Arms Control Today November 2010 by Arms Control Association

INSIDE NATO Set to Back Expanded Missile Defense

Arms Control TODAY Volume 40 Number 9 NOVEMBER 2010

THE SOURCE ON NONPROLIFERATION AND GLOBAL SECURITY

NPT 2010

The Beginning of a New Constructive Cycle By Sameh Aboul-Enein

IN THIS ISSUE

Can Washington and Seoul Try Dealing With Pyongyang For a Change? By Leon V. Sigal

Abolishing Chemical Weapons: Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities By Paul F. Walker

Book Review Wrestling With Nuclear Opacity Bennett Ramberg Reviews Avner Cohen’s The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain With the Bomb

IN THE NEWS Revised Space Code Advances Countries Aim for Fuel Bank Endorsement Iran Nuclear Efforts Face Critical Limits U.S. $7.00 Canada $8.00

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Acts of terror. Failed states. Border disputes. Crimes against humanity. Has the world’s need for international security ever been greater?

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Arms Control TODAY

THE SOURCE ON NONPROLIFERATION AND GLOBAL SECURITY

Vo l u m e 4 0 • N u m b e r 9 • N ov e m b e r 2 010

Focus Move Ahead With New START By Daryl G. Kimball

In Brief

Features 8

NPT 2010: The Beginning of a New Constructive Cycle By Sameh Aboul-Enein

The spirit of compromise that prevailed at the 2010 NPT Review Conference in May produced a final document that contains significant new commitments on nuclear disarmament and a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.

16 Can Washington and Seoul Try Dealing With Pyongyang for a Change? By Leon V. Sigal Pyongyang has long tried to exploit its nuclear program to convince Washington to end years of enmity. Both sides will need to take sustained actions to reassure one another if denuclearization and reconciliation are to have any chance of proceeding.

22 Abolishing Chemical Weapons: Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities By Paul F. Walker The Chemical Weapons Convention and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons serve as models for long-term, verified, and cooperative nonproliferation, threat reduction, and global security regimes.

In The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain With the Bomb, Avner Cohen makes a passionate argument against Israel’s nuclear self-censorship, but fault lines emerge when he translates passion into policy, reviewer Bennett Ramberg says.

Cover photo: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations on May 3, the ﬁrst day of the month-long meeting.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

53 Book Review: Wrestling With Nuclear Opacity

News Europe and the Former Soviet Union

NATO Set to Back Expanded Missile Defense NATO member states appear poised to endorse an expanded missile defense mission at their summit in Lisbon and to invite Russia to play a role. NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the cost will not “break the bank.”

UK Postpones Trident Replacement Amid Cuts After a broad review of its defense policy, the British government has decided to postpone until 2016 the final decision on whether to replace its Trident nuclear submarines. The United Kingdom also said it would cut its nuclear arsenal.

35 37

Revised Space Code Advances The European Union has adopted a revised draft code of conduct for outer space. The code could be opened for signature as early as next year. The United States is deciding whether to sign.

The World

Countries Aim for Fuel Bank Endorsement Convinced that additional time will not help their cause, supporters of a proposal for a nuclear fuel bank are gearing up for a vote at the December meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors.

UN Arms Data Mixed As Participation Falls The number of countries submitting reports to the UN conventional arms registry declined for the third year in a row. Trends in the arms transfers described in the reports were less clear.

U.S. Ofﬁcial Mulls Ending NSG Rule Revamp After six years of unsuccessful talks, it might be time for the Nuclear Suppliers Group to drop its effort to revise rules for exports of sensitive nuclear technology, a senior Obama administration official said.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

The Middle East and Africa

Iran Nuclear Efforts Face Critical Limits Iran continues to face a number of hurdles with its nuclear program. The challenges may impede both its nuclear energy aspirations and its ability to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

Asia and Australia

Work at North Korea Reactor Site Unclear Construction work at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear site has raised both concerns and questions. Experts say the visible work does not appear to be consistent with efforts to rebuild a key reactor structure.

The United States and the Americas

State Dept. Restructures Arms Control Bureaus In an effort to clarify responsibilities and to bring arms control, verification, and compliance into a single bureau, the State Department has reorganized its bureaus that deal with weapons of mass destruction.

50 51

GAO Finds Problems in Tritium Production Technical problems have hampered U.S. tritium production and put in doubt the National Nuclear Security Administration’s ability to meet the country’s future tritium needs, the Government Accountability Office said.

Arms Control TODAY Volume 40 Number 9 November 2010

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ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

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FOCUS

By Daryl G. Kimball Executive Director

Move Ahead With New START

he Senate will return this month for a postelection session that can and should be used to approve the modest but essential New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). Failure to do so would further delay the re-establishment of an effective U.S.-Russian inspection and monitoring system, undermine U.S. nonproliferation leadership, and jeopardize U.S.-Russian cooperation, including joint efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear program. Just as earlier agreements negotiated by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did, New START would keep Washington and Moscow on track to reduce their arsenals by about

commanders, and national security leaders from past Republican and Democratic administrations judge New START to be in the U.S. national security interest. Nevertheless, many Republican senators have withheld their support at the behest of Minority Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.), who has threatened to block New START unless there is still more money ﬂowing to the already well-funded U.S. nuclear weapons production infrastructure. Earlier this year, the administration outlined an $80 billion, 10-year plan to modernize the weapons complex and continue to refurbish existing warhead types (a 15 percent increase

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

30 percent below current limits—to no over current levels). Its plan calls for more than 1,550 deployed strategic spending another $100 billion over Prompt ratification is nuclear warheads on no more than the same period to upgrade strategic 700 delivery vehicles. The United the only way to close nuclear delivery systems. States would retain a large and modern Obama’s $7 billion request for the the “verification gap.” nuclear force more than sufficient to weapons complex in fiscal year 2011 deter nuclear attack by Russia or any was 10 percent higher than it was in other potential adversary. the final year of the George W. Bush administration. Linton Prompt ratification of New START is the only way to close the Brooks, the head of the National Nuclear Security Adminis“verification gap” that has emerged since the original START extration in the Bush administration, said in April, “I’d have

pired on Dec. 5, 2009. New START would establish an updated system of information exchanges and enhanced on-site inspections that would provide more information on the status of Russian strategic forces than was available under START. Without New START, each side would be tempted to engage in more-costly force modernization and hedging strategies. “If we don’t get the treaty, [the Russians] are not constrained in their development of force structure and...we have no insight into what they’re doing. So it’s the worst of both possible worlds,” Gen. Kevin Chilton, the commander of STRATCOM, said June 16. New START skeptics have tried and failed to make their arguments stick. Claims that the treaty’s nonbinding language on the “interrelationship” between strategic offenses and defenses will limit U.S. missile defense options do not add up. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates bluntly said May 18, “[T]he treaty will not constrain the United States from deploying the most effective missile defenses possible.” Some complain that New START does not reduce Russia’s tactical nuclear warhead levels, which have never been covered by a treaty. By design, New START addresses strategic nuclear weapons. It does not make sense to risk veriﬁable reduction in Russia’s long-range nuclear weapons by insisting that the policy for short-range weapons be settled now. New START lays the diplomatic foundation necessary for a future accord on tactical nuclear weapons reductions. For these and other reasons, the overwhelming majority of former military leaders, including seven former U.S. strategic

killed for that budget and that much high-level attention in the administration.” So far, the Obama administration has ensured its ﬁscal year 2011 budget request has not been cut by congressional appropriators. Congress must act before Dec. 3 to approve an extension of the federal budget. The New START resolution of advice and consent approved 14-4 by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee endorses the 10-year plan to maintain the arsenal and delivery systems. However, if the Senate does not vote on New START before year’s end, the administration may not be able to protect the program from cuts. But Kyl is apparently holding out for even more. He has suggested the ﬁscal year 2012 budget request should be higher to cover as yet undocumented cost overruns for two major construction projects: a uranium facility in Tennessee and a plutonium laboratory in New Mexico. He would like new multiyear cost estimates and guarantees they will be funded. Enough is enough. If there are additional nuclear weapons program costs—or savings—down the road, the next Congress can adjust the budget. Senators of both parties should recognize that delaying approval of New START—and reconsideration of the Test Ban Treaty next year—would create uncertainty about U.S. nuclear policy and jeopardize the fragile political consensus to increase funding to maintain the U.S. nuclear stockpile in the years ahead. U.S. national security is clearly stronger with New START than without it. It is time for the Senate to act. ACT

BY THE

NUMBERS

November 2010

InBRIEF

Number of countries submitting reports to the UN Register of Conventional Arms for transfers occurring in the previous calendar year

Notable Quotable “[T]here are still a huge amount of missiles that are pointed at each other for no reason. But everyone is trying to—every country is kind of concerned about how do you get—how do you reduce that? Because there are those in America that are trying to ﬂex their muscles and pretend they’re ballsy by saying, ‘We’ve got to keep those nuclear weapons.’ That’s very rugged, when you say that. It’s not rugged at all; it’s an idiot that says that. It’s stupid to say that.” —California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, on opponents of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, U.S.-Russia Business Council annual meeting, San Francisco, October 21, 2010

2006: 117 2007: 113 2008: 91 2009: 80 2010: 65* *Number of countries as of Oct. 18, 2010; more countries may submit reports before the end of the year.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Five Years Ago in ACT

China’s Export Controls: Can Beijing’s Actions Match Its Words? China’s nuclear and missile relations with Iran and Pakistan have raised questions about China’s commitment to global nonproliferation.

—Anupam Srivastava, November 2005

Source: United Nations

News Briefs

Saudi Arms Deal Sent to Congress

posed weapons sale before the sale can move forward. To block it, Congress must pass a joint resolution of disapproval during the review period and then override a likely presidential veto. Congress has never successfully done that. The Saudi arms sale has received some resistance in the House since news of the deal was leaked in September. In a letter that month to President Barack Obama, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) stated his intention to block any proposed arms deal with Saudi Arabia. (See ACT, October 2010.) He reiterated that point after the administration officially notified Congress of the deal Oct. 20. After the review period, Congress retains the ability to halt the deal at any point during the 15 to 20 years it is expected to take before all transfers are completed. In an Oct. 20 press conference announcing the notification, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro denied the possibility that the U.S.Saudi deal would destabilize the Middle East and lead to a regional arms race. Shapiro went on to say that the sale would not endanger Israel’s “qualitative military edge.” —MATT SUGRUE

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

HEU Spent Fuel Removed From Poland

ore than 450 kilograms of Russian-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) spent fuel has been transported from Poland to Russia in five shipments over 12 months, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced in an Oct. 12 press release. The effort represents the largest spent fuel shipment campaign in NNSA history, the press release said. Repatriation of Russian-origin fresh and spent HEU fuel is a key of part of the NNSA’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative. The NNSA declined to say what the enrichment level of the spent fuel was, but in an Oct. 20 e-mail to Arms Control Today, NNSA spokesman Damien LaVera said the spent fuel return was the program’s largest ever in terms of the quan-

scheduled to be converted in 2012 to run on LEU rather than HEU, he said. Meanwhile, Ken Baker, the NNSA deput y administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation, said Oct. 12 at a conference in Lisbon that the NNSA and Russia’s Rosatom this year will finalize a “legal framework” that will allow the star t of studies to “determine the feasibilit y of conver ting” six research reactors in Russia from HEU to LEU fuel. According to LaVera, the studies are required to determine what t ypes of fuel research reactors in Russia could use if conver ted to LEU. Rosatom has confirmed the shutdown of three HEU-fueled research reactors, with an additional five in the process of being shut down and decommissioned, he said. —DANIEL HORNER

India Signs Nuclear Liability Convention

ndia on Oct. 27 signed the Convention on Supplementar y Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC), an international treaty that seeks to establish global guidelines for compensating victims of nuclear accidents. At a White House press briefing that day previewing President Barack Obama’s Nov. 6-9 visit to India, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns called the signing a “positive step.” The signing comes two months after India passed a controversial nuclear liability law. (See ACT, October 2010.) The law makes nuclear supplier firms potentially liable for a nuclear accident, whereas under the CSC, liability is channeled exclusively to the nuclear facility operator. U.S. nuclear suppliers have indicated they would be reluctant to do business in India without such restrictions on liability. Access to the Indian reactor market was one of the potential benefits cited by advocates of U.S. legislation, enacted in 2008, that allowed nuclear trade with India although New Delhi does not meet key requirements of U.S. nonproliferation law G. Balachandran, writing for the Institute for Defence

Department of Energy

Department of Defense

he Obama administration last month formally notified Congress of a roughly $ 60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. If completed, it would be the largest arms sale in U.S. histor y. According to the notification documents, the Apache Longbow attack helicopter deal includes 84 F-15SA tactical fighters, 70 Apache Longbow attack helicopters, AIM-120C/7 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles, Hellfire missiles, and radar equipment. Congressional notifications list the “not-to-exceed estimate” of possible deals and are subject to reductions. Congress has 30 days after notification to review the pro-

tity of uranium-235, as well as in terms of “sheer volume.” Uranium enriched to levels of 20 percent or more of U-235 is considered HEU. The campaign involved collaboration among the NNSA, Russia, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Poland’s Radioactive Waste Management Plant and Institute of Atomic Energy, the press release said. The material went to Russia’s Mayak facility, where it will be down-blended to low-enriched uranium (LEU), LaVera said. According to the press release, the spent HEU fuel came from the Ewa and Maria research reactors in Swierk. The Ewa reactor is no longer in use and is in the process of being shut down and disas- Highly enriched uranium spent fuel sembled, LaVera said. was transported from Poland to Russia in ﬁve shipments over 12 months. The Maria reactor is

Studies and Analyses, an Indian think tank, said the controversial provisions of the liability law did not legally preclude India’s CSC signature. According to Balachandran, Article XVIII(i) of the CSC requires that a state only declare that its national law complies with the CSC, rather than proving that the law is CSC-compliant. Fourteen states have signed the CSC, and four states, including the United States, have ratified it. It has not yet entered into force. —ERIC AUNER

Reports of Note

Virus May Be Targeting Iran’s Nuclear Program

about dealing with a “rogue” state, Dana Moss says in her

provides “some important lessons for U.S. policymakers” report for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. after, U.S. engagement, Moss, an adjunct scholar at the instigagement leads to behavioral change on the part of a rogue

Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran

On the Calendar 35th session of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Preparatory Commission, Vienna

Nov. 9-12

First meeting of states-parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, Vientiane, Laos Annual meeting of the states-parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, Geneva

Nov. 29-Dec. 3

10th meeting of states-parties to the Mine Ban Treaty, Geneva

Nov. 29-Dec. 3

Meeting of states-parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention: 15th session, The Hague International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors meeting, Vienna

state. She says U.S.-Libyan cooperation has been limited to “areas of mutual interest,” such as the dismantlement of Tripoli’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The desire for international recognition and respect—most notably, engagement with the United States— provided the main motivation for Libyan moves in that area, she says. However, Moss suggests that Washington should not have “placed all the incentives up front” when dealing with Tripoli. That strategy achieved its goal of dismantling the WMD program, but left “no incentive for further cooperation,” she argues. —MATT SUGRUE

Taking Stock: North Korea’s Uranium Enrichment Program David Albright and Paul Brannan, Institute for Science and International Security, October 8, 2010 North Korea has moved forward with a uranium-enrichment program to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear weapons, according to this report by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). The report maintains that addressing this program must be a priority to forestall North Korean “horizontal and vertical” proliferation, but notes that evaluating the scale of the program and determining its location remain key challenges. Although it is unclear whether Pyongyang’s enrichment program is large enough to produce a substantial amount of HEU, “the data support that North Korea has moved beyond laboratory-scale work and has the capability to build, at the very least, a pilot-scale gas centrifuge plant,” ISIS says.The report details signiﬁcant assistance North Korea received for its uranium-enrichment efforts from the nuclear smuggling network run by former Pakistani nuclear ofﬁcial Abdul Qadeer Khan, noting that Pyongyang’s procurement efforts for the program have picked up in recent years, following major setbacks several years ago. The report argues that addressing North Korean uranium-enrichment efforts must entail engaging in diplomacy with Pyongyang, getting greater Chinese cooperation to deal with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and implementing a robust international regime to counter North Korea’s illicit procurement. —PETER CRAIL

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Nov. 8-11

Dec. 2-3

The thaw in U.S.-Libyan relations, starting in the late 1990s,

tute, presents a pessimistic view of the possibility that en-

actor has a Siemens control system. As a result, many experts assume that whoever designed the virus wanted to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. During the past several months, the Bushehr plant has experienced a series of delays in its projected startup date. However, Iranian state-run Press TV reported that Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, dismissed suggestions that Stuxnet had anything to do with the delays. In an October repor t, sof t ware securit y firm Symantec concludes that Stuxnet reprograms the industrial control systems of power plants “to make them work in a manner the at tacker intended.” In a separate repor t, Symantec says the virus exploits four “zero-day” vulnerabilities in Microsof t sof t ware. Zero-day vulnerabilities are holes in a computer program’s securit y that were unknown to the developer. —MATT SUGRUE

Nov. 25-26

Dana Moss, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, August 2010

Arguing that Libya began changing its behavior before, not

Dean Calma/IAEA

tuxnet, a new computer virus, apparently is af fecting Iran’s nuclear program in what may be a new t ype of cyberat tack, according to securit y exper ts. More than 60 percent of the known Stuxnet infections are located in Iran. The virus targets a type of industrial control system built by the German company Siemens. Iran’s Bushehr re-

Reforming the Rogue: Lessons from the U.S.-Libya Rapprochement

By Sameh Aboul-Enein

NPT 2010: The Beginning of a New Constructive Cycle

he 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in New York in May was widely anticipated as a watershed

event for international efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament and to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. After a month of intensive negotiations, the NPT’s 189 states-parties agreed on a ﬁnal document that puts forward 64 follow-on actions including, notably, formal talks in 2012 on eliminating nuclear weapons in the Middle East, an issue that had been stagnating since the 1995

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

NPT Review and Extension Conference.

Given the 10 years of stalemate that followed the 2000 review conference, including the 2005 meeting, which failed to produce agreement on any substantive issue, this is both an un-

precedented success and a glimmer of hope for the nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament regime. Egypt, speaking on behalf of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM), a group of 118 developing

nations and the largest bloc of treaty members, called the timing of the conference a “historical juncture,” citing “stronger political will…aimed at the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”1 The positive outcome stems in good part from the unique constructive exchange that developed between the governments and diplomats before and during the conference. In their closing statements, many delegations credited the success of the conference to an improved atmosphere among member states, created by the active promotion of disarmament and nonproliferation in the lead-up to the conference. U.S. President Barack Obama’s April 5, 2009, speech in Prague calling for steps toward a world free of nuclear weapons and the April 8, 2010, signing of a U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reduction agreement were two oft-cited examples. In fact, however, a broader range of focused and effective diplomatic efforts and developments took place ahead of the conference, including: • the positive atmosphere achieved at the May 2009 NPT Preparatory Committee;

Dr. Sameh Aboul-Enein is deputy ambassador of Egypt to the United Kingdom and a visiting lecturer on disarmament at London Diplomatic Academy. He previously was Egypt’s alternate representative to the Conference on Disarmament and the UN Ofﬁce at Geneva and was an expert delegate at the 2005 and 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conferences. He is an alumnus of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; this article forms part of his postdoctoral research. He is contributing these views solely in his academic and personal capacity.

• the 15th NAM summit held at Sharm el Sheikh, chaired by Egypt in July 2009, where leaders reafﬁrmed their commitment to seek a world free of nuclear weapons; • the “G8 Foreign Ministers’ Statement on Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Disarmament and Peaceful Uses of Energy: A Contribution to the 2010 NPT Review Conference,” which the Group of Eight issued after its meeting in Canada in March 2010; • the U.S. “Nuclear Posture Review Report,” released in April 2010, which marked a substantial achievement by reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security policy; and • the well-timed nuclear security summit in Washington, also in April 2010, with its high-level attendance and powerful message that all states must curb proliferation.

Elmer Cato/Philippine Mission to the UN

Libran Cabactulan (second from left), president of the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, moves for the adoption of a 64-point action plan on May 28, the last day of the month-long conference at the United Nations.

reached produced an opportunity to make real progress on an issue that could have considerable bearing on the strength of the nonproliferation regime in the next decade.

An Acceptable Compromise? Participants in the conference witnessed and welcomed the emergence of new leadership, expressions of determination, and strong political will to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons, articulated by public ﬁgures, intellectuals, and civil society in nuclear-weapon and nonnuclear-weapon states. Although the issuance of a ﬁnal docu-

ment was a big improvement over the 2005 review conference, which did not produce one, it was the result of many compromises. The version of the document to which the parties ultimately agreed was a pale shadow of the plan of action presented by Egypt on behalf of the NAM countries on the total elimination of nuclear weapons and of the NAM’s comprehensive working paper on all three pillars of the treaty—nonproliferation, disarmament, and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy—and on the implementation of the 1995 Resolution on the Middle East, which called for a zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

These events created the necessary positive momentum for the review conference. When the NPT parties convened in New York, it was clear that most of them came determined to reinvigorate the treaty and the wider nuclear nonproliferation regime. The constructive nature of their statements and their willingness to seek common ground reflected this determination, as did the ability of the five nuclear-weapon states to reach agreement on a joint statement early in the conference. The strong leadership exhibited by the president of the conference and chairs of the Main Committees and subsidiary bodies, along with their wise use of committee work to push the agenda forward, helped to channel this goodwill and overcome obstacles posed by parties keen to protect their status or resist criticism. However, a great deal more was required to achieve success. The parties had to negotiate difficult understandings; the most notable example is the language in the final document on steps toward establishing a zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the Middle East. In that case, discussed in detail below, the common ground

destruction in that region.2 Unfortunately, many of these proposals were watered down by key states during the negotiation process, which tended to move consensus toward the lowest common denominator. Negotiations on implementing the 1995 Middle East resolution on a zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction were particularly challenging as states-parties had to balance the differing levels of commitment and the depth of concern expressed over this issue, especially by states in that region. As some of the delegations remarked in their closing statements, these compromises, mainly between non-nuclearweapon states and the nuclear-weapon states, were necessary to secure what was a relatively good outcome.3

Negotiations and consultations over the four weeks of the conference were inclusive and transparent. They covered a wide range of issues that were of crucial importance to the treaty’s credibility and effectiveness as well as to the security and aspirations of states-parties. We negotiated and agreed on three forward-looking action plans on nuclear disarmament, nuclear nonproliferation, and the inalienable right of all states to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. These plans further reaffirmed the critical importance of achieving the universality of the treaty and of putting into action an effective process to implement the 1995 Middle East resolution. We examined the need for a nuclear weapons convention on the total elimination of nuclear weapons within a specified timebound framework; the need for a global, legally binding, unconditional instrument on negative security assurances; and many other issues required to bring about the full implementation of the treaty and a world free from nuclear weapons. Time constraints prevented delegates from conclusively considering all these issues or accomplishing all that states-parties were aiming to achieve at the conference, but we nonetheless moved a step forward. In 1995 the treaty was extended indefinitely as part of a grand bargain. At that time, the nuclear-weapon states also repeated their resolve for total elimination of nuclear weapons by agreeing on a program of action that included some concrete steps toward disarma-

armament initiatives. Egypt chaired the coalition at the 2010 review conference. At the review conference, the NAM, chaired by Egypt, played a crucial role, deciding to take advantage of the positive signs of progress, showing the necessary political leadership, and doing everything to make this review conference a success. Failure was never an option.4 Thus, the resulting commitments made at this year’s conference were translated into an action plan on the three pillars, including proposed steps for implementing the 1995 Middle East resolution. This ﬁnal document advances the agenda further than the 1995 and 2000 conferences did and lays the groundwork for the future. In the ﬁnal analysis, the document adopted was the only viable option in moving forward.

