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The 1971 war between India and Pakistan ended in a decisive victory for India and the vivisection of Pakistan. Pakistan’s nuclear weapon program began shortly thereafter, when President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto gathered the best and the brightest of his country’s nuclear establishment at Multan on January 24, 1972.

The 1971 war may also have given a boost to the Indian nuclear weapon program. This seems counterintuitive, given New Delhi’s huge victory, but here’s the argument: President Richard Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger “tilted” toward Pakistan during this war. To dissuade Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi from overrunning West Pakistan after routing the Pakistan Army in the East, they ordered the deployment of the U.S.S. Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal. It is unlikely that Prime Minister Gandhi had such intentions. But by conveying a thinly veiled nuclear threat in the form of the Enterprise – the very same carrier that came to India’s aid during its disastrous war with China nine years earlier – Washington may have given impetus to a second nuclear weapon program.

Here’s what K. Subrahmanyam, India’s premier strategic analyst, concluded from the Nixon administration’s behavior during the 1971 war:

The experience in Vietnam, and the circumstances that led to the use of nuclear weapons on Japan when compared with the experiences of confrontation in the central European line and the Sino-Soviet border, suggest that mass destruction agents like nuclear weapons, ecocidal agents, etc., tend to be used only when there is no fear of retaliation and when there is no sense of mutual deterrence.

[K. Subrahmanyam, “India’s Nuclear Policy,” in Onkar Marwah and Ann Schulz, eds., Nuclear Proliferation and the Near-Nuclear Countries, (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1975), pp. 128-135.]

“Subbu” was more explicit in his “personal recollection” of the Indian nuclear program which appeared in Nuclear India, a volume edited by Jasjit Singh published shortly after the 1998 tests:

Now we know that there were no specific operational directions to the Enterprise mission. But at that stage, the Indian government could not but assume the worst and treat it as an act of nuclear intimidation…. This experience of nuclear intimidation must have influenced Mrs. Gandhi in giving the green signal to the Atomic Energy Department to go ahead with the nuclear test in 1972.

Subrahmanyam recounts having dinner at Delhi’s Ashoka Hotel in late August, 1971 with Vikram Sarabhai, the head of India’s Atomic Energy Commission. Sarabhai, unlike Subbu, was not eager to test a nuclear device, but he strongly hinted that night that Mrs. Gandhi would grant his dining companion’s wish.

The “one war, two bomb” thesis is highly debatable. Raj Chengappa’s insider account, Weapons of Peace, finds some credence to this story. But George Perkovich, who has written the most detailed account of India’s nuclear program, India’s Nuclear Bomb, The Impact on Global Proliferation, is unconvinced. Likewise, Vijai Nair, who wrote Nuclear India, isn’t buying this story. Itty Abraham’s book, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, also finds other reasons for the timing of India’s “peaceful nuclear” test in 1974.

Comment [14]

Over the years, many experts have predicted proliferation cascades, but worst cases have yet to unfold. The current variation on this theme – reinforced by arms controllers as well as hard liners — is that, once Iran gets the Bomb and North Korea cannot be dissuaded from giving up its nuclear weapon capabilities, other countries in both regions will surely follow suit. I have been known to lend my voice to this chorus from time to time.

The track record of proliferation to date, however, has been both limited and slow. This historical record does not support dire predictions, especially when the presumed proliferators have close ties to the United States and are dependent on Washington for their security.

Dire proliferation forecasts are a dime a dozen; I won’t spend time on them here. Instead, let’s give credit to those with better records of prognostication.

George Quester writes books that matter and that are too-little noticed. The Politics of Nuclear Proliferation was published in 1973 when the NPT’s status was still new and tenuous. This book provides proliferation assessments of key countries that were reluctant to sign the NPT or were likely to remain outliers. While others were offering worst cases, Quester was cautiously optimistic, concluding that, “Even if superpower resolve on India [to join the NPT] is clearly fading, even if Israel elects to be the first member of the nuclear club to accumulate weapons without ever test-detonating one, we may yet see the NPT used to rally the rest of the world into abstinence from further proliferation.”

