Arms Control Wonk

Aspiring wonks, here is your end-of-semester exam question: It’s not OK to use cluster munitions in metropolitan areas, but it is OK to use nuclear weapons against targets that fall within or close to them. Yes? No? Under some circumstances? Explain.

States that possess nuclear weapons are reluctant to argue whether and how their use applies to the laws of armed conflict. To do so would risk undermining deterrence by nullifying battlefield applications, except as a last resort and for responses in kind. Even here, I suppose legal scholars, like The Hague Court, would have more than a few words to say.

Cluster bombs are not supposed to be used in built-up areas because they can have indiscriminate and long-lasting effects. Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, are widely presumed to be targeted against command and control, war-supporting industry, and leadership targets in and around cities.

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Update | May 7. Here is the full text of the speech.

On April 24th, the Chairman of India’s National Security Advisory Board, Shyam Saran, delivered an important address in New Delhi affirming the credibility of India’s nuclear deterrent. Mr. Saran has over two decades of close engagement on strategic matters, including time spent as Foreign Secretary and Special Envoy dealing with the US-India civil-nuclear agreement. What he said, speaking in his personal capacity, bears close scrutiny.

The tone of these remarks is defensive at the outset, reflecting domestic criticisms of the pace of Indian strategic modernization programs. Mr. Saran also takes aim at US, Pakistani, and Chinese analysts who maintain that India sought the Bomb for reasons of status rather than national security. He seeks to set the record straight, making significant observations and recommendations in the process. Here are a few passages:

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Scott Sagan wrote a typically fine essay in the Spring 2000 issue of International Security on “The Commitment Trap.” His subject was the Bush administration’s use of “calculated ambiguity” to deter Saddam Hussein from using chemical or biological weapons in the run-up to the second Gulf war. After disavowing chemical weapons (1992) as well as biological weapons (1972), senior U.S. officials have sought to deter their use by others by issuing warnings of “absolutely overwhelming” and “devastating” responses. These code words imply the use of nuclear weapons.

Scott argued, persuasively in my view, that veiled threats to use nuclear weapons trapped U.S. officials. If CW or BW were actually used by an adversary — regardless of their scope and military effectiveness, whether from top-down dictates or breakdowns in command and control — Washington could feel impelled to carry out its threat, thereby inviting immeasurable but significant costs to its international stranding and to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Alternatively, by refraining from carrying out its nuclear threat, Washington could also lose international standing, inviting new adversaries to call its bluff and old friends to question the protectiveness of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. To avoid these awful choices, Scott proposed that calculated ambiguity be replaced with a clear and credible U.S. commitment to respond to CW and BW use with prompt and devastating conventional retaliation.

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Last week, I was lucky to be able to join NPT PrepCom-ers in Geneva to help present the recently completed UNIDIR study ‘A New START Model for Transparency in Nuclear Disarmament,’ carried out by Pavel Podvig, Phillip Schell, and myself.

The work is accessible on the recently launched nuclearforces.org website, where you can check out the overview report, the individual country reports, some nifty maps, or download the KMZ set.

As the P5 continue to seek ways to show up on their 2010 Action Plan commitments (especially those repeatedly mentioned by name that are related to disarmament, transparency, and reporting - Action 5, 20, & 21), the aim of this project was to demonstrate the feasibility and practicality of applying New START definitions and provisions more widely to the other NPT nuclear weapon states.  Yes, New START was specifically designed for the arsenals of Russia and the United States, so why would we do such a thing?  The overview report says it best:

Even though the New START transparency and accountability provisions were developed in the context of bilateral US–Russian nuclear arms control, they could be applied to the nuclear arsenals of other nuclear-weapon states. The key advantage of New START is that it provides a legal and organizational framework for nuclear reductions that has been thoroughly tested in practice. Extending this framework to all nuclear-weapon states would be a natural and direct way of building a comprehensive system that could ensure transparency and accountability in nuclear disarmament.

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Another installment of the best (and only) regular ACW post!

The White House | “…varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used [sarin] on a small scale…” Joseph Holliday says that Assad has outfoxed Obama.

Nature | From prison in Iran, a graduate student writes that he refused to work on a laser-based enrichment program meant for military purposes.

Yonhap News | North Korea has moved two Scud missile launchers to its east coast.  Should we be afraid?

38 North | Still no missile tests, but North Korea’s bellicose rhetoric keeps escalating. Byung Chul Lee makes the case for engagement.  Related: Jeffrey Lewis makes the case for taking the nuclear threat at face value. Elbridge Colby makes the case for reasserting U.S. nuclear deterrence.

The Sun | Where Kim Jong-un learned theatrics.

CTBTO | Radioactivity detected after North Korea’s February 12^th nuclear test confirms that the test occurred. Time to update this website?

The New York Times | James Acton asks, is China changing its position on nuclear weapons? No, says Yao Yunzhu. No, says M. Taylor Fravel.  No, says Gregory Kulacki, and let’s stop nagging them about it.  (Acton responds to Yao and Fravel. Rachel Oswald reviews the debate.)

New Statesman | Kate Hudson of the UK’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament thinks the U.S. will make Britain give up its nukes. Maybe as soon as the U.S. finishes cutting a leg off the Triad?

Washington Post | Champion of fiscal restraint Lindsey Graham (here is his voting record) is up in arms about another spending cut.  No history of pork there.  But that’d be great.

We hope you enjoyed this installment of FYRP.

What do we really know about Iran’s capability to reconvert triuranium octoxide (U3O8) enriched to 20% U-235 back into UF6 feedstock that can be further enriched to produce weapon-grade uranium? Can Iran do it? And if so, how fast?

The answer matters considerably, as Iran, Israel, and the P5+1 will make decisions this year, based in part on their assessment of risk, about the fate of current efforts to negotiate a comprehensive crisis settlement.

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