Balanced in bringing all countries and groupings on board, it spells out concrete action plans that have to be undertaken by all of them. A framework for progress has been agreed. Now, political will is necessary to achieve it.

The Significance of the 13 Steps The 2010 action plan asks states, for the first time, to take specific actions in support of the three pillars. The wording of these points reflects the intent that they serve as benchmarks for measuring progress and an assurance that there will be accountability at future meetings. Transforming the lofty goals of the NPT debates into concrete benchmarks is a necessary step forward. Much of the debate in May centered on how the 13 steps could be updated and pursued with a renewed commitment. Support by the United States and other nuclear-weapon states for the 13 steps was at its lowest ebb during the 2005 review conference, but the election of Obama has reversed this trend. By committing the United States to nuclear disarmament and by urging the rest of the world to follow suit, the Obama administration has

Jose Jacinto Morales/Philippine Mission to the UN

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Failure Not an Option

ment. This program was ﬂeshed out at the 2000 review conference in the form of 13 “practical steps” toward nuclear disarmament, which were vigorously pursued by the New Agenda Coalition. The coalition, which consists of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden, seeks to build international consensus on nuclear dis-

Cabactulan reads a document at the review conference shortly after delegates approved the action plan.

Pete Souza/White House

Speaking in Prague on April 5, 2009, President Barack Obama calls for steps toward a world without nuclear weapons.

Treaty, the negotiation of a fissile material treaty, de-alerting of nuclear weapons, no-first-use commitments, negative security assurances by the nuclear-weapon states, irreversible disarmament, and an unequivocal commitment to work toward the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. These steps are essential, although not sufficient, for any conceivable and workable plan to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. Moreover, they are part of the only universally agreed and politically declared action plan for nuclear disarmament within the framework of the NPT. The most significant evidence for their relevance was the 2010 review conference itself, during which one of the key challenges was the nuclear-weapon states’ reaffirmation of the 13 steps. The refusal to make this reaffirmation in

2005 was deemed a critical reason for the failure of that meeting.

Timebound Nuclear Disarmament One of the most signiﬁcant outcomes of the 2010 review conference is the decision to focus on achieving “time bound disarmament,” agreed in principle and contained in a limited way in the ﬁnal document. It requires the nuclear-weapon states to report to the 2014 NPT Preparatory Committee on their progress in achieving nuclear disarmament, a welcome addition to the 13 steps. The frustration among the non-nuclear-weapon states over the complacent attitude of the nuclear-weapon states toward implementation of disarmament measures was very evident in May. Many states expressed a skeptical view of the new disarmament momentum and said that the proposed

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

taken some small but signiﬁcant positive steps. There have also been several new commissions and reports supporting a practical vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.5 In this new political environment, where disarmament is very much back on the agenda, the relevance of the 13 steps is a pertinent question. Those steps are by far the most comprehensive commitments that the nuclear-weapon states have ever made on nuclear disarmament. They form a clear road map for those countries to fulﬁll the provisions of Article VI of the NPT on measures relating “to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control,” measures such as bilateral arms control between the United States and Russia, entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban

ing power and a sense of dominance” for their possessors, which constitutes “a serious obstacle to the democratization of international relations…[and] international peace and security.”8 Some 125 countries supported initiating a process leading to multilateral negotiations on a convention banning nuclear weapons, taking this concept from the margins to the mainstream. Nonstrategic nuclear weapons were challenged from all sides. Following a brief mention by the European Union of the need for short-range armaments (variously described as tactical, prestrategic, or substrategic) to be reduced and eliminated, Germany led nine other countries (Austria, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, and Sweden) in a call for increased transparency and the inclusion of nonstrategic nuclear weapons in the bilateral U.S.-Russian negotiations and in broader multilateral arms control and disarmament processes. In support of this proposal, Norway and Poland jointly argued for the step-bystep elimination of such weapons, noting that “the goal of a world without nuclear weapons, which we all share, cannot be met without addressing that issue head on.” The NAM went further, criticizing the deployment of tactical

nuclear weapons in Europe under the auspices of NATO and proposing that the nuclear-weapon states should commit to “refrain[ing] from nuclear-weapon sharing with other states under any kind of security arrangements, including in the framework of military alliances.” Switzerland agreed, arguing that nonstrategic weapons “no longer have a place in today’s Europe.” 9 Although the nuclear-weapon states expunged any explicit reference to such weapons from the ﬁnal document, it did refer to the need to include all types of nuclear weapons in negotiations. However, the high point and marker of success for the review conference was the reafﬁrmation of the unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Implementing the 1995 Resolution One of the dominant issues at the conference was the review of progress made in achieving a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East. The special status of the region was recognized by a resolution adopted by the 1995 review and extension conference, which reaffirmed explicitly the importance of this issue in achieving the indefinite extension of the treaty. The 1995 resolution contained the objectives of establishing a nuclearweapon-free zone in the Middle East, the accession to the NPT by all states in the region, and the placement of all nuclear facilities in the Middle East under full-scope International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. In this light, it is important to recall President Hosni Mubarak’s proposal on a WMD-free zone in the Middle East in 1990.10 His proposal had three main elements: • the prohibition of all weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, chemical, and biological—in all states in the Middle East; • the provision of assurances by all states in the region toward the full implementation of this goal, in an equal and reciprocal manner to fulfill this end; and

Goni Riskin/Greenpeace

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

measures were merely cosmetic. Credible commitment to disarmament requires that disarmament plans have time limits attached and that states are genuinely held to account for their record in concrete achievements. The concept of nuclear deterrence, with its doctrines of continuous deployment and threatened use of nuclear weapons, also came under heavy criticism at the conference. Arguing that “it is high time that the lure of nuclear weapons is ended,” Indonesia’s foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa, challenged such doctrines in his opening statement on behalf of the NAM and called for negotiations on a comprehensive multilateral treaty to ban nuclear weapons and provide for their elimination in accordance with an action plan with benchmarks and a time frame.6 Switzerland, which organized a side meeting with the Monterey Institute of International Studies to launch the ﬁndings of a new study on delegitimizing nuclear weapons, questioned whether any use of these weapons could ever be regarded as legitimate and called for the “humanitarian considerations” to be put at the heart of the nuclear debate, a point endorsed by others in later discussions.7 Brazil highlighted the enduring problem that nuclear weapons have “a more basic meaning, enhanc-

Greenpeace activists stand in front of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, June 23.

• the establishment of proper veriﬁcation measures and modalities to ensure the compliance of all states of the region without exception.

2. negotiation of a treaty text (targeted negotiations based on formulating a legally binding text); 3. setting agreed veriﬁcation models and the role of the IAEA; 4. entry into force (signing and ratifying);

Maged Abdelaziz (left) Egypt’s permanent representative to the UN, headed the country’s delegation at the review conference. Also in the ﬁrst row are the author (center) and Mohamed Edrees, Egypt’s deputy permanent representative.

5. institution building and additional accessions; and 6. step-by-step implementation of all treaty commitments, maturity of the treaty and regime, normalization; entry into assumed “normal behavior.” Up to now, the Middle East nuclearweapon-free zone has been stuck at the ﬁrst stage, partly as a result of the low expectation many states have, and has not progressed through any of the substantive stages conducive to establishing the zone. Serious engagement in good faith by Israel is, of course, a key issue. Although Israel has stated that it will join a regional nuclear-weapon-free zone once all states in the Middle East establish peace, it will be important that it takes a signiﬁcant step in the denuclearization process at a fairly early point in this implementation phase. This would help to convey to everyone in the region that the enterprise is “for real,” particularly if the step were transparent with the IAEA. For example, if the reprocessing facilities at Dimona had not already been closed by this stage, it would be the logical choice for this initial measure because the purpose of Dimona is widely believed to

be for nuclear weapons purposes.13 If it had been closed but not inspected, then inspection would be a significant milestone. If, as is hoped, Israel had already taken both of these steps in the spirit of “early fulfillment” or as an agreed obligation under a global fissile material ban and elimination treaty, then other further steps could be considered. Early steps toward denuclearization beyond the closure of Dimona would logically fall in either of two areas: dismantlement of facilities at Dimona or disclosure of information on stocks of special fissionable material and the placement of the facilities under IAEA comprehensive full-scope safeguards prior to destruction. It is still widely believed that Israel is operating the Dimona plutonium-production reactor and that it is possible that it is used also for tritium production.14 The reactor at Dimona, if it has not outlived its useful life, in theory could be modified for power production by linking it to the electricity generating system, with its fuel then safeguarded by the IAEA.15 In this regard, the example of South Africa—the first country to abandon a fully developed indigenous nuclear weapons program—should be recalled as a model. It has taken many steps to demonstrate its willingness to comply with the highest international arms

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

1. prenegotiation phase (outlining principles and preferences that assist common understanding of the parameters the zone would take);

Sameh Aboul-Enein

At the 2010 review conference, the NPT parties for the first time accepted the importance of a process leading to full implementation of the 1995 resolution, beyond simply wishing its conclusion. They endorsed concrete and substantive practical steps, including the convening of a conference in 2012 by the UN secretary-general and the cosponsors of the 1995 resolution, in consultation with the states of the region, on the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, to be attended by all states of the Middle East. A facilitator with a mandate to support implementation and assist in the convening of the 2012 conference will be appointed, and a host government will be designated. The facilitator will report to the 2015 NPT Review Conference and its preparatory committee meetings.11 The goal of a nuclear-weapon-free zone or, more generally, a WMD-free zone in the Middle East has been repeatedly endorsed by all states in the region, as well as the international community at the highest diplomatic levels. Resolutions are annually adopted to that effect by the UN General Assembly, the IAEA General Conference, and other intergovernmental forums. Despite this wide support, no practical steps toward its fulfillment have been followed beyond the adoption of resolutions. Nuclear-weapon-free zones in Latin America and the Caribbean (established by the Treaty of Tlatelolco), the South Pacific (Treaty of Rarotonga), Southeast Asia (Treaty of Bangkok), and Africa (Treaty of Pelindaba) have all progressed through similar stages as they have come into force.12 These can be summarized as:

control and nonproliferation obligations and standards.16 It dismantled its nuclear weapons program in full cooperation with international partners, including the IAEA. Subsequently, South Africa implemented integrated safeguards tailored to its speciﬁc circumstances, incorporating elements based on the Model Additional Protocol, and

It is a signiﬁcant opportunity. Viewed strategically and handled carefully, it could advance the broader cause of peace and security in the region. The process of establishing a WMD-free zone in the Middle East can become a new tool for peace.17 The steps leading to the enactment of such a zone could require intrusive inspection regimes, conﬁdence-

versation about nuclear disarmament between ofﬁcials and experts from nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclearweapon states is needed.19 There has not been such a conversation for a long time. All the opportunities that can exist to make this happen should be utilized. Representatives of civil society who can inject valuable information,

The process of establishing a WMD-free zone in the Middle East can become a new tool for peace.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

is a participant in all of the multilateral nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements to which it could belong. South Africa also participates in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and therefore incorporates amended NSG control lists into its national export control law and applies the NSG guide-

lines in export licensing decisions. The mention of Israel in the 2010 final document was difficult for the United States to accept, even though the reference simply pointed out that Israel is the only state in the region that is not party to the NPT. The United States, several other countries from the P-5—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—and some other NPT parties were fighting to keep Israel from being specifically named. As a result, the United States and other P-5 members found themselves in a position where they could have been an obstacle to the final consensus on the document over this issue. However, with the adoption of the documents, the United States reiterated its commitment to the outcome and has signaled that it will shoulder with others the tasks of designating a host government, appointing an individual to facilitate preparations, and convening the conference with a view to achieving the participation of all states of the region. In the end, by allowing the reference to Israel, the United States effectively put Iran in the position of being the only potential spoiler in the final hours of the conference. The next two years will have to be devoted to the success of the conference.

building measures, and other steps that would strengthen the nonproliferation regime. The proposed steps could be an opportunity to alleviate the current stalemate. With the spread of dual-use nuclear technology, there needs to be recognition that such a stalemate does not necessarily mean the maintenance of the status quo. Nuclear proliferation throughout the region would gravely harm the security of all states. The agreement to hold the 2012 conference on the Middle East zone is important for achieving the universality of the NPT and for Israel’s accession to it. Although the United States, other P-5 countries, and other NPT members are now burdened with the challenging task of somehow dragging Israel to the conference, the agreement can be seen as a demonstration of the U.S. role in ensuring the success of the 2010 conference. Credit should be accorded to Egypt and its Arab League partners for their willingness to temper their legitimate ambitions in the negotiations in order to avoid plunging the treaty into crisis, understanding what was practical and achievable.

What Next? At the conference, all states recognized how much they have at stake in a continuing and stronger NPT regime. It was this recognition, along with the compromises that found their way into the ﬁnal document, that is perhaps the most fundamental success of the conference: the recognition of the broader common interest on which the NPT rests.18 A more genuine and candid con-

insights, and perspectives, as well as provide bridges, should be invited to help build trust, better understanding, and open horizons. The ﬁnal document as approved by the conference represents the critical framework on which all states-parties to the treaty must vigorously build in the near future. It aims at the earliest possible realization for a world free from nuclear weapons, where policies of deterrence have no place and where the horrible threat posed by nuclear weapons to human lives on our planet no longer exists. There is obviously a particular responsibility here for the nuclear-weapon states. In this context, it is important to realize the objectives of the NAM parties leading up to the 2015 review conference. These are: 1. full and prompt implementation of nuclear disarmament commitments by the nuclear-weapon states, aiming at the total elimination of nuclear weapons by 2025; 20 2. continued focused and dedicated efforts to achieve at the earliest possible time the universality of the treaty, recognizing that universality is a key requirement for the treaty’s effectiveness and the global realization of its objectives; 3. prompt commencement of negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention as the route to realizing a world free from nuclear weapons by the year 2025;

4. commencement of negotiations on a legally binding instrument to provide non-nuclear-weapon states with global, unconditional security assurances against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons, pending the total elimination of nuclear weapons; 5. reaffirmation of the inalienable right of non-nuclear-weapon states-parties to pursue their national choices in the area of peaceful uses of nuclear energy, including their right for the nuclear fuel cycle, without undue restrictions that would contradict Article IV of the treaty; 21 and 6. reaffirmation that voluntary arrangements and confidencebuilding measures undertaken by states-parties should not be seen as turning into legal obligations, as that would affect the balanced commitments and obligations of the states-parties in accordance with the treaty.

history of the NPT: “No nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons. That’s why I strongly

press.com/2010/05/10/day-5/ (Ambassador

reafﬁrmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.”24 The NPT is a potentially powerful instrument to reach help that end. At the 2010 review conference, after a long pause, the parties showed signs of using that potential. The 2010 conference therefore has laid the building blocks for a constructive engagement by all concerned parties to establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East. ACT

Downgrading HEU and Non-Strategic Weap-

ENDNOTES

9. Rebecca Johnson, “NPT Day 18: Updates, ons,” May 21, 2010, http://acronyminstitute. wordpress.com/2010/05/21/day-16/. 10. Sameh Aboul-Enein and Bharath Gopalaswamy, “The Missile Regime: Veriﬁcation, Test Bans and Free Zones,” Disarmament Forum, UN Institute for Disarmament Research, December 2009. 11. William Potter et al., “The NPT Review Conference: Deconstructing Consensus,” CNS Special Report, June 17, 2010. 12. Sameh Aboul-Enein and Hassan Elbahtimy, “Towards a Verified Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in the Middle-East,” VERTIC, April 2010.

1. Maged Abdelaziz, Statement on behalf

13. Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New

of the Nonaligned Movement to the 2010

York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference,

14. Shannon N. Kile, Vitaly Fedchenko, and

May 28, 2010, http://isis-online.org/uploads/

Hans Kristensen, “World Nuclear Forces,”

conferences/documents/NAM_ﬁnal_state-

SIPRI Yearbook 2009, 2009.

ment_28May2010.pdf (hereinafter Maged Abdelaziz statement).

15. Alexander Glaser and Zia Mian, “Fissile Material Stockpiles and Production,” Science

2. 1995 Review and Extension Conference

and Global Security, Vol. 16, No. 3 (2008),

of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Pro-

pp. 55-73.

liferation of Nuclear Weapons, “Resolution on the Middle East,” NPT/CONF.1995/32 (Part I), Annex, 1995, www.un.org/disarmament/WMD/Nuclear/1995-NPT/pdf/Resolution_MiddleEast.pdf. 3. Statement made by the delegation of Australia at the closing of the 2010 NPT Review Conference, May 28, 2010, Closing Statements of Delegations to the NPT Review Conference. 4. Maged Abdelaziz statement. 5. See, for example, International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, “Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymak-

16. Ian Anthony, “Managing the Transfer of Nuclear Technologies Under the NPT,” Chaillot Papers, No. 120 (April 2010), www.iss. europa.eu/uploads/media/cp120.pdf. 17. Sameh Aboul-Enein, “Creating a WMD Free Zone in the Middle-East,” Al-Siyassa Al Dawliya, July 2009. 18. Rebecca Johnson, “NPT: Challenging the Nuclear Powers’ Fiefdom,” Open Democracy, June 15, 2010. 19. Sameh Aboul-Enein, “Challenges for the Non-Proliferation Regime and the Middle East,” Disarmament Diplomacy, Spring 2009. 20. Maged Abdelaziz statement.

ers,” December 2009; George Perkovich and

21. Article IV.1 states: “Nothing in this

James M. Acton, eds., “Abolishing Nuclear

Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the

Weapons: A Debate,” Carnegie Endowment

inalienable right of all the Parties to the

for International Peace, February 2009,

Treaty to develop research, production and

http://carnegieendowment.org/ﬁles/abolish-

use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes

ing_nuclear_weapons_debate.pdf.

without discrimination and in conformity

6. R.M. Marty M. Natalegawa, Statement on

with articles I and II of this Treaty.”

behalf of the NAM to the 2010 Nonprolifera-

22. Deepti Choubey, “Future Prospects for the

tion Treaty Review Conference, May 3, 2010,

NPT,” Arms Control Today, July/August 2010.

www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/rev-

23. Office of the Press Secretary, The White

con2010/statements/3May_NAM.pdf.

House, “Remarks by President Barack

7. Ken Berry et al., “Delegitimizing Nuclear

Obama,” April 5, 2009, www.whitehouse.

Weapons: Examining the Validity of Nuclear

gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-

Weapons,” Monterey Institute for Interna-

Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered.

tional Studies, May 2010.

24. Ofﬁce of the Press Secretary, The White

8. Carol Naughton, “NPT Day 5: Nuclear Dis-

House, “Remarks by the President on a New

armament and Civil Society Presentations,”

Beginning,” June 4, 2009, www.whitehouse.

May 10, 2010, http://acronyminstitute.word-

gov/the_press_ofﬁce/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Egypt has called on states-parties to join together in this important effort in the run-up to the 2015 review conference to promote more effectively the universality of the treaty and the balanced implementation of all its provisions in a manner that provides an opportunity for the next generations to enjoy the prosperity of a nuclear-weapon-free world. The NPT regime has done its best for 40 years to contain nuclear threats, but the message from the 2010 review conference is that dealing with nuclear weapons dangers in the 21st century will require establishing a truly universal approach. 22 Above all, the NPT requires the inclusion of India, Israel, and Pakistan as non-nuclear-weapon states. In his Prague speech, Obama reaffirmed his intention to seek a nuclearweapon-free world, saying, “Today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” 23 In Cairo two months later, Obama defused the charge of double standards that has been leveled at the nuclearweapon states throughout the 40-year

Luiz Filipe de Macedo Soares of Brazil).

By Leon V. Sigal

Can Washington and Seoul Try Dealing With Pyongyang For a Change?

ike his predecessors, President Barack Obama is learning the hard way that the only thing worse than negotiating

with North Korea is not negotiating with

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

North Korea.

Instead of moving to resume talks, the administration sustained the suspension of promised energy aid by South Korea that President George W. Bush endorsed just before he stepped down. It has now matched the Bush record of holding just one high-level meeting with Pyongyang in its ﬁrst 21 months in ofﬁce, and it still speaks of “strategic patience” as if the pressure of sanctions and isolation will somehow make North Korea relent. Nothing of the sort has transpired. Instead, the North stopped disabling its plutonium facilities at Yongbyon and conducted a missile and a nuclear test, then reprocessed the spent fuel removed from its reactor during the disabling to extract another bomb’s worth of plutonium.