Hard liners believe in power, not parchment. In contrast, Quester’s equanimity was partially based on the norm-setting value of the NPT: “What was once a neutral or attractive idea is now somewhat tainted and suspect. Nuclear weapons are not just the ‘latest thing’ anymore; they lack respectability.” Quester was right.

Lew Dunn’s book, Controlling the Bomb (1982), provided a similarly level-headed, wise, and restrained analysis of the prospects of proliferation during the 1980s. Dunn was no Pollyanna. He predicted that it was “quite likely …that at least one country will violate a legally binding nonproliferation obligation…in the decade to come,” and that “it probably will not be possible to head off the deployment of at least rudimentary nuclear forces in one if not more conflict-prone regions during this decade.” Nonetheless, Dunn predicted that sensible policies could succeed in “holding the line at no more than a continuation of the first decades’ pattern of slow and limited proliferation.” Dunn was right.

Comment [5]

It can be surprising just how strongly people tend to feel about nuclear weapons declaratory policy.

The entire idea of declaratory policy, after all, comes down to words. It controls no instruments, makes no irrevocable commitments, and lacks the binding force of law. It amounts to an overt exercise in what the psychologists call impression management. As someone once told Janne Nolan, the standing promise of the United States not to use nuclear weapons under certain circumstances – the so-called Negative Security Assurances, or NSA – boils down to “just a policy.”

(As words go, too, the NSA’s are rather vague.)

Still and all, the strength of the feelings surrounding declaratory policy comes through loud and clear in an exchange of views in the current issue of Survival on whether to adopt a nuclear no-first-use pledge, or NFU, a long-standing proposal recently mooted again by Scott Sagan. For some, NFU would be too weak and therefore meaningless. For others, it would be too strong, tying the hands of the United States when it absolutely, positively has to nuke somebody.

The truth almost certainly lies in between. Michael Gerson – that’s Michael “I’m Not the Speechwriter Guy” Gerson – nailed it when he described the power of NFU as stemming from “audience costs.” This idea, sometimes also described in terms of costly signaling, means that a leader or a state can try to commit itself to a course of action by threatening itself with humiliation if it does not follow through. This is essentially the same reasoning involved in taking a public oath. You can break an oath, but really don’t want to, other things being equal. For this reason, the leader of an NFU state would be reluctant to threaten first nuclear use in a crisis.

My latest column in the Bulletin takes a somewhat different tack. While I’m in favor of NFU, I don’t think it should be pigeonholed as “declaratory policy.” It should be treated as policy policy, laid down in an Executive Order. (Yeah, right there in the Federal Register.) As Commander-in-Chief, of course, the President can override his own standing orders in a pinch, but in the meantime, they should form the basis of guidance for planners.

Why is this distinction important? For one thing, declarations enjoy greater credibility when something more than reputation stands behind them. And President Obama has promised – rather publicly, although no proper oath was sworn – to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.”

This is a good idea because, as I’ve sought to explain in the column, the present role of nuclear weapons is rather broad and nebulous. And it’s just that much harder to persuade countries outside of the U.S. alliance system that nonproliferation is in their interest, too, if it enforces an oligopoly on weapons intended in part for what Thomas Schelling called “compellence” and Alexander George called “coercive diplomacy.” Call it nuclear blackmail, if you like.

Clausewitz on the Bomb

At some point, too, we really ought to decide for ourselves what our nuclear weapons are for. Perspectives vary, so much so that the Perry-Schlesinger Strategic Posture Commission, for example, didn’t make a clear statement about it.*

The nature of nuclear weapons has tended to override attempts to harness them to sensible policy objectives. Policy, as Carl von Clausewitz put it,

converts the overwhelmingly destructive element of war into a mere instrument. It changes the terrible battle-sword that a man needs both hands and his entire strength to wield, and with which he strikes home once and no more, into a light, handy rapier—sometimes just a foil for the exchange of thrusts, feints and parries.

