Following an August 3 report in the Wall Street Journal, the arms control blogosphere has been buzzing about a nearly finalized nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and Vietnam. According to the Journal, and now other outlets including The Guardian and Global Security Newswire , the U.S.-Vietnam deal has considerably weaker proliferation controls than the Obama administration has demanded in the past – specifically, the agreement would allow Vietnam to retain the right to enrich uranium.

The Risks and Benefits of Enrichment

Uranium enrichment technology has both civil and military applications: it can be used to produce fuel for nuclear power plants or fissile material for nuclear weapons. Any country that possesses enrichment facilities would be able to use this technology to jumpstart a weapons program. But any country without enrichment facilities is unable to independently produce nuclear fuel for its reactors and thus required to import fuel for its nuclear energy program.

Read more

Nukes on a Blog, Security Matters, Obama Administration (all tags)

Center Chairman General Gard has written an op-ed on the support of military leadership for the President’s nuclear weapons agenda published today by the McClatchy-Tribune news service. The article, GOP critics vs. the Pentagon, appeared in Lexington, Kentucky in the Lexington Herald-Leader

Read more

New START, Nuclear weapons, Obama Administration, Senate, Conservative High Jinks (all tags)

In this morning’s WSJ, NSA Jim Jones rebuts the paper’s April 17 editorial claiming that New START places too many restrictions on U.S. missile defenses. Jones argues that the treaty’s limits on converting ICBM silos for missile defense interceptors is not a problem because the United States would probably just dig new holes, which is apparently cheaper than converting existing silos, if it ever needed to add additional missile defense silos in California or elsewhere.

Sounds reasonable, although one wonders what the timeline would be for converting silos versus building new ones. In a rapidly-developing crisis situation, would the United States have time to dig new holes? I ask because Keith Payne raised concerns about a rapid, unforeseen scenario in his April 8 WSJ op-ed, which will continue to be plagiarized heavily by the Journal and Senate Republicans.

Here’s the full text of Jones’s letter…

Read more

Nukes on a Blog, Obama Administration, New START, FY 2011 Budget Request, Missile Defense (all tags)

Late last week, KT “Queen of All Media” Mounts took to the pages of Maine’s The Times Record to drop some knowledge on how important young people are becoming in the fight to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons.

Can KT work a “Tommy Boy” reference into her first paragraph? Yes, she can!

I was born into the millennial generation in 1985. I have no memory of the Soviet Union. “Fat Man” to me refers to a Chris Farley dance in the movie “Tommy Boy.” And “duck and cover” in my elementary years meant we would get to play “Heads Down, Thumbs Up.”

In a funny twist of fate, however, despite a lack of experience with these symbols of the Cold War, it may be my generation that will be left to clean up the nuclear weapons mess that remains from it.

[snip]

As the involvement of young people in current debates about nuclear weapons grows, momentum builds for a more secure global future. The road to a world free from the threats of nuclear weapons may be long, but current efforts can get America securely onto the right path.

My generation has been offered a unique opportunity to take the reins — and I believe we’re ready to lead.

Consider this a warm up for tomorrow night’s youth/student conference call with President Obama’s deputy NSA, Ben Rhodes, on U.S. nuclear weapons policy.

Read more

Nukes on a Blog, New START, Obama Administration, Outreach (all tags)

“I'm so hungry [for New START] I could eat the ass end out of a dead rhino!”

(h/t Thrillist)

Read more

Nukes on a Blog, Obama Administration (all tags)

In a CNN poll conducted April 9-11, 70 percent of respondents said that the U.S. Senate should vote in favor of the U.S.-Russia New START agreement, versus 28 percent who think the Senate should oppose it.  As Prof. Julian Zelizer writes today in CNN, this level of public support comports with historical precedent and suggests that New START may be good politics for the Obama administration and congressional Democrats.

Read more

Nukes on a Blog, Congress, New START, Obama Administration (all tags)

Rarely Foggy Bottom

When Jim Jones and Adm. Mike Mullen traveled to Moscow to discuss New START back in January, the folks at the State Department must have been on edge. While State’s Rose Gottemoeller and Ellen Tauscher had been killing themselves for a year negotiating the agreement, it seemed like Jones and Mullen might swoop in, seal the deal, and steal the glory.

Now, I’m sure State was not rooting against its military teammates or anything like that. Nevertheless, it’s understandable that Foggy Bottom wanted to be the agency that gave the Obama administration a much-needed foreign policy win—particularly in an age when the military is increasingly squeezing out State as the primary executor of U.S. foreign policy...