Disengagement has never gone down well with Pyongyang, which has long tried to exploit its nuclear program to convince Washington to end years of enmity and reconcile by signing a peace treaty to end the Korean War and fundamentally improving relations. Even worse, U.S. disengagement conceded the initiative to the Lee Myung-bak government in South Korea, which was determined to show the North who is boss. That led to the North Korean attack on a South Korean navy corvette, the Cheonan, in the West (or Yellow) Sea, killing 46 on board. Much of Washington saw the attack on the Cheonan as an unprovoked bolt out of the blue by a regime attempting to divert attention from domestic disar-

ray and an uncertain leadership transition. Washington also took Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear tests as slapping away the hand that Obama had held out during the 2008 campaign. That is far from the whole story. North Korea’s tests were retaliation for South Korea’s halt to delivery of promised energy aid in late 2008. Seoul’s action reneged on an October 2007 six-party agreement to disable the plutonium facilities at Yongbyon. In addition, North Korea most likely carried out the attack on the Cheonan to avenge a South Korean attack on one of its own naval vessels in November 2009. What North Korea has yet to do is restart its Yongbyon reactor to generate more plutonium-laden spent fuel, complete a plant for enriching substantial quantities of uranium, or conduct additional missile and nuclear tests it needs if it is to develop a deliverable warhead and reliable missiles. An effort to induce North Korea not to take these steps should be a matter of some urgency in Washington. It has not been, in part because political operatives in the White House harbor doubts about its prospects for success and do not want to give the Republicans a target for partisan attack by seeking another deal

Leon V. Sigal is director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council and author of Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (1998). He has served as special assistant to the director of the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in the U.S. Department of State and a member of the editorial board of The New York Times.

with North Korea and in part because Obama wanted to mend fences with allies, most notably South Korea, alienated by Bush’s unilateralism. Disinformation from Seoul assiduously laid the grounds for disengagement. The North’s economy was in decline, it alleged, despite the South’s own data that showed gross domestic product and trade had grown for nine of the past 10 years. A succession struggle was said to be raging despite signs since early 2009 that an orderly leadership transition was under way.1 Understanding the recent pattern of U.S.-Korean interactions is essential if Washington is to head off more trouble on the Korean peninsula.

Engagement Plateaus in 2007 The 1994 Agreed Framework veriﬁably froze North Korea’s plutonium program up front, pending its ultimate dismantlement. The United States, in return, promised two replacement reactors by a target date of 2003, supplies of heavy fuel oil in the interim, and above all, an end to enmity—“to move toward full normalization of political and economic relations.” In 2002, hard-liners in the Bush administration seized on intelligence that North Korea

was seeking the means to enrich uranium to scuttle that accord. The North’s response was to restart its plutonium program. Confronted with the grim prospect of unbounded nuclear arming in the North, Bush grudgingly accepted a September 2005 six-party joint statement that committed North Korea to “abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs” in return for pledges by the United States and Japan to normalize relations; pledges by the United States, South Korea, and China to negotiate “a permanent peace regime on the Korean peninsula”; and the provision of energy aid by the five parties. 2 Washington immediately contravened that promising accord by implementing an Illicit Activities Initiative intended to get banks around the globe to freeze Pyongyang’s hard-currency accounts. When Bush became president, the North had suspended tests of longerrange missiles, had an estimated one or two bombs’ worth of plutonium, and was verifiably not making more. By October 2006, it had six to eight bombs’ worth of plutonium, had resumed testlaunching missiles, and had just conducted its first nuclear test. Within three weeks of that test, U.S.

negotiator Christopher Hill held a bilateral meeting with his North Korean counterpart that led to resumption of the six-party talks, resuscitation of the September 2005 accord, and the refreezing of North Korea’s plutonium program. In October 2007, the talks yielded an accord on “second-phase actions” under which the North pledged to make “a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs” and to disable its plutonium facilities at Yongbyon, pending their permanent dismantlement. In return, it was to get energy aid and an end to U.S. sanctions under the Trading with the Enemy Act and removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. The agreement made no mention of verification, which was left to a later phase. At the same time, South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun was signing a potentially far-reaching summit agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that included, among other provisions, a pledge “to discuss ways of designating a joint fishing area in the West Sea to avoid accidental clashes and turning it into a peace area and also to discuss measures to build military confidence.”3 Had that provision

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

LEE JAE-WON/AFP/Getty Images

South Korean navy personnel stand guard next to the wreckage of the salvaged patrol ship Cheonan during a May 19 media brieﬁng in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul. The ship sank March 26 near the maritime border with North Korea. An international investigation found signiﬁcant evidence of North Korean responsibility, which Pyongyang has denied.

tage of the opening to demand a veriﬁ-

Pool/Getty Images

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun (left) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il exchange copies of a signed joint declaration on October 4, 2007, during their summit in Pyongyang. In their agreement, the two leaders pledged “to discuss ways of designating a joint ﬁshing area in the West [Yellow] Sea to avoid accidental clashes.”

been pursued, it might have prevented the November 2009 naval clash and the sinking of the Cheonan. That was not to be. Within two months, Lee was elected president of South Korea. Determined to display toughness toward North Korea, he abandoned engagement and backed away from the 2007 summit agreement, speciﬁcally the West Sea provision.4 He also allied with Japan to undermine the October 2007 six-party accord. In so doing, he pushed North-South engagement off its precarious plateau and over the precipice.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Pyongyang’s Bargaining Behavior

The most propitious moments in Korea policy have come when Washington and Seoul moved in tandem to reconcile with Pyongyang. That was the case in October 2007, as well as in January 2000 with the ﬁrst North-South summit and that October with the exchange of visits by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok, the highest-level U.S.-North Korean contacts to date. The most dangerous crises came when Seoul blocked engagement between Washington and Pyongyang in March 1993, prompting North Korea to announce its intention to renounce the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; in May 1994, when it abruptly removed all the spent nuclear fuel from

its reactor at Yongbyon; and again now. By escalating tensions, Pyongyang has been trying to compel Washington to re-engage while strengthening its own bargaining leverage.

Seoul Impedes Six-Party Talks The current crisis began in June 2008 after North Korea declared it had separated 38 kilograms of plutonium, an amount at the lower end of the range of U.S. estimates. In a side agreement, Washington allowed Pyongyang to defer disclosing its uranium-enrichment activities and any proliferation assistance it had given to Syria. Doubts soon surfaced in Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington about the accuracy and completeness of the declaration. The day North Korea handed China its declaration, the White House said it intended to fulﬁll its obligations under the October 2007 accord to delist the North as a state sponsor of terrorism and end sanctions under the Trading with the Enemy Act but only if Pyongyang agreed to cooperate in verifying the declaration. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged on June 18, Washington was moving the goalposts: “What we’ve done, in a sense, is move up issues that were to be taken up in phase three, like veriﬁcation, like access to the reactor, into phase two.”5 Seoul, along with Tokyo, took advan-

cation protocol, and Bush went along. Washington gave Pyongyang a draft protocol that demanded “full access upon request to any site facility or location,” among other highly intrusive measures.6 On July 30, the White House delayed delisting the North as a state sponsor of terrorism until it accepted them. North Korea promptly stopped the disabling and, accusing the United States of an “outright violation” of the October 2007 accord, soon announced it would move to restore the reactor and other facilities.7 In a transparent effort to resume proliferation forsworn in that accord, it also sought permission to overfly India with weapons technology believed to be bound for Iran. In a last-ditch attempt to complete the disabling, Hill flew to Pyongyang on October 1 with a revised protocol. His interlocutor, Kim Gye Gwan, agreed to allow “sampling and other forensic measures” at the reactor, reprocessing plant, and fuel fabrication facility at Yongbyon, which could have sufficed to ascertain how much plutonium Pyongyang had extracted in the past. If not, he also agreed to allow “access, based on mutual consent, to undeclared sites.”8 That oral commitment did not assuage South Korea or Japan, which insisted it be put in writing. Much to the dismay of the Aso government in Tokyo, Bush then delisted North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. The disabling resumed, with 60 percent of the spent fuel rods out of the reactor and roughly one-half the promised energy aid yet to be delivered—none from Japan. With South Korea due to deliver the next tranche, Seoul now sided with Tokyo to insist that the delivery of energy aid be suspended unless Pyongyang accepted a written commitment to more intrusive verification. Again, Washington went along. At the seventh round of six-party talks in December, South Korea, Japan, and the United States, but not China or Russia, threatened to halt the aid. On his departure, Kim Gye Gwan left no doubt that there would be retaliation for any reneging on energy aid: “We’ll adjust the speed of our disablement work if it doesn’t come in.”9 On entering the White House, Obama stayed this course. Consumed by the global financial meltdown and looming depression, he made no move to

and overthrowing our system” and said Pyongyang “will no longer be bound by any agreement.” That called into question its commitment to “abandon” its nuclear weapons and its existing nuclear programs. The spokesman listed three other steps Pyongyang would take in response. First, it would “actively examine the construction of a light-water [nuclear] plant.” Such a plant would require enriched uranium. Second, the Yongbyon facilities “will be restored to the original state for normal operation,” which stopped short of saying North Korea would restart its reactor to generate more spent nuclear fuel. Third, the 6,500 spent fuel rods removed during disabling “will be reprocessed.”11 By extracting another bomb’s worth of plutonium, it could conduct its second nuclear test that May without depleting its stock of plutonium. That test prompted a tightening of UN sanctions and stepped-up Chinese engagement.

Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters Not content just to impede six-party talks, the Lee government in Seoul also flung down the gauntlet in its competition with the North, which led to firefights in contested waters off Korea’s west coast. Those waters have been troubled ever since the end of the Korean War in 1953, when the U.S. Navy unilaterally imposed a ceasefire line at sea north of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) on land. North Korea has long objected to this Northern Limit Line (NLL), which is not recognized

internationally. It wants the MDL line extended out to sea. A possible way around the NLL dispute emerged in a wide-ranging summit declaration signed in October 2007 by Kim Jong Il and Roh, Lee’s predecessor. They pledged to discuss establishment of a joint ﬁshing area in the West Sea “to avoid accidental clashes” and also to discuss “measures to build military conﬁdence” that might forestall such clashes.12 That could have been a useful opening step in a Korean peace process. Two months later, President-elect Lee’s transition team opposed implementation of the October declaration. He later backed away from a 2000 summit accord that, among other steps toward reconciliation, had committed the North to abide by the provisional line until permanent borders were drawn. The moves drew a bristling response from Pyongyang. In late March 2008, after building up its shore artillery near the disputed waters, it accused South Korean vessels of violating “its” territory and launched short-range missiles into the contested waters, underscoring the risks of leaving the issue unresolved. It also called for a permanent peace treaty to replace the armistice agreement, a step the Lee government was loath to take. A heated war of words erupted in 2009. On January 17, assailing the South’s defense minister “for making full preparations for the possible third West Sea skirmish,” a North Korean

North Korea’s public demolition of the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear complex is shown on a TV screen at a railway station in Seoul on June 27, 2008.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images

undo the reneging on energy aid or to enter into talks with North Korea. In Seoul, meanwhile, Lee’s approval rate had plummeted to 34 percent, and his party’s right wing was growing restive. Worried that Obama might move to resume nuclear negotiations with Pyongyang or initiate peace talks, hard-liners made common cause with Tokyo. If engagement sped up, a senior South Korean ofﬁcial told a reporter, Japan could help by “slamming on the brakes.”10 Skeptical of Washington’s intentions and unmoved by Obama’s warm words, Pyongyang opted to force the action. In late January, it began assembling a rocket at the Musudan-ri launch site, an effort that would take two months, giving Obama time to reconsider engagement. In public, it did its best to portray the test launch as a peaceful attempt to put a satellite into orbit; in private it made clear to visitors that, without the promised energy aid, it would have no recourse but to strengthen its deterrent. Intent on avoiding an open breach with Seoul and Tokyo, Washington joined them in warning of additional UN sanctions under Security Council Resolution 1718 if Pyongyang went ahead with the launch. That resolution, adopted in response to Pyongyang’s 2006 nuclear test, had called on the North to “suspend all activities under its ballistic missile program and in this context reestablish its pre-existing commitments to a moratorium on missile launching.” Russia and China, however, took the position that the resolution did not bar satellite launches. On April 5, 2009, North Korea launched a three-stage rocket in an unsuccessful attempt to put a satellite in orbit. Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo promptly sought UN sanctions. Beijing initially demurred, convinced that sanctions would delay the resumption of talks, but it was not about to take the blame in Washington for blocking UN action. It drafted a Security Council president’s statement with the United States that condemned the launch for contravening Resolution 1718 and imposed sanctions. Spurning the UN action, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman denounced six-party talks as “an arena which infringes on our sovereignty and which aims only at disarming us

military spokesman warned, “[W]e will preserve…the extension of [the] MDL in the West Sea already proclaimed to the world as long as there are ceaseless intrusions into the territorial waters of our side in the West Sea.”13 Not to be outmuscled, South Korea’s defense minister told the National Assembly a month later that it “will clearly respond to any preemptive artillery or missile attack by North Korea”

With little to show for his efforts to re-engage, Kim Jong Il turned up the heat. On October 15, the North Korean navy accused the South of sending 16 warships into the disputed waters, according to a report by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency, which said, “The reckless military provocations by warships of the South Korean navy have created such a serious situation that a

sibly targeted at suspect North Korean ﬁrms, indiscriminately aimed at shutting down North Korean bank accounts everywhere.19 China, where most of the accounts were located, was unwilling; Chinese ofﬁcials were convinced that economic engagement was bringing about needed change in North Korea. Joint naval exercises by U.S. and South Korean warships in the West Sea,

The message’s meaning was technically obscure, but politically obvious: Pyongyang was saying it

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

was ready for “dialogue”—or else.

in the contested waters.14 The message to navies on both sides was to shoot ﬁrst and ask questions later. In August 2009, Pyongyang reached out to re-engage with Seoul and Washington. Intent on releasing two American journalists who had strayed across the border from China, Kim Jong Il invited former President Bill Clinton to meet him on August 4 and renewed an invitation for U.S. special envoy Stephen Bosworth to come to Pyongyang for talks. He also sent his two top ofﬁcials dealing with North-South relations to Seoul for Kim Dae-jung’s funeral with a personal invitation for Lee for a third North-South summit meeting, but Lee, mistaking the gesture for a sign of weakness, spurned the invitation. On September 3, the North Korean permanent representative to the United Nations informed the Security Council president by letter that Pyongyang’s “experimental uranium enrichment has successfully been conducted to enter into completion phase.”15 Was the North moving to construct an enrichment plant? The message’s meaning was technically obscure, but politically obvious: Pyongyang was saying it was ready for “dialogue”—or else. Washington delayed Bosworth’s trip until December. Without a commitment from Seoul to resume shipments of energy aid, he had little to offer except long-standing U.S. positions on the need to resume six-party talks and denuclearization in return for an improvement in relations.

naval clash may break out between the two sides in these waters.”16 Shortly thereafter, just such a clash took place. On November 9, a North Korean patrol boat crossed the NLL into the contested waters—precisely what the 2007 summit had sought to forestall— and a South Korean vessel fired warning shots at it. The North returned fire and the South opened up, severely damaging the North Korean vessel and causing an unknown number of casualties. On November 12, after Pyongyang’s demand for an apology went unanswered, North Korea’s party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, spoke of avenging the attack: “The South Korean forces will be forced to pay dearly for the grave armed provocation perpetrated by them in the waters of the north side in the West Sea of Korea.”17 Five days later, according to North Korean accounts, Kim Jong Il went to a naval base with his high command and ordered the training of a “do-or-die unit of sea heroes.”18 That order was carried out on March 26 with the attack on the Cheonan, an attack for which Pyongyang has since denied responsibility. A UN Security Council statement condemned the attack but, at China’s behest, did not name North Korea as the perpetrator. South Korea and the United States imposed new sanctions on the North. The South curtailed trade, but stopped short of shutting down the Kaesong industrial park in North Korea, which South Korean firms operate jointly with the North. U.S. sanctions, osten-

ostensibly to reinforce deterrence, were also designed to demonstrate the risk to China of not going along with pressure on North Korea.20 That only antagonized Beijing, prompting it to conduct naval exercises of its own. Some in Washington and Seoul wanted to pick a ﬁght with Beijing over North Korea, but cooler heads understood that continued cooperation with China is the key to security in Northeast Asia.21

Next Steps Events of the past decade have erased any trace of trust between Washington and Pyongyang. Words alone will no longer sufﬁce to restore it. Both sides will need to take sustained actions to reassure one another if denuclearization and reconciliation are to have any chance of proceeding. What does Pyongyang see in engagement? Kim Jong Il has promised “a radical turn in his people’s standard of living” and a “strong and prosperous country” by 2012, the centenary of his father’s birth. He needs foreign capital for his economy to grow, and he does not want to be wholly dependent on China for it. If he wants to meet those goals, he knows he will need to move to denuclearize. Moreover, he may not yet have given up trying to improve his security by convincing Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo to end enmity and normalize relations. He will not yield his nuclear programs without a sustained process of reconciliation. Even a comprehensive settlement will have to be implemented step by tortured

October 2000. Launches of North Korean satellites and Nunn-Lugar aid for convert-

5. Condoleezza Rice, “U.S. Policy Towards Asia,”

ing its missile facilities might be a quid pro quo for that step. A summit meeting between Obama and Kim Jong Il, establishment of full diplomatic relations, and much deeper economic engagement are likely to be needed for Pyongyang to dismantle its reactor and reprocessing plant and allow its enrichment and reprocessing to be verifiably ended. It is unclear whether the North’s programs can be completely eliminated without recommitment by the other parties to construct a nuclear power plant in the North, but conventional power plants should be provided as dismantlement proceeds at Yongbyon. Some in Washington wrongly want to focus on preventing Pyongyang from further proliferation, but the transfer of nuclear know-how has proven difficult to prevent. Elimination of the North’s production capacity is the key to stopping its exports of missile components and nuclear equipment. Even worse, unless Pyongyang’s nuclear programs are halted and dismantled, it may eventually generate enough fissile material to export. If unbounded, those programs will sow further doubts in Seoul and Tokyo about relying on Washington for their security, only making alliance relations more difficult to manage. However reluctantly, the Obama administration is now inching back to the negotiating table. Talks might work but only if Washington and Seoul are committed to sustained political and economic engagement and a peace process in Korea. That remains to be seen. ACT

ton, DC, June 18, 2008.

Address at the Heritage Foundation, Washing6. “Verification Measures Discussion Paper,” April 12, 2010, www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/politics/documents/kesslerdoc_092608. pdf?sid=ST200809260002. 7. “Foreign Ministry Spokesman on DPRK’s Decision to Suspend Activities to Disable Nuclear Facilities,” Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), August 26, 2008. 8. Office of the Spokesman, U.S. Department of State, “U.S.-North Korea Understandings on Verification,” October 11, 2008, http://merln.ndu. edu/archivepdf/northkorea/state/110924.pdf. 9. “North Korea Warns Nuclear Disabling Might Slow,” Associated Press, December 13, 2008. 10. “Japan ‘Could Become Seoul Ally in N. Korea Issues,’” Chosun Ilbo, March 24, 2009. 11. “DPRK Foreign Ministry Spokesman Vehemently Refutes UNSC’s ‘Presidential Statement,’” KCNA, April 14, 2009. 12. “Declaration on the Advancement of SouthNorth Korean Relations, Peace and Prosperity.” 13. “Principled Stand of the KPA to Defend Socialist Country As Firm As Iron Wall Clarified,” KCNA, January 17, 2009. 14. “S. Korea to Strike Back If N. Korea Provokes Armed Clash: Defense Minister,” Yonhap, February 20, 2009. 15. “DPRK Permanent Representative Sends Letter to President of UNSC,” KCNA, September 4, 2009. 16. “Halt to Intrusion of S. Korean Warships Into DPRK Waters Demanded,” KCNA, October 15, 2010. 17. “S. Korea Will Be Forced to Pay Dearly for Armed Provocations,” KCNA, November 12, 2009. 18. Young-jong and Ser Myo-ja, “Fleet Officer Says Kim Intensified Navy Training After Nov. 10 Defeat,” JoongAng Ilbo, May 6, 2010 (quoting [North] Korean Central Television interview of

ENDNOTES

naval ofﬁcer Kim Kwang-il on April 25, 2009). 19. Daniel Glaser, Remarks at press conference at

1. Among the signs were Kim Jong Il’s designation of his third son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor and the elder Kim’s directive on the son’s nomination to the leadership of the Workers’ Party of Korea. See “N. Korea Leader Names Third Son as Successor: Sources,” Yonhap, January 15, 2009. Another sign was the promotion of Kim Jong Il’s brotherin-law to serve, in effect, as regent. 2. “Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of SixParty Talks,” September 19, 2005. 3. “Declaration on the Advancement of SouthNorth Korean Relations, Peace and Prosperity,” October 4, 2007.

the U.S. embassy, Tokyo, August 4, 2010. 20. Elizabeth Bumiller, “U.S. and South Korea Plan Naval Drill as a Message,” The New York Times, July 21, 2010, p. A8 (quoting Admiral Robert F. Willard, commander of the U.S. Paciﬁc Command). 21. Mark Landler, “Diplomatic Storm Brewing Over Korean Peninsula,” The New York Times, May 20, 2010, p. A8; John Pomfret, “U.S. and South Korea to Announce Joint Military Exercises,” The Washington Post, July 15, 2010, p. A10. 22. The Cooperative Threat Reduction program is commonly known as the Nunn-Lugar pro-

4. Jung Sung-ki, “Peace Zone Project Faces De-

gram after its original cosponsors, Senators Sam

railment,” Korea Times, December 30, 2007.

Nunn (D-Ga.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.).

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

step. Some might cavil that such a gradual approach will allow Pyongyang to engage in salami tactics, offering thinner and thinner slices of its nuclear wherewithal and leaving elimination of its weapons to come at the end of that process, if ever. Of course, a step-by-step approach, illustrated below, would have to overcome the lack of political will in Washington to offer much in return and find a way to convince Seoul and Tokyo to contribute their share. A starting point might be for Pyongyang to turn over the replacement fuel rods it has, forestalling a restart of its reactor, and to revive its moratorium on missile and nuclear tests. Additional energy aid might be an acceptable quid pro quo for the fuel rods, because South Korea was negotiating such an arrangement with the North in 2007. A test moratorium will require political moves by Washington, at a minimum the start of a peace process in Korea to be conducted in parallel with six-party talks and some relaxation of UN sanctions. Such a peace process is the key to preventing more Cheonans and advancing talks on denuclearization. Although South Korea committed itself to a peace regime in the September 2005 joint declaration, the Lee government is reluctant to enter into such talks. In addition, it has backed away from negotiating a joint fishing area and naval confidence-building measures that could be the first of several agreements on the way to a treaty. Turning Seoul around will be critical to further progress. Permanent dismantlement best might begin at the fuel fabrication plant at Yongbyon, which would preclude Pyongyang from reloading its reactor to generate more plutonium-laden spent fuel. An economic inducement, such as Nunn-Lugar funding of alternative employment for those who worked at the facility might facilitate that step.22 So would political gestures, such as sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Pyongyang and concluding a peace declaration with the two Koreas and China affirming that they have no hostile intent toward one another and committing them to sign a peace treaty when the North is nuclear free. While in Pyongyang, Clinton might try to reconstitute the offer that Kim Jong Il put on the negotiating table to end exports, testing, production, and deployment of medium- and longer-range missiles when Albright visited Pyongyang in

By Paul F. Walker

Abolishing Chemical Weapons: Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities

rom November 29 to December 3, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will host its 15th annual

conference of states-parties in The Hague to review recent progress in the global elimination of chemical weapons. As the international implementing agency for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the OPCW has overseen the safe and veriﬁed demilitarization of more than 43,000 metric tons of deadly chemical agents in almost four million weapons and containers

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

since the convention’s entry into force in April 1997.