Despite efforts to craft limited nuclear options, there are in the final analysis no thermonuclear rapiers or atomic foils. It’s “terrible battle-sword” all the way. As a consequence, nuclear policy debates have always seemed especially susceptible to arguments that spring less from Clausewitzian strategic calculations than from hawkish or dovish sentiments, pure and simple. In settings like Perry-Schlesinger, the sentiments more or less cancel each other out, leaving matters not very far from where they started. (See the chapter on declaratory policy.)

So, with the Soviet Union almost two decades in the grave, we’re still poised to conduct an annihilating strike on Russia in response to the Red Army’s thrust through the Fulda Gap. And we explain this posture to the world in terms of North Korea’s or Syria’s chemical weapons program. This just makes no sense at all. It’s a function of inertia. Up to now, no President has been ready for the massive exertions required to force change, but the pressing need to overhaul the nonproliferation regime could finally produce that impetus.

* There is no clear joint statement, to be exact. The Chairman's Preface is another matter.

Comment [7]

The Obama Administration has agreed to start negotiations with Iran on the basis of the latest Iranian proposal. A decision I certainly applaud and fervently hope that we can finesse to include the nuclear issue (an issue that was part of Iran’s May 2008 submission and one that they have suggested could still be talked about). I want to return to the nuclear issue in more detail below, but first I want to discuss the overlap between the two sides that this most recent agenda represents. Much has been written and said about how wide ranging Iran’s proposal is but few seem to realize that it is actually a subset of the intersection of those two proposals. Let’s review the major points of the West’s proposal (presented to Iran on 14 June 2008 by the governments of China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the European Union):

1) Nuclear Energy

[…]

2) Political

[…]

3) Economic

[…]

4) Agriculture

[…]

5) Environment, Infrastructure

[…]

6) Economic, social and human development/humanitarian issues

[…]

It is interesting to examine the West’s political section in a little more detail. This section included “support for Iran in playing an important and constructive role in international affairs,” “realizing the objective of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction,” and “promotion of dialogue and cooperation on non-proliferation, regional security and stabilization issues.” There is a lot of room in those proposals for expanding the agenda past what, I’m sure, the West had in mind and might very well explain some of the points that Iran lists in this current version.

Iran’s 2008 submission contained a number of important points on the nuclear issue that I hope we can incorporate in the coming talks. First, and most important, is Iran’s suggestion that the talks include “Establishing enrichment and nuclear fuel production consortiums in different parts of the world— including Iran .” (Emphasis added.) I believe, and my colleague John Thomson and I have written extensively about just this point since 2006, that such consortiums are the best way of ensuring that Iran does not get a nuclear bomb. It is my understanding that Iran’s 2008 proposals are still on the table, though this submission might supersede them. This is one advantage of Iran’s proposal not containing an explicit section on the nuclear issue. We should simply assume that these proposals continue to be on the table and ask them “What do you mean by international consortiums?” Surprisingly, the West has never asked this question even though Iran has, at the highest levels, brought this item up a number of times.

Of course, the West has been turned off by the awful prolog to the proposal; a prolog made all the more disgusting in light of the terrible suppression of the Iranian people since the June elections. Iran would have been better served, at least in terms of public relations in the West, by simply pointing out that their most recent package was this intersection. But then, the prolog was undoubtedly written for internal consumption and justification for a regime that has to be worried about its legitimacy rather than for the Western public.

Comment [6]

By no means do I wish to pick on Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, who was only repeating a common misconception in an NPR segment this evening when she said:

On June 7, 1981, Israel launched the first confirmed military strike ever against a nuclear site.

Actually, it wasn’t even the first military strike against that particular facility.

As best as I can tell, attacks on nuclear facilities have come in four or five waves.

