Maintaining the Momentum for Nuclear Reductions

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

Stories we're following today - Thursday, April 7, 2011:

Moving Ahead on Reducing Nuclear Arms - Madeleine Albright and Igor Ivanov for The New York Times [link]

• On April 8, 2010 Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev met to sign the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). The treaty entered into force in February, and the sides have already exchanged data on their forces. We should build on this momentum and take new actions to reduce nuclear risk and shape a safer world.
• First, the United States and Russia should initiate early negotiations to further reduce their strategic arms. New START permits each side up to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads. They could negotiate to reduce that level to 1,000 deployed strategic warheads — with corresponding cuts in strategic missiles and bombers — which would leave each with more than enough to assure its security.
• While negotiations are underway, Moscow and Washington might consider other steps. New START gives each until 2018 to reach its limits. They do not need that long. The two sides could accelerate their reductions and in parallel implement the limits by 2014 or 2015.
• Moscow and Washington need a better understanding on missile defense, which otherwise could stall further nuclear reductions. The United States, NATO and Russia should vigorously pursue possibilities for cooperation in this area; genuine collaboration could dramatically change how the sides perceive one another.
• Washington and Moscow should address non-strategic nuclear weapons in arms reduction negotiations. In order to prepare the ground for that, we believe that Russian and U.S. officials should hold early consultations to define what weapons fall into the category of “non-strategic”; exchange information on the numbers of weapons, their types and their locations; and discuss how they store such weapons (in part, with a view to designing future verification techniques).
• Finally, nuclear arms control cannot forever remain a U.S.-Russia-only enterprise. The permanent members of the U.N. Security Council will meet in June to discuss nuclear issues. Moscow and Washington might consult with British, French and Chinese officials and on how to multilateralize the nuclear arms reduction process, perhaps starting with a data exchange among the five countries. At some point, other nuclear states should be brought into the process.

Jimmy Carter: Upcoming Trip to North Korea Will Focus on Nuclear Weapons, Humanitarian Plight - The Washington Post [link]

• Former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday he plans to focus an upcoming trip to North Korea on trying to revive nuclear disarmament talks with the reclusive nation while seeking ways to help with the country’s humanitarian woes.
• Carter would not say when the trip was scheduled and the Atlanta-based Carter Center declined to comment on the plans. But U.S. government officials who were briefed on the details have said he could make the journey as early as this month.
• Carter said he would “try to induce the North Koreans to give up their nuclear weapons” and help the country work out a peace treaty with South Korea and the United States. But the trip will also have a humanitarian angle.
• “What we want is a peace treaty and denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and to find out about how we can help with the humanitarian plight of the people who are starving to death,” said Carter, speaking at the end of a human rights conference in Atlanta.
• Carter, a Democrat from Georgia who was president from 1977 to 1981, is well-regarded in North Korea despite the longtime animosity between the U.S. and the secretive communist government. He has visited several times in a private capacity, most recently last August, to secure the release of an imprisoned American.

Experts on Japan Nuclear Crisis Answer Questions From Nature Readers - Philip Yam for Scientific American [link]

• There is no significant risk for travel to countries outside Japan – you’re likely to get a much higher radiation dose from cosmic rays on the flight over than you would from the radiation. Even in Japan, the risks of radiation are very, very low. This is because (1) contaminated products are being kept out of the food supply (2) apart from in the area within, say 40-50km there isn’t a big risk from deposited radioactivity. (3) the radioactive iodine which is causing all the concern at the moment is decaying away. All of it will be gone within a few weeks. I’d be more worried about the disruption to services and anxiety caused by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident.
• Tthere is enormous dilution of radioactivity in the marine system. By the time any contamination got across the ocean to other countries (if any did), the concentrations would be tiny and wouldn’t present any risk. The concern for the marine system is mainly in the local area to Fukushima.
• The situation at the reactors is unpredictable and the next steps are far from clear. What we can say is this: the situation at Fukushima is going to be with us for years. First, the reactors will need to be brought under control, but then they'll need to be cleaned up, and that is going to be very difficult.
• I think a much more difficult question is how to make existing reactors safer. In the case of Fukushima Dai-Ichi, the position of the diesel backup generators relative to the coast was clearly a problem. I imagine regulators world wide will be looking at the number and state of various back up systems to see if they can be improved.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency has some authority to inspect civilian nuclear reactors, but mainly it's just to ensure that they are not being used for nuclear weapons development or other covert purposes. I imagine that some people will ask whether their authority should be expanded in the aftermath of this accident.

NATO Sets Up Arms Control Committee - Oliver Meier for Arms Control Today [link]

• NATO defense ministers agreed in principle during a March 10-11 meeting to set up a new arms control body, but discussions about the committee’s task and its relationship to a broader review of NATO deterrence posture continue.
• The creation of the new body, known as the WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) Control and Disarmament Committee, was in response to a directive from member states at last November’s Lisbon summit, where they agreed to a new Strategic Concept to guide alliance actions in the coming years.
• enior U.S. official told Arms Control Today March 17 that he expects the new committee not only to provide arms control and disarmament input into NATO’s deterrence review, but also to offer a forum for appropriate consultations among NATO members on nuclear and conventional arms control more generally.
• The committee could meet at the level of deputy heads of NATO missions in Brussels, but could be reinforced by officials from capitals when needed, the U.S. official said. There is no agreement yet on the mandate of the committee and how it will be related to other NATO bodies concerned with arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation.

Iran's Blue-Collar Revolution - Hamed Aleaziz Zahedi for Foreign Policy [link]

• On Feb. 28, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boldly declared, "Iran is among the few countries in the world where no one goes to bed hungry." It's hardly the first grandiose claim the Iranian president has made about the state of the Iranian economy. He recently announced that unemployment would be eradicated in two years. And the president defiantly insisted last November that Iran's economy is booming, despite international sanctions.
• These sorts of hubristic pronouncements once made Ahmadinejad popular among his base of lower-working-class supporters, who benefited from government handouts. But these days, the president's exaggerations are running up against economic reality: For the average Iranian, times are tough...So stark is the contrast between the government line and reality that, for the first time, Ahmadinejad's perpetual optimism is losing -- rather than winning -- supporters.
• Enter the Green Movement, which understands that its opposition would be significantly stronger if the Blues would come on board. Although currently under house arrest, the Green Movement's leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, attempted to reach out to the Blues prior to their incarceration. The most recent Green manifesto, for example, released in this February and signed by both Mousavi and Karroubi, seeks to broaden the base of the movement beyond the middle and educated classes by appealing to workers and farmers, as well as ethnic and religious minorities. Apart from calling for free, fair, and competitive elections as well as the establishment of an accountable government that protects civil, minority, and women's rights, the manifesto calls for the necessity of promoting social and economic justice.
• If this approach is even marginally successful, cracks may well develop in the government's security structure. The Basij security forces, which became well-known for their prominent role in the suppression of the 2009 protests, are the "enforcers" of the current regime -- and the Basij are made up primarily of lower-class youth. As their families' economic conditions worsen, however, Basij loyalty to the government may no longer be taken for granted. If working-class families join the Green opposition in the streets, the Basij would be confronted by their friends and family members in the very crowds they are charged to control. Perhaps this might impel them to have second thoughts about firing on the demonstrators.