Last week, the Senate appointed members of the conference committee to combine House and Senate versions of Iran gasoline sanctions passed in December and January. While House conferees have yet to be selected, Congress is hot to trot on its effort to iron out the differences between the two bills, particularly in light of recent statements on U.N. sanctions negotiations.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard L. Berman has said that he would like to have a final agreement signed into law by April: “Time is of the essence here. Every day, Iran moves farther along on its nuclear program.”

On Friday, Senator Charles Schumer and (NoH’s favorite) Senator Jon Kyl penned a letter to President Obama asking him to abandon attempts to add exemptions for certain countries and support the Iran sanctions legislation as is. Again, the Senators stressed the time sensitive nature of sanctions, noting that the “window for implementing meaningful, ‘crippling’ sanctions against Iran is getting narrower by the day.”

Meanwhile, General David Petraeus reported yesterday on a slowdown in Iranian nuclear activities in a hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Just sayin’…

The Obama administration has repeatedly urged Congress to hold off on sanctions that may curtail its flexibility during multilateral negotiations, worried that the U.S. bill could backfire and potentially slow its own effort to pursue “aggressive sanctions.”

On the international stage, China has still shown no sign that it will support new sanctions against Iran. Following recent talks with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi maintained that sanctions weren’t the solution to disagreements over Iran’s nuclear program. He stressed that more talks were the way forward:

“Sanctions do not provide a fundamental solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Ultimately, this issue has to be appropriately resolved through peaceful negotiations.”

There is some speculation that China will eventually agree to U.N. sanctions, but will do its best to delay and weaken any agreement to the point of meaninglessness along the way.

Part II of two posts on the Global Zero Movement
Click here for Part I

As I noted in an earlier blog, the Global Zero movement is supported by both senior level government officials, including Presidents Obama and Medvedev, and high profile celebrities who believe in the vision of a world free from nuclear weapons.  But developing a parallel base of grassroots support is equally as important as securing endorsements from the big names.  

As Global Zero puts it “as more leaders in nuclear and non-nuclear countries come out in support of Zero, a show of global public support could help tip the balance.”  Global Zero is dedicated to raising the profile of the movement to eliminate nuclear dangers by both seeking out voices guaranteed to garner attention and attempting to build the necessary public support to ensure success.

Student activism played an important role in the success of several past movements, including the nuclear freeze movement. Seeking to capitalize on this potentially enormous wellspring of support, Global Zero has worked to establish several chapters at universities throughout the United States and around the globe…

The U.S. student movement spans from coast-to-coast and now boasts 24 chapters.  They include: the University of Michigan, Miami University, Ferris State University, Washington University, Kansas State University, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Brown University, Wellesley/MIT, Columbia University, Memorial University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Yale University, York University, the University of Georgia, Georgetown University, Davidson College, the University of Oklahoma, American University, the University of Oregon, the University of California-Irvine, the University of Washington, the University of Alaska, Stanford University, and the University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign.  Chapters have also been established at universities in India, Japan, Pakistan, France, Germany, Russia, the U.K., Israel, and Canada.

I helped organize the launch of Global Zero @UGA in September 2009, which occurred simultaneously with thirteen other colleges throughout the U.S. as part of the first wave of Global Zero’s student movement.  During our kickoff event, we rented a table at our student center in order to spread awareness and solicit signatures for Global Zero’s declaration.  Since that time, the UGA chapter has partnered with the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network to blog about arms control and disarmament issues, and recently hosted a debate regarding the prospects for achieving a world without nuclear weapons.

Students interested in launching a chapter at their campus can get involved by completing the volunteer form on the Global Zero website and checking the box for “start a Global Zero chapter at my school.”  I can personally vouch that it is an excellent opportunity to take on a leadership role and gain experience in organizing and being part of a grassroots movement.  There are also several invaluable opportunities to network with policymakers, which could come in might handy if you’re interested in pursuing a career in nuclear weapons policy.

And on a related note for students seeking to get involved with the movement, Global Zero has recently announced a unique and exciting opportunity to become a “Roadie” and team up with the movement on its upcoming, six-week road tour to promote the new Countdown to Zero documentary before its theatrical release.  The acclaimed film, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, has been compared to the renowned 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. According to one reviewer, Countdown to Zero seeks to demonstrate that “anyone with a relatively small amount of money has the ability to obtain enough nuclear weapons material to incinerate everything in a five-mile radius of a large city. And they wouldn’t have to missile it into the U.S., they could simply detonate it in a container ship at a port.”

