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LONGTIME ANTI-NUCLEAR ACTIVIST DANIEL ELLSBERG HAS DIED Daniel Ellsberg, the man best known for leaking the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, died Friday. Ellsberg was a longtime anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons activist who when he announced his decision to decline chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer in March pledged to spend the time he had left speaking about the dangers of nuclear war, among other critical issues. At the Center and with our sister organization the Council for a Livable World, we were proud to work with him often, most recently in 2018 when our staff set up meetings between him and Members of Congress to discuss his book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. We will remember his courage and lifelong efforts to build a just and sensible national security posture and to keep government accountable as we continue to work toward those same goals.
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RUSSIA BEGINS NUCLEAR DEPLOYMENT TO BELARUS Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his country’s armed forces would begin deploying tactical or sub-strategic nuclear weapons to Belarus on July 7 and 8 — a few days before a NATO summit in Lithuania. Western observers widely perceive this move as an effort to intimidate NATO leaders including members of the Bucharest Nine — NATO members in Eastern Europe — who have floated the idea of Ukrainian accession to the security bloc. As Senior Policy Director John Erath told Deutsche Welle in April, moving nuclear weapons to Belarus is militarily insignificant, but sends a message that Russia will continue to use its nuclear arsenal to try to blackmail adversaries into favorable treatment.
On the war in Ukraine, Russia removed nuclear munitions from a storage facility in Belgorod after Ukrainian-backed soldiers briefly seized control of surrounding settlements.
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STATE DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCES NEW START ‘COUNTERMEASURES’ In last month’s newsletter, we told you about the United States’ continued commitment to data exchanges under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). However, the Department of State announced on June 1 that the United States would be implementing so-called “countermeasures” to Russia’s noncompliance with reporting and verification under the agreement. Importantly, these countermeasures are somewhat easily reversible. Some of the countermeasures date back to March and include:
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UNITED STATES DENIES RUMORS OF INTERIM IRAN DEAL Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani confirmed that the United States and Iran held indirect talks last month in Oman. The Biden administration has not yet corroborated such claims and has denied reports that there might be an interim Iran nuclear deal, but the story follows rumors from the Israeli press that dialogue had resumed. Kanaani said that his government discussed sanctions with his American counterparts. News outlets report that a top White House official traveled to Oman secretly at the same time as an Iranian delegation which included top negotiator Ali Bagheri Kan. Washington allegedly sent a strong message of deterrence to clarify that Iran would pay a heavy price if it moved forward toward 90% uranium enrichment.
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NORTH KOREA SHIPS MORE WEAPONS TO RUSSIA Washington officials voiced concern that North Korea may ship more weapons to Russia to support Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un vowed to bolster his country’s strategic cooperation with Russia on Russia’s national holiday. The United States confirmed that Pyongyang had already sent weapons to the Wagner Group — a Russian state-supported mercenary group — in November 2022. In March of this year, American officials worried that Russia was negotiating for additional weapons in return for food aid and sanctioned a Slovakian man who reportedly participated in negotiations.
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AFTER DEBT CEILING FIGHT, DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION PROCESS UNDERWAY House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and President Joe Biden reached an agreement to raise the debt limit just days before a potential default. The deal was a genuine compromise that caused portions of both parties to be uncomfortable with the tradeoffs. Ultimately, the agreement passed both chambers with significant bipartisan support. Under the deal, non-defense spending is set at Fiscal Year 2022 levels while defense spending is set at the Biden administration’s requested level. Limits are also placed on how much discretionary spending can increase in the coming years.
With the debt ceiling fight now over, the House of Representatives began markup on the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act on June 13. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) committed to marking up his legislation to the $886 billion topline set by the Biden administration. The Senate will hold subcommittee markups on June 20 and 21.
Both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees are set for full committee markups on June 21. The House language thus far includes increased funding for nuclear weapons, like the nuclear-capable submarine launched cruise missile (SLCM-N). Arms control and non-proliferation, as well as nuclear cleanup funding, were targeted to pay for the weapons increases and keep the topline intact.
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NEW ON THE NUKES OF HAZARD BLOG: BIOSECURITY, TRANSPARENCY, A NUCLEAR DATABASE AND SOVIET NUCLEAR WEAPONS
The end of the cornerstone of biosecurity preparedness: Scoville Fellow Sophia Macartney writes that the end of data-sharing mandates as a result of the end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) means putting the United States in a more vulnerable position to future biological threats, intentional or unintentional. The threat of a biological catastrophe has risen to threat levels comparable to that of nuclear catastrophe, but preparedness and prevention are not as ingrained into biosecurity as in nuclear security.
U.S. release of nuclear data promotes New START transparency amid nuclear tension: Research Analyst Matthew Teasdale writes that the public release of U.S. nuclear data under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) is a positive development considering the absence of dialogue. “Enhancing transparency stabilizes the global environment and reduces the likelihood of misperception, miscalculation and costly arms competitions.”
Thwarting nuclear terrorism through data-sharing: As part of our Next Up in Arms Control blog series featuring authors who are underrepresented in nuclear conversations, high school student Sergey Shkolnikov writes that using the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty as a stepping stone could eventually allow for the establishment of a nuclear weapons database, which would increase accountability and confidence without decreasing a state’s war-waging capabilities.
A book, nuclear weapons, means and ends: Senior Policy Director John Erath writes that the latest book from Mariana Budjeryn, Inheriting the Bomb, should be required reading for policymakers and students of arms control. The book examines Ukraine’s nuclear legacy and the process by which it gave up the nuclear weapons it inherited from the Soviet Union. Erath, a 30-year State Department veteran with expertise in Eastern Europe, writes that multiple U.S. administrations incorrectly defined denuclearizing Ukraine as the goal, rather than a means to a greater end of stabilizing the region. Budjeryn was a guest on our Nukes of Hazard podcast last year discussing her book and the legacy of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
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