U.S.-Libya Nuclear Deal Reduced Qaddafi's Power, Removed Nuclear Threat

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

Stories we're following today: Tuesday, March 1, 2011:

In U.S.-Libya Nuclear Deal, a Qaddafi Threat Faded Away - David Sanger in The New York Times [link]

• In late 2009 the Obama administration was leaning on Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and his son, Seif, to allow the removal from Libya of the remnants of the country’s nuclear weapons program: casks of highly enriched uranium.
• Today, with father and son preparing for a siege of Tripoli, the success of a joint American-British effort to eliminate Libya’s capability to make nuclear and chemical weapons has never, in retrospect, looked more important.
• Senior administration officials and Pentagon planners, as they discuss sanctions and a possible no-fly zone to neutralize the Libyan air force, say that the 2003 deal removed Colonel Qaddafi’s biggest trump card: the threat of using a nuclear weapon, or even just selling nuclear material or technology, if he believed it was the only way to save his 42-year rule.
• The cache of nuclear technology that Libya turned over to the United States, Britain and international nuclear inspectors in early 2004 was large — far larger than American intelligence experts had expected. There were more than 4,000 centrifuges for producing enriched uranium. There were blueprints for how to build a nuclear bomb — missing some critical components but good enough to get the work started.

Bushehr Cooling Pump - Jeffrey Lewis in Arms Control Wonk [link]

• After the IAEA DG report on Iran noted that the Iranians were unloading the fuel from Bushehr, Bill Broad and David Sanger provided several column inches of speculationabout whether STUXNET had struck again.
• Now, Bill Broad reports that Rosatom has offered a more “prosaic” explanation — a failed cooling pump. As Broad reports, this is Russian for “damage to one of the reactor’s four main cooling pumps … necessitated removal of the fuel core and an inspection of the reactor and its fuel assemblies …”
• As explanations go, this is sort of boring — a 1970s-era German (or should I say West German) cooling pump didn’t age so well. Whereas the original story conjured terrifying images of men with beards and turbans on the verge of powering up CHERNOBYL: THE SEQUEL, today’s explanation only reminds us that parts get old and German engineers are, after all, human.
• The Rosatom explanation seems plausible enough, not least because the day before Iran notified the IAEA it would unload fuel assemblies from the core, Sergey Kirienko “made a one-day working visit to Iran” to discuss “topical issues of preparation … including operation of the equipment supplied more than 30 years ago and integrated in the design.”

Clinton Warns Terrorists May Get Fissile Materials - Reuters [link]

• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned on Monday nuclear bomb-making fissile material could fall into the hands of terrorists and called for immediate global negotiations to halt its production.
• In a speech to the Conference on Disarmament, she urged the United Nations forum to end its stalemate on fissile talks and indicated that Washington could pursue the issue elsewhere unless there is a breakthrough soon.
• Clinching a so-called fissile material cut-off treaty would be an important step on the road to a world without nuclear weapons, something President Barack Obama called for in Prague nearly two years ago, Clinton said.
• Diplomats and U.N. officials say that Pakistan is the one holding out on a consensus at the Conference of Disarmament. Negotiations on fissile material outside of the Geneva body could take place in bilateral or small-group sessions.
• "There is no justification for a single nation to abuse the consensus principle and forever thwart the legitimate desire of the 64 other states to get negotiations underway on an agreement that would strengthen our common security," Clinton declared.

On Foreign Policy, Who Speaks for Republicans? - Ben Pershing in The Washington Post [link]

• When it comes to foreign policy, who speaks for the GOP?
• Typically, when a party doesn't hold the White House, the answer to that question should be found on Capitol Hill. Yet the Republican cohort in Congress has few lawmakers who are both experienced enough and high-profile enough to serve as effective party spokesmen on issues beyond U.S. borders.
• "There's clearly a vacuum here," said James Carafano, who heads the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
• Real policy divides exist among Republicans, with neoconservatives long advocating a muscular role for the United States abroad while a growing libertarian wing is more skeptical of foreign entanglements. That can make it harder for the party to unite behind one leader.
  

An Unsung Hero of the Nuclear Age - Ron Rosenbaum in Slate [link]

• I went ahead and dedicated my new book, How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III, to Maj. Harold Hering because Maj. Hering sacrificed his military career to ask a Forbidden Question about launching nuclear missiles. 
• It was a question that makes Maj. Hering an unsung hero of the nuclear age. A question that came from inside the system, a question that has no good answer: How can any missile crewman know that an order to twist his launch key in its slot and send a thermonuclear missile rocketing out of its silo—a nuke capable of killing millions of civilians—is lawful, legitimate, and comes from a sane president?
• If you think Hering's question is a relic of the Cold War, consider the situation now. Let's say you're at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, the place where some mysterious glitch caused 50 missiles to go offline last October. You know the missiles stopped talking to base. Stopped responding to all commands. And you've read about the way the Stuxnet computer worm demonstrated an ability to insinuate itself into the actual control systems of nuclear facilities in Iran and turn them to its own ends.
• And you get a launch order. It looks like it's the real thing, it's all "authenticated." It directs you to retarget your "de-targeted" missiles and then tells you to get ready to launch.
• Should you entertain doubts? Should you question the order to launch such an attack, not knowing for sure it doesn't come from a president off his meds? Or a cyberworm disguised as a president?