A report put out last week by former IAEA inspector Robert Kelly, on behalf of the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), claims that Burma is in the process of developing a nuclear weapons program. The evidence used to compile the report includes photographs and documents smuggled out by a renegade Burmese soldier, Sai Thein Win, Deputy Commander of a highly classified military factory that was the headquarters of the army’s nuclear endeavors. Accusations of a nascent nuclear program in Burma are longstanding; however this new evidence exceeds previous unclear satellite images and uncertain reports, and should heighten concern about the program. The International Atomic Energy Agency has launched an investigation into the claims and may be in a position to confirm some of the information.  

Without doubt, Burma is far from completing the project—and as an ostracized nation with a weak economy and few domestic resources, it will have trouble carrying through with it. However, the report claims the photos indicate a distinct interest in a nuclear weapons program—not a peaceful nuclear energy reactor. The evidence includes photos taken in critical facilities in Burma, including images of a vacuum glove box, used to produce uranium metal; technical drawings of a device known as a bomb-reduction vessel, which makes uranium metal for fuel rods and nuclear-weapons components; and detailed descriptions of tunnels used as command posts and storage areas for secret weapons and equipment.

The new evidence is said to complement previous knowledge about the Burmese nuclear program. The program is believed to be run by Dr. Ko Ko Oo and managed by the Directorate of Defense Services Science and Technology Research Center (DDSSTRC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), the former of which has been charged with building a nuclear reactor, enriching uranium, and building a nuclear weapon. The DVB report concludes that Burma, a state party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and an IAEA member, is developing nuclear technology and has full intent in building a bomb, but that it will have difficulty in doing so, and that the program is in a primitive stage.

While all of this should be taken with caution, due to the one-party source of evidence, attention should be drawn now to the possibility of a future increase of Burmese nuclear cooperation with North Korea.

In terms of their interconnectedness, a leaked report last year showed just how close the militaries of the two states have become. A photo record of Burma’s Joint Chief of Staff Thura Shwe Mann’s official trip to North Korea depicted his delegation visiting several secret locations in the DPRK, including what looks like a SCUD (Hwasong) production plant.  

Long accused of using front companies and intermediaries to provide illegal weaponry to Burma, Iran and Syria, North Korea has recently been accused by the United Nations of defying a UN ban through the continued export of nuclear and missile technology, supported by false labeling of exports and shipping containers, falsification of information about the destination of goods, and use of intermediaries and financial institutions in individual trades.  But while many worry about North Korea proliferating in this manner and transferring physical goods and technologies to countries such as Burma, a more immediate consequence of the DPRK nuclear program is the transfer of scientific ‘know-how.”  

North Korea has thousands of nuclear scientists available for dispatch who could prove a lucrative resource for the cash-strapped regime and importantly, are infinitely harder to detect than the actual transfer of physical nuclear technology.  As such, should the Burmese program carry on in its current form, Rangoon may soon look to North Korea for technical assistance personnel.  Even though Burma’s current program looks to be based on an enriched uranium approach – while North Korea’s is traditionally based on reprocessed plutonium– it is important to remember that Pyongyang has experimented with uranium enrichment and dealt substantially with the A.Q. Khan network (famous for its uranium enrichment technology proliferation) during the 1990s.  Consequently, North Korea is in a position to offer assistance and know-how in this area, and due to the plentiful stocks of uranium ore in its mountains, could one day be in a position to sell uranium for enrichment to Rangoon.

While a Burmese nuclear bomb is not yet in existence, recent developments indicate that we have all the more reason to keep close watch on North Korea’s clandestine behavior and Burmese actions.

I tried to work a good baseball reference into the title (but failed miserably) since at the water cooler this morning, most of DC was focused on new Washington National Stephen Strasburg’s impressive major league debut, rather than the impending UN Security Council sanctions vote.

In fact, maybe that’s the real reason why the vote was delayed?

After over an hour delay, said to be due to indecision on the part of Lebanon, twelve nations of the 15-member body voted for the resolution.  Turkey and Brazil voted against, as was expected, while Lebanon chose to abstain.

Ambassador Susan Rice spoke out strongly against Iran’s actions and addressed ongoing negotiations on the TRR Deal in her remarks following the vote:

Turkey and Brazil have worked hard to make progress on the Tehran Research Reactor proposal—efforts that reflect their leaders’ good intentions to address the Iranian people’s humanitarian needs while building more international confidence about the nature of Iran’s nuclear program. My government will continue to discuss the Iranian-revised proposal and our concerns about it, as appropriate. But the Tehran Research Reactor proposal—then and now—does not respond to the fundamental, well-founded, and unanswered concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. This resolution does.

Later in the day, President Obama said that the new Iran sanctions resolution “demonstrates the growing costs that will come with Iranian intransigence,” but also repeatedly emphasized that the UN sanctions vote does “not close the door on diplomacy.”

