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I notice that Jeff Smith and Joby Warrick have yet another story based on documents provided by AQ Khan to Simon Henderson. (For more about the documents, read Henderson’s account in the Times online.)

This story pisses me off. (I suspect the editors, not the reporters, are at fault here.)

The lede to the story is about Iran, but Khan doesn’t give a whit about Iran. He’s telling a story about domestic Pakistani politics. It’s like sending two reporters to watch a production of Othello, and then publishing a story about Ottoman maritime policy. (To refresh: Othello is sent from Venice to Cyprus to defend the island against the Turks. They Turks never appear; their fleet is destroyed in a storm.) The Post actually lists the players as though this were some off-beat summer stock production.

The main allegation is that Iran sent a senior military official, Ali Shamkhani, to Pakistan to pick up three nuclear weapons promised by the Pakistani military. When the Chairman of the Pakistani Joint Chiefs of Staff says they’ll have to discuss that further, all hell breaks loose. The Pakistanis send Shamkhani packing with little more than the promise of some refuse to be provided by AQ Khan from Kahuta:

Khan’s written statement to Henderson states that after [Ali] Shamkhani’s arrival in Islamabad on a government plane, he told the chairman of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff committee that “he had come . . . to collect the promised nuclear bombs.”

When the chairman, Adm. Iftikhar Ahmed Sirohey, proposed to discuss other matters first and then “see how Pakistan could assist the Iranians in their nuclear program,” Shamkhani reportedly became irate, Khan wrote. He reminded Sirohey that “first Gen. Zia (ul Haq, the Pakistani president until 1988) and then Gen. Beg had promised assistance and nuclear weapons and he had specifically come to collect the same.”

[snip]

Khan said that after hearing Shamkhani’s demand for three finished weapons, Sirohey demurred and that other ministers backed him up. But Beg pressed then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her top military aide “to honour (Beg’s) . . . commitment,” Khan wrote.

Under pressure, the aide asked Khan to “get components of two old (P-1) discarded machines and pack them into boxes with 2 sets of drawings,” which were passed to Iran through an intermediary, he said. P-1 is the designation for the centrifuge model used in Pakistan.

I am writing a longer piece about the other two stories in this series as they relate to North Korea, but I have essentially the same complaint about all three: The apparent faith placed in AQ Khan.

There is good reason to be wary of Khan’s statements. He is not an historian, attempting to document the operation of a proliferation network for future scholars, or a journalist with a big scoop. He’s a perp, trying to save his own skin and repair his reputation. His motive is to demonstrate that everything he did, he did:

(1) with the approval, or indeed at the behest, of senior officials in Pakistan (which is not, precisely, the same thing as the Government of Pakistan), and

(2) in the service of Pakistan’s national interest.

That is the gist of Khan’s March 2004 “statement” to the Pakistani government, his handwritten December 10, 2003 letter to his wife Hendrina, and his 5-page description of his government’s nuclear cooperation with China. Indeed, the apparent reason that the Post won’t publish the documents is that they contain a lengthy list of likely litigious Pakistani officials whom Khan accuses of accepting bribes. (In the print version, there is an image of the statement with the name of one of Khan’s employees blacked out.) Khan is implicating others, casting his own actions as having served his country.

The whole Iran angle is just backdrop, like the never-seen Turkish fleet in Othello. The real drama is the fight between the Army and the civilian government, represented by General Beg and Prime Minister Bhutto. In this play, Khan is neither Othello nor Iago. He’s Roderigo — the fool used by one powerful force to get at another, then betrayed.

Seriously, the Post’s theater critic could have written a better story.

Who suggested giving Iran nuclear weapons? Not innocent AQ Khan, but the powerful Army Chief of Staff. Who decided to provide Iran with (old) centrifuges as a consolation prize? Not gentle AQ Khan, but Benazir Bhutto’s military aide. Seriously, I think Khan missed a career writing for stage and film.

Clearly the Iranians were up to no good with Pakistan, as were the Libyans, North Koreans and probably a few others. Khan played a central role in that relationship, so his account is interesting, if not dispositive. But to read Khan’s account of the wrangling in Islamabad as a story about motivations in Tehran is a bizarre editorial choice that speaks volumes about the state of the Post.