As the key institutional elements of the most successful multilateral arms control and disarmament regime to date, the CWC and OPCW serve as models for long-term, veriﬁed, and cooperative nonproliferation, threat reduction, and global security regimes.1 However, this successful and ongoing

elimination of a whole class of weapons of mass destruction has not been without its own challenges and hurdles, including choosing the safest and most environmentally sound destruction technologies; paying the high costs of demilitarizing dangerous liquid agents, propellants, explosives, and other pollutants; meet-

ing legally binding weapons destruction deadlines with little if any relationship to planning, engineering, construction, and operational schedules; bringing all countries under the OPCW inspection regime; encouraging all states-parties to fully implement the convention domestically; shifting the CWC from a demilitarization to a nonproliferation and anti-terrorist regime; and encouraging full cooperation, consensus building, and transparency from all members and stakeholders. Although more than 60 percent of the world’s declared chemical weapons stockpiles have been successfully eliminated over the past two decades in ﬁve of the seven declared chemical weapons possessor states, almost 30,000 metric tons still await destruction, and several suspected possessor states remain outside the CWC regime. Meanwhile, terrorist organizations have reiterated their intention to obtain weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, chemical, and biological—raising the stakes over the past decade to secure and eliminate chemical weapons stockpiles as quickly as possible and strengthen the CWC nonproliferation and inspection regime. This article will review the history of establishing and implementing a global ban on a whole class of weapons of

Paul F. Walker is director of the Security and Sustainability Program at Global Green USA, the U.S. national affiliate of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Green Cross International, in Washington, D.C. He is a former professional staff member of the Committee on Armed Services in the U.S. House of Representatives.

mass destruction; explain the progress to date in destroying large and dangerous Cold War arsenals of chemical weapons; address current and future challenges to completing this process; and draw conclusions for the abolition regime and other global arms control efforts.

The Chemical Weapons Convention Article IX of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention includes a commitment by states-parties to work toward an international ban on chemical weapons.2

International negotiations on the CWC began in earnest in April 1984, one month after a UN report on Iraqi chemical weapons attacks, when U.S. Vice President George H.W. Bush introduced a draft chemical weapons treaty at the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva. This was a decade after the Soviet Union and the United States announced bilateral discussions on reducing chemical weapons stockpiles. By 1989 these U.S.-Soviet negotiations produced a bilateral memorandum of

understanding concerning veriﬁcation and data exchange. In 1990 the two countries’ leaders, Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, signed an “Agreement…on Destruction and Non-production of Chemical Weapons and on Measures to Facilitate the Multi-lateral Convention on Banning Chemical Weapons.” Finally, on September 3, 1992, after years of negotiations, the CD adopted a ﬁnal report on an international convention on chemical weapons. The treaty was opened for signature by UN Secretary-

A History of Chemical Weapons

he use of harmful chemicals in warfare, personal attacks, and assassinations dates back centuries, but the rise of industrial production of chemicals in the late 19th century opened the door to more massive use of chemical agents in combat. The ﬁrst major use of chemicals on the battle-

ENDNOTES 1. Adam Roberts and Richard Guelff, eds., Documents on the Laws of War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 36-37. 2. “Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare,” opened for signature on June 17, 1925, and entered into force on February 8, 1928. 3. See Dana Adams Schmidt, Yemen: The Unknown War (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968), p. 267. 4. For the UN report on alleged use of chemical weapons by Iraq in 1984, see UN Security Council, “Report of the Specialists Appointed by the Secretary-General to Investigate Allegations by the Islamic Republic of Iran Concerning the Use of Chemical Weapons,” S/16433, March 26, 1984, www.iranwatch.org/international/UNSC/unsc-s16433-rptusecw032684.pdf. 5. This author participated in this U.S. inspection of the 5,400-metric-ton nerve agent stockpile in Shchuch’ye, in the Kurgan Oblast of Russia, in July 1994. 6. For the Turkish case, see “Gift gegen Kurden?” [Poison against the Kurds?], Der Spiegel, No. 30 (July 26, 2010).

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

field was in World War I when Germany released chlorine gas from pressurized cylinders in April 1915 at Ypres, in Belgium. Ironically, this attack did not technically violate the 1899 Hague Peace Conference Declaration, the first international attempt to limit chemical agents in warfare, which banned only “the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.”1 Historians estimate that, with the introduction of mustard gases in 1917, chemical weapons and agents injured some one million soldiers and killed 100,000 during the 1914-1918 war. The 1925 Geneva Protocol sought to ban the use of biological and chemical weapons, but many of its signers joined with major reservations. 2 China, France, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom all joined in the 1920s, but Japan did not join until 1970 and the United States until 1975. Between the two world wars, there were a number of reports of use of chemical weapons in regional conflicts: Morocco in 1923-1926, Tripolitania (Libya) in 1930, Sinkiang (China) in 1934, Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935-1940, and Manchuria (China) in 1937-1942. World War II saw no major use of chemical weapons, with the exception of the Sino-Japanese conflict, and both President Franklin Roosevelt and German leader Adolf Hitler had stated publicly that they were personally against the first use of chemical weapons. Most of the major powers in World War II developed, produced, and stockpiled large amounts of chemical weapons during the war. Since the end of the war in 1945, there have been only sporadic reports of limited use of chemical weapons, including in the Yemen war of 1963-1967 when Egypt bombed Yemeni villages, killing some 1,500 people. 3 The United States heavily used herbicides such as Agent Orange and tear gas in the Vietnam War in the 1960s; although such chemicals are not covered under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), some observers saw this as chemical warfare. The first major uses of chemical weapons were by Iraq in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and in Saddam Hussein’s bombing of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988. These two cases provoked widespread public opposition to the horrors and indiscriminate nature of deadly chemical agents

and certainly helped to propel CWC negotiations, which had begun in the early 1980s, forward to their conclusion in 1992.4 The use of the nerve agent sarin by the Japanese terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo in June 1994 in Matsumoto, Japan, and again on March 20, 1995, in the Tokyo subway system, killing 19 people and injuring some 5,000, suddenly brought to light the potential threat of nonstate actors intent on using weapons of mass destruction. The first official on-site inspection by the United States of a Russian chemical weapons stockpile in the Kurgan Oblast along the border of Kazakhstan in July 1994 well illustrated to U.S. officials that Russian chemical weapons arsenals left much to be desired regarding security against theft, diversion, and terrorism.5 Iraqi insurgents in recent years have combined tanks of chlorine gas with improvised explosive devices, but with little success. There have been more recent reports of the possible limited use of chemical agents by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and by Turkish troops against Kurdish rebels in eastern Turkey, but these allegations remain unproven. In public statements, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have repeatedly threatened to use nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiological weapons.6 —PAUL WALKER

1925.” Article IV obligates each country to declare “all chemical weapons owned or possessed by a State Party, or that are located in any place under its jurisdiction or control” and to “destroy all chemical weapons.… Such destruction shall begin not later than two years after this Convention enters into force for it and shall ﬁnish not later than 10 years after entry into force of this Convention,” that is, by April 29, 2007. 3 The treaty allows a deadline extension of up to ﬁve years from that date. The convention also requires round-the-clock, on-site inspection of all chemical weapons destruction operations and allows for challenge inspections of suspect activities.4 The OPCW is the implementing agency for the CWC. Located in The Hague, the OPCW opened its doors in 1997 after more than four years and 16 formal sessions of its preparatory commission. 5 Now in its 14th year of operations, the OPCW has undertaken more than 4,000 inspections of 195 chemical weapons-related sites (stockpiles, former

production facilities, and laboratories) and more than 1,100 chemical industry sites in 81 countries. Its record of successfully inspecting and verifying the destruction of chemical agents and munitions, noted above, is very impressive for a new, multilateral organization that has faced and resolved many challenges over its short history.

Chemical Weapons Demilitarization Of the 188 states-parties to the convention today, seven have declared chemical weapons stockpiles: Albania, India, Iraq, Libya, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. Russia declared the largest stockpile with 40,000 metric tons at seven arsenals in six regions—oblasts and republics—of Russia. The United States declared 28,577 metric tons at nine stockpiles in eight states and on Johnston Atoll west of Hawaii. Albania and Libya declared the smallest stockpiles, 16 and 23 metric tons, respectively. India and South Korea declared stockpiles in the 2,000-metric-ton range, maintain-

Department of Defense

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in Paris on January 13, 1993. It required 65 ratifications for entry into force. Hungary became the 65th country to deposit its instrument of ratification on October 31, 1996; the CWC entered into force 180 days later, on April 29, 1997. The two largest chemical weapons possessor states, the United States and Russia, ratified the treaty on April 25, 1997, and November 5, 1997, respectively, after protracted ratification debates in both capitals. The convention, in short, bans the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, transfer, and use of chemical weapons and requires all possessor states to destroy their stockpiles safely. The CWC’s preamble explains that statesparties are “determined for the sake of all mankind, to exclude completely the possibility of the use of chemical weapons, through the implementation of the provisions of this Convention, thereby complementing the obligations assumed under the Geneva Protocol of

A member of the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency conducts an ultrasonic pulse echo measurement on a container of VX nerve gas at the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana in January 2003. At right is an inspector from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Table 1: Stockpiles of Declared Chemical Weapons Possessor States Original Size of Stockpile (Metric Tons)

Amount Destroyed (Metric Tons, as of October 2010)

Russia

40,000

19,500 (est.)

United States

28,577

23,147 (est.)

South Korea

2,000 (est.)

India

2,000 (est.)

Libya

Albania

Iraq

n/a

72,616 (est.)

46,663 (est.)

Country

TOTAL

Note: The numbers above may vary depending on assumptions. The OPCW states that 43,131 metric tons (61 percent) have been destroyed out of a 1997 total of 71,194 metric tons as of the CWC’s entry into force. The exact sizes of South Korea’s and India’s stockpiles are not known publicly.

ing a high degree of secrecy around the size, location, and composition of their weapons. Iraq, which joined the CWC in 2009, has declared two large bun-

ing operations in 1994. Congress subsequently banned transportation of chemical munitions on safety and security grounds, necessitating the current plan for a destruction facility at each of the nine U.S. sites at which chemical weapons are stored. This major change had serious schedule and cost implications for the program. The other early challenge for the program was the controversy over incineration among environmental and public health officials, regulators, and activists. At least four states—Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, and Maryland—were opposing Army incineration plans and threatened to delay the program with legal and permitting issues. When the U.S. Senate finally approved the CWC, on April 25, 1997, after a long and contentious debate, the articles of ratification specified, among many other conditions, that the president place the highest priority on protection of public health and the environment and that the Army undertake the development and demonstration of nonincineration technologies for chemical weapons destruction. Congress also mandated that a new program, the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment program (renamed the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program in 2003), be established to evaluate nonincineration technologies. The program established a “national dialogue” of stakeholders—federal, state, and local officials; environmentalists; public health experts; and military officials—to determine what criteria might

eration demilitarization technologies. Today the United States has constructed and operated five large incinerators: on Johnston Atoll and in Tooele, Utah, as previously noted; in Umatilla, Oregon; in Anniston, Alabama; and in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The Johnston Atoll incinerator finished operations in 2000; the other four continue to operate. In addition, neutralization facilities were built in Newport, Indiana, and Edgewood, Maryland; they chemically treated and destroyed bulk VX nerve agent and mustard agent. The remaining two chemical weapons stockpiles in Pueblo, Colorado, and Blue Grass, Kentucky, will each be destroyed by chemical neutralization. Facilities to perform that task are under construction. As of October 20, 2010, the United States had destroyed 81 percent of the chemical weapons stockpile it had declared as the CWC entered into force: 21,984 metric tons in more than 2.1 million munitions and bulk containers of the 1997 stockpile total of 27,141 metric tons. Equally impressive is that the destruction to date represents, according to the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency, about a 99 percent reduction of stockpile risk at the seven sites where destruction has taken place because it has encompassed the most dangerous agents and munitions.7 This 20-year history of U.S. chemical weapons destruction, with almost 22,000 metric tons of deadly agents safely eliminated, illustrates well the deep commitment of the United States to abolish its Cold War arsenal. Although the United States no doubt will face criticism from some CWC states-parties in The Hague for missing the final convention deadline of April 29, 2012, no one should underestimate the determination of the United States to complete its chemical weapons destruction in the foreseeable future. The U.S. Congress has set 2017 as the date for 100 percent destruction while the U.S. Army projects 2021 as the new likely end point. Whatever the final schedule turns out to be, it remains clear that the primary goals are protection of public health, the environment, and worker safety; schedule deadlines are secondary. The United States will be chemical weapons free in the near future, a milestone that will have taken more than three decades and some $40

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

kers with chemical weapons debris and related equipment. The United States bombed these bunkers during the 1991 Persian Gulf War; their contents remain somewhat unknown although UN inspection documents, not yet available to the public, reportedly describe much of the contents when UN inspectors sealed them in the 1990s. The United States and Russia. As noted earlier, Russia and the United States had agreed in 1989, eight years before the CWC’s entry into force, to eliminate their chemical weapons stockpiles. The United States in fact had begun construction of its ﬁrst prototype incinerator on Johnston Atoll in the 1980s. In 1990, it began burning 1,842 metric tons of chemical weapons, which had been secretly shipped from forward deployment in Germany and Okinawa many years earlier. When the CWC entered into force in 1997, the United States was already operating its ﬁrst two incinerators on Johnston Atoll and in Tooele, Utah, which was the largest U.S. chemical weapons stockpile with 12,353 metric tons. The Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization, the U.S. Army branch overseeing the chemical weapons stockpiles, emergency preparedness, and destruction operations, was able to burn 1,436 metric tons, about 5 percent of the total chemical stockpile, at the two sites before the April 1997 entry into force.6 The U.S. Army initially planned to construct three centralized incinerators

to destroy the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile, and early schedules optimistically showed the United States complet-

be used to choose alternative, nonincin-

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

billion to reach. This is a record that can be well defended at the OPCW. Russia, in spite of the 1989 bilateral agreement with the United States, has been much slower in its chemical weapons destruction program. To its credit, Russia has been fully committed to complete elimination of its stockpile, but the breakup of the Soviet Union and subsequent difficult socioeconomic transition in the 1990s prevented it from focusing on chemical weapons demilitarization. The visit of an official U.S. delegation in July 1994 (see box, p. 23) to one of Russia’s seven declared chemical weapons stockpiles and a follow-on joint study of Russian chemical weapons destruction technologies helped the Russian program move forward. However, Russian officials made it clear in 1993 and in 1997, when they signed and ratified the CWC, that they would need technical and financial support from other CWC members to meet treaty deadlines. During the 1994 U.S. visit to Russia, Russian military officials and the chairman of the Duma defense committee rejected a U.S. offer made by the assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs to construct an incinerator at the Shchuch’ye chemical weapons stockpile. Russian officials wanted to determine their own technologies for demilitarization and were very wary of incineration as too complex, too expensive, too dangerous, and too politically contentious. The first Russian chemical weapons demilitarization facility, built and funded as a prototype facility by Germany for neutralizing lewisite, an older, arsenic-based chemical agent, opened in 2002 at Gorny in the Saratov Oblast. Since then, Russia has been able to open four more chemical weapons destruction facilities: in Kambarka in the Udmurt Republic in 2005; in Maradikovsky in the Kirov Oblast in 2006; in Leonidovka in the Penza Oblast in 2008; and in Shchuch’ye in the Kurgan Oblast in 2009. The last two stockpile sites, Pochep in the Bryansk Oblast and Kizner in the Udmurt Republic, will likely open in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Most of these facilities have been supported financially by the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, founded by the Group of Eight at its summit meet-

ing in Kananaskis, Canada, in 2002. The United States through the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR or Nunn-Lugar) program has committed more than $1 billion since the mid-1990s to the planning and construction of the neutralization facility at Shchuch’ye, while Germany has committed $475 million (340 million euros) to construction at Gorny, Kambarka, and Pochep. Canada and the United Kingdom have contributed some $82 million and $39 million, respectively, while at least another 10 additional countries have contributed some $25 million. After eight years of chemical weapons demilitarization, Russia has destroyed almost 50 percent of its declared stockpile, about 20,000 metric tons. It has already

closed two facilities, at Gorny and Kambarka, that housed 7,500 metric tons of lewisite in bulk containers. Three facilities are currently operating, and as noted above, the final two are expected to open within the next two years. Neither Russia nor the United States, as noted earlier, will be able to meet the CWC’s final destruction deadline of April 29, 2012, and the Blue Grass, Kentucky, site will miss the congressional deadline of 2017. The United States now predicts that the last chemical weapons stockpile at Blue Grass will not finish operations until 2021, while the Pueblo, Colorado, stockpile will likely be eliminated by 2017. Russia has projected its operations will finish by the end of 2015, although some observers believe they may extend

Table 2: U.S. and Russian Declared Chemical Stockpiles, by Site UNITED STATES Original Size (Metric Tons)

Amount Destroyed as of Oct. 20, 2010 (Metric Tons)

Percentage Destroyed

Anniston, Ala.

2,045

1,718

Blue Grass, Ky.

475

Edgewood, Md.

1,471

100

Johnston Atoll

1,842

100

Newport, Ind.

1,152

100

Pine Bluff, Ark.

3,494

3,424

Pueblo, Colo.

2,367

Tooele, Utah

12,353

11,612

Umatilla, Ore.

3,374

1,991

28,577

23,147

Original Size (Metric Tons)

Amount Destroyed as of Sept. 2010 (Metric Tons)

Percentage Destroyed

Gorny, Saratov Oblast

1,143

100

Kambarka, Udmurt Republic

6,349

100

Kizner, Udmurt Republic

5,745

Leonidovka, Penza Oblast

6,885

5,500

Maradikovsky, Kirov Oblast

6,890

5,000

Pochep, Bryansk Oblast

7,498

Shchuch’ye, Kurgan Oblast

5,456

1,500

40,000

19,500

Stockpile Site

TOTAL

RUSSIA Stockpile Site

TOTAL

Note: Numbers may not add to totals due to rounding. Destruction ﬁgures are estimates.

Senator Richard Lugar

During a 1999 visit to the Shchuch’ye chemical weapons stockpile in Russia’s Kurgan Oblast, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) demonstrates the proliferation risk by placing an 85 mm chemical shell into a briefcase. a survey of its military sites and facilities. With the help of the United States, Germany, and Switzerland, Albania immediately secured the small site and incinerated the bulk agent in the first half of 2007. Although it had planned to meet the April 29, 2007, CWC deadline for full destruction, a technical error caused a two-month delay. Neither the OPCW nor any of the states-parties made a major issue of the missed deadline, and the OPCW declared Albania’s destruction complete in early July 2007. Its mustard agent stockpile had reportedly been received in the 1970s from China.9 Libya joined the CWC in 2004 and, in its submittal at the time, declared 23 metric tons of mustard agent in bulk containers. In addition, it declared one inactivated chemical weapons production facility, two chemical weapons storage sites, 1,300 metric tons of precursor chemicals, and 3,563 unfilled aerial bombs. It first planned on eliminating its chemical agent stockpile by the 2007 deadline. However, after aborted attempts at U.S. and Italian partnerships in

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

to 2016 or beyond. This situation will present challenges at the OPCW for Russia, just as for the United States, but both countries clearly are fully committed to full abolition of their chemical weapons stockpiles and will no doubt undertake confidence-building measures to reassure the 186 other CWC states-parties of their commitment to fulfill their obligations.8 Russia, having been reliant on somewhat unpredictable Global Partnership funding over the past decade and not having begun chemical weapons destruction operations until 2002, has accomplished an enormous amount in just eight years and has no reason to apologize for its delays. Other possessor states. Albania was the first possessor state to destroy its stockpile. Although it joined the CWC in 1994, it did not acknowledge its possession of 16 metric tons of mustard agent (as well as small quantities of lewisite and other chemicals) until 2003. A small, nondescript building in the mountains outside Tirana apparently went without notice until the government that took power in Albania earlier that year began

its demilitarization program, it asked for several OPCW deadline extensions, the latest of which is until 2011.10 India and South Korea joined the CWC in 1996 and 1997, respectively, and both declared chemical weapons stockpiles. Little is known publicly about either stockpile, but both countries successfully completed their destruction programs according to schedules extended beyond 2007 and approved by the OPCW—South Korea in 2008 and India in 2009. South Korea has refused to acknowledge its stockpile in any public presentations, including the annual speeches by its ambassador to the OPCW, and has claimed full confidentiality (“highly protected information”) under the Confidentiality Annex of the CWC; all OPCW delegations and staff therefore refer to it as “A State Party” in reference to possessor states.11 India, on the other hand, acknowledges its stockpile publicly, but has invoked confidentiality for the stockpile’s size, location, destruction technology, and agent types. India’s stockpile is generally thought to have consisted of mustard agent and to have been incinerated. South Korea’s stockpile reportedly included new binary nerve agent weapons, very similar to the newest U.S. weapons. The last CWC state-party to declare a chemical weapons stockpile is Iraq. Iraq joined the CWC in early 2009 and declared two large, two-story, sealed bunkers with chemical weapons and related equipment and debris from the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Because at least one of these bunkers had been hit by aerial bombs in the war, there is no final inventory of weapons and agents, nor a thorough evaluation of the possible risks of open agents or unexploded ordnance in the bunkers. No decision has been made concerning the final disposition of these bunkers, but there is ongoing discussion at the OPCW with Iraqi officials about methods to evaluate the bunkers, possible costs of destruction, and options for further sealing the bunkers and improving local security. Thus, of the seven countries that declared chemical weapons stockpiles, three—Albania, India, and South Korea—have completed their demilitarization programs in the last three years; the two largest possessor states—Russia and the United States—will continue to

demilitarize their enormous arsenals for another five to 10 years or more; and the final two countries—Iraq and Libya—will likely destroy their remaining agents still sooner, perhaps in the next two to five years. This is an enormous success story for the OPCW and all states-parties. As of September 2010, the OPCW has

The United States reported in 1993 that it suspected some 224 burial sites of old chemical weapons and agents in 38 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.13 Perhaps the best known and surveyed site is in northwestern Washington, D.C., known as Spring Valley, where the U.S. Army Corps

The convention also obligates all states-parties to declare other chemical production facilities (OCPFs) capable of producing banned or dual-use chemicals and to permit occasional OPCW inspections to verify that these facilities are not producing banned chemical agents. Once existing chemical weapons stock-

