In regard to war and the sometimes counterintuitive actions for avoiding it, we are no longer either confident or clearsighted. What a pity to have come so far to find that our rivals and enemies all over the world can run rings around us because half of our politicians have lost their intelligence and the other half have lost their nerve.

If I am reading this right, Halprin has essentially argued that Chinese leaders will escalate a conventional shooting war with the U.S. to the nuclear level out of desperation. Whatever happened to the cold rationality of deterrence and mutually assured destruction? Are we back those dark days of the Cold War where policy elites debated the efficacy of deterrence because we believed that our adversaries were slaves to their an irrational ideology? I hate to sound cynical, but Mark Halprin's piece isn't the first aspirant to George Keenan's Long Telegram I've seen in the last five years and, unfortunately, it probably won't be the last.

Isn't it interesting how nuclear paranoids like Mr. Helprin, force planners at the Pentagon and Democrats in Congress can look at the same subject, but see three complete different threats? It makes one think that public hand-wringing about the 'China threat' might be a self serving exercise...

But then again, I'm just an lowly East Asia analyst. What do I know about nuclear strategy or China, right?

Items of Interest

Between writing endless read-aheads, glad-handing foreign military officials or praticing my Japanese in preparation for next week's language exit exam at GWU, I have been pretty busy. Instead of forgetting all of the neat ideas for a blog post that pop into my mind throughout the day, I've taken down to writing brief notes. Here are a few items of interest for my dear readers:

Counterterrorism Policy by Schwarzenegger

Unfortunately, California's governor has not penned his own counterterrorism policy. Yet. A fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution named Thomas Henrikson did in the February/March issue of Policy Review and it looks a lot like something straight out of Commando. His "Security Lessons from the Israeli Trenches" lauds Israel's aggressive, muscular approach to stopping terrorism including some of its more contraversial aspects, such as targeted assassinations, building 'buffer zones' on foreign soil and urban commando raids.

I don't mean to sound like a dove here, but I think the key flaw of Henrikson's thesis is that he measures success by relative body count. His article makes a key error that I think the Israeli security establishment has made since the 1970s, namely the pursuit of short-term survival over ending the attacks in the long-term. Even the Israelis have an excuse for missing this issue because dealing with constant violence along its periphery can be taxing for leaders and bureaucracies.

Henrikson, however, does not have excuse for missing the big picture, which is probably why he is stuck in an Ivory tower for conservative scholars like the Hoover Institution.

Kim Jung Il seyz: "The only thing spinnin' be the rims on my Escalade"

It turns out that the Norks might not have a gas centrifuge-based uranium enrichment program after all. Of course, if you read ArmsControlWonk, you'd know that the Arms Control Association's Paul Kerr was digging up the same info two years ago. This in itself should be nothing new because Kerr has a pretty solid track record for getting inside the mainstream media's OODA loop on nuclear proliferation issues.

Reliable Replacement Warhead contract issued

Yep, its true. One of the most God foresaken politically-driven decisions regarding the critically sensitive area of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is actually going to happen:

The design team from NNSA's Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories was selected to develop the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). NNSA and the national laboratories have determined that this design can be certified without requiring underground nuclear testing.

[Snip]

Teams from NNSA's Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories partnered with Sandia National Laboratories to submit design proposals to the NWC. In late 2006, the NWC evaluated the proposals and determined that the RRW concept was feasible to sustain the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile.

"Both teams developed brilliant designs," said D'Agostino. "Because of the superior science across the nuclear weapons complex with assets like supercomputers, and the early design engagement with the production facilities, the laboratories were able to develop designs in nine months that were much more mature than they would have been after two years of work during the Cold War. This is an amazing scientific accomplishment that should not be overlooked."

The two nuclear weapons laboratories both submitted designs that fully met all RRW requirements. However, D'Agostino noted that higher confidence in the ability to certify the Livermore design without underground nuclear testing was the primary reason for its selection. That design was more closely tied to previous underground testing. While one of several factors, it was an especially important one to assure long-term confidence in the reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile.

Several features of the Los Alamos design are highly innovative and will be developed in parallel with the Livermore effort. As they mature, the features may be introduced into the RRW design as it progresses.

