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We’ve just had a public holiday in the UK and, in consequence, a long weekend but I wanted to add a few thoughts to Jeffrey’s post last Friday about Chris Ford’s resignation.

Being the US representative at NPT meetings is a pretty thankless task, but Dr Ford did it very well. What made him a bit different was his willingness to debate and discuss the “D word”. This speech, In Praise of Complexity: Some Thoughts on Disarmament Ethics in the Real World, is a good example of his style. You don’t often see this level of thoughtfulness from a government official from anywhere.

He is also one of the funnier diplomats out there. I saw him close-up at a workshop earlier this year. His speech focused on the issue of withdrawal from the NPT and his opening went something along the lines of “In January 2003, when North Korea suspended the suspension of its withdrawal, as it were…”

U.S. Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation Chris Ford is resigning to take a job at the Hudson Institute.

From: Ford, Christopher A
Sent: 22 August 2008 01:59
Subject: Ford is moving on . . . .
Importance: High

Dear Friends:

Most of you have regularly been getting mail from me on NPT issues for some time; others of you are new to this list as a result of my having the pleasure of making your acquaintance during the first months of 2008 as I continued to bounce around the world as U.S. Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation. Since taking up my current position at the U.S. State Department, I have used my contact list for this series of messages in order to try to keep friends and acquaintances abreast of developments in U.S. nonproliferation, arms control, and disarmament policy — particularly in connection with the 2007 and 2008 NPT Preparatory Committee meetings.

This current message, however, is of a somewhat more personal nature — and is likely to be my last contact with many of you on this e-mail account. After some five and a half years at the State Department, I shall very soon be leaving. Effective September 1, I will be joining the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C. “think-tank” (public policy research institution), as a Senior Fellow, to build a program for them on many of the same issues in the nonproliferation, arms control, and disarmament field — and, more generally, the impact of technology upon the global security environment — on which I have been working at the Department for some time.

I look forward to keeping in touch with many of you, particularly as the issues on which I will be working for Hudson are not dissimilar to those in connection with which I have made your acquaintance. My e-mail address at Hudson, they tell me, will be [deleted]@hudson.org. Until that gets up and running, however — and indeed thereafter, for personal correspondence — feel free to contact me at [deleted]@gmail.com. In my new capacity, I will no longer be able to claim any special authority as a spokesman for the United States on such issues, but you can be sure that I will not be shy about expressing my opinion (which will indeed be entirely my own now), that I will remain very interested in knowing as much as I can about your perspectives and concerns, and that I will continue to strive to be a constructive contributor to these important debates wherever and whenever possible. I have tried to make straightforward, thoughtful, and articulate engagement the hallmark of my tenure as Special Representative, and I look forward to continuing this approach with as many of you as possible as I work these issues, in my new private capacity, in the months and years ahead.

All my very best,

CAF

Dr. Christopher A. Ford
United States Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation
U.S. Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
[deleted]@state.gov

Here as promised is Tom Shea’s Notional convention on nuclear power.

Two other nuclear power factoids I heard recently that may interest…

First, the UAE has announced its intention not to acquire enrichment or reprocessing technology as part of its nuclear power programme.

This is significant but the question is: is it a one-off? I suspect it says more about that country’s desire to maintain good relations with the ‘West’ than it does about on-going attempts to prevent the spread of fuel cycle technology.

Second, some of the delays at Finland’s Olkiluoto 3, the EPR that is being built by Siemens and AREVA, have been caused by an inability to pour concrete correctly. Apparently the contractors (AREVA and Siemens) have been letting it fall through too great a height thus compromising its quality. I’ve often heard it said that the French have forgotten how to build reactors in the last 20 years—this is apparently one of the consequences.

I’ve been away for the last week or so—hence the absence of any posting from me. Ironically, a long weekend in Paris precluded me from blogging about Sarkozy’s remarks on disarmament—but more about that (the background specifically) tomorrow or Monday.

Following Paris, I spent an interesting day in Vienna at a workshop organized by SIPRI and the Carnegie Moscow Centre entitled Seminar on Multinational Nuclear Arrangements: Government, Commercial and Public-Private Approaches. MNAs are very much in vogue at the moment; the idea being that states will choose not to develop enrichment or reprocessing capabilities if they are extended a guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel. There are numerous models for MNAs on the table ranging from physical fuel banks to multinationally-owned enrichment plants. For a slightly-dated but still excellent summary see Oliver Meier’s ACT article. There is also a good overview in the March 2008 edition of the IAEA’s Bulletin, which will appear here when put online.