[Russia] has accomplished an enormous amount in just eight years and has no reason to apologize for its delays.

declared that 43,131 metric tons of chemical agents have been destroyed since the CWC entered into force in 1997. This represents 61 percent of the world’s declared chemical weapons stockpiles of 71,194 metric tons (at entry into force). This 13year, multilateral demilitarization effort has also included the elimination of 3.95 million munitions and containers, 46 percent of the 8.67 million weapons inventoried by OPCW inspectors in the possessor states. This concerted effort by many countries, especially the United States and Russia, to abolish their Cold War chemical weapons arsenals, represents a historic step forward in multilateral arms control and disarmament. Yet, this long process has had its ups and downs, especially ﬁnancially and politically. The next section describes some of these.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Challenges and Conclusions

Old and abandoned chemical weapons. The CWC requires states-parties to identify and safely destroy nonstockpile chemical weapons that may have been buried, dumped, or abandoned on foreign territories, once they are excavated and retrieved.12 At the end of 2009, the OPCW stated that 13 states-parties had declared old chemical weapons and that some 87,000 of these had been recovered and were still awaiting destruction. Most of Europe is littered with buried weapons, including chemical weapons, from the two world wars. Belgium, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, among others, continue to be actively engaged in locating and destroying old weapons and unexploded ordnance.

of Engineers has uncovered dozens of buried chemical munitions, related toxic materials, and unexploded ordnance over the last 17 years, all dumped after World War I in 1918 when the Army chemical weapons laboratory closed at American University. Costing more than $250 million to date, this program remains very controversial because of the heavily populated area and the unknown environmental and public health impacts.14 Beyond Spring Valley, the U.S. Army needs to be more proactive in surveying and remediating old burial sites. The most serious case of abandoned chemical weapons involves Japan, which left hundreds of thousands of chemical weapons buried on Chinese territory in the last century. Negotiations between Japan and China have been ongoing for more than a decade, with most burial sites in remote and mountainous regions of northern China. The OPCW announced in September 2010 that the ﬁrst mobile destruction facility for excavated Japanese abandoned chemical weapons had become operational in Nanjing, China.15 This costly process will likely continue for another decade or more. Chemical industry inspections. The CWC obligates all states-parties to declare and destroy or convert their former chemical weapons production facilities (CWPFs). By the end of 2009, 43 of 70 declared CWPFs had been destroyed, and another 19 had been converted for purposes allowed under the convention. Of the remaining eight, located in Iraq, Libya, and Russia, four are due to be destroyed and four converted.

piles are fully eliminated over the next decade or less, this will be the main occupation of the OPCW—inspections of commercial chemical industry facilities in order to verify and enforce the convention’s ban on deadly chemicals and the proper use and trade in dualuse chemicals. To date, the OPCW has carried out 4,166 inspections at 195 chemical weapons-related sites and 1,103 industrial sites in 81 countries. The organization has declared that 4,918 industrial facilities are currently subject to inspection, so this important task will continue for the long-term future. CWC universality. The CWC attracted 151 signers in its first year, 1993, and had 88 full members by its entry into force in 1997. Today it includes 188 countries representing 98 percent of the world’s population. Although the treaty’s coverage is very close to universal, seven countries remain outside the abolition regime. Two of these—Israel and Myanmar (Burma)—signed the convention in 1993 and have participated as observers at annual OPCW meetings. The other five—Angola, Egypt, North Korea, Somalia, and Syria—have neither signed nor ratified. All of these countries, some of which are suspected of hiding chemical weapons stockpiles, must be brought under the CWC umbrella in the near future. Also, Taiwan, which has a large chemical industry, must somehow be included although China claims Taiwan under its “one China” policy. Until the whole world is open to inspectors, one can never be certain that all chemical weapons have been fully destroyed and that

no banned chemicals are being secretly produced and traded. OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü emphasized universality and its importance to nonproliferation and the Middle East before the United Nations in October: “Universality is indispensable to the success of the Convention. Only thus can there be an assurance that all countries of the world have legally accepted the prohibition on chemical weapons…. Given the inhumane nature of chemical weapons, and the fact that they are no longer regarded of much military value, the CWC should be accepted by all nations as a moral imperative.”16 Transparency and stakeholder involvement. All weapons of mass destruction were highly secret during the Cold War. Due to this legacy, terrorist threats, and political sensitivity around potential public health and environmental impacts, the demilitarization of chemical weapons has taken more than two decades to become more public. Even now, limits in public diplomacy and transparency persist to varying degrees in all the possessor states. India and South Korea still refuse to discuss their demilitarization programs publicly; Russia very closely manages its public relations and has threatened activists and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that are critical of federal operations; and the United States, although the most transparent of all possessor states, has stopped most on-site visits of stakeholders since the September 11 terrorist attacks and still is

reluctant to have visiting OPCW officials meet with local officials and activists. The OPCW itself has sought to promote greater involvement of NGOs, industry, and other international organizations; it organized an “academic forum” and an “industry forum” at its last five-year review conference in 2008. It also supported the establishment of an alliance of NGOs, known as the CWC Coalition,17 at last year’s annual conference in The Hague and has been more committed to posting OPCW documents on its Web site in a timely way. Because the OPCW represents 188 states, however, it sometimes can be frustrated by overly sensitive demands for secrecy from individual or small numbers of countries. All state-parties, including chemical weapons possessor states, must realize that, for the CWC to become truly universal and enforceable, there must be active participation by all stakeholders, including interested NGOs, industry, and other state and local government officials committed to a world free of chemical weapons. OPCW staffing and budget. The OPCW employs an international staff of some 525 diplomats and experts, including an international inspectorate of about 175 experts trained to inspect both chemical weapons stockpiles and chemical industry facilities. The annual budget of the OPCW is about $103.5 million (74.5 million euros). One-half of this amount covers verification and inspections, and the remainder covers management, external

The OPCW budget has remained steady, essentially a no-growth budget with some recent reductions, since 2005. This has strained the organization in the last several years, but may be helped by sizable reductions in the inspectorate as more stockpiles are destroyed in the next four to five years. However, the OPCW must maintain an expert inspectorate and Technical Secretariat in order to continue its global monitoring of commercial industry, support for nonproliferation and national implementation, and promotion of the peaceful uses of chemistry, all mandated in the convention. It also must maintain a robust capability for “challenge inspections,” as allowed under Part X of the CWC Verification Annex. To accomplish this, its annual budget must inevitably rise in real terms; and its most senior staff, including inspectors, must be exempted from the current and controversial seven-year ceiling on OPCW employment. Also, states-parties must pay their annual assessments on time. For the first time in many years, the United States this year paid its annual calendar-year assessment by April. In previous years, Washington had delayed its payment by six to nine months or more, placing the OPCW in a difficult cash-flow position.19 OPCW leadership. The OPCW has just undergone its second change of leadership since 1997. Last December, the states-parties chose Üzümcü, the former Turkish ambassador to the CD, to replace Rogelio Pfirter from Argentina as director-general. The first OPCW director-general, who served from 1997 until 2002, was Ambassador José Bustani from Brazil; he was ousted by the United States and others in 2002 over strong disagreements over his management style and the future of the organization. Pfirter had a very successful eight years in leading and expanding the organization, and Üzümcü, supported by states-parties over six other candidates last year, will be the first senior Turkish diplomat to lead such a large and important international organization. Pfirter and Üzümcü have supported broader efforts at public diplomacy, more transparency, and wider and more sustained involvement of all stakeholders in order to strengthen the organization and fully implement its guiding principles.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Department of Defense

A worker in full protective gear at the Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon inspects M-5 rockets ﬁlled with nerve agents in this undated photo.

relations, and support for cooperation and assistance to states-parties.18

Üzümcü, now only three months on the job, has already begun to meet with staff, states-parties, NGOs, and industry to discuss the organization’s future and will no doubt begin to imprint his own style on the organization over the coming year. In comparison with nuclear and biological weapons, chemical weapons often get overlooked in current arms control and disarmament discussions. Yet, they remain the most numerous, with some five million munitions still awaiting destruction and two to four additional suspected stockpiles in nonmember states undeclared. Chemical weapons have been used in warfare and terrorist attacks a dozen times or more in the last three decades, causing horrific human suffering. Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Aum Shinrikyo, Iraqi and Afghan insurgents, and others continue efforts to steal or produce deadly chemical agents for indiscriminate terrorist attacks. These current threats underline the central importance for global security of ridding the world of chemical weapons. The chemical weapons abolition regime, led by the OPCW, seems the best example to date of a multilateral verification organization, effectively managed and run by consensus, to oversee the total elimination of a whole class of weapons. It would behoove both the nuclear and biological arms control and disarmament regimes to learn from the CWC’s successes and challenges and to move forward with truly comprehensive abolition regimes themselves. A world free of all weapons of mass destruction will be a much more secure, safe, and peaceful world. ACT

tion or use of chemical agents for weapons pur-

Albania, India, the Russian Federation, and the

poses.” See www.state.gov/www/global/arms/

United States of America was approximately

treaties/bwc1.html.

35,892 metric tonnes (MTs), or approximately

3. See www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-

51.70% of the declared quantity of this category

convention/. 4. For the full text of the CWC, see www.opcw. org/chemical-weapons-convention/.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

their Category I chemical weapons, while the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya has yet to commence destroying the Category I chemical weapons it

the OPCW, see Ian Kenyon, “Establishing the

had declared.” OPCW, “Note by the Director

PC and Creating the OPCW Technical Secretar-

General,” EC-58/DG.11, October 7, 2009, p. 2.

iat,” in OPCW: The Creation of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, ed. Ian R. Kenyon and Daniel Feakes (The Hague: TMC Asser Press, 2007), pp. 31-67. 6. The Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization was subsequently renamed the Chemical Materials Agency (CMA). See www.cma.army.mil/. 7. See CMA, “CMA Reaches 80% Chemical Weapons Destruction Mark,” October 4, 2010, www.cma.army.mil/fndocumentviewer. aspx?DocID=003683572. 8. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged in a letter to the U.S. Congress in 2006 that the United States would not meet the legally binding 2012 CWC deadline. Russia acknowledged its schedule slippage beyond 2012 to the OPCW in June 2010. OPCW Director-General Rogelio Pﬁrter, in his opening statement to the June 2010 Executive Council, said, “The members of the Council are aware, as informed by the Russian delegation yesterday during the informal consultations, that the Russian Federation now estimates that it will complete the destruction of its chemi-

12. See CWC, art. III.1.b; CWC Veriﬁcation Annex, pts. IV(B).B and C. 13. See U.S. Army Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization, “Survey and Analysis Report,” 2nd ed., December 1996, www.cma.army.mil/fndocumentviewer. aspx?DocID=003674324. 14. For more information on Spring Valley, see www.nab.usace.army.mil/projects/WashingtonDC/springvalley.htm. 15. See OPCW, “Ceremony Marks Start of Destruction of Chemical Weapons Abandoned by Japan in China,” September 8, 2010, www. opcw.org/news/article/ceremony-marks-startof-destruction-of-chemical-weapons-abandoned-by-japan-in-china/. See also OPCW Executive Council, “Arrangement for the Destruction at the Abandoned Chemical Weapons Mobile Destruction Facility of Chemical Weapons Abandoned by Japan on the Territory of the People’s Republic of China,” EC-61/ DEC.2, June 29, 2010. 16. OPCW, “Statement by H.E. Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü, 65th Session of the United Na-

cal weapons stockpiles by 2015. Thus the two

tions General Assembly,” October 13, 2010, p. 3.

major possessor States, the United States of

17. Global Green USA is the coordinator of the

America and the Russian Federation, have now

new CWC Coalition.

conﬁrmed that they will not be able to meet

18. See OPCW Conference of the States Parties,

the 29 April 2012 deadline.” OPCW Executive Council, “Opening Statement by the Director-General to the Executive Council at its 61st Session,” EC-61/DG.17, June 29, 2010, p. 2. chemical weapons stockpile, see Joby Warrick, “Albania’s Chemical Cache Raises Fears

“Program and Budget of the OPCW for 2010,” C-14/DEC.8, December 2, 2009. 19. OPCW Director-General Rogelio Pfirter alluded to past delays in annual assessments in his last report to the Executive Council: “As at 28 June 2010, 91.9% of the annual contributions for 2010 had been

1. For information on the CWC and OPCW, see

About Others,” Washington Post, January 10,

www.opcw.org. The ofﬁcial title of the CWC is

2005, p. A1.

the Convention on the Prohibition of the De-

10. OPCW, “Libya Submits Initial Chemical

a very significant improvement. Neverthe-

Weapons Declaration,” March 5, 2004, www.

less, I wish once again to encourage States

opcw.org/news/article/libya-submits-initial-

Parties that have not yet done so, to do

velopment, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction.

collected, as compared to only 64.1% by the same date last year. This is, of course,

2. Article IX of the Biological Weapons Conven-

chemical-weapons-declaration/; OPCW, “Ini-

their utmost to pay their dues at the earli-

tion states, “Each State Party to this Convention

tial Inspection in Libya Completed,” March 22,

est and in full. The lack of payment on

afﬁrms the recognized objective of effective

2004, www.opcw.org/news/article/initial-in-

time by some Member States is indeed the

prohibition of chemical weapons and, to this

spection-in-libya-completed/.

subject of some reflections by the Exter-

end, undertakes to continue negotiations in

11. An example of this repeated usage of “A

nal Auditor, to which I fully subscribe.”

good faith with a view to reaching early agreement on effective measures for the prohibition of their development, production and stockpiling and for their destruction, and on appropriate measures concerning equipment and means of delivery speciﬁcally designed for the produc-

and India had completed the destruction of all

5. For an excellent history of the founding of

9. For a ﬁrsthand account of the Albanian

ENDNOTES

of chemical weapons. A State Party, Albania,

State Party” to represent South Korea as a chemical weapons possessor state is Ambassador Rogelio Pﬁrter’s statement before the OPCW Executive Council in 2009: “As of 30 September 2009, the aggregate amount of Category I chemical weapons destroyed by A State Party,

OPCW Executive Council, “Opening Statement by the Director-General to the Executive Council at its Sixty-First Session,” EC-61/DG.17, June 29, 2010, p. 10, www. opcw.org/index.php?eID = dam_frontend_ push&docID =13851.

In-Depth Research and Analysis from the Arms Control Association

By Cole Harvey March 2010

By Tom Z. Collina with Daryl G. Kimball February 2010

This ﬁrst-of-its-kind Report Card measures the performance of 11 key states in 10 universally-recognized nonproliferation categories over the past 18 months.

How do states propose to strengthen the NPT, the cornerstone of the nuclear nonproliferation system? This is ACA’s comprehensive guide to the major issues affecting the treaty today.

Nuclear testing is a dangerous and unnecessary practice the United States gave up two decades ago. Now More Than Ever lays out the case for U.S. approval of the CTBT.

By Sidney D. Drell and James E. Goodby Revised October 2007

By various contributors with an introduction from Oliver Meier April 2008

Threat Assessment Briefs are produced through ACA’s “Realistic Threat Assessments & Responses Project,” which is led by Senior Fellow Greg Thielmann. Each takes an objective look at today’s top weapons-related security issues—from Iran, to missiles, to treaty verﬁcation.

This inﬂuential report outlines how and why the United States can reduce its strategic arsenal to no more than 500 warheads, with a responsive force of 500 by 2012.

Authoritative articles, essays, and interviews from Arms Control Today on the implementation and future of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

These reports are available for download at www.armscontrol.org/reports

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

By Peter Crail and ACA Research Staff March 2010

InThe

NEWS November 2010

32 Europe and the Former Soviet Union 39 The World

Asia and Australia

50 The United States and the Americas

47 The Middle East and Africa

NATO Set to Back Expanded Missile Defense

the Czech Republic to counter a potential Iranian long-range missile threat. Following a policy review, in September 2009 the Obama administration changed direction in favor of a larger number of shorter-range, sea-based Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptors around Europe and land-based SM-3 batteries in Romania and Poland, collectively known as the Phased Adaptive Approach. The SM-3 interceptors, the Obama administration argued, are more reliable and could be deployed more quickly to address Iran’s existing short- and medium-range ballistic missile force. (See ACT, March 2010.) “The studies have been done, the data are well known, and the affordability is clear,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said after the Brussels meeting. “It is time for a decision.” Although none of NATO’s 28 members has announced opposition to the plan, its approval is not automatic. The missile defense language will be part of the broader revised NATO Strategic Concept, which covers all alliance military and nuclear policies, and must be passed by consensus.

John Thys/AFP/Getty Images

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

head of next year’s planned deployment of a U.S. medium-range missile interceptor system in Europe, NATO member states appear poised to endorse an expanded missile defense mission at their Nov. 19-20 summit in Lisbon and to invite Russia to play a role. The U.S. system would include a mobile radar in Turkey, which Ankara has yet to approve. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters after NATO’s Oct. 14 foreign and defense ministers meeting in Brussels, “I believe we are nearing a consensus at the Lisbon summit for NATO to have a capability to defend all of NATO-Europe against the threat of a missile attack,” adding that he hopes “that soon we can add territorial missile defense cooperation to the list” of issues on the NATO-Russia agenda. NATO members have engaged in discussions for years on the role of missile defense in alliance policy, most recently in 2007 when the Bush administration proposed to site 10 ground-based strategic missile interceptors in Poland and an X-band radar in

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (left) speaks with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on October 14 at NATO headquarters in Brussels before a meeting of the alliance’s defense and foreign ministers.

Georges Gobet/AFP/Getty Images

Some alliance members suggested at the Brussels meeting that NATO policy on missile defense should be linked to changes in NATO’s approach to nuclear weapons reductions, particularly to the fate of forward-deployed U.S. tactical nuclear bombs stored in ﬁve European member states. “We think missile defense is basically a good idea, but we also believe that matters like arms control should be and will be an important component” of NATO defense policy, German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told the Associated Press Oct. 14. The German government has been advocating a shift in alliance policy that would open the way for the removal of U.S. tactical weapons, arguing that the U.S. missile interceptors in Europe would mean that tactical bombs are no longer needed to assure some central European NATO members of the United States’ ongoing commitment to alliance defense.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen speaks at a press conference following the October 14 NATO meeting. He said the alliance was close to agreeing “to have a capability to defend all of NATO-Europe against the threat of a missile attack.”

French Defense Minister Hervé Morin indicated that the concept of expanded missile defenses would be endorsed in Lisbon, but he compared it to the Maginot Line of fixed defenses that failed to prevent Germany’s invasion of France during World War II. “The best way to guard against an apocalypse is to be in a position to gain respect from having credible military capabilities,” he told reporters. French officials have been arguing against reducing the role of nuclear weapons in NATO policy, in part to deflect political pressure on Paris to reduce its own nuclear arsenal.

Missile Defense Radar in Turkey?

Cost Concerns Although it has yet to endorse the concept of an expanded U.S. missile interceptor system for all NATO member states, the alliance has already approved a joint, short-range (less than 1,000 kilometers) missile defense system to protect troops. Under the Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defense (ALTBMD) plan, NATO will oversee command and control of member state-based missile defense assets, such as short-range interceptors (mainly U.S.-origin Patriot interceptors) in France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. However, future additions to this system are still on the drawing board. For example, a joint, $16.5 billion U.S.-German-Italian program to develop a European short-range interceptor to replace the Patriot, called the Medium Extended Air Defense System, is not scheduled for deployment until late in the decade and reportedly may get cut due to heavy budget pressures in Europe and the United States. In response to European concerns about the cost of expanding NATO’s missile defense mission, Rasmussen wrote in an Oct. 12 op-ed in the International Herald Tribune that “missile defense won’t be cheap, but neither will it break the bank.” He said the current ALTBMD program costs NATO $1.1 billion over 14 years and that, for less than $280 million more over 10 years, this program could be integrated with the U.S. system and thus would be able to augment the current mission of protecting NATO troops

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

In addition to new U.S. SM-3 interceptors in Romania and Poland, the last remaining land-based piece of the Obama administration’s plan is a mobile X-band radar to be deployed in southeastern Europe by next year. The radar is critical to the overall system, U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Director Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly told an Atlantic Council-sponsored forum Oct. 12. The X-band radar would be part of a test next summer “to validate that all of these capabilities work together in order to have your initial substantiation of capability for the Phased Adaptive Approach,” he said. Turkey, a NATO member since 1952 and neighbor of Iran, is the United States’ first choice to host the radar, but Ankara has yet to commit. Turkey is worried about appearing to sign a bilateral pact with Washington that is designed to counter Middle Eastern nations. “We told the U.S. officials that Iran and Syria should not be cited as ‘threats’ for NATO’ s planned missile shield,” an unnamed Turkish Foreign Ministry official told Turkish Weekly Oct. 15. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Turkish officials on the sidelines of the Brussels meeting to discuss whether Turkey would host the radar on its territory. “I would say that we are not putting pressure on the Turks,” Gates told reporters Oct. 14, “but we are having continuing conversations with them as one of our allies.” Bulgaria is another siting option for the radar. The United States does not need official NATO approval to move ahead with its plan to deploy SM-3 interceptors and radars

to support them, but U.S. ofﬁcials recognize that leaders of some states, such as Turkey, might be more comfortable participating in the U.S. system once it has been integrated into NATO. “We are not asking for [NATO] to buy additional systems that they already are not planning on procuring,” O’Reilly said at the Atlantic Council event. “We want there to be political buy-in by our NATO allies on this issue,” U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Space and Defense Policy Frank Rose said at the same forum. The phased approach “will then become the U.S. contribution to a NATO effort,” Rose said, adding that the radar host nation would not be announced until after the Lisbon summit.

EUROPE AND THE FORMER SOVIET UNION

stand its limits. It’s a very good capability against a threat within a couple of thousand kilometers.… [I]t’s not a very good capability if you’re trying to defeat a threat that is deep inside Russia,” he said. The United States also deploys 30 long-range interceptors in Alaska and California, the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense, to counter a limited, unsophisticated ICBM attack. Obama administration and European Missile Defense officials are sensitive to the fact that the Agency Director United States is essentially footing the Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly bill for missile defense in Europe. To address congressional concerns about burden sharing, U.S. officials stress that, in addition to countering missile threats to Europe, the phased approach provides defensive capabilities for the continental United States. “Deploying the AN/TPY-2 radar in the first phase of the approach will augment the ability of our existing Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system to intercept any future long-range missiles launched from the Middle East,” Rose told the Atlantic Council audience. “By 2020 we will supplement that capability when we deploy the SM-3 Block IIB missile in Europe,” he said. Japan and the United States on Oct. 28 conducted a joint test of the SM-3 Block IA missile, which successfully intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile target off the coast of Hawaii, according to the MDA. Japan, which is primarily concerned about North Korean missile capability, is also cooperating with the United States on developing the larger and more capable SM-3 Block IIA, for possible deployment in 2018.

