Doomsday Clock Remains at 5 Minutes to Midnight

On the radar: Unrealized opportunities; Iran talking talks; Coercive diplomacy; Nuclear waste management; GMD expectations sliding; and Russian military switches to socks.

January 15, 2013 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke

Doomsday Clock - The Doomsday Clock will stay at five minutes to midnight, according to the Science and Security Board and Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

--In an open letter to President Obama, the setters of the Doomsday Clock cite 2012 as a year of “unrealized opportunity to reduce nuclear stockpiles, to lower the immediacy of destruction from missiles on alert, and to control the spread of fissile materials and keep nuclear terrorism at bay.” The “stasis of 2012” convinced the board to leave hands of the clock in place.

--The letter complements President Obama on measures taken in his first term to reduce global threats. It calls on the President to reduce the nuclear arsenal to under 1,000 deployed strategic warheads, announce an effort to stop on production of fissile materials and eliminate existing stocks worldwide, and take action on climate change. Full letter here. http://bit.ly/W3GRJS

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Setting the clock - Since 1947, the Doomsday Clock has been as far from midnight as 17 minutes (1991) and as close as 2 minutes (1953). Wikipedia charted the changes. http://bit.ly/Xbb1tR

Negotiating negotiations - “Iran wants the agenda for a new round of nuclear talks to refer explicitly to sanctions relief and what it views as its right to enrich uranium,” reports Barbara Slavin for Al Monitor. The U.S. and its negotiating partners in the P5+1 await Iran to agree to a date and venue for renewed talks, which were once expected to occur this month. Full article here, including speculation on why Iran might be taking its position. http://bit.ly/VfYhEz

Tweet - @wellerstein: I'd noticed some low-flying helicopters recently in DC -- interesting reason: http://bit.ly/Xb0iQ9

Threats and promises - “Getting to Yes with Iran: The Challenges of Coercive Diplomacy” by Robert Jervis in Foreign Affairs.

--Summary: “Halting Iran's progress toward a bomb will require the United States to make credible promises and credible threats simultaneously -- an exceedingly difficult trick to pull off. For coercive diplomacy to work, Washington may need to put more of its cards on the table.” (paywall) http://fam.ag/V70GUT

GMD Deficiencies - “The [Ballistic Missile Defense System] capability against strategic threats has not increased because the [ground based midcourse defense (GMD)] program continues to resolve deficiencies with its Capability Enhancement II (CE-II) Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV). As a result, the GMD program did not conduct a flight test in FY12,” according to a report from the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation.

--This quote is part of a pattern of ever-lower expectations for the GMD program, notes Kingston Reif at Nukes of Hazard with a comparisson to previous assessments of the system. http://bit.ly/W5pJm7

Article -“The Real Cuban Missile Crisis” by Benjamin Schwarz for this month’s issue of The Atlantic. Tagline: “Everything you think you know about those 13 days is wrong.” http://bit.ly/WHXucs

Nuclear waste - “Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste” by the Department of Energy. January 2013. (pdf) http://1.usa.gov/SEqEhK

Iran Intelligence - “Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security: A Profile.” Report prepared by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. December 2012. (pdf) http://bit.ly/10wNv1T

--From the summary: “Even though Iran has created a well-equipped counterintelligence system to protect its nuclear program, it appears that other countries’ operatives still succeed in infiltrating the system, as well as some other parts of Iran’s intelligence apparatus.”

Tweet - @dangerroom: How a Government Report Spread a Questionable Claim About Iran http://bit.ly/SE0HPp

Sock modernization - Russia’s minister of defense yesterday ordered the military to start issuing socks to its soldiers, ending the centuries-old practice of having soldiers wrap their feet in a cloth. The New York Times reports. http://nyti.ms/SE2FPG