Framing the Next Arms Reduction Treaty

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Friday January 6, 2011.

The Next START - Jeffrey Lewis of Arms Control Wonk [link]

• A lifetime rooting for the bumbling Chicago Cubs is perfect preparation for a career in arms control...While bruised Administration politicos despair at the thought of going another round with the Russians and Jon Kyl, those of use in the arms control community are thinking: What should the next nuclear arms reduction treaty look like?
• A kind of consensus is forming around the idea that the next treaty will include a further reduction in deployed strategic nuclear weapons (the ones covered by START) as well as a limitation on the total number of nuclear weapons (everything else including reserve and tactical nuclear weapons).
• People seem to like the numbers 1,000 (deployed strategic) and 2,500 (total), though I think 1500/3000 would be a monumental achievement. Current US levels, for reference, are 1,968 and 5,113.
• The advantage of this approach — lets call it 1500/3000 — is that a single category of nondeployed warheads offers a solution to the disparity in tactical nuclear weapons, which currently “favors” Russia. As it happens, the Russian advantage in tactical nuclear weapons is offset by the US advantage in strategic “reserve” or “hedge” warheads.
• So we each keep thousands of reserve weapons for different reasons: The US as a strategic hedge against technical and geopolitical uncertainty; the Russians as a tactical option in the event that things turn south with NATO or, more probably, China.
• But the bottom line is this: Any agreement that constrains all nuclear weapons is probably going to allow the US and Russia to retain thousands of non-deployed nuclear weapons for their respective national reasons. We might trim the hedge, as it were, but there is little prospect of eliminating either it or Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons stockpile in the next round of negotiations.

US hardliners Lose Ground on Iran? - Robert Dreyfuss for The Diplomat [link]

• The current round of talks between Iran and the major world powers, represented by the so-called P5+1, resumes January 24 in Istanbul following an initial two-day session held last month in Geneva. And, while it’s exceedingly unlikely that the talks will achieve a breakthrough, for the first time in quite a while there’s actually some reason for optimism.
• According to several sources…the United States will offer to allow Iran to continue enriching uranium, on its own soil and with its existing array of centrifuges. That offer, however, will be contingent on Iran exporting the bulk of its enriched uranium for processing outside the country, most likely in Russia, where part of it will be transformed into fuel rods for use in the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), which is used for medical purposes, and part of it will be reprocessed into fuel for the Russian-built nuclear plant at Bushehr, which recently started up.
• In exchange, Iran would be required to accept stringent new oversight by the international community, through the International Atomic Energy Agency. In addition, it wouldn’t be allowed to expand either the number or the capacity of its existing centrifuges.
• Were a deal struck roughly along these lines, it would achieve the much-desired win-win outcome for both sides…Needless to say, though, there are still enormous obstacles that make achieving an agreement unlikely.
• First, the Obama administration itself is divided, and the White House is under pressure from hawks and hardliners not to make any concessions to Iran.
• The tumultuous state of Iranian politics will make it difficult, if not impossible, for Iran’s negotiators to strike a deal with the United States.
• Still, the fact that Iran and the United States are talking again is a good sign, as is fact that the next round will be held in Istanbul.

The Emperor's New Missile Defense - Lawrence Krauss in Scientific American [link]

• Absent from the [New START] debate was a key reality check…We do not have an effective Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Defense system, and no one has ever demonstrated that such defense is technologically and strategically workable. This point should have been brought home on the day the Senate voted to begin debate on the treaty
• Failure has been the norm rather than the exception regarding our experience with Missile Defense. Before deployment, the system failed in at least 40% of its tests, even allowing for some debate about what constituted success, and after deployment the failure rate has been worse, with even the Defense Department acknowledging success in only 8 of 15 tests.
• In fact, the system has never been tested against a realistic threat: an incoming missile with decoys, long known to be the Achilles Heel of Missile Defense. A decoy was supposed to be used in one recent test, but that test failed because the decoy failed to deploy.
• Efficacy questions aside, there are serious National Security issues that make one wonder whether we should be spending such sum—and even in today’s world 100 billion dollars is significant—instead on systems that might address realistic threats.
• Whatever the future brings, it was nevertheless unfortunate that the debate in the Senate on an issue as important as New Start—of relevance to the safety and security of much of the world’s population—was not more firmly grounded in empirical reality.

Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons and the Enemy Within - Sanjeev Miglani for Reuters [link]

• Steve Coll, the president of the New America Foundation and a South Asia expert, has raised the issue of the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in the wake of the assassination of the governor of most populous Punjab state by one of his bodyguards. It’s a question that comes up each time Pakistan is faced with a crisis whether it a major act of violence such as this or a political/economic meltdown or a sudden escalation of tensions with India obviously, but also the United States.
• Pakistan’s growing nuclear stockpile – about which we wrote here – is under the lock and key of the military. Coll says the Punjab governor’s killing was a reminder that one shouldn’t be too dismissive of the possibility of a breach in the nuclear security systems by an insider, however remote.
• Rolf Mowatt-Larssen…echoed the same in the July/August 2009 issue of Arms Control Today: "Purely in actuarial terms, there is a strong possibility that bad apples in the nuclear establishment are willing to cooperate with outsiders for personal gain or out of sympathy for their cause. Nowhere in the world is this threat greater than in Pakistan. . . . Anything that helps upgrade Pakistan’s nuclear security is an investment."
• Retired Pakistan Brig. Gen. Feroz Hassan Khan, a former director of arms control and disarmament affairs in the Strategic Plans Division, said in a piece in the same issue of Arms Control Today that while some of the fears over nuclear security were valid, many were overblown.
• But Pakistan was aware of the dangers and had taken important steps, especially since the September 11 attacks that dramatically changed the security environment in the region following the arrival of foreign troops in Afghanistan and the exponential rise of militant groups since then, Khan says.

Clinton to visit Gulf states - Matthew Lee for the Associated Press [link]

• The Obama administration is sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Persian Gulf region this weekend to shore up relations with U.S. allies there as fears about Iran's nuclear program mount.
• The State Department said Thursday that Clinton will visit the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar starting Sunday where she will hold talks with leaders focused on regional security, the Mideast peace process and development.
• In an apparent bid to forestall new action against it, Iran has invited the European Union and some other world powers - but not the United States - to tour nuclear sites on Jan. 15-16, ahead of a new round on international talks on the matter. Those talks are tentatively set for Istanbul, Turkey on Jan. 21-22, according to officials briefed on the plans.
• The U.S. has derided the Iranian move as an invitation to a "magical mystery tour" that is aimed at diverting attention from its defiance of demands to come clean on its nuclear program.