If the Post is worried about lawsuits arising from Khan’s allegations, doesn’t that say something about the credibility of the documents? Either the Post should have the courage to publish the documents in full, as David Albright et al. have suggested, or admit that there are real problems with Khan’s credibility.

Comment [8]

Once [Follow-On To Lance] had been cancelled [in May 1990], as well as the upgrade for nuclear artillery, and the INF Treaty had eliminated all longer-range missiles, only dual-capable aircraft remained available for SACEUR’s use as a nuclear deterrent. The rancor raised by the FOTL debate carried forward in to a broad public concern over any nuclear forces, thereby putting the spotlight on [dual-capable aircraft]. In response, NATO chose over the next 15 years to minimize public discussion or awareness of this aspect of its deterrent mission.”

— Jeffrey A. Larsen, The Future of U.S. Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons and Implications for NATO: Drifting Toward the Foreseeable Future (2006)

Make that 20 years. For about a generation’s time now, the North Atlantic alliance has been drifting, in Larsen’s words, “toward the withering away of its nuclear capabilities.” Nuclear debates have been deferred indefinitely, leading to the present situation, wherein acquisition decisions (or non-decisions) have long substituted for fundamental policy choices.

But now we’re having the discussion, which at times has manifested as a semi-public debate between the German Foreign Ministry and the German Defense Ministry. Behold the nuclear side of what SecDef Gates recently dubbed “the demilitarization of Europe – where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it.”

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Now that the argument has finally commenced, the official silence and habitual secrecy surrounding the exact numbers and whereabouts of NATO’s bombs must rank among the quirkier legacies of the Big Shhh that descended years ago over U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe. Consider this passage from the above-cited study by Larsen, which was sponsored by NATO:

Most estimates claim that there remain several hundred U.S. tactical nuclear warheads in Europe, at some eight bases in six European nations that could be delivered by a fleet of dual-capable aircraft (fighter-bombers) manned by up to eight allied nations. [5]

[5] See, for example, Hans Kristensen, U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe: A Review of Post-Cold War Policy, Force Levels, and War Planning (Washington: Natural Resources Defense Council, February 2005); Kristensen and Stan Norris, “NRDC Nuclear Notebook: U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2006,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 2006, pp. 68-71; and Brian Alexander and Alistair Millar, eds., Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Emergent Threats in an Evolving Security Environment (Washington: Brassey’s, 2003).

Or this passage from an instant classic of Shhh, a February 2010 paper by Franklin Miller, George Robertson, and Kori Schake:

According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), the US possesses about 1,200 tactical nuclear weapons, of which 500 are operational warheads (the rest are in storage or in the process of being dismantled). The FAS indicates that 200 of the operational weapons are deployed in Europe, stationed with US and allied air crews in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey. [2]

[2] Federation of American Scientists, http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2009/03/russia-2.php.

Now, George Robertson used to be NATO’s Secretary-General. Who supposes that he needs Hans Kristensen & Co. to tell him where the bombs are?

This sudden deference to NRDC or FAS is the NATO equivalent of a phrase that appears, in some version, in every Israeli news report or commentary about Israel’s “nuclear option”: According to foreign media… That fig leaf is enough to keep the military censor out of the hair of reporters and editors.

Jive Turkey

Speaking of figs, NATO’s extreme case study in formal opacity may be Turkey, where, as Alexandra Bell has reported, military officials are far from ready to concede the obvious:

Turkish officials were cagey about discussing these weapons. A former Air Force general, following what seemed to be the official line, denied that there were nuclear weapons in Turkey, saying they were removed at the end of the Cold War. This differed from the other officials I met, whose wink-wink references basically confirmed the presence of the nukes. They also hinted that the weapons would be critically important if a certain neighbor got the bomb.

Turkish civilian officials, as ACW’s own Jeff Lewis has gathered, seem to take an altogether different view on the importance of U.S. nuclear weapons hosted abroad. Turkey may be as divided as, say, Germany on the matter.

