The Four Horsemen (a.k.a. George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn) are back with another Wall Street Journal op-ed on the importance of eliminating the “threat to the world” posed by nuclear weapons.  The bipartisan group of four senior statesmen notes that “as we work to reduce nuclear weaponry and to realize the vision of a world without nuclear weapons, we recognize the necessity to maintain the safety, security and reliability of our own weapons.”

Below are some comments in reaction…

The Good

• The op-ed is a reminder that steps to reduce the dangers posed by nuclear weapons, including reductions in the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, have strong bipartisan support and are consistent with U.S. national security interests.  In an earlier op-ed the Four Horsemen called for further, verifiable reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles “as soon as possible” and the adoption of “a process for bringing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) into effect.”

• The op-ed notes that “advances in the scientific understanding of nuclear explosions and obviated the need for underground nuclear explosive tests.”  

• The op-ed reinforces the conclusions of the September 2009 JASON scientific advisory group report on the status of U.S. efforts to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  The report concluded that “Lifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in LEPs [Life Extension Programs] to date.”

The Questionable

• The op-ed states that “Departures from our existing stewardship strategies should be taken when they are essential to maintain a safe, secure and effective deterrent.” The Four Horsemen might have added that what we have learned about our nuclear weapons to date suggests that existing stewardship and life extension programs offer a technically sound procedure for the U.S. to maintain the reliability of the stockpile without changing the military characteristics of existing weapons or designing new nuclear warheads. The September 2009 JASON report and other independent estimates support this conclusion.

• The op-ed claims that new investments in the U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure, particularly in science, technology, and engineering programs, are “urgently needed.”  Many Republicans have argued for major investments in new nuclear weapons production facilities. Yet absent a compelling explanation for why existing capabilities are insufficient for U.S. needs, which the Four Horsemen (noticeably) do not provide, it doesn’t make sense to pursue new production facilities that could have enormous financial and environmental costs and undermine U.S. nonproliferation objectives.

What it Means

Early indications are that the Obama administration’s Fiscal Year 2011 budget request will likely include increased funding for the type of investments in science, technology, and engineering programs called for by the Four Horsemen.  A significant investment will also be made in the newly created Stockpile Management Program. There may also be funding for new production facilities.  The Albuquerque Journal’s John Fleck reported last weekend that the National Nuclear Security Administration’s budget for nuclear weapons programs will rise to $7 billion, up from $6.4 billion last year.

The Four Horsemen and the Obama administration have likely concluded that the price for 67 Senate votes for the START follow-on treaty and eventually the CTBT is increased funding to maintain our nuclear weapons (recall also that this is generally in keeping with the requirements of the FY 2010 Defense Authorization Act, which calls for a plan to enhance the safety, security, and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile, modernize the nuclear weapons complex, and maintain the delivery vehicles, and an estimate of budget requirements to do so over a 10-year period). Yesterday’s election result in Massachusetts has probably only strengthened that view.  

The key question (apart from whether this funding is necessary to sustain our deterrent) is whether in offering so much right now for New START the administration will have anything left to bargain with to gain the support of Republicans and the nuclear lab directors for the CTBT down the road.

After ending 12 years of deadlock on May 29, the UN Conference on Disarmament (CD) is once again stuck in the mud due to Pakistan’s objections.

The 65-member conference, which operates by consensus, has spent much of 2009 in procedural wrangles after agreeing to a work plan that addressed four main issues, including the negotiation of a verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons (FMCT), in May.

Today, Pakistan blocked the adoption of the 2010 agenda for the CD, suggesting that 2010 may be another slow year for progress.

Adoption of the agenda at the start of the annual session is normally a formality.  One veteran official, unable to recall a similar delay in the past, states that, “Even in the darkest days the agenda was adopted, because everything can be discussed under the agenda.”  

Pakistan, however, has an interest in delaying the start of substantive talks, since a limit on the production of fissile material could put it at a disadvantage against longer-standing nuclear powers such as India…

In a move that may be aimed directly at its daunting neighbor, Pakistan Ambassador Zamir Akram asked today that the forum consider conventional arms control at the regional and sub-regional level, in line with a United Nations General Assembly resolution sponsored by Pakistan and passed last year.  India has rejected a discussion of regional conventional arms control in the past, arguing that the conference should focus on global issues.  

Akram also asked that the conference negotiate a global regime on all aspects of missiles.  “It is not our intention to create an obstacle,” he said, “but it’s also not our intention to create a situation which is oblivious to what is happening around us.”