Read more

Nukes on a Blog, New START, Obama Administration (all tags)

As analysts prepare for the impending release of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (see 1 – 2 – 3), a grading scale would help to illustrate which policies are under consideration. Thankfully, Prof. Tom Sauer provided such a scale in “A Second Nuclear Revolution: From Nuclear Primacy to Post-Existential Deterrence,” his contribution to the October 2009 issue of The Journal of Strategic Studies.

Sauer argues that nuclear weapons states may choose to downgrade the importance of nuclear weapons in their security policies sooner than is commonly expected. He then digs into some Global Zero analysis towards the end, so if that’s your bag, check him out.

Here is the excellent typology Sauer presents for considering nuclear weapons policy. Click to enlarge.

Here are the definitions and historical examples Sauer uses to illustrate his typology.

Nuclear Primacy
Description: the capability to eliminate the nuclear weapons force of the enemy with a first strike
Example: U.S. during the late 1940s

Maximum Deterrence
Description: role of nuclear weapons in the defence posture is emphasized, literally maximized, in order to squeeze as much benefit as possible out of deterrence
Examples: U.S. and Soviet Union during the Cold War; U.K. and France during the Cold War, albeit at much lower levels

Minimum Deterrence
Description: minimize the emphasis on nuclear weapons…a secure second-strike force does not require a very large arsenal, as long as a small number of nuclear weapons are invulnerable
Examples: current postures of Israel, France, and U.K.; perhaps the U.S. and Russia in 15-20 years?

Existential Deterrence
Description: nuclear weapons are able to deter thanks simply to their existence, regardless of the nature of the nuclear posture
Examples: China, North Korea, India, and Pakistan, although the latter two want to move up the chart

Post-Existential Deterrence
Description: nuclear deterrence without the existence of nuclear weapons (i.e. tracking Mazarr)
Examples: Japan and Germany

When the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review comes out in the next few weeks, analysts might ask how closely it adheres to Sauer’s full description of minimum deterrence:

Minimum deterrence tries to minimize the emphasis on nuclear weapons. According to minimum (and existential) deterrence, in contrast to maximum deterrence, a secure second-strike force does not require a very large arsenal, as long as a small number of nuclear weapons are invulnerable. As long as the opponent believes that he can be attacked with tens of nuclear weapons in a retaliatory strike, the fear of assured destruction will prevail. Parity, let alone superiority, is therefore not a requirement. Because of the relatively small nuclear forces, counterforce targeting and massive attack options are excluded. To the same extent, high alert rates are not needed, except maybe for the invulnerable part of the arsenal. A no-first-use declaratory policy then also becomes an option, at least for states that cannot be easily overrun by non-nuclear means.

How will the Obama administration’s review stack up?

Read more

Nukes on a Blog, Posture Review, Obama Administration (all tags)

During last week’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the fiscal year 2011 U.S. Navy budget request, Senator John Thune (R-SD) stuck to his parochial and political guns by quizzing the witnesses about U.S. nuclear force posture. His line of attack on the administration’s policy process suggests an argument that opponents of New START may advance during Senate debate on the agreement, whenever that occurs.

Following an exchange on nuclear delivery vehicles (pun!), Thune cited last year’s Guardian article and asked whether it was true that President Obama had rejected the Pentagon’s previous Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) draft because it was too timid. This question dovetailed with the “numbers game” criticism I dissected last week, wherein conservatives claim that the White House is cutting nuclear weapons sans either strategy or international/ intragovernmental consultations.

In response, Navy CNO Adm. Gary Roughead detailed just how inclusive and accountable the Obama administration’s NPR process has been. He said:

I've been involved in the NPR and I believe that the process we've had, the considerations we've had, has placed great value on our nuclear deterrent force, all legs of that triad, and the considerations of being able to feel the strategic needs of the nation.

[snip]

I'm very comfortable with the discussions we've had, the involvement that we've had, and how we're looking at things.

[snip]

I think as we have worked our way through what's a very complex process, I've been very comfortable with the discussions that we've been having, sir.

Policymakers and analysts will inevitably disagree about what the new NPR contains. Yet there is clear evidence that the White House has not unilaterally imposed its agenda on the Pentagon. The process has been collaborative, responsible, and, perhaps as a consequence, a teensy bit behind schedule.

Read more

Nukes on a Blog, New START, Senate, Congress, Posture Review, Obama Administration (all tags)

I wish this movie was about John Bolton

John Bolton takes to the pages of the Washington Times today to assail President Obama’s supposedly naïve obsession with nuclear reductions. One of Bolton’s central criticisms is that the Obama administration is placing numbers ahead of strategy. He writes...

Read more

Nukes on a Blog, New START, Posture Review, Obama Administration (all tags)