Department of Defense

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

The View From Moscow

A Standard Missile-3 is launched on October 28 from the Japanese ship Kirishima in a joint missile defense intercept test with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency in the mid-Paciﬁc.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, invited weeks ago to attend the Lisbon summit, told reporters Oct. 19 that he would attend the Nov. 20 NATO-Russia Council meeting but that he had concerns about missile defense cooperation. “We are now evaluating the idea of this proposal, but I think that NATO itself needs to understand in what form it sees Russia joining this system, what it will bring, in what manner an agreement can be reached, and how to proceed further,” he told reporters after meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Deauville, France. “Only based on the evaluation of this proposal can we give an answer on how we will proceed with regard to the idea of European missile defense,” Medvedev said. Further clarifying Moscow’s concerns, Russian Ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin told Itar-Tass news agency Oct. 15, “We need to understand what this means in principle—the parameters of the missile defense system, who it will be aimed against, who will press the button.” The question of which country or countries have ultimate authority to launch interceptors under a “joint” missile defense system has been a long-standing issue for Russia. “You have one button and 28 ﬁngers. I even know which ﬁnger will press the button,” Rogozin said. “This is a U.S. system on the European soil,” he said. Russian leaders also have expressed concern that later phases of U.S. missile defense plans would be capable of intercepting Russian ICBMs. U.S. and NATO leaders say the system is not aimed at Russia, but at Iran. Russia, however, has “problems

Department of Defense

by defending European populations and territory as well. “With a relatively small investment, all the allies could plug into the multi-billion-dollar United States system, share the beneﬁts of increased security, and demonstrate a shared commitment to our mutual defense. That is an attractive return on investment,” Rasmussen said. By comparison, the MDA is spending about $10 billion per year on all missile defense programs, with much of that geared toward European-based systems. Initial phases of the phased approach would provide a layer of defense against medium-range missiles (1,000-5,500 kilometers) on top of U.S. and NATO short-range defenses. According to the MDA, by 2011 the United States plans to deploy 23 Aegis ships with over 100 SM-3 IA missile interceptors and an AN/TPY-2 X-band radar in southeastern Europe. The ﬁrst land-based SM-3 site would be added in Romania by 2015 and the second in Poland by 2018. Between 2015 and 2020, the United States would deploy Theater High Altitude Area Defense mobile interceptors in Europe as well. In the fourth phase, the SM-3 IIB interceptor would be deployed beginning in 2020 on land with enhanced capabilities, giving it “a very good opportunity to intercept ICBMs too,” O’Reilly Oct. 12 said at the Atlantic Council event, referring to intercontinental (long-range) ballistic missiles. “I have been to Moscow to show capability of the [Phased Adaptive Approach] all the way through phase four so [the Russians] clearly under-

with our NATO colleagues already having branded Iran ‘a bad guy,’” Rogozin said. Russia, which is not a NATO member, does not have an ofﬁcial say in whether the alliance expands its missile defense mission, nor is Moscow expected to agree in Lisbon to cooperate on a speciﬁc missile defense proposal. But Moscow may agree to start a process for greater NATO-Russia missile defense cooperation.

Joint Missile Threat Assessment To help reassure Moscow about future U.S. missile interceptor deployments, the United States has renewed discussions with Russian ofﬁcials on possible ways to cooperate on missile defense and “hope[s] to expand that cooperation both bilaterally and through the NATO-Russia Council,” Rose said at the Atlantic Council meeting. The United States and Russia announced efforts in June to share early-warning data on missile launches (see ACT, July/August 2010), and they have been working on a joint threat assessment of global missile programs to establish a baseline for further cooperation. “The purpose of the joint assessment is to increase our mutu-

al understanding of the ballistic missile threat,” Department of State spokesman P.J. Crowley told The Washington Times Oct. 19. “There is nothing in these discussions that contemplates limits on missile defense, but rather cooperation between the U.S. and Russia,” he said. “The reality is Iranian missiles with nuclear warheads are… actually a bigger danger, to Russia than they are to the United States because [Iran does not] have intercontinental ballistic missiles yet,” Gates told Interfax Sept. 14. Russia disagrees. “For now it is enough to hold consultations and analyze missile challenges rather than panic and build something immediately,” Rogozin said Oct. 15. The joint threat assessment will be released late this year or in early 2011, Rose said. The administration is still open to collaborating with Moscow on use of a radar facility in Azerbaijan, Gates told Interfax. “We have been very interested in the Gabala radar. We’ve had conversations about it. I think we’ve sent technical experts there to examine the radar. We’ve talked about a data center, a data exchange center in Moscow where all of this information on missile launches could be shared,” he said. —TOM Z. COLLINA

UK Postpones Trident Replacement Amid Cuts

British Prime Minister David Cameron addresses military staff at the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, north of London, October 19. That day, Cameron told the House of Commons that the government is postponing until 2016 the ﬁnal decision on whether to replace its Trident nuclear submarines.

year,” the defense review said. The United Kingdom currently deploys its entire nuclear arsenal aboard four Vanguard-class submarines, each of which is armed with Trident ballistic missiles. In addition, the United Kingdom will

cut the size of its nuclear arsenal, the review said. The government will reduce its stockpile of operational nuclear warheads from fewer than 160 to no more than 120, and the maximum number of warheads on each submarine will decrease from

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

ward, it must pass through two approval points: the “initial gate” decision allowing preparatory work to proceed and the “main gate” decision to begin building the new submarines. The initial step “will be approved, and the next phase of the project commenced, by the end of this

Toby Melville/AFP/Getty Images

he United Kingdom will postpone the final decision on whether to replace its Trident nuclear submarines until 2016, Prime Minister David Cameron told the House of Commons last month. Cameron’s Oct. 19 address marked the conclusion of a broad reassessment of British strategic and defense policy. The National Security Strategy, published Oct. 18, assessed threats and set strategic priorities; the Strategic Defense and Security Review, released the following day, detailed the steps that the government will take in accordance with those priorities. Cameron said the British government will extend the life of its Vanguard-class nuclear submarines “so that the first replacement submarine is not required until 2028.” As a result, he said, the final decision “to start construction of the new submarines need not now be taken until around 2016.” That date is after the next British general elections, which will take place no later than May 2015. For the Trident replacement to go for-

EUROPE AND THE FORMER SOVIET UNION Government of United Kingdom

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

The strategic missile submarine HMS Victorious, one of four in the Royal Navy, leaves its home port in Faslane, Scotland, on January 13, 2005.

48 to 40. Likewise, the overall size of the nuclear stockpile, including nondeployed weapons, will drop from “not more than 225 to not more than 180 by the mid 2020s,” the review said. British ofﬁcials cautioned against interpreting the changes as a weakened commitment to their country’s nuclear deterrent. Speaking in Washington Oct. 28, Minister of State for Security and Counter-terrorism Pauline Neville-Jones said, “We do not believe that it makes a great deal of sense, given that we have a nuclear deterrent, to decide that we’re going to dispense with it…. We will remain in the nuclear club.” On the subject of nuclear declaratory policy, the review strengthened London’s negative security assurances to nonnuclear-weapon states. The report said, “We are now able to give an assurance that the UK will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states parties” to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It noted that

this assurance “would not apply to any state in material breach of those nonproliferation obligations” and reserved the right to review its assurance if future advances in chemical or biological weapons made it necessary. The new British posture is similar to the one expressed in the United States’ most recent Nuclear Posture Review, completed this April. (See ACT, May 2010.) The strategic and defense reviews took place in an atmosphere of severe financial pressures. Since taking office in May, Cameron has vowed to reduce the size of government significantly in an attempt to address budget deficits. On Oct. 20, the government released its Comprehensive Spending Review, in which it declared that the budgets of all government departments other than health and overseas aid would be cut by an average of 19 percent over the next four years. The Ministry of Defense avoided the deepest cuts. However, the defense budget will still decrease by 8 percent in real

terms over four years, Cameron said. According to the defense review, this will include reductions of 17,000 service personnel and 25,000 Ministry of Defense civil servants by 2015. In the week prior to the review’s release, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed concern about the impending defense cuts in the United Kingdom and other NATO countries. When asked if that prospect worried the Obama administration, she said, “It does, and the reason it does is because I think we do have to have an alliance where there’s a commitment to the common defense.” After the review’s publication, Clinton issued a statement in which she said the United States was “reassured that the UK conducted its review in a thoughtful and clear-eyed manner.” She expressed her appreciation for the British “commitment to retain the full spectrum of military capabilities that enable our forces to partner together so effectively in so many areas of the world.” —ROBERT GOLAN-VILELLA

Revised Space Code Advances

he European Union in late September adopted a revised draft code of conduct for outer space activities after receiving feedback on text circulated in December 2008. (See ACT, January/February 2009.) Endorsed by the EU as a basis for consultation with additional countries, the voluntary code may be opened for signature as early as next year. The revised code retains many of the features of the earlier draft, including a voluntary commitment to refrain from intentionally harming space objects, measures to control and mitigate space debris, and mechanisms for cooperation and consultation. The section on space operations commits states to avoid damaging or destroying space objects unless such action is “conducted to reduce the creation of outer space debris and/or is justiﬁed by the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence in accordance with the United Nations Charter or imperative safety considerations.” That wording is essentially unchanged from

the original text aside from the reference to self-defense and the UN Charter. The new wording may make it easier for states that wish to retain flexibility in times of conflict to sign on to the code. At an Oct. 14 event on space transparency and confidence-building measures where the code was introduced, Frank Rose, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for space and defense policy, said Washington hopes “to make a decision as to whether the United States can sign on to the code in the coming months, pending a determination of its implications for our national security and foreign policy interests.” In June the Obama administration unveiled a new space policy supportive of transparency and confidence-building measures. It also promised to consider legally binding measures provided that they do not limit U.S. access to or use of space. (See ACT, September 2010.) Pedro Serrano, the EU’s UN ambassador, said at the event that the EU is “considering the possibility of opening the code for signature at an ad hoc diplomat-

ic conference, to take place in 2011.” He also indicated that formal negotiations on the code would not take place at the Conference on Disarmament (CD), UN First Committee, or forums dealing with civilian outer space activities such as the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space or UN Fourth Committee. In recent years, transparency and conﬁdence-building measures such as the code have received greater attention, especially as progress on treaty-based approaches has generally stalled. The CD has been unable to move forward on an agenda to prevent an arms race in outer space or on the 2008 introduced treaty by China and Russia on prevention of weapons in space. At the First Committee in October, China and Russia joined with more than 40 other countries in sponsoring a resolution that would establish a group of governmental experts to begin work in 2012 studying transparency and conﬁdence-building measures. The resolution passed on Oct. 29 by a vote of 167-0 with one abstention, by the United States. —JEFF ABRAMSON

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences Program Officer/Associate For International Security & Energy Policy Programs The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an international learned society and policy research center with headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, seeks a Program Officer /Associate to support its work on issues of Science and Global Security. The Academy’s Committee on International Security Studies is undertaking a major integrative project on the global nuclear future and energy policy. This is a unique opportunity for a highly motivated individual to play a role in significant intellectual projects involving some of the country’s most outstanding scholars and practitioners.

The ideal candidate will have a Ph.D. or other relevant degree, with demonstrated interest in and knowledge of international relations, issues of international security and nuclear nonproliferation, and related energy issues; familiarity and experience with current policies and scholarship in international affairs and security policy; at least three years relevant experience in academic or project administration, and an interest in a career in international policy research; excellent writing skills and communication skills; successful grant writing experience; and the ability to work collaboratively and effectively in a team environment. Salary will be commensurate with relevant experience. Please send a cover letter and resume to stafﬁng@amacad.org. For further information about the Academy and its program areas, please visit the Academy’s website at www.amacad.org.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

The Program Ofﬁcer/Associate will provide research support for the Academy’s Committee on International Security Studies and other related Academy projects; work with Academy Fellows and senior staff to identify and develop new projects; organize conferences and symposia; edit research papers and publications; help raise funds to support projects from foundations and other sources; and maintain general administrative oversight of the program, including supervision of Program Assistants and other Academy staff working in this area.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

group of countries led by the United States is working to secure support for a proposed nuclear fuel bank, with the goal of having the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors adopt a resolution endorsing the plan at its next meeting, according to statements from governments and other organizations involved in the process. In interviews in recent weeks, diplomats and others who are following the situation said supporters of the plan are moving now because they believe that additional time will not help their cause. Addressing the IAEA General Conference in Vienna Sept. 20, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said the United States planned “a common approach” so that the board could approve the plan at its Dec. 2-3 meeting. The aim of the fuel bank proposal is to dissuade countries from pursuing their own uranium-enrichment programs by providing them with an assured supply of fuel at market prices. The bank, which the IAEA would administer, would serve as a backup to existing commercial mechanisms for countries with good nonproliferation credentials. President Barack Obama has strongly supported the plan, as did President George W. Bush and IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei when they were in ofﬁce. Under the plan, the IAEA would own enough low-enriched uranium (LEU) for a full core of a typical power reactor, once the LEU was fabricated into reactor fuel. In 2006 the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a private U.S. organization, pledged $50 million for such a reserve on the condition that IAEA member states donate another $100 million and that

the board approve the plan. The NTI originally said the plan had to be in place within two years, but since then has agreed to three one-year extensions. Pledges of $50 million from the United States, up to 25 million euros from the European Union, $10 million apiece from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and $5 million from Nor-

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Countries Aim for Fuel Bank Endorsement

way have combined to meet the ﬁnancial goal, but the board has not endorsed the plan. In his speech in Vienna, Chu said of the $150 million, “[T]hese resources will be at risk if we do not reach a decision soon.” Several of the sources interviewed cited similar concerns that the governmental pledges, as well as the one from the NTI, might not remain available indeﬁnitely. In an Oct. 7 interview, Corey Hinderstein, the NTI’s vice president for international programs, declined to say whether the most recent one-year deadline extension would be the last. However, when the NTI receives an extension request from the IAEA, it has to assess the prospects for the fuel bank proposal, she said. If the prospects are seen as unlikely to improve, “then we have to say, ‘What are we waiting for?’” she said.

Improved Chances A year ago, the IAEA board endorsed a plan for Russia to establish an LEU reserve at the Angarsk site in Siberia. (See ACT, January/February 2010.) The plan garnered support from a sizable majority of the 35-member board, but eight countries (Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, and Venezuela) voted against the plan and three (India, Kenya, and

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Dean Calma/IAEA

Energy Secretary Steven Chu addresses the International Atomic Energy General Conference September 20 in Vienna.

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Changed Composition

Since the Angarsk vote, the composition of the board has changed, and Hinderstein and others suggested that the new makeup might be more amenable to the fuel bank. The European diplomat said the board transition has resulted in some “more friendly NAM” representation. As an example, he noted the departure of Egypt, which cast one of the eight dissenting votes, and the accession of Jordan. Another new member of the board is the UAE, which pledged money for the fuel bank. However, the European diplomat said he did not see the board realignment as a “major driving factor” in the decision to go ahead now. The U.S. ofﬁcial agreed, saying, “The impossibility of consensus is what really drove this.” The European diplomat also said the notion of consensus is “not completely realistic.” However, he said he expected to see a “large majority” of the board co-sponsor or otherwise support the resolution. The diplomat and the U.S. ofﬁcial said the resolution was likely to make full-scope safeguards a requirement for recipients of fuel

from the bank. Countries that accept full-scope safeguards allow IAEA inspections of all their nuclear facilities.

Amano’s Role In his brief reference to the fuel bank effort during his Sept. 20 remarks to the General Conference, IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said that although there were differences among member states, “there is a convergence of views that the issue needs to be discussed further.” He “encourage[d]” the states “to find suitable ways of dealing with this issue” and said the IAEA Secretariat “stands ready to provide any assistance required.” In the interviews, the officials and others said the statement reflected the contrast between Amano’s attitude

AFP/Getty Images

Turkey) abstained. Analysts noted that the dissenters included some of the developing world’s most influential countries. For most of its history, the IAEA board has made decisions by consensus, although it has varied from that pattern somewhat in recent years. Since the fuel bank proposal was first raised, members of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) and other developing countries have expressed concerns that participation in the fuel bank arrangement would impede their rights under Article IV of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which gives parties the right to “the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy” and says parties have an “inalienable right” to pursue nuclear energy programs as long as the programs are “in conformity with” the treaty’s nonproliferation restrictions. Supporters of the fuel bank have repeatedly said the proposal would not infringe on those rights; the board’s Angarsk resolution included language to that effect. However, Hinderstein said, “some of the no votes on Angarsk were not about the resolution, but about the process.” There was a perception among some of the opponents that the issue was “just put on the table” and that states were told just to say yes or no, she said. Russia had pressed for a vote, with the support of the United States, sources said. Countries supporting the resolution are using the time before the December meeting to engage in “real consultations,” Hinderstein said. The supporters have to answer “reasonable questions,” but are not going to be able sway opponents who have deep-seated objections to the basic concept of the fuel bank, she said. In an Oct. 27 interview, a U.S. official said supporters of the fuel bank will “listen to criticism” and “try to come up with a resolution that will demonstrate we have listened.” A European diplomat said on Oct. 25 he was not sure the more extensive consultations would really change any countries’ positions but that it was a “fair point” to ask for more time than was available on the Angarsk vote.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Yukiya Amano

toward the fuel bank and ElBaradei’s. ElBaradei actively supported the plan, but Amano has a more hands-off approach, the sources said. Amano “does not believe the time is ripe for such an idea” and “seems to be more interested in questions that have to do with the back end” of the nuclear fuel cycle, one source said. According to another source, the secretariat thinks the fuel bank would be a good idea and is willing to provide the necessary technical and legal assistance, but “the member states have to pick up the baton and run with it.” A third source chose a different metaphor, saying of Amano, “He’s on board, but he’s not driving the train.” —DANIEL HORNER

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UN Arms Data Mixed As Participation Falls

Table 1: International Arms Exports Reported to the UN Register of Conventional Arms 2007-2009 Major Weapons Systems

2007

2008

2009

Warships

Attack Helicopters

Combat Aircraft

219

222

223

Large-Caliber Artillery Systems

630

874

1,282

Battle Tanks

954

510

462

Armored Combat Vehicles

2,254

1,385

768

Missiles and Missile Launchers

24,423

4,838

9,548

TOTAL

28,577

7,913

12,351

2,089,986

1,480,790

1,242,411

Small Arms and Light Weapons

Source: Data derived from claimed exports in voluntary submissions to the UN Register of Conventional Arms by late September of each reporting year. no transfers in any of the seven categories of major weapons. Nearly 40 did so for 2007 and 32 for 2008. Such reports, which affirmatively state that there were no transfers, are seen as statements of support for the register. Some experts predicted that the 2009 failure of a group of governmental experts to recommend adding small arms and light weapons as an official eighth category would further erode participation in the register, especially among states that typically filed nil reports. Thus far, however, 30 states have filed such reports, only a small decrease compared to 2008. A larger decrease occurred in the number of states filing reports on imports of major weapons systems, from more than 40 in 2008 to 29 through September for 2009. Participation declined in all regions, including in the United Nations’ “Western European and Other” and “Eastern European” regional groups. The members of those groups are typically reliable participants in the register and are some of the world’s leading exporting states. Reduced participation by these countries may be particularly important because their reports often offer insight into trade with countries that do not report to the register. Canada, Cyprus, France, and Turkey,

which have been regular participants in past years, have not submitted information to the register this year. Among eastern European states, which at times trade in large volumes of Soviet-era or Soviet-design weapons, Croatia and the Czech Republic were absent after having ﬁled reports in 2009. The Philippines, which ranked second last year for total claimed small arms and light weapons exports, also did not submit a report. The register’s data do not provide a complete picture of global arms trade. Some countries do not submit reports; different countries have different criteria for reporting transfers; and there is no veriﬁcation provision. Nonetheless, the register is the primary international mechanism for states to detail their arms trade and is frequently discussed as a starting point for the scope of an international arms trade treaty (ATT) that may be negotiated as early as 2012. (See ACT, September 2010.) Whether to account for small arms and light weapons is also a key topic in the ATT debate and one with which register participants have grappled for years. Following a call made last year for views on whether the absence of small arms and light weapons as a main category of the register affects participation in and the relevance of the register, six

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

he number of countries submitting reports to the UN conventional arms registry declined for the third year in a row, according to data based on reports received by late September on transfers made in 2009. In part because of that trend, it is difficult to determine whether trade in conventional weapons also declined in 2009. After increasing to record levels in 2007 and dropping precipitously in 2008, the number of exports reported in one category, small arms and light weapons, fell modestly in 2009. Major weapons exports rose as a total number, but the figures are complicated by a large transfer of missiles designated for destruction. If those missiles are removed from the total, data compiled from the register would show a net decline for the year. A modest 2009 decline aligns with findings reported by other sources. A recent report from the Congressional Research Service said the conventional arms market shrank in 2009, and the 2010 yearbook produced by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) found the market to be relatively flat last year. (See ACT, October 2009.) Based on a 1991 agreement, the UN Register of Conventional Arms collects voluntary information on imports, exports, domestic production, and holdings of seven categories of major weapons systems. In 2003, countries agreed to request data on small arms and light weapons, but did not create an official category for the weapons. (See ACT, September 2009.) At least 100 countries submitted records for arms transfers each year from 1999 to 2006, but that number fell to 91 for 2007 and 80 in 2008. By Sept. 30 of this year, only 65 countries had reported calendar year 2009 transfers. States are invited to report to the register by May 31. Some reports come in after that, but most are in by the end of September. Some of the decrease over the past three years can be attributed to a reduction in the number of countries filing “nil” reports. For 2006, more than 60 countries filed such reports, which claim

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states have submitted opinions thus far. Colombia, Japan, Mauritius, Mexico, and Switzerland supported inclusion of the weapons as a main category or said its absence as a main category hurts the register. Singapore did not favor any changes to the status of the weapons. The topic is expected to be taken up again at the next meeting on the register by a group of governmental experts, tentatively scheduled for 2012.

Trends Mixed for Major Weapons

2009, accounting for the biggest single difference in the three-year period. Turkey, which did not file a report for 2009, had claimed the delivery of at least 1,000 missiles per year to the United Arab Emirates in the four previous years. Of those countries claiming missile exports, the United Kingdom’s transfer to Sweden for destruction accounted for more than half of the category’s total. Russia, which led the missile category in 2008 but fell to second behind the United Kingdom last year, claimed the export of 2,510 missiles. Most of those were man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), 1,800 of which Russia exported to Venezuela, with an additional 98 to Egypt. The United States has led an effort to control and recover MANPADS because of the acute threat they pose to civilian and military aircraft.