The move forced the conference president, Bangladesh ambassador Abdul Hannan, to adjourn the meeting for consultations to find a consensus, which is not likely to come easy.  Hannan hopes to resume discussion this Thursday.

It looks like it’s going to be a long year for the CD.

Guest Post by Nick Roth

For the last twenty years, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) “contract and project management” program has been a charter member of the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) list of government programs at high risk for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.

Late last week GAO ensured that the contract and project management program would remain on the list when it released a report describing how incredibly poor DOE has been at estimating the cost of their programs…

In a report titled “Actions Needed to Develop High-Quality Cost Estimates for Construction and Environmental Cleanup Projects,” GAO looked at DOE’s process for estimating the cost of major projects. The report focused on four specific projects, including the massive Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) proposed as part of DOE’s plan to increase it’s capacity to build new nuclear weapons. For those of you keeping score at home, the UPF was one of the items that Senator Kyl included on his “nuclear weapons Christmas wish list” in a letter sent to the President in December.

Report Highlights

Below are the Top 5 Most Important, Amusing, and “WTF?!” Report Findings/ Highlights:

1. DOE has not had a policy that establishes standards for estimating the cost of projects for over a decade.

2. GAO does not consider any of the cost estimates for the UPF to be fully or even mostly credible, well documented, accurate, or comprehensive.

3. Eight of DOE’s twelve major construction projects have exceeded their initial cost estimates by a total of nearly $14 billion. Nine of the ten major environmental cleanup projects related to nuclear weapons production experienced cost increases and need an additional $25 billion to $42 billion to be completed.

4. A DOE contractor conducted a risk analysis which estimated with 95% certainty that the UPF could be constructed for $2.3 billion. Later, DOE “experts” reviewing the project thought it would require significantly more funding and added more than a $1 billion “allowance” to the project. Also, DOE has no way of knowing whether any of these cost estimates are even remotely accurate.

5. Cost estimators for the UPF did not collect evidence to support cost projections contained in their estimate. For instance, the cost estimates did not include “costs associated with developing technologies that are critical to the facility’s function but were not yet mature enough to be included in such a facility.”

The report recommends that DOE:

1. Ensure its new policy and guide fully reflect cost-estimating best practices, including by requiring independent cost estimates for its major projects.

2. Create a centralized, independent cost-estimating capability within the department.

3. Conduct independent cost estimates for those major projects that have not received one.

Future Options to Study

GAO is to be commended for highlighting DOE’s slipshod accounting practices.  GAO should also conduct a study of what accountability measures can be put in place when DOE programs go way over budget.  One model to consider is how the Department of Defense (DOD) deals with significant cost overruns in their weapons procurement process.

DOD is now legally required to submit Select Acquisition Reports, or “SARs,” updating Congress on the status of their acquisition programs, including estimated Life Cycle Costs. According to the Nunn-McCurdy amendment to the 1982 Defense Authorization Bill, if a DOD procurement program has a cost overrun of more than 15%, DOD has to inform Congress. If a program has a cost overrun of more than 25%, the Secretary of Defense is required to appear before Congress and meet certain certification requirements; otherwise the program is terminated. DOE needs to be held to the same standard of accountability both before AND after they do their cost estimates.

Nick Roth is the Program Director for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA).  The views expressed in this post are Nick’s and do not necessarily represent those of ANA.

Editors note: Click here for John’s comments on the Doomsday Clock published yesterday in Global Security Newswire.Click here for John’s radio interview yesterday on the Doomsday Clock on Wisconsin Public Radio.

Who says that nuclear scientists can’t tell time?

Yesterday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the doomsday clock one minute further from midnight.

That movement signals that the world is in slightly better shape than a year ago, a little less likely to meet the doomsday of a nuclear holocaust or destruction of the planet by global warming.

The Bulletin issued a statement yesterday saying:

We are poised to bend the arc of history toward a world free of nuclear weapons. For the first time since atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, leaders of nuclear weapons states are cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material. And for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries alike are pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable.

In fact, the movement of the Doomsday clock away from zero is appropriate in light of developments in 2009, and could have been moved even further if the decision were based solely on nuclear weapons issues.

Maybe two minutes more away from midnight.

The Copenhagen summit on global warming was widely seen as a baby step forward with governments unable to agree on mandatory limits for greenhouse gasses.

On the other hand, there has been significant progress on nuclear weapons issues in the past year, starting with President Obama’s seminal speech on nuclear issues at Prague last April.  

After little official focus on Cold War-aftermath issues by the previous two Presidents, the U.S. government has now renewed a focus on the 23,000 nuclear weapons remaining across the globe and the danger that some of these weapons could get in the hands of terrorists.  

