THE DEPROLIFERATOR — The Obama administration is trying to decide on its nuclear “posture.” What stance will nuclear weapons assume in U.S. national security strategy? At ease or at attention? Supine, prone, or erect? The president’s critics, David Sanger and Thom Shanker write in a New York Times article about the Nuclear Posture Review, “argue that his embrace of a new movement to eliminate nuclear weapons around the world is naïve and dangerous.” What else is new?

Meanwhile, many of the president’s supporters, along with the disarmament community (however much the two overlap) “fear that over the past year he has moved too cautiously” thus leaving open “the possibility that the United States might use nuclear weapons in response to a biological or chemical attack, perhaps against a nation that does not possess a nuclear arsenal.” Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — David Kay has “very bad news for you.” You may recall that he’s the man who led two teams to Iraq: one, after the Gulf War, determined that Iraq had a nuclear program; the other, before the Iraq War, that it then had no WMD program. Despite supporting the Iraq War anyway, Kay remains a credible voice on nuclear weapons.

His bad news, though, is about Iran, where, he recently wrote in the National Interest, “a weapons-inspection regime. . . will not work. Inspections themselves are most effective when both the state being inspected and the inspecting countries are fully on board — and even then there are limits.” For example, the “number of inspectors and level of intrusiveness necessary to ensure that [there are no nuclear weapons] in a country Iran’s size is far greater than anything that can be contemplated.” Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — In December, what for all intents and purposes looks like the mother of all reports on nuclear weapons was issued. The entity responsible is called the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND). A joint initiative of the Australian and Japanese Governments, it was launched to reinvigorate global nuclear disarmament in time for the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — More loose nuclear ends. . .

• In 1982 the well-known astrophysicist and science popularizer Carl Sagan coined the term “nuclear winter” to describe the environmental effects of nuclear war. Since then, like climate change, it’s garnered its share of deniers. In the recent Scientific American, Alan Robock and Owen Brian Toon write (emphasis added):

People have several incorrect impressions about nuclear winter. One is that the climatic effects were disproved; this is just not true. Another is that the world would experience “nuclear autumn” instead of winter. But our new calculations show that the climate effects even of a regional conflict [such as between India and Pakistan] would be widespread and severe. … far more than enough to destroy agriculture worldwide. … Even the warheads on one missile-carrying submarine could produce enough smoke to create a global environmental disaster.

Nuclear winter: the cherry on top of climate change. Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — Paul R. Hill was an aerodynamics scientist who led some key projects for NASA. Also, like moon-walking astronaut Edgar Mitchell, he believed in UFOs, in part because of two personal sightings. In fact, Hill marshaled his aerodynamic and mathematical expertise to the task of determining what made them fly. . . and stop on a dime. . . and change directions in a heartbeat. The book that was the result of his labors, Unconventional Flying Objects (Hampton Roads Publishing, 1995), is one of the most respected works in UFO lore, as well as great fun to read (despite all the equations).

Hill determined that their means of propulsion were — no surprise — an anti-gravity force field. Of course, he wasn’t able to conceptualize a working model. Had he been, NASA would no doubt have yanked him out of retirement and become involved in a tug of war with the Pentagon for his services. Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — “We declare that Iran respects the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty], despite all the flaws the treaty has,” said Ali-Akbar Salehi, director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, on Iran’s Press TV. “I believe that some Western countries, which are unfortunately affected by international Zionism, are trying to force Iran to withdraw from the NPT so that they can create an anti-Iran climate in the international arena.”

While invoking the NPT — that talisman of a treaty — on his way to the moral high ground, Salehi stumbled and took a header. Like his president, he just couldn’t keep his thoughts about Zionism to himself. Nor did he help himself or his cause by adding “we hope that the wise part of the West will overcome its irrational part so that it can seize the opportunity offered by Iran to end the current situation.” Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — Most who champion nuclear disarmament were heartened by the election of Barack Obama. His apparent abhorrence of nuclear weapons seemed forged in The Day After eighties. Hopes soared after he delivered his celebrated Prague speech in April outlining his vision for a nuclear-free world.

The first step — negotiations on a treaty to continue the work of the recently expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) — may not have met the December deadline, but the treaty’s conclusion is seen as imminent. The new, improved model of START, the New York Times reports, “would require each side to reduce deployed strategic nuclear warheads to roughly 1,600 [and] strategic bombers [and] missiles to below 800.” Still, “Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia said on Thursday that there had been ’some slowing down’ in negotiations by the other side.” Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — Last week Secretary of Defense Robert Gates accused Tehran of “stiffing the international community” by failing to hold up its end of the October United Nations agreement. Iran, of course, had agreed to send low-enriched uranium to Russia and then France. In return, it would receive uranium that was highly enough enriched to run a reactor producing medical isotopes.

