Preventing Catastrophe: The Use and Misuse of Intelligence in Efforts to Halt the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction - Hardcover

Hansen, Keith A.; Graham Jr., Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804763607 ISBN 13: 9780804763608

Publisher: Stanford Security Studies, 2009

Synopsis

Preventing Catastrophe is written by two authors who are experienced "Washington hands" and who understand the interplay between intelligence and policymaking. Both have been personally involved, in the United States and overseas, in pursuing national and international measures to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Their extensive experience is evident in this book, which puts the Iraqi WMD issue in proper perspective, explains the challenge of monitoring small clandestine programs, and explains how the effort to prevent terrorist acquisition and use of WMD differs from preventing their acquisition and use by nation states. At the same time, the authors are able to make a complex subject understandable to non-technical experts, making this book a useful teaching tool, especially for those who have little or no knowledge or experience in US national security decision making.

"National intelligence and international inspections are necessary to create confidence that violations of non-proliferation commitments are detected in time to permit appropriate action. Both must be pursued with professionalism and critical minds avoiding poor intelligence or cosmetic inspections. The issues studied thoroughly and with good judgment in this welcome volume by Graham and Hansen were intensely controversial in the case of Iraq but remain central to international counter-proliferation efforts."―Hans Blix, Executive Chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission

About this title

About the Author

Thomas Graham Jr. served for nearly three decades as general counsel as well as acting director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He was President Clinton's Special Representative for arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament, with the rank of ambassador. Keith A. Hansen served in the course of three decades on various strategic arms control delegations (SALT II, INF, and CTBT), where he concentrated on verification issues as an expert on strategic nuclear force issues. He teaches classes on arms control and national security at Stanford University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PREVENTING CATASTROPHE

The Use and Misuse of Intelligence in Efforts to Halt the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction By THOMAS GRAHAM JR. KEITH A. HANSEN

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2009 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-6360-8

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments.................................................................................xiForeword by Paul R. Pillar..................................................................................xvIntroduction................................................................................................11 Motivations of Countries and Terrorists to Acquire WMD....................................................72 Detecting and Monitoring Clandestine WMD Programs.........................................................223 The Track Record Against Clandestine Proliferation........................................................434 Intelligence Community-Policymaker Relations: Playing as a Team?..........................................885 Intelligence on Iraqi WMD Programs and Policy Reactions...................................................1066 National and International Efforts to Thwart Proliferation................................................152Conclusion: Is It Possible to Prevent Future Proliferation?.................................................187Postscript: What If the International Community Fails to Prevent Further Proliferation?.....................195Epilogue....................................................................................................201Appendixes..................................................................................................205Notes.......................................................................................................267Bibliography................................................................................................282Index.......................................................................................................293

Chapter One

Motivations of Countries and Terrorists to Acquire WMD

Countries and terrorist groups seek weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, for various reasons. According to Sidney Drell and James Goodby (The Gravest Danger), the cases of North Korea, Iran, and Iraq suggest that prestige and national security-through parity or regional dominance-has been the driver behind efforts to acquire nuclear weapon capabilities. To assert that a state is interested in nuclear weapons for security reasons usually means for strategic parity or deterrent purposes; for example, with Pakistan, to offset the superior forces of India, or with Israel, initially to nullify the numerical advantages of its Arab neighbors' conventional military forces. Some states believe that just by possessing nuclear weapons they will be perceived as the dominant state in their region. Iran is a case in point. The possession of nuclear weapons might enable Tehran to dominate at least its part of the Middle East. For purposes of prestige, nuclear weapons also have political value: a state in possession of nuclear weapons can be perceived as a great power. India is a case in point, while Japanese diplomats have complained that Japan is treated like a second-class nation in the international arena and is excluded from important diplomatic meetings because Japan does not have nuclear weapons.

One can argue that it was Saddam's WMD effort that ultimately led to Iran's decision to pursue nuclear weapons, although we believe that Iran probably has had other motives, such as prestige under the Shah, hostility with Israel after the 1979 revolution, and possibly deterrence against US military action. The defense of national sovereignty is a powerful motivation, and both Iran and North Korea appear to have pursued nuclear weapons for that reason.

