Nuclear Weapons Counterproliferation

The National Defense University recently hosted a major symposium to address the challenges to U.S. national security and international stability posed by the spread of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and missiles as a means of delivery. The need to examine such issues is clear. Perhaps no problem facing civilian and military decision makers today is as urgent and important as the effort to control the proliferation of such weapons. Put simply, WMD proliferation represents one of the most complex and fundamental threats to security today. Attended by many of the premier experts in the field, the NDU Symposium explored a broad spectrum of issues ranging from the incentives and disincentives for proliferation to non- and counterproliferation policies and programs. The panelists discussed such critical issues as how effectively present controls to prevent proliferation are working and how to protect against proliferation when it occurs. Most impressively, the participants ventured to identify alternative perspectives and approaches that may contribute to meeting the common challenges. All this unfolds in the pages that follow. It is a search for wisdom, for, as Cicero said twenty centuries ago, "Weapons are of little use on the field of battle if there is no wise counsel at home." Ervin J. Rokke Lieutenant General, USAF President, National Defense University

Contents: the defense counter-proliferation initiative; the spread of weapons of mass destruction; responding to radical proliferators; history's lessons for preemptive counter-proliferation decisions (preventing Nazi A-Bombs; bombardment of Tokyo's nuclear reactor; Israel's Osirak attack; India thwarts Israeli destruction of Pakistan's Islamic BombÓ; Iraq destroys Iran's Bushehr Reactor; lessons of the Gulf War; the missile crisis: an air strike deferred); dealing with a potential Nuclear HitlerÓ; the proliferation challenge of North Korea.

This book proposes a new framework for achieving global nuclear security in the 21st century. Building on recent developments, such as the remarkable new capabilities of nuclear forensics, and legal and institutional evolution that can be made a turning point for counterproliferation capacity, it sets forth the critical basis to achieve profound improvement of nuclear security worldwide.

Examining counterproliferation as a global phenomenon, the authors use an in-depth analysis of the Counterproliferation Initiative to develop a theoretical model of counterproliferation for the 21st century. Arguing that existing counterproliferation policy is the product of bureaucratic competition, the authors propose several modifications of existing policy. In the second half of the book, they use four case studies (Cuban Missile Crisis, Persian Gulf War, Osirak Reactor Raid, and Sudan) to identify factors that might contribute to an effective counterproliferation strategy. More specifically, the authors explore the relationship between the strength of an intelligence-gathering apparatus and the successful or unsuccessful elimination of weapons of mass destruction. The study concludes with observations and limited predictions regarding the future of counterproliferation.

Sweeping changes are occurring in the international system, presenting the United States with both opportunities and challenges. The East-West strategic rivalry that dominated the global security environment for over forty years has been fundamentally and, in a number of critical ways, irreversibly altered. Yet the world continues to be unpredictable and dangerous. Relations with Russia and China have improved dramatically in the last ten years but remain uncertain. Both states continue to emphasize and modernize their nuclear arsenals. In other regions of vital interest to the United States, potential adversaries increasingly have at their disposal advanced conventional and unconventional capabilities, as well as weapons of mass destruction and the means for their delivery. Together, these and other factors, such as the ongoing revolution in military technology, have engendered major adjustments in U.S. national security policy and in the strategy and forces that support U.S. security interests. A series of U.S. government analyses, including the Nuclear Posture Review and the Quadrennial Defense Review, has guided the restructuring of U.S. conventional forces and provided the basis for the late 1997 Presidential Decision Directive on nuclear weapons policy. Further analyses and adjustments will certainly follow. As a contribution to this dynamic process, this report assesses the rationale and requirements for U.S. nuclear weapons, and the infrastructure and people that are critical to their sustainment, in the current and future security environment. By so doing, the report is intended to promote greater understanding of the issues and the measures that will be necessary to sustain deterrence in an uncertain future. The American public and its leadership in both the Executive and Legislative branches must remain informed, involved, and supportive. Absent concerted and continuing high-level attention to the policies and programs supporting its nuclear forces, 7.

Since the advent of the nuclear era in 1945, Americans and others have been debating whether or how it might be possible to prevent the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD). As each new proliferation challenge has emerged, debate about the shortcomings of the various policy tools for coping with proliferation has intensified. These debates have grown only more intense in the last ten to fifteen years. Despite such debates, American presidents have steered a fairly consistent course promoting nonproliferation, innovating along the way, while also coping with its periodic failures. The end of the Cold War seemed to make new things possible for nonproliferation, with the promise of even more cooperation between East and West on specific proliferation challenges. And the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91 seemed to make new things necessary, as the United States faced the first regional war under the shadow of weapons of mass destruction. First President George H.W. Bush and then President William Clinton committed the federal government to significant political efforts to strengthen the tools of nonproliferation policy.

The United States faces a small number of rogue states that either have or are working to acquire weapons of mass destruction. These NASTIs, or NBC-Arming Sponsors of Terrorism and Intervention, include such states as North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria. U.S. nonproliferation programs and policies have helped to keep this number small, but U.S. and allied counterproliferation programs are essential to reduce the danger. It is up to deterrence, active defenses, passive defenses, decontamination, and counterforce to turn enemy weapons of mass destruction into instruments of limited destructive effect. Warfighters will also have to adopt a different strategy and concept of operations in fighting an adversary that is so heavily armed. This strategy will feature a combination of deception, dispersion, mobility and maneuver, diffused logistics, remote engagement, missile defense bubbles, non-combatant evacuation operations, and large area decontamination. It will also involve upgrades to NBC passive defense measures and equipment, as well as a counterforce capability that can find and destroy a variety of adversary targets, including mobile launchers and deeply buried and hardened underground structures.