The first wave, in the 1940s, consisted of a series of British and Norwegian commando and air raids against the world’s first commercial-scale heavy-water plant, in German-occupied Norway. Wikipedia has a rundown. The subject came up again just this past June (see: Operation Gunnerside, 29 June 2009).

The second wave, in the 1980s, consisted of at least eight air raids against partially complete reactors, involving three countries in the Middle East. Israel’s strike on the Tammuz 1 / Osirak reactor was the second event in this wave.

From Leonard Spector’s Going Nuclear (1987), p. 129:

At least five such attacks are known to have taken place: an unsuccessful bombing raid by Iranian aircraft against Iraq’s large Osiraq research reactor outside Baghdad on September 30, 1980; Israel’s June 7, 1981, air strike against Osiraq, which destroyed the unit; and three Iraqi attacks against the two partially complete Iranian nuclear power plants at Bushehr, on March 24, 1984, and February 12 and March 4, 1985.

But wait, there’s more. According to NTI’s chronology, Iraq bombed Bushehr again on July 12, 1986, and twice again on November 17 and 19, 1987. Nothing if not persistent.

The third wave consisted of Coalition air strikes in January and February 1991 against Iraq’s nuclear facilities at al-Sharqat, al-Tarmiya, and al-Tuwaitha (where Tammuz 1 had stood). A building at al-Atheer also caught a bomb.

By some accounts, there was another strike in the third wave, an as many as five attempted ballistic missile attack[s] by Iraq against Israel’s nuclear complex at Dimona in February 1991. But I’ve seen nothing to support the idea that Iraq’s missiles were accurate enough to make a meaningful try. Unlike the other missiles launched by Iraq during the same conflict, this missile or missiles did not even have an explosive warhead[s], and appears to have been no more than a symbolic “stone” or “stones” thrown at Israel. But it is also possible that Saddam Hussein did not know about the inaccuracy problems, and did order a Dimona strike.

The fourth wave consists, so far, of Israel’s September 6, 2007 air raid against the so-called al-Kibar facility in Syria, to all appearances a complete gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor that had yet to be activated.

The four waves can also be broken down into four contexts: WWII, the Iran-Iraq War, the Persian Gulf War, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Not entirely coincidentally, perhaps, every country involved as either an attacker or defender—let’s leave Norway out of the picture—has pursued nuclear weapons at one time or another. (Here, I’m going with the 2007 NIE.) But so far, at least, no country that has had its facilities bombed has succeeded.

Also of note: Iraq was involved, either as attacker or defender, in every strike of the second and third waves.

Have I missed anything? Probably I should say something about the three Taliban attacks on Pakistani military facilities in 2007 and 2008, described here. It’s unclear whether these were specifically intended as attacks on nuclear targets. Perhaps so: on July 2, 2009, the Taliban blew up a bus in Rawalpindi full of employees of Khan Research Labs. Let’s tentatively call it a fifth wave, but of a basically different character.

If you can think of anything else, sing out.

Comment [24]

The infrasound signals from North Korea’s 4 July 2006 missile launch.

Infrasound has become an accepted CTBT monitoring technique in recent years with 60 infrasound stations world-wide as part of the CTBTO network. They also, however, detect a bunch of other atmospheric phenomena, as Bharath Gopalaswamy has illustrated. I am particularly interested in using these facilities (or perhaps I should say this phenomena) to study missile proliferation and have worked with Bharath on just this question. In particular, I think it would be useful to determine when North Korea’s 2006 Tae’podong-2 failed or Iran’s August 2008 Safir launch failed. (The analysis has proved complicated with one acoustic event, such as the staging of the rocket, potentially showing up at several different times in the recorded signal. Each time corresponds to a different acoustic flight path such as 3 vs. 4 bounces off the stratosphere. Since a rocket trajectory consists of a number of such acoustic events, it becomes fairly complicated to unwrap the signal; especially since the timing depends on wind speeds and directions and could vary for the different paths. I hope to post more about this analysis as we progress.)