While the term weapons of mass destruction normally includes chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, the principal attention should be on nuclear weapons (see Appendix B). Chemical and biological weapons should more properly be considered weapons of mass casualties; they do not have the same destructive power as nuclear weapons. Chemical weapons affect only a limited area when employed, and military forces have defenses against them. Biological weapons are essentially terror weapons (even the party deploying the weapons has little control over them once their use is initiated because of the possibility that infected individuals would travel and spread the disease before knowing they themselves were infected), and in advanced countries public health services may be able to develop defenses against them. However, while a first attack with biological weapons in an advanced country likely could be contained, it nevertheless would draw vast quantities of antidotes to the area where the biological agent was used. A series of attacks could place a heavy toll on the responder community (or country) and cause widespread panic. Moreover, the broad extent of international travel could spread a disease to other countries. No other weapon has a comparable capacity to create catastrophe anonymously. Even so, the use of nuclear weapons could be a potential "game changer": they are overwhelmingly destructive through blast and intense heat; they can change the relationship between states; they can be controlled by the deploying party; and there is little defense against them. Nuclear weapons are truly a thing apart, and terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda, dream of obtaining such a weapon.

States are also motivated to acquire nuclear weapons for strategic deterrence. The security issues may be regional, such as with India and Pakistan, or more global, as with the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, and China, especially during the Cold War. For other countries, such as Iran and North Korea, which deeply mistrust the West and fear that the United States will act impulsively and aggressively against their interests, their likely calculation is that nuclear weapons provide at least some deterrent value. After all, they saw how the United States and the Soviet Union used their nuclear arsenals to deter each other from initiating nuclear aggression during the Cold War. However, if unconstrained, the nuclear weapon programs of North Korea and Iran could lead to further nuclear proliferation within their respective regions and might actually decrease their security.

The Political Value of Nuclear Weapons. It became apparent early on that nuclear weapons, with their enormous destructive capacity and indiscriminate effects, could not be used as primary weapons of war; rather they were weapons of deterrence or of last resort. Nevertheless, nuclear weapons took on political value. The possession of nuclear weapons came to be seen as indicative of great-power status for a country, distinguishing it from states that did not have such weapons. For example, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are the five nuclear weapon states recognized by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The political value of nuclear weapons was graphically demonstrated by Britain and France many years ago. In February 1958 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, referring in a television interview to the British nuclear weapon program, said that "the independent contribution [of British nuclear weapons] ... puts us where we ought to be, in the position of a great power." In a speech in November 1961, French president Charles de Gaulle asserted that "a great state" that does not have nuclear weapons when others do "does not command its own destiny." Further, after the May 1998 Indian nuclear tests, Indian prime minister Vajpayee announced, "We have a big bomb now. India is a nuclear weapon state." President Lula of Brazil declared during his first successful election campaign for president in 2002 that what Brazil needs is respect and in this world the only way a state gains respect is through economic, technological, and military strength, which includes the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Such assertions, of course, are not lost on countries such as North Korea and Iran.

Major Nuclear Weapon states

The international community generally recognizes five nuclear weapon states (China, France, the Soviet Union/Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), which was codified in the drafting of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in the late 1960s.

The United States acquired nuclear weapons at the end of World War II as a result of the Manhattan Project, which began in the early 1940s. The project had been established by President Roosevelt in response to urging by Albert Einstein and other scientists. Most of the scientists who advocated this course were migrs from Nazi Europe; they greatly feared that, given the quality of German nuclear physics, Hitler would get the bomb first and use it to dominate the world. Eventually, this concern became the driving force in establishing the national nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The United States and Britain did their best to frustrate possible German programs, bombing the heavy-water plant in Norway, conducting elaborate espionage efforts, and so on. The US program paused after the close of World War II but then resumed, responding to the beginning of the Cold War, and thereafter to the Soviet nuclear buildup.

The Soviet Union reacted to the United States in the 1940s with its own nuclear weapon program. It largely stole the technical capability from Los Alamos by means of its atomic spy ring and tested its first nuclear device in 1949, early in the Cold War. President Harry Truman had mentioned to Stalin at the Potsdam Summit, in 1945, that the United States possessed a new, highly destructive weapon. While Stalin appeared to show no interest in Truman's information, he understood; on his return to the Soviet Union, Stalin energized the Soviet program, which soon was led by Igor Kurchatov. Eventually the Soviets constructed an enormous nuclear infrastructure, which included a number of secret cities whose only function was to contribute to the Soviet nuclear weapon program.

After a time the US program, as well as the Soviet program, developed a momentum that seemed unstoppable, and a vast arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union came into being. The United States ultimately built more than seventy thousand nuclear weapons and at the peak had more than thirty thousand weapons deployed. The Soviet Union built some fifty-five thousand weapons and maintained forty-five thousand nuclear weapons in the field for a number of years. As a result of the competition and large commitments, the United States and the Soviet Union became the world's nuclear superpowers, a status that held great political and military significance for half a century.

