Arms Control Wonk

A few weeks ago — ok, maybe longer — I commented on an interesting proposal (that I nevertheless disagree with) by Crispin Rovere and Kalman Robertson to prohibit low yield nuclear weapons. I agued (“Size Doesn’t Matter“) that I didn’t agree with the problem as framed, didn’t think the treaty could be verified and, in any event, thought entry-into-force of the CTBT would be a better use of our time and energy.

Rovere and Robertson asked for the opportunity to respond, which I think is quite reasonable:

Size Matters 

Crispin Rovere and Kalman A. Robertson

The following is our response to Jeffrey’s challenge to our study and its conclusions. We apologise for this taking some weeks, Crispin has been lost in the internet black hole of the DPRK for much of that intervening period, and has only just rejoined the technological landscape.

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Sometimes it helps to frame choices about familiar subjects in different ways. By way of prologue – and to dust off the arguments in my book, Better Safe than Sorry (2009) – here’s another way to think about future arms control choices:

The global system created over many decades to prevent nuclear proliferation can be likened to a construction project. The construction is only as sturdy as the common resolve of the five nations with nuclear weapons that also enjoy permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council. As the world’s strongest power, the United States has the most responsibility for building maintenance. If Washington walks away from this job, the construction site will become unsafe. But even if the United States does its job properly, Russia, China, France, and Great Britain still have to support the structure. When the P-5 works in concert against the perils of proliferation, the construction provides reliable shelter. When they place other national security and commercial interests ahead of proliferation concerns, the construction becomes wobbly.

The building’s load-bearing walls consist of agreements, rules, and norms designed to prevent proliferation. Treaties that set legally binding obligations constitute the steel beams that keep this structure erect…

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Yesterday, the two us — Jeffrey Lewis and Jende Huang — discussed AQ Khan’s residence in the upscale E-7 neighborhood of Islamabad, where he lived for many years including the period he was under house arrest.  Today, we turn our attention to his lake-side villa.

Khan’s lake-side villa played a central role in the unflattering profile of Khan by William Langewiesche that appeared in The Atlantic (“Wrath of Khan”) and Atomic Bazaar. Langewiesche argued that Khan built the lake house “in blatant disregard of the law” to demonstrate his power and status.  Khan disputed the account, calling it total rubbish.

Ok, but where is it?

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Where does AQ Khan live?

Well, he has at least two houses in Islamabad – a lake-side villa in Bani Gala that was the subject of controversy as detailed by William Langeweische in The Atlantic and home in the E-7 neighborhood of Islamabad where he spent much of his house arrest. He is rumored to have been connected to additional homes, including properties in the E-7. As a knowledgeable commentator once asked, “Can anyone give a credible and, preferably, checkable list of the houses he owns?”

Well, that’s a tall order.  But the two us — Jeffrey Lewis and Jende Huang — have at least located his two main residences.  Let’s talk today about the home in E-7, where he served his house arrest.  We’ll talk about the lake-side villa tomorrow.

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This is the spot where the Defense Threat Reduction Agency eliminated Albania’s chemical weapons stockpile.

I’ve spent the last few weeks ruminating on the challenges of finding a third party to accept Syria’s chemical weapons.

Most Syria’s stockpile is in bulk form (mustard and precursors for sarin and VX.) The current plan is to consolidate the precursors at a site near one a port such as Latakia or  Tartous, then ship the materials to a third country for destruction by mobile assets like the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System.  Norway recently declined to be that third country. Others have made it clear they are not interested.

One of the challenges, I think, is relates to a larger problem in implementing our nonproliferation policies.  We’re good at doing the parts we like, but we often leave behind a mess.  As a result, states that cooperate on nonproliferation issues aren’t always left feeling good about having cooperated.

Consider the case of Albania.

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After a departure from our regular content, it returns!

P5+1 Briefing – US Dept. of State | Finally, the text of the background briefing on the P5+1 negotiations!  I wonder what the entrance to the negotiations looked like…  Aside from this briefing, details have been scarce.

Majid Rafizadeh – CNN | The main question everyone is asking: who won the first round of the Iran-P5+1 negotiations?  Mr. Rafizadeh seems to think that Iran has the upper hand.

Iranian Nuclear Proposals – Arms Control Association | Let’s look back through time and see all of the failed Iranian nuclear negotiation proposals!

Thomas Erdbrink – New York Times | Hey, the recent negotiations seem to have perturbed certain hard-liners.  The Speaker of the Iranian Parliament is not too happy about the latest round.

The Economist | The Economist sees hope for an Iranian nuclear deal.  However, it is a bit optimistic about the power point presentation (which probably went more like this).