There’s a limit to the comparison, of course: Germany isn’t undergoing the revolution in civil-military relations that is Turkish political life today.

Latest News: Cold War Still Over

But enough talk about talking about not talking. Whether to act — to withdraw an undisclosed number of tactical nuclear weapons from undisclosed locations in Europe — will be on the agenda of the conference of NATO Foreign Ministers next month in Tallinn, Estonia. It should be mighty interesting. This comes on the heels of a Japanese decision to disavow explicitly any claim to standing over American decisions on tactical nukes, and a Japanese news report alleging that the Americans have, as a courtesy, telegraphed an upcoming decision on that front. We’ll have to wait and see if that’s really so.

Whenever it comes and however it comes, change is coming. As with strategic weapons, but perhaps moreso, the ground has shifted around tactical nuclear weapons. Kids today have no idea what’s meant by the Fulda Gap — trust me on this one. But everyone’s heard of Osama.

For further reading: Pavel Podvig and yours truly at the Bulletin.

Comment [1]

And, while we’re doing public service announcements for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, let me remind readers that CNS is again hosting the Doreen and Jim McElvany 2010 Nonproliferation Challenge.

First prize is 10 Gs. Seriously, who can’t use a little extra baksheesh these days?

The due date is 11:59 PM (Eastern time, North America), May 31, 2010:

The James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) at the Monterey Institute of International Studies strives to combat the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons to state and non-state actors by training the next generation of nonproliferation specialists and disseminating timely information based on cutting-edge research and analysis.

In order to spur new thinking and policy initiatives to address today’s most urgent proliferation threats, CNS and its journal, the Nonproliferation Review, created an essay competition to identify and publish the most outstanding new scholarly papers in the nonproliferation field. Our priority is to generate new insights and specific recommendations for resolving today’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons challenges, including those involving both state and non-state actors.

Eligibility

This competition is open to persons worldwide, except for current faculty, staff, interns, and students of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, past winners of this competition, and anyone involved in reviewing or judging submissions. To be eligible for the student prize, an entrant must be enrolled at a college or university at the time of submission. A team of authors comprising one or more students and non-students is not eligible for the student prize.

• Students are eligible for the grand prize.

How to Enter

On or before May 31, 2010, e-mail your entry to essaycontest [at] miis.edu. A valid entry consists of two parts:

1. a completed official cover sheet [Word DOC] indicating the name(s) of the author(s), address, telephone number(s), e-mail address(es), indication of status as a student at the time of entry (yes or no, undergraduate or graduate), date of birth, title of the submission, and a one paragraph biography of the author(s) (the cover sheet is the only place where this information should appear); and

2. the submitted essay.

Past Grand Prize Winners are Ward Wilson for The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence and Anne Harrington de Santana.

Think you can do better?

Comment

Well, this is very interesting. You can now get an MA in nuclear terrorism. Imagine the class projects!

Alright, I kid, but the Monterey Institute has a new degree in “Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies” that brings together the best of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) and the Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program (MonTREP):

The Monterey Institute is launching a new M.A. degree in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies (MANPTS). The first of its kind in the United States, it prepares students for careers in analyzing, preventing, and responding to terrorist threats and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Courses for this degree will be taught by faculty of the Graduate School of International Policy and Management; by policy, scientific, and technical specialists in the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) and the Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program (MonTREP); and by experts invited from international organizations, government agencies, the private sector, and leading universities all over the world. Students in this M.A. program may also gain practical experience through internships at international organizations or work as research assistants at CNS and MonTREP. Placement assistance from our Center for Advising and Career Services helps graduating students find professional positions in government agencies and international organizations dedicated to combating terrorism or the spread of WMD as well as private firms specializing in security research, corporate security, or related fields.

I am not sure I would have called it MANPTS (Man Points?), but a rose by any other name … If you are interested, there relevant information is here.

Comment [12]

So, the one time I met Tom D’Agostino, he called me “Jerry.”