The nuclear weapon arms race and the associated threat of thermonuclear confrontation was created and sustained by mutual worst-case assumptions, which came to pose grave danger, not only to the two countries but to the world community. Even as early as the 1960s this danger was well understood: during the all-encompassing strategic arms race, both countries deployed land-based and submarine-based missiles that were maintained on hair-trigger alert and were capable of delivering nuclear weapons with pinpoint accuracy in thirty minutes or less. Once launched, these missiles were not recallable; many incidents over the years ran the risk of causing one or the other country to mistakenly launch its weapons. In the end, the arms race bankrupted the Soviet Union, and it cost the United States around five and a half trillion dollars. If any of the incidents had led to launches, even resulting from erroneous information, world civilization could have been destroyed. The risks associated with nuclear deterrence were total.

The United Kingdom was the partner of the United States in the Manhattan Project and thus privy to the secrets of the program. Britain decided to deploy nuclear weapons shortly after World War II and conducted its first test in 1952. In the wake of the dismantlement of its empire, and its high personnel and material costs in World War II, possessing nuclear weapons was Britain's key to maintaining its great-power status. Interestingly, Canada was also part of the Manhattan Project, but it did not feel the need to build nuclear weapons. Canada's security could rely on the country's relationship with the United States, and Canada did not have the political need to be perceived as a great power. Even so, for many years afterward, Canada was regarded as an advanced nuclear state and was included in important East-West meetings of the 1950s along with Britain and France. For example, Canada was included as a member of the Subcommittee of Five of the United Nations Disarmament Commission (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, and Canada), which was the first forum to address the discontinuance of nuclear weapon testing, in the 1950s.

France was motivated by the same consideration as Britain's, although in France the issue of whether to become a nuclear weapon state was far more controversial. Several governments of the Fourth Republic after World War II were opposed to nuclear arms because they feared that if France developed nuclear weapons, Germany would as well. For many French leaders it was more important to deny nuclear weapons to Germany than it was to gain them, and great-power status, for France. This concern lessened somewhat as West Germany undertook obligations never to acquire nuclear weapons. However, the French questioned the reliability of the US nuclear umbrella, worrying that the United States would not risk nuclear strikes on its own soil to defend France. Finally, in 1955, Premier Mendes-France decided to build the bomb; the first test was conducted in the Sahara Desert in 1960, by which time the Fifth Republic, led by General de Gaulle, was in place. President de Gaulle made no secret of his view that possessing the "bomb" would ensure great-power status for France. So, while it could be said that the United States and the Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons for their security, Britain and France acquired them for status as well as for security.

China began pursuing nuclear weapons in the 1950s, leading to its first test in 1964. In the early years of the program, China received substantial help from the Soviet Union as a "fraternal" Communist state. This changed abruptly during the last years of the 1960s, and the once fraternal relationship turned toward hostility, nearly leading to war. China pursued nuclear weapons largely for security reasons, namely, hostility toward the Soviet Union and fear of possible nuclear blackmail by the United States over Taiwan. Indeed, China had engaged in a serious military conflict with the United States during the Korean War. However, China has not shown much interest in great-power status based on the prestige of being a nuclear weapon state, and has thus far followed a policy of minimum nuclear deterrence.

Proliferate States

Beyond the five earliest nuclear weapon states, four other countries currently have nuclear weapons: India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan. As discussed in this section, a number of other countries have the potential to acquire nuclear weapons should they deem it necessary for national security (see Appendix C).

India was the first of these states to test a nuclear explosive device-a so-called peaceful nuclear explosion-in 19.4. It is uncertain when the Indians actually weaponized their nuclear devices, but in 1998 they tested the "bomb" overtly to demonstrate that India had become a nuclear weapon state. India has always appeared more interested in the prestige factor of nuclear weapons. Although a security issue with China exists, for nearly twenty-five years India appeared content to possess nuclear weapon technology without building or testing weapons, despite being on the opposite side of the Himalayas from several hundred Chinese nuclear weapons. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power and conducted nuclear tests, in 1998, India has emphasized that it is now a nuclear weapon state and therefore an important country.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from PREVENTING CATASTROPHEby THOMAS GRAHAM JR. KEITH A. HANSEN Copyright © 2009 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford Security Studies
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804763607
• ISBN 13: 9780804763608
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320