Alexey Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

A comparison of reports submitted to the UN by late September for each reporting year indicates that exports of major weapons systems dropped from 28,577 in 2007 to 7,913 in 2008. In 2009, exports of these weapons rose to 12,351, but 5,357 of that total were missiles the United Kingdom reported as transferred to Sweden for destruc-

tion. Removing those weapons from the total would show a net decline in 2009 for major weapons systems exports (see table 1). Most of the register’s seven major weapons categories saw a drop. Because a missile and a warship are each counted as one unit in the register despite the difference in size and capability, comparing overall numbers can be misleading. The seven major weapons categories in the register are tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, and missiles and missile launchers. Because missile and missile launcher exports are most numerous, ﬂuctuations in that category drive changes in the overall total of major weapons numbers. For example, Slovakia reported the export of 17,740 missiles in 2007, but said it had no missile exports in 2008 or

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (fourth from left) examines the construction of man-portable air defense systems at an arms production facility in Kolomna, outside Moscow, on November 18, 2009.

was Ukraine, delivering 26 armored combat vehicles. No countries claimed major weapons exports to Afghanistan. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq, both countries with major ongoing conﬂicts, participates in the register. China, a traditional supplier of lesssophisticated arms, especially to Africa, claimed more transfers for 2009 than it did for 2008. Beijing reported the export of 140 major weapons, comprised of 48 armored combat vehicles to Ghana, 21 to Namibia, and nine to the Republic of Congo; 15 combat aircraft to Nigeria, 11 to Pakistan, six to Venezuela, and two to Tanzania; and 16 missiles to Malaysia and 12 to Thailand. For 2008, China claimed the export of 20 armored com-

AFP/Getty Images

bat vehicles to Rwanda and six ﬁghter aircraft to Pakistan, numbers lower than its reports of 120 exported weapons in 2007 and 387 in 2006. Overall, 27 countries have ﬁled nonnil export reports for major weapons thus far in 2009, providing data on more than 70 recipient states. Those numbers are very similar to the ones at the same time last year for transfers made in 2008.

U.S. Still Top Small-Arms Buyer Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez holds a model of a helicopter during his visit to a helicopter plant in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on June 30, 2007.

is scheduled to visit this month. As with Russia, missiles led all categories for the United States, comprising 823 of 1,080 total major weapons exported. Washington noted the transfer of 214 missiles to Pakistan, an ally in U.S. anti-terrorism efforts and a traditional rival of India. Additional U.S. missiles and launchers were sent to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Japan, Poland, Singapore, and Turkey. The United States was second in overall exports of large-caliber artillery systems, a category of weapons trending upward over the past three years. In addition to exporting 115 such systems to Pakistan, Washington transferred 25 to Israel and 41 to Lebanon in 2009. Serbia led all countries with claimed exports of large-caliber artillery systems, sending 758 to Iraq last year. The only other country claiming exports to Iraq

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Matt Schroeder, an arms and MANPADS expert at the Federation of American Scientists, highlighted the Russia-to-Venezuela export as signiﬁcant because of the size and proliferation potential of the transfer. But he also praised Russia for taking its reporting obligations seriously. In recent years, the United States has expressed concern about Russian military ties with Venezuela. In 2009, Moscow claimed the transfer of 18 attack helicopters to Caracas, and Beijing reported sending six combat aircraft. Venezuela last ﬁled a report for transfers in 2002, claiming nil. In 2009, Russia continued its ongoing relationship with India, claiming the export of 80 tanks, 14 large-caliber artillery systems, six combat aircraft, and 282 missiles to New Delhi. The United States is seeking defense trade with India as well, which President Barack Obama

Although again not ﬁling a report on its small arms and light weapons transfers, the United States retained its position as the top recipient of exports of the weapons in a somewhat smaller global market in 2009. Overall, exports of small arms and light weapons declined, falling from 2,089,986 in 2007 to 1,480,790 in 2008 and 1,242,411 in 2009, according to the data in the reports. (See ACT, November 2007; October 2008.) Fifteen of 19 countries reporting nonzero and nonclassiﬁed exports of small arms and light weapons for 2009 indicated the United States as a recipient. Together, these states transferred 616,994 of the weapons, approximately 50 percent of the annual global total. In 2008 the United States received 63 percent of approximately 1.5 million small arms and light weapons exported and approximately 75 percent of 2.1 million in 2007. Italy, the largest exporter of such weapons for the second year in a row, reported transferring 473,518 small arms. Of that total, 310,618 went to the United States, and the remainder went to more than 75 other countries. Russia, the next high-

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Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

A riﬂe made by the Italian company Beretta is displayed on April 20, 2009, during the Exa 2009 arms show in Brescia, Italy.

est Italian recipient by volume, received 19,078 small arms. Chile, Libya, Mexico, Thailand, and Venezuela each imported more than 10,000 weapons from Italy, according to Rome’s report. All of Italy’s exports of such weapons came from the first two of six categories of small arms, consisting of revolvers and self-loading pistols, and rifles and carbines. Italy led all countries in exports of these two categories of small arms. The four additional small arms categories are assault rifles, submachine guns, light machine guns, and others. Light weapons, which accounted for slightly more than 3 percent of total exports claimed in 2009 by all countries, are defined in seven categories as heavy machine guns, handheld underbarrel and mounted grenade launchers, portable anti-tank guns, recoilless rifles, portable anti-tank missile launchers and rocket systems, mortars of calibers less than 75 millimeters, and others. Eastern European countries ranked

second through fourth in total claimed exports of small arms and light weapons in 2009. Serbia, ranked second, reported a total of 270,052 weapons transferred to more than 35 different countries. Serbia dominated exports in the light machine gun and heavy machine gun categories, with 146,730 of 158,328 and 18,504 of 20,555 total exports within each respective category. Belgrade reported transferring 92,263 weapons to Algeria and 35,000 light machine guns to Libya. Ukraine claimed the export of 175,718 small arms and light weapons. Romania, fourth with 119,753 total exports, was the leader in assault weapons transfers, accounting for 31,009 of 94,130 weapons in the category. The United Kingdom, which had been third the previous two years with 250,000 or more weapons exported, claimed only 60,703 small arms and light weapons exports in 2009, the ﬁfth-highest total. Washington remained London’s primary recipient,

accounting for 36,636 of the weapons. As in past years, submissions to the register did capture some small arms and light weapons transfers to Afghanistan and Iraq. Six countries together claimed the export of 31,687 such weapons to Afghanistan, with some designated for NATO and the International Security Assistance Force. That total is nearly twice the number reported in 2008 and comparable to the 2007 totals. Four countries claimed the transfer of 7,149 weapons to Iraq, a steep decline from nearly 19,000 in 2008 and 100,000 in 2007, possibly reﬂecting the general international drawdown of forces in the country. Croatia, the top exporter of small arms and light weapons in 2007 with more than 650,000 exported weapons claimed, did not ﬁle for 2009. The Philippines, ranked second in 2008 with nearly 300,000 small arms transferred, also did not report for 2009. Their absence may have contributed to the decline in 2009 totals.

Although ammunition is not included in the register’s scope, Albania reported the export of 60 million rounds in 2009 under the small arms “other” category. Whether to account for ammunition

in a future ATT remains an area of disagreement. Because of their scale and the lack of information on such exports in the submittals from other countries, Albania’s ammunition exports are not

included in the data analyzed here. Overall, exporting states claimed to transfer weapons to more than 140 countries in 2009, a slight increase over 2008. —JEFF ABRAMSON

U.S. Ofﬁcial Mulls Ending NSG Rule Revamp

f the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) does not agree soon on new guidelines for selling sensitive nuclear technology, there would be a good argument for dropping the effort, a senior Obama administration ofﬁcial said Oct. 18. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Gary Samore, the White House arms control coordinator, said, “I think that if we are not able to reach agreement, my guess is that we should probably decide that this is an effort that was just not going to be successful.” The NSG’s Consultative Group is scheduled to meet Nov. 1011 in Vienna. The NSG has been working since 2004 to revise its guidelines on exports relating to uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing. According to the public statement issued at the end of its plenary meeting this June in Christchurch, New Zealand, the group “agreed to continue considering ways to further strengthen guidelines dealing with the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technologies.” The current guidelines say that suppliers should “exercise

restraint” in making such transfers. As Samore described it, that criterion “was interpreted by everybody as ‘don’t sell it.’” In a February 2004 speech, President George W. Bush said the NSG “should refuse to sell enrichment and reprocessing equipment and technologies to any state that does not already possess full-scale, functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants.” Other NSG members, led by France, favored an approach based on adopting a list of speciﬁc criteria that countries would have to meet to be eligible for such exports. The NSG, which currently has 46 members, has not been able to agree on the criteria although the differences are now “down to a couple of words here and phrases there,” Samore said. Asked about the time frame for making decision to break off the talks, he said, “If we make progress in this next meeting, then we might want to stay at it a little bit longer.” But if the discussion “really looks like it’s stalemated,” he said, “I’m a big believer in not wasting effort on things that are not going

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Video capture/AAAS

Gary Samore, the White House arms control coordinator, shown above in a video capture, speaks at the American Association for the Advancement of Science October 18.

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to be successful.” If the countries cannot reach agreement on a new set of detailed criteria, “then I frankly think we should just set the effort aside,” he said. In late 2008, the NSG produced a “clean text” and appeared to be close to reaching agreement. (See ACT, December 2008.) When it failed to do so, the members of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized countries agreed at their 2009 summit meeting to adopt the 2008 NSG text as a national policy for a year. The G-8 extended that policy for another year at its meeting this June. All the members of the G-8—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—also belong to the NSG. In an October 27 interview, a European diplomat said G-8 adoption of the new guidelines “could be a temporary alternative” to the NSG but not a “100 percent alternative” because the G-8’s membership is so much smaller.

China-Pakistan Deal

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Another issue that NSG members are likely to discuss at the Vienna meeting, sources said, is the proposed sale of two Chinese reactors to Pakistan for its Chashma site. China provided little information on that issue at the Christchurch meeting. (See ACT, July/August 2010.) Since that meeting, China has ofﬁcially conﬁrmed its plan to sell the reactors. At her Sept. 21 press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said, “The Chashma Project III & IV mentioned in recent media reports are carried out according to the cooperative agreement in nuclear power signed by China and Pakistan in 2003,” according to a tran-

script posted on the ministry’s English-language Web site. She added, “China has already notified the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] of relevant information and asked for its safeguard and supervision.” NSG guidelines, which are nonbinding, do not allow the export of nuclear goods such as reactors and fuel to countries that do not accept IAEA safeguards on all their nuclear facilities. Pakistan does not have these so-called full-scope safeguards. When China joined the NSG in 2004, it had already built a power reactor at the Chashma site. It claimed at the time that, under NSG “grandfather” provisions, it was entitled to build a second one, on the grounds that the second project was covered in its existing agreement with Pakistan. (The first reactor is operating; the second is in the final stages of construction.) According to several accounts, the NSG agreed in 2004 that the second reactor would be allowable under the grandfather provision but that subsequent power reactor sales would not. In the weeks before the Christchurch meeting, the U.S. government said the sale of reactors beyond Chashma-1 and -2 would be “inconsistent with NSG guidelines and China’s commitments to the NSG.” (See ACT, June 2010.) The European diplomat said her government “tend[s] to think in a similar direction” but wanted to get more information on the “ins and outs of the deal,” including the Chinese explanation. Media reports last month quoted Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, as saying the United States had asked Pakistan for more information on the deal. —DANIEL HORNER

lies at the center of concerns surrounding its nuclear ambitions. Gas centrifuges are used to enrich uranium to low concentra-

smuggling network led by former Pakistani nuclear official Abdul Qadeer Khan. Called the P-1, the centrifuge design is known to be problematic. Iran has been developing more-advanced centrifuge designs based on the so-called P-2 machine, but to date has tested only small numbers of those centrifuges. Iran is also believed to be dependent on outside sources of critical materials, such as carbon fiber, for its advanced centrifuges. International sanctions prohibit the export to Iran of materials and technology that could be used in a gas centrifuge program. Heinonen told Haaretz that due to the technical challenges Iran is facing, it is not likely to have the capacity to produce HEU for weapons for another one to two years. Such hurdles do not pertain only to Iran’s enrichment program. Over the past several years, Iranian officials have justified their controversial enrichment program by describing an ambitious plan to build nuclear power reactors. However, Tehran does not appear capable of fulfilling such aims, particularly under international sanctions. In the latest iteration of Tehran’s nuclear power plans, parliamentary spokesman Kazem Jalali told reporters Oct. 13 that the Iranian parliament adopted legislation urging the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) to build up to 20 additional nuclear power plants by 2030 to produce about 20,000 megawatts of power. Those plans mirror intentions expressed by the shah of Iran during the 1970s for a plan to produce 20,000 megawatts. The plans were abandoned following Iran’s 1979 revolution. Although the United States was engaged in nuclear cooperation with Iran at that time, Washington suspected that the shah was seeking a capability that could be used for nuclear weapons and objected to Iran’s development of certain sensitive fuel-cycle technologies.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

tions of the fissile isotope uranium-235 for use in power reactors or to higher concentrations, which can be used in nuclear weapons. Tehran claims that its enrichment program is intended only to produce fuel for nuclear power reactors. Many countries, however, have charged that the real purpose is to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) for weapons. Heinonen’s assessment echoes that of U.S. administration officials who have asserted that Iran’s technical difficulties provide time to pursue a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Gary Samore, the White House arms control coordinator, said during a May 11 press briefing that because of technical hurdles with Iran’s enrichment program, “the nuclear clock is not ticking as quickly as some had feared.” These technical challenges also appear to be borne out in IAEA reports on Iran’s program. The latest such report, in September, indicates that Iran’s commercial-scale enrichment facility at Natanz currently houses about 8,800 centrifuges, but only about 3,700 are operating. (See ACT, October 2010.) In addition to Iran’s difficulty operating the centrifuges it has built, due to a lack of critical materials such as maraging steel, it likely faces an upper limit on the number of machines it can produce. Knowledgeable sources said in October that Iran likely only has enough materials for about 12,000 machines. The IAEA has previously estimated that Iran had enough components to manufacture about 10,000 machines. (See ACT, December 2008.) Iranian officials have said that the Natanz plant is intended ultimately to run about 50,000 centrifuges. The centrifuges Iran is currently operating are based on a 1970s-vintage Dutch design acquired through the nuclear

Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images

ran continues to face considerable technical difficulties with key aspects of its nuclear program, the former head of safeguards at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in October. Olli Heinonen, who was the deputy director-general for safeguards at the IAEA until August, said in an Oct. 22 interview with Haaretz that because of problems Iran is facing with its gas centrifuge uranium-enrichment plant, “they are losing materials…and so, with this defective equipment, they will have a hard time enriching the material to a level high enough to enable the production of nuclear weapons.” Deficiencies in the centrifuge operations have led to substantial amounts of wasted uranium hexafluoride gas, the feedstock for enrichment. At higher Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveils a new centrifuge design during enrichment levels, these deficiencies April 9 festivities in Tehran marking Iran’s fourth annual National Nuclear Day. become more severe, wasting larger Iran has experienced problems with its older centrifuge designs. mounts of material. Iran’s uranium-enrichment program

THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

Iran Nuclear Efforts Face Critical Limits

THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

leak in a pool in the middle of the reactor which was ﬁxed.” He added that correcting the problem will take about one month.

Talks Proposed for Mid-November Meanwhile, senior Iranian officials appeared to respond favorably last month to a proposal by six world powers to hold negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program in mid-November, potentially paving the way for the first such talks in more than a year. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) plus Germany have been involved in diplomatic efforts to address Iran’s nuclear program since 2006. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said during an Oct. 15 press conference in Brussels that he welcomed upcoming talks with the group, known as the P5+1. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has already proposed late October or early November as appropriate time for negotiations,” he said. On behalf of the P5+1, EU High Representative for Foreign

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

it with some proprietary rights or information needed to build the specialized fuel assemblies. Following years of delays, Iran’s Bushehr plant was completed last year, and the lengthy process of loading fuel for the reactor began in August. (See ACT, September 2010.) However, due to technical problems, the fuel loading has been delayed. AEOI Deputy Director Mohammad Iranian Foreign Minister Ahmadian told the Islamic Republic Manouchehr Mottaki News Agency Oct. 16 that “there are some minor problems including a small

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton (right) speaks during an October 14 press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Brussels.

Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton Oct. 14 proposed holding negotiations with Iran Nov. 15-17. The six countries are waiting for a formal response from Iran. Iranian ofﬁcials have said that Tehran still needs more details on the nature of the talks before formally responding. Iran’s state-run Press TV Oct. 20 quoted Tehran’s deputy nuclear negotiator, Abolfazl Zohrehvand, as saying that Iran received a letter from Ashton but that it “only addresses issues such as where, when and how long the talks should be and does not deal with more important issues, such as the framework, aim and direction of the talks.” Reuters reported Oct. 22, and diplomatic sources conﬁrmed, that a letter Ashton sent to Iran’s EU ambassador that same day re-invited Iran for talks and stated that “the main focus of the meeting would be on the question of the Iranian nuclear program, not excluding any other items pertinent to the discussion.” —PETER CRAIL

UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

In order to fuel its ambitious nuclear power program, Iran also would need access to sufficient amounts of uranium. Iran has two uranium mines located at Saghand and Bandar Abbas, but only the latter is operating. The Saghand mine contains low-grade ore, which is less economical to mine. In an Oct. 22 e-mail to Arms Control Today, Mark Fitzpatrick, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, said these reserves are “barely sufficient for one reactor,” let alone the larger numbers that Iran has cited as part of its nuclear power plans. He added that additional reserves may be found with extensive searching, “but it is highly unlikely that reserves would thus expand to anywhere near the amount required for self-sufficiency in uranium for the envisioned program.” UN sanctions adopted in June prohibit Iran from acquiring stakes in uranium mines abroad. Prior sanctions resolutions prohibit Iran from importing uranium. In October, Iranian officials announced that the country would intensify its search for uranium reserves and indicated that the government had allocated funds to begin uranium ore extraction at the Saghand mine. The Tehran Times quoted AEOI Director Ali Akbar Salehi Oct. 21 as stating, “We have expanded our exploration activities…and have focused on places where there are hopes of greater uranium reserves” in order to become self-sufficient to fuel Iran’s first nuclear reactor at Bushehr. Russia, however, has agreed to provide fuel for the Bushehr reactor, which it constructed, for at least the next 10 years. According to Russian diplomats, Moscow’s state-run nuclear conglomerate Rosatom has not provided Iran with the proprietary information needed to manufacture the reactor fuel. Iran has recently proposed a joint venture with Russia for nuclear fuel production, an arrangement that might provide

ASIA AND AUSTRALIA

Work at North Korea Reactor Site Unclear

UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

orth Korea is engaged in new construction work near its dormant nuclear reactor, the South Korean Defense Ministry said Oct. 5, raising concerns that Pyongyang is preparing to reconstitute the plant used to produce plutonium for its nuclear weapons. Yet, experts said that the purpose of the construction work seen via satellite photos is not clear and does not appear consistent with efforts to rebuild critical reactor structures. “North Korea is restoring nuclear facilities and continuing maintenance activities at Yongbyon,” a ministry spokesman said, citing Defense Minister Kim Tae-young’s comments to parliament the day before. The Yongbyon nuclear complex houses several facilities involved in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, including a nuclear reactor to produce plutonium for weapons and a reprocessing facility to

North Korean Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Pak Gil Yon addresses the UN General Assembly September 29.

separate that plutonium from the reactor’s spent fuel.

Yongbyon reactor left over from 1994, when the fuel fabrication facility last operated. It also has about 12,000 bare fuel rods for a larger reactor whose construction was halted that same year under a nuclear freeze agreement with the United States. A large portion of those fuel rods would need to be modiﬁed and clad in magnesium alloy before they can be used in the Yongbyon reactor. “This may take up to six months,” Hecker said, “in which time [North Korea] could easily reconstruct the cooling tower.” The Yongbyon reactor is North Korea’s sole source of plutonium for weapons, leaving its plutonium stockpile effectively capped until it is restarted. Pyongyang is believed to possess enough plutonium for four to 12 weapons. North Korea also is believed to be pursuing a uranium-enrichment program, which can provide highly enriched uranium for weapons. After years of denial, Pyongyang ﬁrst admitted to carrying out work on uranium enrichment last year. An Oct. 8 ISIS report assesses that Pyongyang has escalated this work, moving beyond “laboratory-scale work” to a possible pilot plant (see p. 7). Pyongyang has recently repeated claims that it would strengthen its nuclear deterrent. Deputy Foreign Minister Pak Gil Yon told the UN General Assembly Sept. 29, “As long as U.S. nuclear aircraft carriers sail in the seas around our country, our nuclear deterrent can never be abandoned, but should be strengthened further.” In an annual meeting of U.S. and South Korean defense ministers Oct. 8, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told reporters that, in response to nuclear and conventional-weapons threats from North Korea, Washington is “committed to providing extended deterrence using the full range of American military might, from our nuclear umbrella to conventional strike and ballistic-missile defense.” A joint communiqué issued by the two countries the same day said that they agreed to institutionalize the Extended Deterrence Policy Committee to enhance the effectiveness of the extended deterrence relationship. —PETER CRAIL

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

In 2007, North Korea disabled three critical nuclear facilities at the complex as part of a February 2007 six-party agreement that included China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. (See ACT, March 2007.) Pyongyang withdrew from those talks in April 2009 and subsequently reconstituted its reprocessing facility to separate an estimated bomb’s worth of additional plutonium. (See ACT, May 2009.) Seoul’s claim appears consistent with a Sept. 30 analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which said that commercially available satellite imagery showed construction at the former site of the Yongbyon reactor’s cooling tower. The reactor’s cooling tower was destroyed in June 2008 as part of the six-party talks. It would have to be rebuilt before the reactor could operate again unless Pyongyang decided to construct an alternative cooling system or run the reactor at far lower levels. The ISIS analysis said, however, that “there is no indication in the imagery that North Korea is rebuilding its cooling tower.” The report notes that North Korea has constructed two buildings of unknown purpose instead and identiﬁes construction or excavation equipment visible in the satellite photos. Former Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Siegfried Hecker, who has visited the Yongbyon complex on several occasions, said in an Oct. 20 e-mail to Arms Control Today that there is no need to construct buildings to replace the cooling tower. “They must be doing something else,” he said. Before North Korea can operate its reactor once again, it also must restore its secondary cooling loop, which was severed as part of the 2007 agreement, and prepare additional reactor fuel. Hecker said that restoring the cooling loop only requires replacing or rejoining the piping system, which “could be done in days to a week.” A more time-consuming step is the preparation of fresh fuel for the reactor. North Korea still has about 2,000 fuel rods for the

THE UNITED STATES AND THE AMERICAS ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

n its third internal reshuffling in a dozen years, the Department of State has reorganized its bureaus charged with addressing threats presented by weapons of mass destruction. The revamping is an effort to clarify responsibilities and to bring arms control, verification, and compliance into a single bureau, the department said in an Oct. 1 press release. Under the new arrangement, the Bureau of Verification, Compliance and Implementation (VCI) was renamed the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance (AVC). In addition, a number of offices in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation (ISN) were moved into the AVC. As a result of the shift, the AVC assumed principal responsibility for multilateral arms control policy, including representing the United States at the Conference on Disarmament and the UN General Assembly. The AVC also now has the lead role within the State Department on missile defense, space policy, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and efforts to conclude a fissile material cutoff treaty. Meanwhile, the ISN will remain responsible for the State Department’s efforts “to ensure the security, and prevent the proliferation and acquisition, of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems; the materials, equipment, and technology needed to build them; and other destabilizing conventional military capabilities,” according to the press release. The ISN will continue to oversee the Biological Weapons Convention, the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and nuclear material controls. The existing Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, the State Department’s principal link to the Department of Defense, will remain unchanged, covering subjects including defense trade, arms export controls, and conventional weapons issues such as the Mine Ban Treaty and a prospective arms trade treaty.