Global Zero is currently looking for “12 highly motivated, intelligent volunteers who are willing to be at the forefront of a growing global movement” to join them this spring and summer in bringing the documentary to campuses, churches, conferences, and camps throughout the country.  The application must be completed as soon as possible, as the tour begins in Washington, D.C. on March 20.  The campaign concludes at the end of May in New York City.  Your responsibilities will include setting up screenings, planning daily events, selling merchandise, handling deposits/accounting, managing inventory, and continuing investment and follow up with new supporters that you’ll meet on each campus and at each screening.  

Global Zero has agreed to cover the costs of your housing in D.C. during training and has set up host homes throughout the tour.  Transportation costs are covered, and you will be provided with a stipend for food as well.  They have also agreed to work with you and your university to provide internship credit while you’re away.

More information can be found at http://www.globalzero.org/roadtour.  Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to spread the Global Zero movement!

There’s been a lot of buzz recently over the use of a containment strategy to curtail the threat – or the eventuality – of a nuclear Iran.  David Sanger wrote a piece in the New York Times that followed on the heels of an article in Foreign Affairs by the duo James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh; both discussed how containment could be employed to peacefully co-exist with a hostile Iranian regime.  

While the implication that Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon is a foregone conclusion – which the Foreign Affairs article title (After Iran Gets the Bomb) suggests – is a little heavy on the fearmongering and designed more to attract readers than fairly represent the Iranian nuclear situation, the result has undoubtedly been increased attention to the spectre of a nuclear Iran…

Sanger writes that talks of sanctions might be continuing, but, simultaneously, “the administration races to add antimissile systems and a naval presence in the Gulf — an effort to contain Iran’s power in the region, officials say, but it sure looks like the building blocks of a nuclear containment policy, a backup in case the next round of sanctions fails to do the trick.” But are Sanger, Lindsay, and Takeyh drawing hasty conclusions?

Our focus should be on continued diplomatic attention and engagement, rather than assuming that Iran will dig in its heels and follow the North Korean path.

Moreover, military force should categorically not be considered at this time.  Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reinforced last month his position that “we owe the American people our readiness. But, as I have said many times, I worry a lot about the unintended consequences of any sort of military action. For now, the diplomatic and the economic levers of international power are, and ought to be, the levers first pulled.”  

Laicie wrote last week to highlight the policy recommendations of Zbigniew Brzezinski on diplomatic engagement with Iran, and his words still hold true:

Give rhetorical support to Iran’s opposition while accepting America’s limited ability to help it; eschew thought of a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities; and keep talking to Tehran.

Above all: Play the long game, because time, demographics and generational change aren’t on the side of the current regime.

We here at Nukes of Hazard have said it before, and we’ll say it again: patience, careful monitoring and involvement by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and persistent diplomatic engagement by Western powers will not guarantee success but are the only sensible options to try to block Iran’s nuclear weapons plans.

It seems to be all the rage lately so I figured I’d join the fray.  At a March 5 hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development on NNSA’s FY 2011 budget request, ranking member Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) asked NNSA administrator Tom D’Agostino to compare the investments the Russians and Chinese are making in their nuclear warheads and delivery systems with U.S. efforts to maintain its deterrent.

Batterrrr up!:

Look I get it that the administration wants to convey the impression that it’s really serious about nuclear deterrence, our complex and experts were largely ignored before this budget, some of the buildings at our laboratories and production facilities are really old, etc.  I even agree that some of their arguments have merit.

But that’s no excuse to run roughshod over the facts, which are these:

1) Even before the FY 2011 budget, the U.S. has successfully maintained an arsenal that is not only safe, secure, and reliable, but is also more lethal on a per-weapon basis today than it was during the Cold War.

2) Even before the FY 2011 budget, our confidence in the reliability of our nuclear warheads has been steadily growing.

Describing our post-Cold War efforts to maintain the arsenal as “not letting anything break” or “not keeping up” doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story paints a misleading picture of what we’ve actually been doing and are doing and deserves some further clarification from D’Agostino.  

Unfortunately Di-Fi wasn’t around to call T-D’ag out on it.