It was interesting moment, because I couldn’t decide whether he just suffered from some mild aphasia or was trying to be insulting. (Though, you know, Jerry Lewis is big in France.)

I’ve since seem him speak a couple of times, and still can’t decide if this is just an act or he really is just in way over that shiny pate of his. But, the endless speculation entertains me in a cruel way — and I do love new data points.

Enter Nick Roth, of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, who went to watch T-D’Ag testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee (Subcommitte on Energy and Water Development). Nick observes that T-D’Ag wildly misrepresented the recent JASON report on Lifetime Extension Programs, and got thumped pretty hard by Dianne Feinstein:

Tom D’agostino was explaining the findings about LEPs in the latest JASON report. Tom D’awg’s interpretation was if we don’t want to improve safety, security, and reliability, we continue doing what we do now. Senator Feinstein instantly interrupted explaining that was NOT what the JASONs said. Tom D’awg responded that he did not have the report in front of him.

Later in the hearing Senator Feinstein submitted the declassified JASON study for the record and acknowledged that the original rationale for new pits has been refuted. She also said that she is going to arrange a meeting for the JASONs to sit down with Tom D’awg.

You can listen to the whole thing as a webcast. T-D’ag draws Senator Feinstein’s ire at 29:24-30:04 and then later, at 51:30 she has the unclassified executive summary submitted for the record.

The report said, as Senator Feinstein noted correctly, something very different. Regular readers will remember that Arms Control Wonk acquired an early copy of the unclassified executive summary, titled Lifetime Extension Program (LEP), JSR-09-334E.

The study plainly states that refurbishment and component reuse will allow improvement of safety, surety and reliability (to be precise, “margins”). Replacement would be necessary only in one, extreme instance — an effort to add “intrinsic” surety features (ie those inside the nuclear explosive package) to some reentry vehicle warheads. (Elaine Grossman had a nice story before I had a copy of the document.)

Either T-D’ag has limited reading comprehension, or he was foolish enough to think he could get one past Senator Feinstein. I don’t know which is worse.

I think that sometimes, because she is such an effective politician in terms of speaking plainly, that wonks underestimate Senator Feinstein. That is, as T-D’ag has no doubt noticed, a big mistake. I had the pleasure of hosting Senator Feinstein at one of my nuclear strategy dinners, watching her talk to Mort Halperin and Arnie Kanter all evening. She’s impressive, and not just “for a politician.”

At any rate she’s certainly a lot smarter than Tom D’Agostino.

Comment [8]

Mark Stokes has a really cool paper out on China’s system for handling warheads (China’s Nuclear Warhead Storage and Handling System):

The Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission (CMC) maintains strict control over China’s operational nuclear warheads through a centralized storage and handling system managed by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Second Artillery. Nuclear warheads are granted special consideration due to their political significance and potential consequences of an accident, incident, or unauthorized use. As a result, warheads are managed in peacetime
through a system that is separate and distinct from Second Artillery missile bases and subordinate launch brigades. Second Artillery nuclear warheads also appear to be managed separately from China’s civilian fissile material protection, control and accounting (MPC&A) system. In addition, the Second Artillery appears to control and manage nuclear warheads that could be delivered by other services, such as the PLA Air Force and Navy.

The narrative is not surprising, but the detail is jaw-dropping.

He’s gotten well-deserved raves in Defense News (Wendell Minnick, “China’s Central Nuke Storage ID’d,” March 8, 2010) and the Washington Times.

Comment [11]

As I noted yesterday, the Japanese government released two reports (an official report and an experts report) on the so-called “secret agreements” regarding the storage and transit of US nuclear weapons in Japan, as well as a massive amount of declassified supporting documentation.

Unfortunately (for me at least), this treasure trove is entirely in Japanese.

Below is the text of an article in the Yomiuri Shimbun, identified by reader Julia, which is the best description of the contents that I have found so far:

A Foreign Ministry panel of experts concluded in its report released Tuesday that there were three secret deals between Japan and the United States out of four alleged deals it has been investigating, including one on the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan concluded when the bilateral security treaty was revised in 1960.

