REPRESENTATIVE DOUG LAMBORN (R-CO): …Well, then, as a follow-up, do you believe there are now an adequate number — I think it’s too limited of a number, but do you think there’s an adequate number of ground-based interceptors both to counter the thr…

By Andrew Carpenter and Ulrika Grufman

(For more information on this feature, see here.)

And this week’s in the weeds conceptual/theoretical articles on nuclear weapons and related issues include…

Veto Players, Nuclear Energy, and Non-Proliferation
Hymans, J. E. C., 2011. Veto Players, Nuclear Energy, and Non-Proliferation. International Security. Fall, 2011.

“The key point here is that even though the regime-type variable may not be significant, this should not be taken to mean that domestic institutional variables are not significant”. (p.158)

Hymans looks at how states make the decision on whether to pursue a nuclear bomb.  Hymans finds that an important aspect of the decision is institutionalized veto players.  These are individuals who are able to veto the decisions states make.  Hymans performs a case study on Japan, and uses the institutionalized veto players concept to explain why Japan has not moved to acquire a nuclear weapon, nor discard its plutonium fuel cycle.  Institutional Veto players in Japan are able to prevent any attempt by Japanese leadership to pursue a nuclear weapon, but also prevent Japan from discontinuing its plutonium production cycle.  As a result of this finding, the regime type is not as important as the structure of government institutions.  When analysis of a states’ proliferation potential is undertaken, a states’ government institutions must be examined.  

Self-Regulation to Promote Nonproliferation
Hund, G. & Seward, A., 2011. Self-Regulation to Promote Nonproliferation. Public Interest Report (Journal of the Federation of American Scientists). Spring 2011. pp.41-43.

“The nuclear industry has a unique opportunity to promote the control and security of nuclear material and technologies. The companies involved in the production and trade of nuclear, radiological, and dual-use commodities and technologies are in an ideal position to bolster existing governmental mechanisms to secure these operations and prevent proliferation.” (p.41)

In this article, Hund and Seward, set out to explain how the nuclear industry could help promote non-proliferation through certain self-regulatory measures. Their argument is based on research by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. They find that many industrial self-regulation processes start by a trigger event, like an industrial accident. They suggest that one such trigger for the nuclear industry could be a nuclear terrorist event. Before this happens, the authors urge companies to take action both on an individual and a cooperative level. These actions can include anything from better regulatory standards to government lobbying. Hund and Seward furthermore argue that it would be in the companies’ best interest to regulate since it could lead to a higher profit, or at least the avoidance of losses.

Proliferation Implications of Civil Nuclear Cooperation
Hymans, J. E. C., 2011. Proliferation Implications of Civil Nuclear Cooperation: Theory and a Case Study of Tito’s Yugoslavia, Security Studies, 20:1, March 2011. pp.73-104

“Atoms for Peace can substantially retard or even reverse the growth of technical capacity to build the bomb, despite the transfer of hardware and know-how that it promotes.” (p.100)

In this article Hymans argues, contrary to the prevailing literature, that civil nuclear cooperation, such as the Atoms for Peace program, can help in preventing developing countries from acquiring a successful nuclear weapons program. He claims that the current literature is outdated and oversimplified. The central thesis of his argument concerns brain drain. By “changing the career opportunities available to the most talented and energetic workers […] Atoms for Peace makes their choice of loyalty more complicated, their choice for voice less dangerous and their choice for exit more feasible” (p.101). The author bases his argument on a case study of the nuclear developments and subsequent closure of the nuclear weapons program in Yugoslavia. He does not claim that Atoms for Peace singlehandedly resulted in the closure of the program or that the results could easily be generalised. He does however call for further studies to be done and he asks for a more nuanced debate on civil nuclear cooperation since it does have policy implications for the U.S.

by Nickolas Roth and Ulrika Grufman

This week, Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey held a press conference announcing that more than sixty Members of Congress had co-signed his letter to the super committee urging them to substantially cut nuclear weapons funding in order to balance the budget.

In reply, Ohio Representative Michael Turner, Chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, offered some of his usual rhetoric that cutting funding meant the U.S. was unilaterally disarming. His statement was quickly followed by the release of a letter sent to the Senate Appropriations Committee signed by Republican members of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee asking that the Senate fully fund the President’s request for nuclear weapons. To justify the request for more money, the letter makes a number of questionable arguments regarding the nuclear weapons budgeting process over the past year.