This helps illustrate how one person’s useful technique for detecting clandestine nuclear explosions is another’s intelligence gathering. In particular, I understand that India considers this nothing but an intelligence gathering exercise. Should the international community deny itself such a useful tool because it could be used to gather information about a country’s missile development? Or should countries recognize that firing a rocket is an inherently open process and that certainly their neighbors could set up their own infrasound stations and monitor what is going on regardless of whether or not the international community does? And, of course, the US and perhaps Russia are observing the rocket launches with infrared-sensitive satellites.

You can probably guess which way I come down on this question. I might also mention that if the CTBT actually goes into force, people like me will no longer be able to access any of the information from any of the CTBTO stations, including seismic signals. That’s what the treaty says. So public scrutiny of missile proliferation will, hopefully, be denied this important tool. But governments who sign the CTBT will be able to use it so the question is still important for policy makers.

Comment [6]

UCS Summer Symposium at Fudan University’s Center for American Studies

Hello from Shanghai! I’m here in this booming Chinese city for the 21st annual UCS Summer Symposium and it’s off to a great start. For those of you who don’t know about it, UCS brings together a small group of scientists (mostly in the hard sciences but also some political scientists) each year to foster an international community of technically oriented analyst. It started off in 1989 (I think!) as mostly a meeting between Russian and American scientists interested in arms control and cooperation. But it has grown to include participants from around the world. Run by what’s known as the “Cornell Mafia,” which now seems to mean mostly David Wright and Lisbeth Gronlund (but also included George Lewis when I attended my first one in 1997), it is geared to fostering a new generation of students and young analysts interested in the technical issues associated with international security.

Today we had four very interesting lectures from young scientists, with plenty of time for discussion, on: using nuclear forensics to tie together (for verification purposes) the US uranium enrichment and plutonium production programs, a talk on using microbial and another on nuclear forensics to “deter” terrorists (very good talks but I don’t believe it), and a discussion of the radioactive xenon emissions (or lack of them) for the 2006 and 2009 DPRK tests. The later has caused me to re-think my opinion on whether or not the 2009 test was actually nuclear. But I’m going to save my thoughts on that for my next post!

So if you are a young scientist (graduate student or post-doc or even older) who is interested in working on technical issues involved in international security, think about applying to go to next years symposium. They are great! (And yes, the total solar eclipse will be visible from Shanghai during the symposium.)

Comment [4]

The Arab Institute for Security Studies recently hosted an international conference on nuclear energy and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. This represents a sort of trip report on that very interesting conference

The Amman skyline

There is a great debate about nonproliferation roaring around the world today. Unfortunately, few in the West seem to even know this debate is going on, much less actually listening to the voices from other corners of the globe. Nothing was clearer than this at the recent conference in Amman on nuclear energy and nuclear proliferation hosted by the Arab Institute for Security Studies.

One pole of this “debate,” the one most familiar to Western audiences, says that nationally owned enrichment facilities are dangerous and should be limited to as few as possible. Of course, there are a number of views of how this should be accomplished. Former President Bush, for instance, believed that the numbers of such facilities should be rolled back and only allowed in a few “supplier” countries that are acceptable to the current nuclear establishment. Others, such as IAEA Director General ElBaradei have suggested that national enrichment facilities should be replaced by multinationally owned plants. While proposals for such multinational arrangements have been around since the beginning of the atomic age, they have come under renewed interest in recent days.