Anyway, here are some of the best nuggets from the day:

It’s the recipients stupid! There is a growing realisation that, if MNAs are to go anywhere, states offering them need to sit down with potential recipients and discuss how the guarantees can be made credible. D’oh.

Fuel fabrication This is an overlooked problem, especially for the physical fuel bank concept (intended as a supply of last resort should a state’s flow of reactor fuel be disrupted for political reasons). Because there is little standardisation in reactor fuel design, a physical fuel bank would actually be a bank of low enriched hex. Before being delivered the hex would have to be fabricated into fuel assemblies. The problem is where. Any given type of fuel is, in general, only manufactured by a small number of facilities. If a state is facing a fuel shortage because its primary supplier has reneged on a contract, it will need to find a fuel fabrication facility located outside the territory of its primary supplier that has the capacity to manufacture fuel at short notice. This may prove tricky, although Pierre Goldschmidt has some ideas.

The Forden-Thomson Plan There was much discussion of this plan, which aims to facilitate a compromise with Iran around the concept of a jointly-owned enrichment facility on Iranian territory. The FT Plan has been mentioned on the Wonk before but I’m not sure their key argument has been discussed here. It is that the main proliferation threat from Iran is an undeclared programme (as opposed to breakout or diversion from a declared facility). Having international technicians in Iran, working closely with their Iranian counterparts, would, according to F and T, be an awfully effective way to sniff out any clandestine activity. I won’t launch into a long analysis of its pros and cons except to say that, if you are interested, you can read more about it here.

Notional Convention on Fuel Supply and Spent Fuel Disposition World Nuclear University’s Tom Shea is currently developing a draft treaty to facilitate the spread of nuclear power (anyone who likes writing treaties in his spare time is the Wonk’s kind of guy—he is doing this for fun, not part of his job). It’s based around the idea that any given state may be able to supply some fuel cycle services but may need to purchase others and so, for each part of the fuel cycle, there’s a need to match suppliers with purchasers. Anyway, I’m delighted to say that he is willing to let me post his paper here (as soon as he gets back from his latest travels and can send me the pdf).

Oh, next time you’re in Vienna, you got to check out this bar. Awesome.

In December, I noted a story by Michael Isikoff in Newsweek that Condoleeza Rice would name Paul Wolfowitz to chair the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board.

Well, it is official. (Bloomberg News has a nice exposition with a money quote from Joe Cirincione.)

Although much of the attention is understandably focused on the chair, I am most concerned at how one-sided the overall composition of the board has become, especially since Amy Sands departed in the wake of that awful report they issued on space.

A little housekeeping. The ISAB removed the link to the terms of reference for their forthcoming China study. I have posted the TOR here.

I came across this really cool resource today and thought I’d share it with my fellow wonks. It’s the complete library of reports prepared by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, with links to the full text of each report.

Many of the OTA reports are classics in the field of nonproliferation, such as the June 1977 wonkfest Nuclear Proliferation and Safeguards, which weighs in at more than 1300 pages (including appendices). Enjoy.

OTA was among the many sensible governmental resources that Newt Gingerich’s so-called “Republican Revolution” put before a firing squad in 1994-1995. Kudos to the University of North Texas’s CyberCemetary Project for making these resources so readily available.

Jeffrey adds at 1:40 pm that Congressman Rush Holt has led the fight to restore OTA.

I’m tickled pink that my brief comment about the purpose of arms control in a recent post has already provoked debate. I think some of you are expecting me to argue to that, now the Cold War has ended, arms control serves no useful purpose. Well, that’s not what I’m going to say. I think it would be very foolhardy to scrap those agreements we have at the moment for an as-yet-undetermined alterative. My argument is that, in today’s world, arms control could serve a number of different, useful purposes—but it can’t serve them all at once. Consequently, there is a need for the arms control community and governments—particularly governments—to try and come to a unified sense of what they want arms control to do.