It argues that “former Secretary of Defense Gates transferred $8.4 billion in top-line budget authority  from the Department of Defense to NNSA over five years” and that this money “was instead given to water related projects.” While DOD did transfer money, the letter fails to mention that, for the purposes of allocating nuclear weapons spending for Fiscal Year 12, security and non-security spending received separate allocations. The Energy and Water appropriations committees were not allowed to transfer money between NNSA and water projects. The Senate Appropriations Committee alluded to this fact in its press release, which stated, “The allocation for this bill is divided into security and non-security accounts. The security accounts are made up of funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and these received a $528 million increase over fiscal year 2011. The non-security accounts received an allocation $584 million below fiscal year 2011.” Congressman Turner should have been fully aware of this fact. If he was not, it is because he did not do his homework.

In a rather bizarre twist, the letter is critical of the Republican led House Energy and Water bill for not funding the President’s full request for nuclear weapons, arguing that “the House—unlike the Senate—was not fully consulted” on the long term funding plan for nuclear weapons and needs “additional time to develop the consensus” on the need for nuclear weapons funding. The House received the Obama administration’s long-term plan for nuclear weapons spending in April 2010 and has had exactly the same amount of time as the Senate to review it. In fact, over the past year and a half, House committees held more than a dozen hearings on the nuclear weapons stockpile and related funding issues. Do those who signed this letter think that House Members need more time to make a decision than Senators given the exact same information? Does Congressman Turner think think that his fellow Republicans in the House are slow on the uptake?

The letter also argues that without the funding identified in the President’s long-term nuclear weapons spending plan, “the nuclear modernization plan cannot be realized.” As has been pointed out previously , this argument is also untrue. The House Energy and Water Subcommittee made modest cuts to several programs that were either being managed poorly or had questionable justifications, without jeopardizing the NNSA’s modernization plan. The mark reflects an interest in good government and indicates that there are more important priorities other than nuclear weapons.

In the last sentence of the letter, the HASC Republicans threaten that if Congress does not fully fund the administration’s request for nuclear weapons, it will “seek to ensure, through the annual defense authorization legislation that any reduction in the nuclear stockpile—including to levels mandated by the New START Treaty—are directly contingent upon successful execution of the planned nuclear modernization program.” Congressman Turner has already attempted to do this by incorporating his New START Implementation Act into this year’s Defense Authorization bill, which, embarrassingly, had to be amended because it contained provisions that would actually reduce the reliability of U.S. nuclear forces.

As a general point, the letter asks that the Senate and the President “stand by” their commitment to nuclear modernization made during the New START ratification. However, committing to a plan does not mean that every penny requested by the Obama administration for nuclear weapons necessarily needs to be appropriated. Just like with all government agencies, it is possible that not all of the funding is needed or justified. By the looks of it, it seems as if the Republicans on the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee are comfortable with abdicating their responsibility to provide oversight for nuclear weapons funding. As Congress tries to find billions of dollars in cuts for security and non-security spending, this type of ideologically driven call to increase nuclear weapons spending is exactly what is not needed.

Turner’s Comments on “Disarmament”

Turning briefly to Congressman Turner’s comments that budget cuts are tantamount to the U.S. unilaterally disarming. The measure of an “effective” nuclear deterrent is whether the weapons can carry out the missions to which they are assigned, not how they compare to another country’s weapons. The cuts suggested by Congressman Markey are perfectly reasonable given the current budget environment. The United States holds roughly 5,000 active and reserve warheads, each one bigger than the bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of these 5,000, New START requires that fewer than 200 warheads be removed from deployed status. When the New START treaty was being discussed, the Pentagon assessed that lowering the number of deployed U.S. strategic warheads would be beneficial for national security and sufficient for deterrence. It appears that Turner is now trying to argue that both the military and the Senate, which provided its consent for New START, made a mistake. He should really find a better tactic other than asking for a favor on the nuclear weapons budget while simultaneously telling the Senate and military leadership that they are wrong.

By Andrew Carpenter and Ulrika Grufman

(For more information on this feature, see here.)

And this Friday’s in the weeds theoretical/conceptual articles on nuclear weapons and related issues include…

Sigal, L. V., 2011. Political Prospects for a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone in Northeast Asia. Pacific Focus. XXXVI: 1, April 2011. pp22-36.

“A Northeast Asian nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ) or a Japan–South Korea NWFZ could help entice the DPRK to carry out its commitment in the September 2005 Six-Party Joint Statement to “abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs”. (p.22).