The President followed the rhetoric with specific actions, including securing approval for his long-term goal of a world free of nuclear weapons by the U.N. Security Council, launching new negotiations with Russia on a nuclear reductions treaty, pledging vigorous action for ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, planning a Global Nuclear Security Summit in April 2010 and other steps.  

Where to next?  

We will know a lot more in six months if the steps produce successful conclusions and there is a productive Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference later this year.

The first of occasional postings
Guest Post by Afghanistan Ag Man

On December 1 of last year, President Barack Obama spoke to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on the future of American military operations in Afghanistan.  In the course of outlining the resources that would be required to implement a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy, the President stated:

We will work with our partners, the UN, and the Afghan people to pursue a more effective civilian strategy, so that the government can take advantage of improved security…we will also focus our assistance in areas — such as agriculture — that can make an immediate impact in the lives of the Afghan people.

It is due to these lines in the speech that I am here in Afghanistan today. As an agricultural advisor from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), I have been assigned to a province in the mountains of the Hindu Kush in Eastern Afghanistan.

Ultimately, I hope to use these blog  posts as an outlet to tell the stories of local Afghans and the troops that I live with, as well as my own story as an average American farmer that is now part of a civilian-military (re)development strategy in Afghanistan.  

My identity and location will remain anonymous to protect not only myself, but also the Americans and Afghans that I am working with. I will, however, try wholeheartedly to report as completely and factually as possible…

For the next year, I will be embedded with the men and women of the US military as they go on their patrols and conduct missions in my provincial area of responsibility. I am, however, just one of the several hundred U.S. Government employees (primarily from the Department of State, US Agency for International Development, and USDA) sent here to Afghanistan to serve in various capacities, including as Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) and District Support Team (DST) members; Afghan minister/ministry mentors; technical experts in the fields of governance, rule of law, agriculture, and irrigation; and civilian counterparts and advisors to our military leaders at the brigade, battalion, and platoon levels.

To better access the local population, I have been placed on an outpost in a remote area of the province and will be travelling from district to district to better assess the agricultural situation of each village. Life out here is pretty basic, but the guys I live alongside are honestly the best “co-workers” I could ask for. My integration into my unit has been surprisingly quick.  I neither expected nor have been granted special treatment. I celebrated Christmas by taking inventory of ammunition in a mortar pit; carried equipment to the tops of mountains to survey a valley (and I assure you, these are not hills, but mountains!); “conquered” a burned-out Soviet tank (an explanation will come in a following post); and waded through a river on a New Year’s Eve night mission.

In addition to my role as a member of a military unit, the Obama administration’s new strategy tasked me with the job of “reinforcing positive [Afghan] action” throughout the populace of my designated province. To this end, it will be necessary to go “outside the wire” each day to conduct missions. Such missions include shuras (i.e. consultations) with village representatives and elders, discussions with local farmers on crop yields and technical improvements, and project site assessments to gauge the progress of agricultural and irrigation improvements.

Each day’s mission usually starts out with encouraging words from our fearless lieutenant that it is only “a short walk–a few clicks (i.e. kilometers) at the most.” As I have found out, our missions continually evolve and these “few clicks” could include anything from scaling a mountain, to traversing fields after dark because a key leader engagement (KLE) (i.e. a meeting with key leaders or representatives of a village that speak on behalf of that community) was delayed, to spending long hours keeping watch over old Soviet minefields until a team arrives to deal with them.

A willingness to be flexible is, therefore, key to surviving a tour in Afghanistan. I live in an environment that has no weekends and that runs on military time, which I am still trying to get used to. A typical workday starts at about 0600 and does not end until 0000 (i.e. midnight). My normal morning routine of reading the New York Times has been replaced by reading mission briefs and security reports. As I fall asleep at night, I think about the possibility of an apiculture (i.e. beekeeping) training session for local farmers or the consequences of a check dam series (i.e. a series of small, somewhat temporary dams that slow down rivers and create pools of water) on a stretch of a particular river.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I have never had an occupation that has brought so much satisfaction and exhaustion so early on. I look forward to getting up each day, working alongside American soldiers and Afghan interpreters, and doing my part to help stabilize the country so that we can ultimately leave. From my vantage point, the military has embraced the necessity of a civilian effort to complement their military efforts. For example, on occasions when I am not out on patrol with my base unit, I often return to dinner conversations with them that contain enthusiastic reports of their meetings with farmers that need to meet me or of potential agricultural projects to assess. I am often referred to the villagers as “an agriculture guy that is really smart and can help you with your crops” – a humbling moniker that I hope to live up to.