Forgive me if I start with a quick and somewhat simplified history. During the Cold War arms control served two primary purposes (and here I restrict myself to nuclear arms control). First, it was driven by finance ministers seeking to reduce the costs of the arms race. Second, and most importantly, it was about ensuring—in a very technical sense—strategic stability. That is making sure that both the US or Soviet Union were deterred from a pre-emptive nuclear strike by the certainty of a devastating counter strike. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (RIP), for instance, was premised on the assumption that the ability to defend against a counter strike might embolden an aggressor to strike first. Not everyone agreed with arms control being used in this ‘limited’ way. Parts of the disarmament lobby in particular felt very uncomfortable that mutual assured destruction was essentially being enshrined with treaties. But arms controllers generally had a pretty clear sense of what they were trying to do.

It seems to me that there is no longer such a clear sense of what arms control is for. I can think of various possibilities:

• Maintaining strategic stability
• Preventing the re-emergence of a new nuclear arms race
• Saving money
• Building trust between states in respect of their intentions for their nuclear weapons
• Building trust between states more generally
• Promoting disarmament by reducing weapon numbers significantly

Each of these is a laudable and important goal—I’m just not sure arms control can do all of them at once.

There are, for instance, tensions between the first goal (maintaining stability) and the last (promoting disarmament). If you really believe the primary purpose of arms control is to maintain stability, you almost certainly believe that cutting nuclear weapon numbers rapidly is dangerous. It increases the probability (even absent cheating) that at some given moment one side might have many more nuclear weapons than the other—exactly the kind of imbalance that is dangerous according to Cold War arms control theories. You probably also believe bilateral treaties should remain the focus of arms control. On the other hand, if you believe the primary purpose of arms control is disarmament then you presumably want to see large, fast cuts, probably by all states with nuclear weapons.

Another example illustrating this same tension concerns verification arrangements. If you believe stability is where it’s at then you probably want complex warhead counting rules and intrusive verification arrangements to boot. START, for instance, permits US and Russian inspectors to count the number of shrouded re-entry vehicles mounted on ballistic missiles. In contrast, if you believe disarmament should be the driver of arms control then you believe that the purpose of arms control is to convince the rest of the world of the nuclear weapon states’ good intentions. Verification is still important but now it would best be conducted by international inspectors. However, in the short to medium term at least, there seems little prospect of the US and Russia granting international inspectors the kind of intrusive access rights they do for each other’s nationals. Hence, it seems likely that, for the time being, internationally-verified arms control agreements will have to focus on missile and launchers not warheads—something that would seem like a retrograde step to a ‘classical’ Cold War arms controller.

I don’t want to overstate my argument here. I’ve obviously chosen the two objectives from the list that are most in tension. However, I do believe that arms control can’t do everything at once. It’s important to discuss whether stability and disarmament are partly contradictory aims and, if so, which is more important. Given there is a good chance we will see an arms control revival in the next few years, arms controllers need a clear picture of what their priorities should be and which of their objectives might be in tension before they start drafting the next generation of treaties. Only that way can those treaties be as effective as they possibly can.

It’s public knowledge that the United States has helped Pakistan secure its nuclear complex in the past, but Senator Clinton’s proposal at the Democratic debate on Sunday is by far the most ambitious yet. She said she would try to get Musharraf to share the security responsibility of the nuclear weapons with a delegation from the United States and perhaps Great Britain so that there is some failsafe.

I really like how bold this proposal is, and applaud Senator Clinton for thinking outside the box. But this proposal is a bit too far outside the box.

First, there is simply no way Pakistan would ever agree to it.

Second, it would complicate both U.S.-Indian relations and deterrence on the subcontinent. My eyes cross when I begin to think about the implications of an American/British failsafe in the context of a Pakistani-Indian nuclear standoff.

Third, it would violate the NPT. Article I of the NPT requires nuclear-weapon States like America to not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons. Under the NPT, Pakistan is a non-nuclear weapon State.

As our hero Jeffrey noted in a November 2007 entry, the United States refused PALs to Pakistan because of concerns about Article I. If transfer of PALs would violate the NPT, surely Senator Clinton’s proposal for a far more intimate, intrusive nuclear relationship involving some measure of active American and British command and control would as well.

Kudos to Senator Clinton for thinking big, but this proposal is misguided.

I’ve only spoken with Michael Dobbs once, on the telephone, and he seemed like a nice guy.

But, wow, is he being rude and dissmisive on the Washington Post website. It is this kind of ignorant arrogance that bothers the hell out of me.

Dobbs, in a feature called “Fact Checker,” expands his mandate to disagree at 9:28 with Obama’s judgment that the NPT “fell apart” under the Bush Administration.