In this article, Leon Sigal, makes the argument that a Northeast Asian or a Japan-South Korea nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ) would be beneficial for security in the region. In his opinion, there are two possible scenarios for the nuclear future of North Korea: containment or gradual rapprochement with its neighbours and the US. A regional NWFZ would be favourable could support either scenario. Political, economic and military containment is the strategy which the US and its allies have used against North Korea since the end of the Cold War. If this strategy, which has proven not to be very successful since North Korea has developed a nuclear capability, continues then a NWFZ between Japan and South Korea would strengthen containment. However, it could also lead the way to rapprochement since it would move in the direction of satisfying “Pyongyang’s longstanding demand for nuclear reassurances”. Sigal concludes that the NWFZ would be more viable if China and Russia join the pact, but that they probably will not do so without a commitment from the US. Although Sigal appears to doubt that this will happen soon, he believes that we are moving in the right direction and that beginning discussions between South Korea and Japan would be an advantageous starting point.

Fravel, T.M. & Medeiros, E.S., 2010. China’s Search for Assured Retaliation: the Evolution of Chinese Force Structure. International Security.  XXXV:2 Fall 2010. Pp 48-87.

“China’s leaders have never equated the size of their arsenal with China’s national power. Instead, to be seen as powerful and to deter attacks against it, China needs only a small number of nuclear weapons.”

In the article “China’s Search for Assured Retaliation the Evolution of Chinese Force Structure” M. Taylor Fravel and Evan S. Medeiros attempt to determine why China has not built a larger nuclear force.  They determine that China’s leaders have simple views of the role of nuclear weapons (2010, 85).  China’s leaders lacked the experience needed to fully utilize nuclear weapons in their national strategy.  Fravel and Medeiros found that while China has put more attention into developing their nuclear program, they still hold to their early leader’s belief in an assured second strike capability and the importance of conventional land forces.  Instead of increasing the size of China’s nuclear arsenal, Chinese leaders have focused on making their nuclear deterrent more difficult to destroy by emphasizing mobile launchers.    

Zhang, B., 2011. U.S. missile defence and China’s nuclear posture: changing dynamics of an offence-defence arms race. International Affairs.  LXXXVII: 3 May 2011. Pp. 555-569.

“The rise of U.S. missile defence has altered the rationale for the force development of the Chinese nuclear deterrent. (2010, pg. 561)”

In the article “U.S. missile defence and China’s nuclear posture: changing dynamics of an offence–defence arms race” Baohui Zhang explores the consequences of increasing the capability of the United States’ missile defence capabilities on China’s nuclear force.  Zhang finds that China’s current force structure is designed for a limited second strike capability, allowing it to have a smaller, more mobile nuclear force.  If the United States increases its ability to find and neutralize China’s nuclear missiles, then China will need to expand its nuclear force in order to be able to overcome the United States’ new defensive capability.  Zhang believes that increased dialogue between the United States and China may help to reduce China’s concerns and prevent an arms race with China.  

Jeffrey Lewis (aka Armscontrolwonk) and Elbridge Colby recently penned a provocative article calling on the Obama administration to modify the B83 gravity bomb in order to hold certain hard and deeply buried targets (HDBTs) in North Korea at risk.  

According to Jeffrey and Bridge, this capability would threaten underground bunkers where Kim Jong-Il might seek refuge or hide some of his nuclear forces that cannot be targeted by existing conventional earth penetrators or nuclear weapons, thereby enhancing deterrence and our ability to reassure South Korea.  In addition, they argue that such a weapon wouldn’t violate the Nuclear Posture Review’s prohibition on the design and construction of new nuclear weapons with new military capabilities.

The piece has prompted many reactions and in response Jeffrey wrote a follow-up post over at Armscontrolwonk expanding on and clarifying some of their arguments.  I think Jeffrey and Bridge highlight a very serious issue (how to deter North Korea), but I disagree with their proposed solution.  I laid out my objections in a comment on Armscontrolwonk, which I’m crossposting below the jumb.  Be sure to check out the other comments, as well as Jeffrey’s responses, over at his blog here.  It’s a fascinating and important debate.

Jeffrey-

Thanks for the follow up post. A few thoughts:

I don’t really disagree with your point that a modified B83 would not be considered a new weapon under the Nuclear Posture Review – for better or for worse. However, in my view that’s not what this debate should be about.

For me the issue is whether your proposal makes sense for U.S. and South Korean security. I don’t think it does for the following reasons.

First, you write:

“there is some deterrent benefit to being able to hold at risk Kim Jong Il’s leadership facilities and nuclear forces, some of which are likely located in hard and deeply buried facilities immune to conventional attack. Or, to be more precise, I believe deterrence suffers some difficult-to-measure harm from not being able to hold those targets at risk and that steps to remedy that gap may be more reassuring to South Korea than other proposals, such as the deployment of fighter-delivered tactical nuclear weapons that Gary Samore mentioned.”