Unfortunately, necessary posturing on the part of Iran is likely to make diplomacy difficult in the near future, and Congress is already gearing up to ensure that another round of sanctions is passed by the end of the June.

Rep. Howard Berman praised the passage of this morning’s resolution and confirmed that Congress would be moving forward on gasoline sanctions legislation:

We now look to the European Union and other key nations that share our deep concern about Iran’s nuclear intentions to build on the Security Council resolution by imposing tougher national measures that will deepen Iran’s isolation and, hopefully, bring the Iranian leadership to its senses. The US Congress will do its part by passing sanctions legislation later this month.

S. 3454, the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), was posted online yesterday.  The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) completed its mark of the bill on May 27, though it’s not clear when the full Senate will act on it.  Unlike the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), SASC marks up the NDAA behind closed doors.

H.R. 5136, the House version of the NDAA, cleared the full House on May 28.  As you may recall, HASC approved two damaging amendments on nuclear policy, both of which went unchallenged on the House floor.  One provision constrains the ability of the President and senior military leaders to determine the best strategic posture for the U.S., while the other undermines and mischaracterizes the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review.

Fortunately the SASC mark does not include these measures.  On the plus side, the bill contains two essential provisions calling for greater oversight over Life Extension Programs and major NNSA construction projects.  Given the unprecedented amount of money that the Obama administration is proposing to spend refurbishing and modernizing the nuclear weapons complex over the next ten years, it only makes sense that Congress demand additional means of supervision and accountability.  Simply put, these provisions are no-brainers…

The first important oversight provision in S. 3454 is Sec. 1049, which calls for the development of criteria for determining the safety and security of nuclear weapons.  The provision requires the Secretaries of Defense and Energy to submit a report to the congressional defense committees no later than March 1, 2011 containing (1) criteria for determining the appropriate baseline for safety and security of nuclear weapons and (2) a methodology for determining the level of safety and security that may be achieved through a life extension program for each type of nuclear weapon.

According to the Committee report accompanying the bill, the baseline requirement for safety and security “would be the minimum requirement for safety and security across the nuclear weapons stockpile.”  The report goes on to say that the methodology for determining the level of safety and security “should include…a broad, system life cycle cost benefit analysis, in addition to the cost of the Life Extension Program, which is currently part of the phase 6.2A process.”

I take this to mean that SASC is looking for answers to the types of questions that Hans Kristensen and Ivan Oelrich have repeatedly been asking: “how much surety is enough, who sets the bar, and what is it worth?”  Without clear baselines it’s always possible to argue that more surety is needed, whether it’s actually necessary or not.  Similarly, I wonder if the Committee’s call for a “system life cycle cost benefit analysis” is designed to shed some light on the cost-effectiveness of enhancing safety and security by tinkering with the nuclear explosive package (also known as intrinsic surety) relative to other more targeted measures to improve surety over the course of a weapon’s lifetime (e.g. more guns, guards, and gates).  The 2007 Minot incident screams for this type of approach.        

The second provision of note in S. 3454 is Sec. 3114, which amends the Atomic Energy Defense Act to require the Administrator of NNSA to establish cost and schedule baselines for Life Extension Programs, and the Secretary of Energy to establish cost and schedule baselines for defense funded construction projects and defense environmental management projects with a total cost in excess of $100 million.  The Committee report lays out of the particulars of the provision as follows:

Sound familiar?  Regular readers of NoH will remember that Nick Roth recommended similar language earlier this year.  Citing a January 2010 GAO report excoriating NNSA for failing to establish high-quality cost estimates for construction and environmental clean-up projects, Nick argued that the Department of Energy should be subject to much greater scrutiny when its projects go way over budget.  Here’s what he wrote at the time:

Has SASC been reading NoH?  In any event, these provisions are big wins for greater transparency and accountability that ought to command strong bipartisan support.

At an event held today at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “Taking Tehran’s Temperature: One Year On,” some of the world’s top scholars on Iran, including Abbas Milani, Gary Sick, and Karim Sadjadpour, spoke about Iran’s domestic political situation and American policy towards the Islamic Republic.

While Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not a focus of the panel, Professor Sick included substantive commentary on the recent round of UN sanctions. He stated clearly that sanctions do not work—noting most specifically that “when sanctions began, Iran had zero centrifuges. Today, after four UN Security Council sanctions resolutions, Iran has 9000 centrifuges.” He went on to explain that “Iran doesn’t like sanctions,” however if they are imposed, Iran will live with them; but, if they are threatened, Iran is likely to compromise in order to avoid them. This, he says, is what happened with the Brazil-Turkey deal. The West’s failure to take advantage of this opening was a “terrible decision,” missing the opportunity to use sanctions for what they do best—leverage. Missed opportunities (which he expands on in his blog), he says, are the most disappointing aspect of recent events.

Professor Sick added that threatening smart sanctions- which target the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and not the citizens of Iran- could be effective. Details of the newest round of UN sanctions are included in the Annex of the most recent version of the resolution, which is expected to see a vote tomorrow.  The text of the Annex is, unfortunately, not available to the public, so we cannot yet conclude if these sanctions are “smart”, or will be as futile as those in the past.