Explaining the rationale behind the change, a State Department spokesman told Arms Control Today in an Oct. 13 e-mail that some arms control and verification functions were moved into the VCI in 2005, including strategic arms control and European security agreements. This reorganization, he said, would “continue with the organizational unification of arms control, verification, and compliance policy in a single bureau.” By bringing these missions together, the State Department will be able to ensure that verification and compliance regimes will be built into arms control agreements from the beginning, the press release said. The spokesman added that fewer than 35 employees were affected by the change, out of a pre-reorganization total of approximately 225 in the ISN and 100 in the VCI. This is the third reorganization of the United States’ arms control and nonproliferation machinery to occur since 1997-1999, when the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) was merged into the State Department during the Clinton administration. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee at the time, demanded ACDA’s dissolution in exchange for allowing a Senate vote on advice and consent for the Chemical Weapons Convention. (See ACT, April 1997.) ACDA’s merger into the State Department led to the creation of the position of undersecretary for arms control and international security in 1999. Two new bureaus, one for arms control and one for nonproliferation, were established under the undersecretary’s leadership. In addition, the Bureau of PoliticalMilitary Affairs was folded into the newly created directorate. The following year, a fourth bureau, the Bureau of Verification and Compliance, was added by congressional statute, restoring a function previously performed by a separate ACDA bureau. In 2005 the Bush administration carried out a second restruc-

Department of State

State Dept. Restructures Arms Control Bureaus

Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg addresses State Department employees at the new Bureau of Arms Control, Veriﬁcation and Compliance October 1. Rose Gottemoeller, the head of the bureau, is at right.

turing. The arms control and nonproliferation bureaus were merged into the current ISN bureau. In addition, the verification and compliance bureau was expanded to include implementation. (See ACT, October 2005.) According to a State Department document explaining the Bush-era changes, the pre-2005 structure reflected “a time when our nation concentrated on negotiating strategic arms control agreements, often over the course of many years, and focused almost exclusively on the Soviet Union as the greatest threat to our security.” Instead, the State Department argued at the time, “[w]e must change the focus of our diplomacy by concentrating the efforts of the many professionals in these bureaus on preventing the spread of WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and missile capabilities and on protecting against WMD threats from hostile states and terrorists.” A report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2009 strongly criticized the Bush-era changes. According to the GAO, the State Department’s “approach to the reorganization was unsystematic,” and the department “did not clearly define the objectives and lacked metrics to assess them.” The report said the department followed few of the practices that the GAO had identified as essential for organizational transformations and mergers. Also, the State Department could not demon-

strate that its actions had met its own goals, the GAO said. This February, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote an open letter to the directorate’s employees in which she announced that the department would pursue a “focused reorganization” of the VCI and the ISN. Ellen O. Tauscher, the undersecretary for arms control and international security, was charged with overseeing the transition, which culminated in October’s reorganization. Clinton’s proposal initially drew criticism from Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee. Lugar opposed the idea of combining the arms control and veriﬁcation functions within a single bureau, saying in a letter to Clinton that he would “support only those [changes] that do not continue to blur the line between ofﬁcials who negotiate agreements and those who verify them.” A “wall of separation” is necessary “to insure the credibility of treaties and agreements negotiated and presented to the Senate for advice and consent,” he said. Congress received the required notice of the reorganization plan Aug. 11, the State Department spokesman said. The 15-day congressional review period expired Aug. 26 without action from Congress, allowing the proposal to proceed, he added. —ROBERT GOLAN-VILELLA

GAO Finds Problems in Tritium Production

in Watts Bar-1, a nuclear power reactor owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal corporation. Tritium is then extracted from the TPBARs in a facility at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. TPBARs were ﬁrst irradiated at Watts Bar in 2003. The technical problem that is the focus of the GAO report is tritium “permeation” from the TPBARs into reactor coolant water at a rate that is higher than expected. The NNSA has noted the problem in budget documents, but in an interview last year, the manager of the NNSA’s Savannah River Site ofﬁce said the main issue was the potential impact on reactor operation rather than on tritium production. (See ACT, June 2009.) Because regulations for nuclear power reactors set a ceiling on the amount of tritium that can be released into the coolant, the TVA has limited the number of TPBARs loaded into Watts Bar-1, the GAO said. As the GAO noted, the Energy Department’s agreement with the TVA allows it to use two additional TVA reactors, Sequoyah-1 and -2, for tritium production.

However, as the NNSA put it in a letter to GAO commenting on a draft of the report, “Both TVA and NNSA would experience programmatic and operational beneﬁts from keeping tritium production in one reactor, and will be working to achieve this goal. Nevertheless, NNSA does have this backup plan that can meet mission requirements with existing technologies and assets.” The GAO said, “While we are encouraged that NNSA and TVA are working together to increase the number of TPBARs being irradiated, continued uncertainty about NNSA’s and TVA’s ability to irradiate additional TPBARs in a single reactor while not exceeding limits on the amount of tritium released into the environment raises doubts about the program’s ability to provide a reliable supply and predictable quantities of tritium over time.” From the beginning of the program, some tritium permeation had been expected, NNSA spokeswoman Jennifer Wagner said in an Oct. 29 e-mail to Arms Control Today. The higher-than-expected permeation was initially observed in the summer of 2004, she said. —DANIEL HORNER

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

echnical problems have prevented the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from producing as much tritium as it planned, the Government Accountability Ofﬁce (GAO) said in a report released last month. Although the NNSA currently is meeting the tritium requirements for the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, “its ability to do so in the future is in doubt,” said the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress. Tritium is a radioactive gas used to boost the explosive power of nuclear weapons. Because it decays at a rate of 5.5 percent a year, supplies of it have to be replenished periodically from either retired weapons or new production. According to the GAO, “Although the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile is decreasing, these reductions are unlikely to result in a signiﬁcant decrease of tritium requirements and will not eliminate the need for a reliable source of new tritium.” The tritium for the U.S. arsenal is being produced by irradiating special fuel rods, known as Tritium-Producing Burnable Absorber Rods (TPBARs),

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Reviewed by Bennett Ramberg

BOOK REVIEW:

Wrestling With Nuclear Opacity

srael is the most curious of nucleararmed states today. It remains the only member of the exclusive club that has never acknowledged or given evidence of its arsenal while its adversaries call for its nuclear disarmament. Israel’s repeated response: “Israel will

By Avner Cohen Columbia University Press, 2010, 416 pp.

The Worst-Kept Secret is a passionate indictment of what the author contends is Israel’s anti-democratic coddling of an all-too-secret nuclear enterprise. Unlike the United States, which subjects its weapons research, development, and deployment activities to annual legislative budget review, periodic nuclear doctrinal assessment, and excruciating Senate scrutiny in the nuclear arms control treaty ratiﬁcation process, Israel does nothing of the sort. Cohen argues that Israel is long overdue to modify what he calls its nuclear strategy of amimut (Hebrew for “opacity” or “ambiguity”). He contends that amimut’s institutionalization of secrecy—“a policy that was credible enough to generate effects of deterrence but opaque enough to maintain political distance, even deniability”—although appropriate for an earlier era, has become “anachronistic and awkward because Israel’s nuclear status is no longer ambiguous.” He calls for greater willingness, appropriate for a mature democracy, to reconsider behavior that is “parochial” and “strange and inexcusable.” However, by hedging on what the lifting of amimut would entail, the book indicates that Cohen himself is conﬂ icted.

Concerned about pushback from friends and foes, Israel shrouded its nuclear enterprise from the earliest days. Israel and the Bomb reveals that, in May 1963, Prime Minister David BenGurion, the father of the weapons program, attempted to pull the wool over the eyes of a skeptical President John F. Kennedy, who was determined to halt Israel’s nuclear quest. Ben-Gurion wrote, “In our conversations in 1961 I explained to you that we were establishing nuclear training and reactor in Dimona with French assistance. This assistance has been given on condition that the reactor will be devoted exclusively to peaceful purposes. I regard this condition as absolutely binding.” Kennedy remained unconvinced and continued to press the Israelis on the program until his death. Cohen reports that that the Johnson administration pursued “protracted” efforts to push Israel to sign the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to no avail, leaving it to President Richard Nixon to push forward. Providing important new information, The WorstKept Secret reveals that, in July 1969, the new president’s senior staff struggled to craft a policy that would allow Israel

Bennett Ramberg is a foreign policy writer and consultant based in Los Angeles. He served in the Department of State in the George H.W. Bush administration.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

not be the fi rst nation to introduce nuclear weapons into the region.” No one believes the refrain, but no one can quite get a handle on the extent of Israel’s nuclear weapons program. According to figures compiled by Cohen, estimates of the Israeli stockpile have ranged from 60 to more than 400 bombs. It is nearly impossible to make any accurate calculation of Israel’s plutonium stocks and resulting bomb making absent knowledge of the Dimona reactor’s power generation and operational time.1 No source outside Israel has the information, not even the “experts.” Israel has done a remarkable job of keeping its nuclear enterprise under wraps. While some debate Israel’s weapons numbers, others attempt to bring context to the speculation. Certainly, no one has done a better job than Avner Cohen. His 1998 book, Israel and the Bomb, is a masterful study of the personalities and decisions that made Israel a nuclear-armed nation. Cohen’s new book, The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain With the Bomb, represents a far different treatment. Although it updates the earlier work with significant new fi ndings about how the Nixon administration removed itself as an obstacle to Israel’s nuclear development, the book’s focus lies elsewhere.

The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain With the Bomb

latitude to continue weapons-related research while preserving NPT integrity. The consensus settled on three minimal objectives: NPT ratiﬁcation, an Israeli written pledge not to be the ﬁrst country to introduce nuclear weapons

nuclear caution and has refused to make a clear-cut choice of one or the other.” Through the years, Israel largely has stuck to the bargain. It continues public nuclear silence. It has not explosively tested its arsenal, although suspicions

stretch the understanding, albeit modestly. Its acknowledged purchase of German-manufactured submarines capable of launching nuclear-armed cruise missiles translated to a May 2010 report in London’s Sunday Times that it had

Cohen’s concern lies with Israel’s nuclear self-censorship and the implications for

into the region, and acquiescence to the principle that “possession” meant “introduction.” As in the Kennedy administration, the denial of military aircraft exports appealed to Nixon administration officials as leverage to move Israel. However, Nixon himself never bought into the plan. What Nixon decided instead marked a dramatic change in U.S. policy: an acceptance of Israel as a nuclear-weapon state. In a critical September 26, 1969, White House meeting, Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir came to an understanding that the United States would turn a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear effort, end U.S. inspections of Dimona, 2 and not press Israel to join the NPT as long as it abstained from declaring, publicizing, or testing the arsenal. Cohen reveals that national security adviser Henry Kissinger and Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, memorialized the understanding in writing. Neither that document nor meeting notes authored by Nixon or Meir have ever come to public light. Neither have Nixon’s motives. Some speculate U.S. domestic politics played a role. Cohen suggests that the Nixon Doctrine, the president’s 1969 call for regional allies to strengthen themselves militarily to promote Washington’s interests, may be more telling. For four decades, the Nixon-Meir understanding has guided U.S. presidents as Israel settled into what Cohen calls its “bargain with the bomb,” namely “enough credible evidence to deter enemies but sufficient ambiguity and lack of acknowledgment to allow friends to look the other way.” Israel sought “to enjoy the benefits of nuclear resolve and

persist that it may have exploded a device over the Indian Ocean off South Africa in 1979. Remarkably, even in the most dire circumstance, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel resisted issuing threats against Egypt or Syria as their armies threatened Israel. Indeed, Cohen reports that the war cabinet never seriously considered nuclear use although he and others write that Israel’s placement of its nuclear-capable Jericho missiles on alert in response to a state of alert of Soviet SCUD missiles in Egypt sufﬁced to scare the United States to airlift much-needed conventional munitions to Israel to dampen fears of nuclear use. In recent years, Israel has begun to

placed elements of the ﬂeet off the coast of Iran. Such moves constitute a modest revelation of the nuclear threat, which might be called “opacity plus.”3 However muted this nuclear saber rattling, Cohen’s concern lies with Israel’s nuclear self-censorship and the implications for Israeli democracy and policy. Given the secrecy that shrouds the program, Cohen clears the institutional underbrush to reveal new but limited information about the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), the organ responsible for nuclear research and development, as “probably Israel’s most secretive government agency”; the Ofﬁce of Security for the Israeli Defense Establishment, the most secret department in

Archives Department, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Israeli democracy and policy.

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir meets with U.S. President Richard Nixon at the White House on September 25, 1969. In a meeting the next day, the two leaders reached an understanding on Israel’s nuclear program.

Books OF NOTE Arming Without Aiming: India’s Military Modernization Stephen P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta, Brookings Institution Press, 2010, 223 pp.

his informative, concise book describes a rising India’s attempts at defense modernization. India has enjoyed rapid economic growth, but according to the authors, an unwieldy military acquisitions process and an indifferent governing class threaten to hamstring modernization efforts. The country’s armed forces have been expanding as New Delhi has assumed a more assertive role in its volatile region and international affairs generally and as it considers potential threats from its two nuclear-armed neighbors, China and Pakistan. Given this increased assertiveness and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the traditional military patron from which New Delhi received very favorable terms of trade, the country has been looking for new sources of arms. India has long preferred to develop military technologies indigenously, but has largely failed to do so, and it has been expanding defense acquisitions from countries such as Israel and the United States. Cohen and Dasgupta emphasize India’s “strategic restraint,” a long-running Indian tendency that has led the country to avoid the use of force as a policy instrument and has inﬂuenced the course of its military modernization. They also highlight India’s historical preference for ironclad civilian authority over the military, even at the cost of military preparedness. Arming Without Aiming contains brief chapters on nuclear weapons and police modernization, but focuses primarily on the army, navy, and air force. It concludes with recommendations to guide U.S. policy toward India’s military and nuclear arsenal. The book is an excellent resource for those already familiar with Indian and South Asian strategic issues. —ERIC AUNER

The Missile Defense Systems of George W. Bush: A Critical Assessment Richard Dean Burns, Praeger, 2010, 198 pp.

espite what the title suggests, Richard Dean Burns, emeritus professor of history at California State University, does not limit the scope of his book to the Bush administration. He critiques the history of U.S. attempts to construct ballistic missile defense systems, tracing U.S. missile defense policy from the Eisenhower administration to the present. Burns shows how “overblown” reports, such as those from Team B in 1976 and the Rumsfeld Commission in 1998, that exaggerate the danger posed by ballistic missiles have strengthened a belief over the years that missile defense is the solution. At its core, however, Missile Defense Systems is a narrative of how “political demands for deployment” of these systems have led to the entrenchment of missile defense in U.S. strategic thinking. Burns concludes that missile defense has become embedded in the U.S. military-industrial complex for two reasons: Political considerations have become paramount when discussing missile defense policy, and Congress has not seriously reviewed the costs and capability of these systems. His book is a useful primer on the antecedents of the current debate over the value of U.S. missile defense and an excellent companion piece to Victoria Samson’s American Missile Defense. (See ACT, June 2010). Although Samson examines the technical aspects of U.S. ballistic missile defense systems, Burns focuses on the policy aspect of missile defense. —MATT SUGRUE

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

the Ministry of Defense, responsible for protecting the atomic secrets; and the Office of the Military Censor (Censora) that suppresses public discussion. Cohen notes that the Knesset never brings up the nuclear program for discussion or review. The prime minister exercises ultimate nuclear responsibility, including the appointment of senior nuclear management; but nowhere does the government reveal lines of authority, command and control, nuclear use doctrine, or safeguards to prevent unauthorized use or diversion of weapons or material. Cohen is impassioned in his condemnation of the Israeli government’s “deliberate and continued refusal to allow discussion of the subject”: “the bargain with the bomb is at odds with its commitment to democratic norms”; “total amimut is an insult to Israel’s democracy”; “Israel is probably the nuclear democracies’ most extreme case of nondemocratic policymaking”; “Israel’s bargain with the bomb was born and cultivated in an undemocratic, elitist, guardianship ethos dominated by secrecy.” He concludes that “there is a growing sentiment that the old bargain, centered on amimut, has become anachronistic and awkward.” He says amimut reflects a conservative defensive mind-set—”the world is against us”—that has changed little over time. In addition to being undemocratic, the strategy is dangerous, Cohen says. It excludes vital checks and balances. It risks groupthink. It fails to make use of experts outside government. It raises the possibility of nuclear mistakes for a country that has had its share of mistakes in other arenas, such as the 1973 Yom Kippur War and 2006 Lebanon war. However, when Cohen translates his passion into policy, fault lines emerge and boldness gives way to timidity, generality or, perhaps better put, reality. Cohen finds that wholesale democratization of the nuclear enterprise may not be justified, at least not now as Israel confronts Iran’s nuclear rise. He notes, “As long as Israelis continue to view themselves living under a state of siege, they will not be interested in reforming the bargain, they believe, gives them that existential security.” Still he pushes the argument for nuclear transparency, at least incrementally. Legislation would define “the legal

Getty Images

ARMS CONTROL TODAY November 2010

Estimates of the amount of plutonium Israel has produced at its Dimona site, pictured above in an undated photo, vary widely.

status of the IAEC as the government’s nuclear agency, its overall mission, authority, subordination, oversight, and so on.” It would specify “the authority of the Prime Minister over nuclear affairs…supervision principles through the Knesset; issues of safety in the IAEC facilities; and more.” Having laid out the principles, Cohen qualiﬁes his passionate call for democratization when he writes, “[S]uch legislation need not require a formal end to amimut. If the state of Israel were not politically ready to move beyond the current boundaries of amimut, no act of legislation could do so.” Indeed, not even the United States’ Atomic Energy Act, which Cohen cites as a model, allows total transparency. True, U.S. institutions reveal much, but the government uses an elastic “no unreasonable risk” criterion to declassify even “formerly restricted data.” Cohen also hedges on liberalization of Censora’s monitoring. He would not criminalize publication unless it “with near certainty would harm the national interest.” No doubt such language would be a gold mine for dueling lawyers.

More to the point, Cohen’s argument butts against his acknowledgment that amimut has not harmed Israel. In fact, he concedes the beneﬁts: existential deterrence, freedom of nuclear development, preservation of the United States as a tacit partner, and no NPT constraint. This prompts the question, if the system is not broken, why ﬁx it? Cohen concedes that amimut “allows Israel to live in the best of all possible worlds by having the bomb but without having to deal with many of the negative consequences that such possession entails.” Israel’s policy “is at odds with… emerging international proliferation norms,” Cohen argues. Yet, that critique does not trump the nuclear insurance that amimut provides. Indeed, Israel’s latent nuclear capacity may have tempered regional proliferation and may continue to do so. True, over many years, several of Israel’s neighbors have attempted to acquire the bomb despite amimut: Iraq, Libya, and Syria tried, and Iran continues. However, the lifting of amimut arguably would have inspired more rapid devel-

opment and encouraged others. Cohen is correct that amimut challenges Israel’s democratic institutions and nuclear oversight. On balance, however, given the compelling risks posed by nuclear revelation, the limited evidence of harm, and the authority of the elected prime minister over the nuclear enterprise, it appears that amimut remains prudent. That said, The Worst-Kept Secret provides a laudable effort to contest this conventional wisdom and to stir much-needed debate, particularly in Israel. ACT ENDNOTES 1. See Bennett Ramberg, “Should Israel Close Dimona? The Radiological Consequences of a Military Strike on Israel’s Plutonium-Production Reactor,” Arms Control Today, May 2008. 2. For a history of U.S. inspections of Dimona, see Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), ch. 10. 3. For elaboration of the concept of “opacity plus,” see Bennett Ramberg, “The Nowhere Bomb: Should Israel Come Out of the Nuclear Closet?” New Republic, September 2, 2010, pp. 6-8.

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THE THIRD ANNUAL NUCLEAR DETERRENCE SUMMIT Strengthening U.S. Capabilities to Prevent the Spread and Use of Nuclear Weapons February 15-18, 2011 Sheraton Crystal City Hotel Arlington, Virginia

This year’s Summit will address: — Sustainability of Nuclear Deterrence and the U.S. Nuclear Umbrella in the 21st Century; — Modernization and Infrastructure Projects Necessary to Sustain a Credible U.S. Nuclear Umbrella; — The Fiscal Year 2012 Budget and Long-term Funding Challenges Involved in Maintaining the Nation’s Nuclear Deterrent; — Putting in Place Management Contracts for Critical Sites Within the U.S. Weapons Complex—Y-12/Pantex, Sandia National Laboratories—and Meeting NNSA Construction Needs; — The Path Forward for Implementing the New START Treaty; — Challenges to Certifying U.S.-Russian Nuclear Weapons Stockpiles Within the Framework of the START Treaty; — Broadening the Framework for Nuclear Arms Agreements; — Cybersecurity Needs to Ensure the Viability of a Nuclear Deterrent; — Progress Toward Putting in Place the International Framework to Secure Vulnerable Nuclear Materials Stocks by 2013; and — The Critical Path Forward for the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Laboratories.

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