The opposite pole in this debate has best been expressed by a diplomat from an important non-aligned country who said “the presumption should not be that some nuclear technologies are safe in some hands but not in others.” This was echoed by several of the speakers at the conference from the region who complained that the developed countries were more interested in technology—and its suppression—than in helping countries develop. With the advent of the so-called nuclear renaissance, we are in danger of the NPT being regarded as a mechanism to stop the spread of nuclear profits more than to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

A Nuclear Renaissance and the Middle East

Much of this, of course, depends on how real the nuclear renaissance is. When we in the West think about nuclear power in the Middle East, we have a natural tendency to think about Iran, which has declared a very ambitious civilian program as well as being suspected of a secret military program. Or perhaps Saudi Arabia, which has bought Chinese missiles; an almost subconscious association of nuclear and missile development. Both of these countries are floating in oil. However, many of the countries in the Middle East are oil importers and were hurt as much, and arguably more, than the West was by last year’s the sharp increase in oil prices. This was a point a number of speakers from the region made.

Jordan, our host country for the conference, imports all of its oil from foreign sources. In 2008, it imported 110,000 barrels of oil per day; an amount that the United States consumes every eight minutes. When oil was $70 per barrel, Jordan was devoting 15% of its GDP to purchase oil. At the time, the US was spending 3.6% of its GDP on oil, including indigenously produced oil. Furthermore, Jordan is facing an increasing need to desalinate water. If it had to desalinate all of the water its population consumed, it would use a third of its current oil imports just for sustaining life. It’s hard to say no to nuclear power for these people when their very life’s blood depends on imported energy.

Whose Proliferation?

In light of this, what did Western analysts have to say to their colleagues from the Middle East? One suggested a Persian Gulf nuclear free zone. This probably seemed to the tone-deaf speaker to be a cleaver way of avoiding the issue posed by Israel’s nuclear arsenal while bringing onboard Iran’s neighbors to oppose any nuclear weapons program. Nobody from the region seemed to appreciate the proposal’s subtlety. Instead, the countries in the region, if the participants are any indication, do not view an Iranian bomb as the same magnitude of threat as an Israeli bomb. “Whose proliferation are we talking about?” was a common theme; hinting that disarmament beyond the United States and Russia might be an important road block at the upcoming NPT review conference.

If the West is too busy talking to listen, the mid-East is also ignoring half the conversation. Lethal suppression of peaceful protesters on the streets of Tehran set an unspoken context for the meeting. Tehran’s actions symbolize for many in the West the Iranian regime’s nuclear duplicity. Unfortunately, not once did I hear anyone from the region talk about the internal strife gripping Iran. Instead, Iran’s neighbors were quick to send their congratulations to President Ahmadinejad and recognize the election’s official outcome. Many who are justifiably concerned about Iran’s nuclear ambitions point, as Mark Fitzpatrick ably did during his presentation at the conference, to the years of Iranian lies and its efforts to hide its nuclear activity as clear indications of a coming danger.

Modernity vs. Non-Proliferation

The world needs to reach a consensus on how to move forward in the new proliferation environment: where basic industrial technology and know-how necessary for development is—and by right should be—much more wide-spread than when the Nuclear Suppliers Group was formed even if they do have the potential to contribute to proliferation. Doing so will be hard, perhaps especially for the West. Not only will the world need to reinvigorate the bargain inherent in the NPT—nuclear technology and know-how in exchange for verifiable renunciation of nuclear weapons—with fresh ideas and new, inventive types of safeguards, but it will also have to give up its belief that nuclear weapons are safe in some hands but not in others: all nuclear weapons are dangerous.

Comment [34]

Many nuclear experts recently gathered in Oslo for an event on nuclear disarmament, organized by the Nobel Institute.

Bruno Tertrais, attendee and friend of wonk, sends along this photo of what, for him, was the highlight of the meeting: A talk by Joachim Rønneberg, “who, in addition to bearing a slight resemblance to Clint Eastwood (and is now 90), was the first successful counter-proliferator in history. He led the Norwegian team that conducted Operation Gunnerside, the sabotaging of the Nazi-occupied Norwegian heavy water plant in February 1943.”

Bruno might think Rønneberg looks like Clint Eastwood, but Kirk Douglas (right) played the Rønneberg character in The Heroes of Telemark.