Ouch. Talk about a "Dear John" letter for Los Alamos National Laboratories. It originally looked like Congress might buy into two RRWs just to keep both laboratories alive. Then the Bush administration toyed with the idea of a hybrid bomb that would combine technology from Lawrence Livermore's design, which was tested back in the 1980s, and Los Alamos's brand new design. Now it appears that the Bush administration has come to grips with the fact that it can't afford to keep two nuclear weapons laboratories on life support.

The Los Alamos insider's blog LANL: The Corporate Story (successor to LANL: The Real Story) believes that this announcement is the laboratory's death knell. Unless Pete Domineci can defend LANL by slipping a consolation prize into this year's enormous Defense appropriations bill, I think they may be right.

Blast from the Past: Latest 6-P Talks joint statement

I just read the latest joint statement agreeded to by the six parties (China, Russia, Japan, the U.S. and North and South Korea) and I almost cried. Not out of elation or sadness, but because it reminded me so much of the 1994 Agreed Framework and 1994 always makes me think about the death of Kurt Cobain. Here is a summary of today's statement:

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I. The Six Parties reaffirm their intention to implementing the September 2005 joint statement in a 'step-by-step' fashion. (see this ACW post for a good description of how Joe Rood's unilateral reinterpertation of U.S. commitments in the 2005 JS caused implementation to fall apart before it even began)

II.

1) North Korea will power down and seal the graphite-moderated Magnox reactor at Yongbyon.

2) North Korea will disclose all of its nuclear activities.

3) The U.S. and North Korea will initiate talks to normalize relations, including consideration of taking Pyongyang off the state-sponsors of terror list and easing some unilateral sanctions.

4) Japan and North Korea will initiate talks to normalize relations, including North Korean grievances originating from the Japanese occupation and the status of the Japanese citizens kidnapped by the Norks back in the 70s (not explicitly stated, but definitely in the subtext).

5) Reaffirms the first three clauses of the JS issued two years ago. This includes commitments to normalizing relations all around, an affirmation that U.S. nuclear weapons are off the Korean peninsula and will not return and commitments to provide energy aid to Pyongyang.

III. The Six Parties will establish working groups on Korean denulearization, energy assistance to the North, the normalization of relations between Pyongyang and Tokyo/Washington and a East Asian 'peace and security' mechanism.

IV. The North Koreans will receive up to 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil (with an initial shipment of 50,000 tons) once they declare and begin dismantling their nuclear program.

V. The Six Parties agree to future ministerial meetings to monitor implementation and explore other subjects to promote 'peace and security' in East Asia.

VI. The Six Parties will work to build mutual trust and peace in the region. Peace between the North and South will be handled in a different (probably bilateral) venue.

VII. The Six Parties will meet again on March 19th for the sixth round of talks.

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The lack of a firm promise to provide North Korea with a permanent substitute for the energy generated by Yongbyon (i.e. light-water nuclear reactors) and a commitment to continue six-party consultations on larger security issues are the two major differences between today's JS and the Agreed Framework.

These changes definitely reflect the Bush administration's qualitatively different approach to security East Asia and nonproliferation. In terms of East Asia, the U.S. has chosen a position that is long on revisionist rhetoric (shaping China's rise, regime change in North Korea, etc.), but is short on similar policies. The administration's most substantial policy shift in my eyes was Bush solidifying the status quo in the Taiwan Strait back in 2003 by writing off U.S. support for a unilateral declaration of Taiwanese independence. That was a pretty big step away from revisionism for a man who declared the the U.S. will do "whatever it takes to help Taiwan defend herself" in the opening days of his presidency.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the White House is still moving away from the 'hub-and-spoke' model of relations towards East Asia that the U.S. has used to maximize its leverage over Japan, Korea and Taiwan for the past 40 years. Converting the six-party format into a semi-permanent regional security dialogue is a critical first step towards East Asian security integration. One thing is for sure, this certainly wouldn't have been possible with a sino-phobic Rumsfeld still at the helm of the DOD.

The JS is also interesting because it toes the administration's belief that nuclear proliferators should completely abdicate their right to even peaceful, proliferation resistant nuclear technology. Previous administrations have been willing to trade light-water reactors and the Additional Protocol in exchange for dismantlement, but the White House's expandive definition of 'nuclear capability' generally foreclose that route.