[snip]

The six-member panel of experts classified secret agreements into two types: narrowly and broadly defined pacts. Narrow deals carried official agreements, but the government accepted obligations or cost burdens without informing the general public of the agreements. Broad secret deals were those without clearly documented arrangements that represented “tacit agreements.”

Although the panel could not confirm there was a clear secret agreement made at the time of the revision of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in 1960 between Japan and the Untied States over bringing nuclear weapons to Japan by U.S. forces, it recognized a “tacit agreement” to effectively tolerate port calls by U.S. vessels carrying nuclear weapons, categorizing it as a broadly defined secret agreement.

Concerning combat operations of U.S. forces in the event of a contingency on the Korean Peninsula, there was a “narrowly defined secret pact” compiled at the time of the 1960 treaty revision as the panel confirmed the existence of documents to prove that Japan promised the United States use of U.S. bases in Japan without prior consultations if the occasion arose.

On an agreement to cover cost burdens for the 1972 reversion of Okinawa to Japan from U.S. control, documents found in the United States, signed by the Foreign Ministry’s then American Bureau chief, did not bind the two nations and therefore cannot be called a narrowly defined secret deal, the panel concluded.

However, the panel recognized that the Japanese government shouldered costs for restoring land plots that the U.S. forces had used to their original condition—costs which should have been paid by the U.S. government—thus constituting a broadly defined secret pact.

However, the panel did not recognize the minute of an accord in 1969, believed to have been exchanged between then Prime Minister Eisaku Sato and then U.S. President Richard Nixon during negotiations on the reversion of Okinawa to Japan, made public by a relative of Sato in December, as a secret agreement to allow nuclear weapons into Okinawa Prefecture in times of emergency, although the panel authorized the minutes as “genuine.”

The minutes did not have binding power after the Sato administration, according to the panel, which also cited other reasons.

As I read this, Japan allegedly agreed to four secret deals: two following the 1960 Security Treaty relating to (1) port calls and (2) the introduction of nuclear weapons in the event of renewed fighting in Korea and two following the 1972 reversion to Okinawa relating to (3) compensation to local landowners — it seems Tokyo agreed to pay the compensation to avoid revealing that nuclear weapons had been present in Okinawa — and (4) the Sato-Nixon accord on reintroduction of nuclear weapons that caused all the uproar in December.

Interestingly, the panel concluded that the Sato-Nixon understanding was the only allegation that did not constitute a secret understanding. The document is genuine, but apparently not binding. This Asahi editorial captures my thinking perfectly: “We do not understand how the panel reached this conclusion.” No kidding.

Of course, the answer may lie in the reams of Japanese documents that might as well be written in Klingon as far as I am concerned. Fortunately, we have some great Japanese speaking readers who’ve helped out on past issues like the Okada letter and an article in Sankei, including blogger Michael Cucek.

I really hope this interests you all as much as it does me.

Comment [5]

As you can see from the poster, the University of California-San Diego is hosting its annual Public Policy and Nuclear Threats course from July 16–August 6, 2010:

A rapidly evolving nuclear landscape poses major challenges and opportunities for the United States. The most critical of these issues include the growing threat of nuclear proliferation and terrorism, the renaissance of civilian nuclear power, and the pressing need to renew the country’s aging intellectual infrastructure of specialists equipped to address America’s nuclear weapons policies.

The Public Policy and Nuclear Threats course is designed to cover important issues in U.S. nuclear strategy and policy, supported by an understanding of the scientific foundations of this policy. This course aims to give participants the knowledge and analytic tools to contribute to the debate on future U.S. nuclear policy.

The course features lectures, discussions, debates and mini-workshops on a wide range of issues. Participants will attend talks by distinguished researchers, academics, policy officials, and operational specialists from the University of California system and other leading universities, the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and federal government agencies dealing with nuclear policy, threat, detection, and safeguard issues.

[snip]

For more information about any aspect of the program, please email igcc-recruiting [at] ucsd.edu.

The deadline is March 26.

I’ve participated the last two years; it’s been fun.