Of course, Kirk is also father of Michael, no slouch when it comes to acting himself, who fights proliferation in his capacity as Ploughshares Board Member.

Bruno did not ask whether any of Rønneberg’s descendants were available for a short visit to Arak — no visa required.

Comment [2]

Click on the image for a larger version

In a typical one hour period, five US low earth orbit satellites pass over the Port of Rajin

Yesterday, I pointed out that the only way for the West to tell the difference between a cargo container full of uranium gas centrifuges and a container full of pig iron as it was being loaded might be increased security associated with the centrifuges. That, of course, assumes two things: 1) that the West can see the loading and 2) North Korea decides that it wants to include the security. After all, Syria apparently decided to do without anti-aircraft batteries and other security measures for its Box on the Euphrates in order to avoid signaling the US that it should pay special attention to that building. We all know how well that worked: it seems to have fooled the US but Israel, with its spies in Syria (the ones who smuggled out the photos of the construction, presumably from a central office in Damascus) managed to obtain the evidence they needed. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that Israel has spies in North Korea (I guess I could be wrong about that) so we are probably left with using technical means to watch the loading and unloading of ships.

One possibility is to use satellites and another is using UAVs. Let’s consider using satellites, mainly because this post is already getting too long. As the image above shows, the US has a great many low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. The orbital elements for these satellites comes from an amateur satellite observers website and could very well include satellites that have ceased to function. (That’s my fault and not the amateur observers. On the hand, North Korea might not know any better than me which satellites were functioning and which are not.) They do not include the Navy’s NOSS satellites which are used to track ship locations. Those satellites were going to be considered tomorrow when I thought we would look at tracking ships on the high seas as a way of determining if their cargo might be suspicious. It turns out, however, that there might be other, more convenient, ways of doing that (See Allen Thomson’s posting and the responses to that) so I’m going to skip that post.

If you simply require that a satellite be above the local horizon to spy on North Korea, then these satellites supply considerable coverage. ( Click here to see a graph of the satellite elevations over the Port of Rajin during a three day period.) Of course, viewing a scene at a grazing angle—unless you are something like an electronics intelligence satellite which could conceivably pick up the radio chatter between security elements—can prove difficult to interpret. Of course, it’s still possible to see things at angles very close to grazing, just things like buildings and trees get in the way. That and the fact that you are looking at very large distances, perhaps as much 3000 km, so the resolution will be very poor.

With that in mind, I plotted the time between satellite passes where a pass is counted as starting when it appears above a certain elevation and ends when it dips below that elevation. ( This plot is shown here for three threshold elevations: 0 degrees, 20 degrees, and 45 degrees.) North Korea, too, could generate just such a plot and know that critical signatures, such as deploying security forces, would have to be timed to fit in between passes. If satellites can detect signatures at grazing angles, then typical separations between US LEO satellite passes is about 10 minutes. That seems very short, though I have no experience deploying security forces. Its worth pointing out that if the satellite is a photoreconnaissance satellite that normally has a resolution of 10 cm at 200 km, it has a resolution of 1.5 m at 3000 km. There might also be a big decrease in sensitivity of electronics intelligence gathering depending on how they normally function.

Going to a 20 degree threshold substantially reduces the slant range but also substantially increases the time between effective passes. Thus, there is an average gap of 34 minutes between satellite passes in that configuration. Much more can happen in 34 minutes than in 10 minutes: more troops could be better deployed etc.

There are still more practical questions to be answered about achieving “reasonable grounds” for interdicting WMD. Clearly human intelligence would be the best. But that has important problems too, such as protecting the life of the informant if you ever have to prove you had “reasonable grounds.” It seems possible to use technical means to increase your confidence by seeing an unusual amount of security. But the most likely clue might simply be the destination: is it another “rogue” nation? Of course, if all the “law abiding” nations won’t trade with a rogue, perhaps their only trade partners are other rogues.

Comment [9]