As you note, this is hardly a ringing endorsement, and still I think it overstates the ability of earth penetrating weapons to hold HDBTs at risk. As others have already pointed out, reliable intelligence about the location of underground targets (and whatever is inside them at a given point in time) is difficult to come by, North Korea could build deeper facilities or shift more assets to mobile facilities, and the collateral damage from an earth penetrating weapon would be extreme, further undermining its credibility. Moreover, an additional earth penetrator would give North Korea a convenient excuse to accelerate its nuclear program, thereby undermining U.S. and South Korean efforts to denuclearize the peninsula. Of course without access to all the relevant classified intelligence information, I can’t rule out that some targets might be susceptible to destruction by a modified B83, but given that North Korea could simply dig deeper in response to the U.S. deployment of such a weapon, I still doubt its’ deterrent benefit.

I also think you could be more precise about what exactly it is you mean to deter. Are you trying to deter North Korea from engaging in limited “peacetime” conventional provocations against the U.S. or U.S. allies, in light of mutual deterrence at the nuclear level (also known as the stability-instability paradox)? Put in another way, are you seeking to enhance deterrence of low-level conventional conflict by denying Kim Jong-Il a nuclear retaliatory capability (and a secure place to hide), such that the U.S. would have less fear of escalating in response to North Korean conventional provocations?

If so, I don’t think a modified B83 would do the heavy lifting you want it to do, for the reasons I’ve already laid out: namely, it can’t effectively hold HDBTs at risk. Furthermore, given Pyongyang’s ability to wreak terrible destruction on Seoul with its conventional forces, I imagine the U.S. would be wary of escalating even if North Korea didn’t have nuclear weapons.

If you’re trying to deter North Korea from launching a large-scale conventional attack against South Korea or threatening to use or using nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict with the U.S. or South Korea (i.e. all-out war), I doubt a modified B83 would add anything to deterrence, as the U.S. already possesses robust nuclear and conventional capabilities with which to eliminate the North Korean regime.

Moreover, I think you also need to consider the implications of a modified B83 for crisis stability. In the event of a severe crisis or once a conventional war has begun, enhanced U.S. counterforce capabilities could prompt North Korea to take destabilizing measures to enhance the survivability of its forces by, for example, predelegating launch authority to field commanders. Likewise, the perceived ability to take out Kim Jong-Il in a hardened underground bunker could also create strong incentives for the U.S. to attack early in a conflict, lest the Dear Leader take steps to increase the survivability of his bunkers and forces, thereby closing the U.S. window of opportunity. While some of these crisis pressures would exist even in the absence of a modified B83, the additional capability would exacerbate them.

Regarding the reassurance of South Korea, I agree that a modified B83 is a better alternative than redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to the Peninsula. However, that’s the wrong standard by which to judge your proposal, especially since (as far as I can tell) the constituency in South Korea in favor of redeployment is confined to a small number of conservative Korean officials and academics.

I don’t doubt that North Korea’s recent provocations present real security challenges, but I don’t see how the deployment of a small number of modified B83s would be anything more than a temporary means of reassurance – North Korea can simply build deeper bunkers.

In addition, I think there’s a risk to relying on a nuclear capability of highly questionable utility as a measure of the strength and vitality of the U.S. commitment to South Korea’s security. The more the U.S. and South Korea lean on such capabilities as a crutch, the easier it is to avoid difficult but much needed discussions about how the U.S. can continue to guarantee South Korea’s security even as we continue to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons. I think the extensive discussions among the U.S., South Korea, and Japan that ultimately led to the retirement of the TLAM-N provide an excellent model as to how this can be achieved.

I also weigh the balance of nonproliferation and deterrence goals differently than you do. Regardless of an existing mid-1990s era requirement for a hard rock penetrator, a modified B83 (particularly to deter limited conventional attacks) would signal a step back in the U.S. effort to reduce its reliance on nuclear weapons, thereby undermining U.S. nonproliferation objectives. I think this cost (along with the others I’ve highlighted above) outweighs the very minimal (at best) deterrence benefit a modified B83 might provide.

Finally, given the current economic environment, I think you need to at least offer an estimated cost of the modification you’re proposing. Given that you don’t envision this as anything more than a niche capability, perhaps the cost would be minimal, but it would be helpful in assessing its affordability and opportunity costs.