Paul Kerr – Congressional Research Service | Paul Kerr’s 2012 report on the state of the Iranian nuclear program.

The Jerusalem Post | Apparently, Iran has not ceased 20% enrichment, contradicting recent claims by Parliament Member Hossein Naqavi Hosseini (who heads the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee).

Scott Peterson – CS Monitor | Mr. Peterson argues that the secrecy surrounding the talks is just ammunition for Iranian hardliners.  Hey, more published details would make my job easier.

We hope you enjoyed this edition of FYRP.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his key civilian advisers received the red-carpet treatment in Washington last week. The Prime Minister’s state visit — the first official trip of a Pakistani leader in a decade – including meetings with President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary Kerry, Defense Secretary Hagel, NSC Adviser Rice and CIA Director Brennan. Talking points were exchanged primarily on Afghanistan, counter-terrorism, drones, regional security, and Pakistan’s economic and energy woes. Missing from the conversation – at least according to press reports – was the topic of nuclear weapons. Chalk this up to yet another negative consequence of seemingly endless warfare in Afghanistan.

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Because neither side has disclosed details, we don’t know for sure whether the roadmap Iran proposed to the P5+1 powers in Geneva in mid-October includes the future of the IR-40 reactor project. Iran’s counterparts have good reason to make sure that the unfinished heavy water reactor is on a short list of must-resolve issues. Once it is completed, Iran will have an installation that can generate annually in its irradiated fuel between 5 and 10 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium. That’s enough for one nuclear weapon a year.

The powers don’t want the IR-40 to make plutonium that Iran then separates. Iran wants a versatile and safe research reactor. These issues could be reconciled by diplomacy. The P5+1 could help Iran finish the reactor if Iran provides credible assurances it won’t access the plutonium.

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In November 1953, The American Academy of Political and Social Science issued a thin hardcover issue of The Annals, edited by Robert A. Dahl, titled The Impact of Atomic Energy. This collection of essays and book reviews appeared during a rocky phase of the nuclear competition, with the advent of thermonuclear weapons and a geopolitical balance than seemed to be tipping away from Washington, where scapegoating was at full throttle.

Here are some excerpts from an essay by Wayne A.R. Leys, “Human Values in the Atomic Age.” Leys also wrote Ethics for Policy Decisions (1952).

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One of the nicest things about relocating to Monterey is that Avner Cohen, a colleague from my days at the University of Maryland, has relocated too. Avner, like me, is a lapsed philosopher with a deep interest in nuclear weapons — there is probably no one who knows more about the Israeli nuclear weapons program.  Well, no one who can talk, anyway.

Avner’s knowledge is based on decades of research.  Now, that material is available to other scholars.  Avner donated to the Woodrow Wilson Center his research materials — tens of thousands of pages of copies of archival documents, countless press clippings, and hundreds of hours of oral history interviews — that form the basis for his books, Israel and the Bomb and The Worst Kept Secret. Some of these materials are now online.

As part of the announcement process, Avner wrote an op-ed for the New York Times.

I am pleased to note that Avner also accepted my suggestion to collect all the wonky bits that might not interest a general reader in a long-form piece for the blog.  You are in for a real treat.

How Nuclear Was It? New Testimony on the 1973 Yom Kippur War

Avner Cohen[1]

Two weeks ago the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP), which is housed at the History and Public Policy Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C., released the first installment from my personal archival collection, known now as the “Avner Cohen Collection,” on its digital nuclear archive web site.

The key item in this release is a video interview (as well as a written transcript) which I made in 2008 with the late Azarayahu ‘Sini’ Arnan, a former senior advisor in the Israeli government, who provides a dramatic eyewitness description of a closed-door ministerial consultation in which Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir overruled Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, halting preparations to ready the country’s nuclear weapons for a possible demonstration during the 1973 War.[2] This interview upends conventional assumptions that Israel was very close to using nuclear weapons in this conflict (or even threatened to use nuclear weapons) and provides unique insight into how the Israeli government came to this decision.

On the day of the release, which coincided with the 40^th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, the New York Times published an op-ed piece I authored about the Sini interview.[3] It was in this context that my colleague Jeffrey Lewis suggested that I should write something for this blog that will go beyond what I already said in the New York Times and elsewhere. Almost with no hesitation I told Jeffrey, sure, I’ll do something. That something will try to discuss the nuclear dimension of the 1973 War beyond what was discussed before, and it will also be homage to this great blog that for some time I have had the desire to be a contributor.

So here it is and I hope it will stir some further discussion.

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