After South   Korea released its international report on the sinking of the Cheonan detailing North Korean responsibility for the incident, tensions rose on the Korean peninsula to levels not seen in recent years.  With South Korea promising a ‘stern response’ to the attack and North   Korea promising retaliation that could include a ‘a sacred war involving the whole nation’, it looked like there was real potential for escalation.  Now, nearly three weeks on, both South and North Korea appear to be u-turning on a number of the threats they issued. Which begs the question: were the threats just all talk, as we have seen in the past, or were tensions so high (as I explained here) that both sides deemed that they had no choice but to urgently take de-escalatory steps?

Reports initially suggested that South Korea would seek sanctions at the U.N Security Council as part of its promised ‘stern response’ to the sinking of the Cheonan. But Pyongyang threatened to respond to any action at the Security Council using an ‘indiscriminate punishment of our style.’  Nearly three weeks later, Seoul has finally referred the case to the Security Council and naturally, North Korea has responded again with strong rhetoric – even implying the possibility of more missile / nuclear tests.  But instead of sanctions, South Korea now seems to be looking to send a ‘political, symbolic and moral message’ at the Security Council.  North Korea’s bellicose rhetoric may have contributed to this change in approach, but it also seems that uncertainty over Russia and China’s position curtailed South Korea’s desire to try and get sanctions through the UN.

Another area of policy u-turn seems to be South Korea’s threat to recommence its psychological warfare campaign against the North.  Stopped under the sunshine policy of Kim Dae Jung, South Korea had threatened to rebuild a network of loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda across the Demilitarized Zone and drop leaflets over the North containing the probe results of the Cheonan investigation.  Of all South Korea’s promised countermeasures this seemed one of the most potentially dangerous, given North Korea’s declaration that it would shell the propaganda speakers with its artillery forces and South Korea’s assertion that it would respond to any attack militarily.   Defectors have been on record as suggesting that in this case at least, North Korea’s threats would likely be carried out.  Given the severity of Pyongyang’s warning, it thus seems that Lee Myung Bak heeded it as reality in his decision to withhold resumption of the psychological warfare campaign.  The decision may have also been influenced by his desire to keep the South Korean markets stable, which were rattled significantly in the days following the report’s release.

South Korea also promised to heighten its naval presence and commence new joint-exercises with the U.S. as another element of its response strategy to the Cheonan sinking.  Late last month Seoul carried out a much publicized unilateral anti-submarine exercise, and a joint operation with the U.S. was moved forward by a month.  Predictably, North Korea responded to these moves by saying that it would cancel accords with the South designed to prevent clashes at their military border, and warned of prompt physical strikes if any South Korean vessels entered the disputed area off the west coast of the peninsula.  It appears North Korea’s harsh tone may have again paid off to a degree as South Korea and the U.S agreed last week to postpone the joint naval exercise.  Chinese intervention may also have helped influence this decision, as it called upon the U.S-ROK alliance to cancel or drastically reduce the scale of the exercise.

For North Korea’s part, it too seems to have u-turned on some of its threatened responses – particularly in the case of the joint DPRK-ROK Kaesong Industrial Complex venture.  On May 27 North Korea promptly threatened to block all cross-border traffic to the Complex.  Of course, such a move would have been very self-defeating, as it employs some 43,000 North Korean workers and brings the North millions of dollars worth of badly needed revenue each year.  Not surprisingly, just days after making this threat North  Korea made clear that it had no intention of acting on it, instead advising South Korea that it intended to keep the project open.  For its part, South Korea has had to tread very carefully with regards to the Kaesong complex, due to the potential risk of having its nationals taken hostage by North Korea should tensions further rise.  In the end, mutual restraint prevailed because escalation was in neither side’s interest.

Despite rumours that suggested Kim Jong Il had ordered North Korean forces to prepare for war, on-the-ground reports instead revealed that North Korea was not preparing for anything of the sort.  Once again, the Pyongyang likely calculated that it would neither be in Seoul’s interests to pursue conflict nor for North Korea to initiate what would inevitably be a suicidal attack for Kim Jong Il’s dilapidated military forces.

On Sunday President Lee Myung Bak used a Memorial Day speech to outline his commitment to peace with North Korea. A day earlier he assured investors that there was “absolutely no possibility of a full-scale war”.  It thus looks like (for the moment at least) that the potential for confrontation on the peninsula has been reduced significantly – or perhaps the danger was never all that great in the first place.  From the policy u-turns described it seems that some of the threats made on both sides likely were more than just talk, but at the same time, restraint was viewed by both parties as preferable to escalation.  Although the raising of the Cheonan at the United Nations could lead to further North Korean belligerency (as was the case after the issuance of UNSC 1874), it seems that for now, the status quo has once again prevailed on the peninsula