The big draw, though, is Linton Brooks, who is set to appear as a scholar-in-residence again. You can learn more about nuclear weapons by hanging out with Linton for two weeks than just about any other way I can imagine.

The fact that you can do so in sunny La Jolla is just gratuitous.

Comment

We’d all be better off if Richard Betts wrote more often about proliferation. But he seems intent on pursuing high-quality, book-length projects on a wide range of topics, including surprise attack, war & peace, intelligence, and the Cold War.

My favorite Richard Betts article on proliferation appeared in Foreign Policy (Spring 1977) on paranoids, pygmies and pariahs, which he updated in a 1993 issue of Security Studies. Nations seek the Bomb, according to Richard, for two essential reasons: fear or ambition, or if you prefer, security or status.

Here’s a sampler:

Trying to coerce or buy off a power-happy state might well backfire; the desire for prestige is the desire not to be in a position of either victim or supplicant… Security-motivated candidates are the ones we should spend the most time worrying about. But here the problem is less what we can do than what we want to do.

There are no simple solutions that are feasible, no feasible solutions that are simple, and no solutions at all that are applicable across the board… There is no free lunch in nonproliferation policy; every effective measure has economic, political, or moral price tags.

Proliferation does not have a life of its own; it is a political problem as much as a technical one. Technological mystery, coinciding with international bipolarity, simply gave the United States a long period of grace in which it could afford to pay less attention to the political dimension.

With the disappearance of “technological mystery” and bipolarity, is there any wonder why new concerns about proliferation have arisen?

In a subsequent piece on proliferation (in Vic Utgoff, The Coming Crisis: Nuclear Proliferation, U.S. Interests, and World Order, 2000), Richard labels proliferation optimists like Kenneth Waltz as “utopian realists” who argue that,

… nuclear weapons can produce the permanent peace that liberals have always believed in and realists have always said is impossible… Any theory that predicts, say, 90 percent of outcomes on some important matter is an amazingly good theory. The Waltz argument may be in that category… [but] one exception to the rule may be too many… The United States should act as if the utopian realists are wrong, but hope that they are right.

As for U.S. nonproliferation policy, Richard argues that,

For most of the nuclear era the priority that the United States placed on nonproliferation was high in principle but low in practice. Washington was always willing to promote nonproliferation when it did not have to short-change some other objective, but seldom did it prove willing to sacrifice other interests for the cause.

Comment

The United States has long had a policy to “neither confirm nor deny” the presence of nuclear weapons on US ships in foreign ports (NCND). There has always been an interesting question about the degree to which foreign governments understood, until early 1992, many US warships calling on their ports were loaded with nuclear weapons.

To date, our case studies on the theory and practice of the “neither confirm nor deny” policy have been concerned Iceland, Norway and Denmark. (Some of Hans Kristensen’s very best work has been on the question of NCND with respect to his native Denmark. Here is a short article by Hans on what that work means for Japan.)

As a result of Japan’s ongoing debate about its nuclear history, Japan’s Foreign Ministry has released an official report on “secret nuclear agreements”, backed up with a treasure trove of documents — which unfortunately (for me at least) is almost entirely in Japanese.

Here is my initial attempt at an English guide to what the Japanese have released. There is a general introductory page, with several links including one to the main page on the March 9 announcement. The principal documents appear to be:

❶ Ministry of Foreign Affairs internal report

❷ Report by the Expert Committee

❸ Historical Documents, including

✓ List of documents

✓ Documents related to the 1960 Security Treaty

✓ Documents related to the 1960 Security Treaty

✓ Documents related to the 1972 Okinawa Reversion

✓ Documents related to the 1972 Okinawa Reversion

❹ Other relevant documents

✓ List list other relevant documents

✓ Other Documents related to the 1960 Security Treaty (Volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4)

✓ Other documents related to the 1960 Security Treaty (Korea) (Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5)

✓ Other documents related to the 1972 Okinawa Reversion (Volumes 1 and 2)

✓ Other documents related to the 1972 Okinawa Reversion

I can’t speak a word of Japanese, so I welcome efforts by Japanese speakers to begin making sense of what is a treasure trove of documents.

Comment [2]