Anywho, Dobbs decides to say that “things weren’t great under Clinton. It was under Clinton, after all, that India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons, which put a huge hole in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.”

Now, that’s just silly. Apart from the fact that India and Pakistan aren’t members of the NPT, testing nuclear weapons didn’t put a “hole” in the treaty.

Daryl Kimball sent Dobbs a note, then Dobbs responded with this:

I am glad that the Obama camp is reading the Fact Checker at all hours of the night. I got several e-mails from Obama supporters well after midnight disputing my critique of the senator for blaming George W. Bush for allowing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to “fall apart.” Here is a typical one, which landed at 1.39 a.m., from Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

Your post on Obama’s point about the erosion of the nonproliferation system under Bush misses the point and ignores the facts. India/Pak tested nukes in 1998, yes, but are not members of the NPT. Under Bush, Iran has advanced its nuclear program, [North Korea] has produced plutonium and tested a bomb, the 2006 NPT Review Conference was an utter failure due to lack of Bush admin leadership, and experts ranging from Kissinger to Nunn, to Hans Blix, to Mohammed El Baradei agree that the system is under tremendous strain now.

Well, ok, it’s true that Pakistan and India were not signatories to the 1968 non-proliferation treaty, so it is technically true that they did not violate their treaty obligations. In addition, India tested a small nuclear device in 1974. Nevertheless, the twin nuclear tests by India and then Pakistan in 1998 came as a huge shock to the Clinton administration, and did much to undermine the international non-proliferation norms established by the treaty. Once those two countries went nuclear, other countries lost the incentive to abide by the treaty. Many experts would agree that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal will present the single greatest national security threat to the United States over the next few years, given the political instability in that country.

You can’t blame Bush for everything, much as some people would like to do so.

What a pathetic answer!

First, I am pretty sure that Daryl is not associated with the Obama campaign. So, Dobbs is simply making up a fact about Daryl’s affiliation to undercut his credibility. Of course, Dobbs also writes for Hustler. (Okay, I just made that up. See how unfair it is?)

Second, Dobbs asserts that “Once [India and Pakistan] went nuclear, other countries lost the incentive to abide by the treaty.” Really? Lost their incentive? Okay, which countries — name them! — stopped abiding by NPT as a consequence of tests?

Dobbs doesn’t really make any effort to address the core of Daryl’s argument, which is that the Clinton Administration secured the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995 and a successful review conference in 2000. By contrast, the 2005 NPT review conference was a total meltdown, as even Bush Administration officials will admit over beers.

There is no perfect way to objectively measure the health of the NPT regime, although successful review conferences and the number of nuclear states are indicators. On both of those accounts, the Bush Administration has fared worse than the Clinton Administration.

As it happens, I actually disagree that the NPT “fell apart” under the Bush Administration, though I do think Bush & co. undermined the regime in significant and dangerous ways. The problem is that Dobbs decided to expand his “fact check” mandate to matters where facts are few and causality is not clear cut. His efforts to excuse his inexcusable post only make him look more foolish.

Two weeks ago, a story broke involving the arrest in Slovakia of two Hungarians and one Ukrainian for allegedly trying to peddle around 1 pound of weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium.

Days later, the incident was reported as involving 481.4 grams of a substance containing uranium 235, with a Slovak lab technician saying “Preliminary examinations showed it was low-enriched uranium,” which contains U-235 but can’t be used in a bomb. Big difference.

Well, a State Department official confirmed to me yesterday that the material was definitely not HEU.

When the story first broke, I was skeptical of the initial claim by the Slovak police that the level of enrichment was 98.6%. The precision of the number rubbed me the wrong way, given that the bust had just occurred, but it also struck me as a bit high. I’m not a physicist, but my understanding is that to the extent HEU is used in non-weapons applications — such as research reactors, propulsion, and radioisotope production — it is almost always closer to 90% U-235. (I’m sure a reader will correct me if I’ve got this wrong…)

Anyway, this seems to be one of those cases where authorities rush to worst-case judgments to hype their accomplishment. The Slovak police deserve credit for the bust, but crying wolf is never a good thing.

Addendum: And the extraordinary precision of that 98.6% figure? A little birdie told me today that the NRDC’s Tom Cochran had it right two weeks ago when he told the New York Times that the figure is the confidence in the radiation detector measurement, not the [level of] enrichment. Way to go Tom!