Gates wasn’t rattling the national saber, though, with his colloquial turn of phrase. Military action, he said, would only slow down, not halt, Iran’s nuclear program (however he perceives it). Instead, Gates was trotting out that old scourge sanctions. Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — You’ve probably heard the word redundancy in its current embodiment. To refresh your memory, it refers to the duplication of the critical components of a system, such as an airplane, to enhance its reliability. Redundancy’s rationale is obvious: The likelihood that the entire system will fail decreases as its components are duplicated, or even triplicated, in isolation from each other. Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — A large part of the lore of crime is the history of those transporting precious goods and the highwaymen who prey on them. Valuables are most vulnerable when in transit. Removed from safe storage and the constancy of inanimate walls, they become susceptible to the capriciousness of the human element. For example, their guard corps may be infiltrated by agents of those who covet them. This is as true of nuclear materials as anything else. Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR

“We have reached the point where the senior military generals responsible for nuclear forces are advocating, more vocally, more vehemently, than our politicians, to get down to lower and lower weapons.”
– General Eugene Habiger (Ret.), former head of U.S. nuclear forces, in 2000 Full Story »

According to a BBC report:

A controversial Scottish brewery has launched what it described as the world’s strongest beer — with a 32% alcohol content. Tactical Nuclear Penguin has been unveiled by BrewDog of Fraserburgh. Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — As you no doubt know, deterrence is the product of a balance of power — nuclear arsenals, in other words, that are roughly equal. Constrained by the eye-for-an-eye principle, but to the umpteenth power, states armed with nuclear weapons, such as the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and India and Pakistan today, keep their nukes holstered.

But terrorists, according to conventional thinking, are immune to deterrence. If they ever obtained nuclear weapons, they’d suffer few qualms about using them. First, they’re secure in the knowledge that they’re ostensibly stateless. It’s unlikely that the state which they’ve attacked with nuclear weapons, such as the United States, would retaliate against the state which served as their command center for the attack. (Can’t speak for another possible target, Israel, though.) Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — Few fields are as lacking in fresh perspectives as nuclear weapons. Entire decades have been spent by nuclear strategists deliberating which state would strike first and how many weapons the victim would have left to retaliate. Then they came up with deterrence. What a concept — as if equally armed forces had never arrived at a standoff before. Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — Nuclear disarmament is usually approached from three directions. They who pursue the middle way might, by definition, be capable of appreciating the charms of those following the two paths which diverge from it. But chances are that each of those parties — one of which is an outlier; the other an in-lier — views the other with a jaundiced eye. Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — Recent statements by its chief representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency suggest that Iran may be backing away from an agreement to ships it low-enriched nuclear fuel to Russia for further enriching. Even, though, after agreeing to the deal, President Ahmadinejad, ever the master of the sweeping gesture, said the West had “moved from confrontation to cooperation.”

Among reasons to hope that Iran relents is a fact of which many who proclaim Iran has a right to a nuclear program seem ignorant. Turns out that transubstantiating the fuel used for nuclear energy into nuclear-weapon fuel, far from a miracle, is all too commonplace. Full Story »

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — Sometimes it seems as if neither the United States nor Russia got the message that the Cold War ended almost two decades ago. Previously I wrote about the Dooomsday Device, a back-up defense system that Russia developed in the 80s. In the aftermath of a nuclear attack, it ensures that, even if no civilian and military leaders are still around to issue the command, a retaliatory nuclear attack will still be launched. Depending on your point of view, it’s either the ultimate in deterrence or the most senseless act of revenge ever. Full Story »

If you start a war, we may die but the rockets will fly automatically.

Thus spake the man who was profiled in William Taubman’s masterwork Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. The Russian premier was addressing U.S. diplomat Averell Harriman, who sought to prepare the way for the Russian premier to make his contentious 1959 visit to the United States. What exactly did Khrushchev mean by “automatically”? After all, computers were still in their infancy. Full Story »

A Personal ‘Nuclear Posture Review’

THE DEPROLIFERATOR — When viewed on film, a nuclear weapons test might strike the discerning eye as a rip in the very fabric of existence. While one might view a supernova in the same light, not only doesn’t the explosion of a star occur within the confines of a planet, but in an entire galaxy. Furthermore, a supernova is ultimately a creative force that leads to the formation of new stars.

By contrast, a nuclear explosion is a “destroyer of worlds,” as Robert Oppenheimer famously described the first test, Trinity. He prefaced that expression with the words “I am become Death,” from the Bhagavad Gita. In fact, viewing a nuclear explosion can induce a variety of religious experience (apologies to William James). We’re engulfed by the sight of the mushroom cloud unfurling and billowing in slow, majestic motion. An inner peace obtains. Never mind that it’s as insidious as being aroused by a snuff film. Full Story »

Blame it on Dick Lugar. He provided Barack Obama with living proof that a Republican could work towards a bipartisan end with a Democrat. The most senior senator of his party, he’s the last of a dying breed — a Republican who’s both willing to meet the Democrats halfway and actually work with them. Lugar, of course, is most noted for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program that he sponsored in 1992 along with former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn.

Its purpose was to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union states in accordance with disarmament treaties such as SALT II. To give you an example of how positive a force a Republican can be, this program has eliminated 6,312 nuclear warheads — and that’s just the tip of its iceberg. Of course, the recent, regressed breed of feral Republicans claim that the program only frees up Russian money for new weapons programs. Perhaps, but at least they’re conventional weapons. Full Story »