What’s gotten into the Air Force lately?  First there was this December 2009 report from the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies calling for a bomberless dyad.  Now, in an article in the latest issues of Strategic Studies Quarterly co-authored with two professors from Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, Col B. Chance Saltzman, chief, Strategic Plans and Policy Division, Headquarters Air Force, calls for significant reductions in the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

Just how significant you ask:

In fact, the United States could address military utility concerns with only 311 nuclear weapons in its nuclear force structure while maintaining a stable deterrence. [emphasis mine].

And to think they didn’t even pick a nice round number!

Saltzman et al, argue that such a force could be maintained on a triad of 100 single-warhead Minuteman III ICBMs, 192 de-MIRVed Trident D-5 SLBMs on 12 Ohio class submarines, and ALCMs to be deployed on 19 B-2s.  Apart from calling for a triad of counterforce and countervalue weapons, the article mostly ignores the other specific details of deterrence that have consumed so much energy in the context of the ongoing Nuclear Posture Review.

I’m not really up on the intricacies of Air Force bureaucracy, so I don’t know how much weight the Strategic Plans and Policy Division actually pulls within the department, but it seems to me to be noteworthy that the head of said division is associating himself with a strategy of minimum deterrence…

What do we mean by “minimum deterrence”?  Jeffrey (or is it Jerry?) Lewis summed it up nicely a few years ago in the Bulletin:

A different view is that, beyond a certain point, all of this is crazy talk, and the technical details don’t matter very much at all. The balance of terror is anything but delicate. An enemy who can be deterred, will be deterred by the prospect of a counterattack, even if it consists of only a few nuclear weapons. Beyond that minimum threshold, nuclear weapons provide little additional deterrent benefit.

Saltzman et al., fit squarely within this camp.  For example, they do not specify which specific warheads should make up a force of 311 weapons (e.g. should our subs carry W76s, W88s, a mix of the two, life extended W78-W88 warheads that share common components, or new, RRW-style warheads).  Nor do they suggest requirements for alert levels, declaratory policy, or the nuclear complex.  

They are also silent on whether the U.S. needs to develop a new SSBN or (perhaps most interestingly) a next generation long-range bomber.  Finally, they suggest that the U.S. need not deploy any weapons outside the U.S. (with exception of our boomers of course) or maintain any additional warheads in reserve as either a technical or geopolitical hedge.

Oh, and I almost forgot: They claim that a reduction in the U.S. nuclear stockpile from the current level of some 5,000 total weapons to 311 weapons could be undertaken unilaterally regardless of whether Russia follows suit.  

In response to those who might posit that the U.S. must retain a far larger force given the (allegedly) numerous threats it must deter, its obligations to its allies, or that such a small force might be vulnerable to a first-strike, the authors state that this “ignores the vast conventional superiority of the United States,” and “is also undermined by the fact that the United States is deterred in most contingencies by China, which has a much smaller force structure.”

Even their embrace of the triad is lukewarm.  “If one accepts the basic idea that it is the political value of nuclear weapons that matters,” they write, “the method of delivery is immaterial.”

At the same time, they push back against the view that significant reductions in nuclear weapons would necessarily mean the end of the triad due to “concern over organizational competency and professional development.”  Determining the appropriate number of nuclear weapons, they argue, “should be based primarily on the requirements for a stable, reliable, nuclear deterrent, with support issues like industrial base support, crew force management, and training only weighing in as secondary considerations.”  

(Come to think of it, this logic kinda reminds me of a Wu-Tang remix I heard recently.)

Given the many ways in which they eviscerate the traditional justifications for maintaining a U.S. nuclear arsenal of thousands of excess weapons, one might think the authors call for the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.  They do not: “Nuclear weapons allow international life to go on in spite of their inherent dangers because leaders of nuclear states realize that that they are constrained despite their goals, desires, or rhetoric.”  Hence, the title of their article: “Remembrance of Things Past: The Enduring Value of Nuclear Weapons.” Still, the title is misleading.   Where they disagree with most opponents of abolition is in their belief that deterrence can be maintained with a very small nuclear stockpile.

All in all, the piece is a thought-provoking assessment of America’s strategic posture. Regrettably, it’s a perspective that probably received short – if any – shrift during the Nuclear Posture Review.