This may be practical option for states with minimal nuclear know-how like Iran, but it doesn't seem very practical for North Korea considering that they (kind of) crossed the nuclear threshold last year.

This may all be a moot in few months anyways, considering each party's seeming inability to implement their side of the JS in good faith. Then again, the years I've spent studying Japan, Taiwan and China have given me a pretty cynical view of the East Asian security environment.

North Korea to test again?

According to ABC News, Defense officials have pontificated that the North Korea is preparing for another nuclear test. I'm a little suspicious about this myself because as Dr. Jeffery over at ACW points out, Reuters is quoting officials from other corners of the Intelligence Community who think otherwise. I'm not a huge fan of the DIA, so I decided to so look east and see what is percolating in the Japanese press: - The Chunichi Shimbun, Nikkei News, CNN Japan, and (my preferred periodical) Yomiuri Shimbun have all picked on the story, but they all cite the original ABC News piece or 'the American media' more generally as sources. Nothing of interest to report so far. - The Yomiuri has a posted a short wire piece on the Japanese cabinet's official reaction: Second North Korean nuclear test will yield a severe response, Prime Minister tells foreign press January 5, 2007

On the night of January 5th, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe discretely responded to the BBC and Reuters internet wire service from his official residence. According to the Cabinet press office, the Prime Minister stated "(In the event of a precipitous nuclear test) Japan and the interntional community will respond by taking severe measures" in refernce to reports that North Korea is preparing to conduct a repeat of its October 2006 nuclear test. He pointed out that "North Korea is involved in the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The understanding and cooperation of European Union and NATO members in stemming North Korean proliferation has been indispensible. The countries of the world view the kidnapping [ed. of Japanese citizens by North Korea in the 1970s] question as a gross violation of international human rights that must be tackled.

That is pretty hum-drum stuff coming from the occasionally belicose Abe.

Translation of the Sankei article on the Japanese nuclear industry

Okay, I finally broke down and started my own blog on the various things I bother the good folks at Defensetech.org and the Arms Control Wonk about on a regular basis. That and I need to an excuse to practice my Japanese ahead of an exit exam at GWU in March. To inaugurate this blog, I will have reproduced the rough translation of a December 25th article from the Sankei Shimbun on the Japanese government's recent report on that country's nascent nuclear weapons capacity. Here is the bulk of the item: "Japanese Government Internal Report Says 3-Plus Years and 200-300 Billion Yen to Build Nuke Prototype" December 12, 2006, 2:38am

According to a government report released on the 24th of December, it would take 3-5 years to build a prototype of a miniaturized nuclear warhead. The report “The Domestic Potential for Nuclear Weapons” says that although Japan has the uranium enrichment and nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities needed, technical limitations would make it difficult to divert them to weapons production. A discussion of revising the first part of Japan’s “Three Non-Nuclear Principles” has emerged since the North Korean nuclear test the report confirmed the reality that hypothetical Japanese nuclear weapons would be starting from ‘square one.’ The report was proposed on the 20th of September. It went forward after the North Korean nuclear test on the 9th of October. It would take at least 3 years and 200-300 billion yen to mobilize the hundreds of technical needed to build a miniature nuclear warhead prototype. This would be good enough for a hypothetical nuclear-armed Japan to check North Korean nuclear threats alone. The ingredients of nuclear weapons would include uranium for the type of bomb used over Hiroshima or plutonium for the type of bomb used over Nagasaki. The Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (Ibaraki Prefecture) and the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Facility (Aomori Prefecture) can do both uranium enrichment and nuclear fuel reprocessing. However, using their light water reactors will not yield weapons-grade plutonium. Enrichment facilities only manufacture low-enriched uranium that is only enriched to 3% and the facilities frequently experience mechanical problems, so expanding enrichment would be difficult. According to the government report, Japan would have to construct a graphite-moderated breeder reactor and expand its reprocessing facilities to produce enough Pu 239 needed for a nuclear arsenal. It would also be difficult for Japan to miniaturize nuclear warheads because there are many gaps in the technical knowledge required for development.

The results of this report don't really surprise me too much. Sure, Japan has dozens of nuclear power plants with some limited plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment capacity, but it is only enough to support the country's reactor requirements. The large-scale production facilities needed to produce fissile material efficiently can't just be dreamed up over night, even for the technically adroit Japanese.