On the evening of November 18th, the arms control community came together to recognize members of Congress who have demonstrated superior support for common sense nuclear weapons policies. On behalf of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation …
Project Sapphire: a model for defense by other means
David Hoffman’s chapter on Project Sapphire in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Dead Hand reads like a spy-thriller novel — complete with a young American diplomat protagonist, angry Russians, a top-secret “Tiger Team” and enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) to make 24 nuclear bombs.
Project Sapphire was the first major success of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which passed just after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In November 1994, a team of 25 Americans transported 1,322 pounds of HEU from the Ulba metallurgical factory in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to be blended down to low-enriched uranium. The operation was an enormous success thanks to the cooperation and discretion of the Kazakh and American governments.
In 1994, “the Russian nuclear establishment was showing the same signs of deterioration as the rest of the country.” Fissile material across the country “was stored in rooms and warehouses easy for an amateur burglar to crack;” the 90 or 91 percent-enriched Uranium 235 (nearly weapons-grade) was kept “safe” by what was described by the American diplomat protagonist Andy Weber as “a Civil War padlock.”
The dismal standard of safety and security of nuclear material at the fall of the Soviet Union lends to the fact that threat of nuclear war isn’t our greatest danger, loose nuclear material and weapons are.
Since Project Sapphire, Central Asia and specifically Kazakhstan have become a world leader in non-proliferation efforts. In 1991, Kazakhstan inherited 1,410 nuclear warheads and the world’s largest bioweapons plant. By 2001, Kazakhstan was free of nuclear weapons; and in 2009, all five Central Asian republics ratified the Central Asia Nuclear-Weapons-Free-Zone (CANWFZ) treaty.
At the 20th anniversary event commemorating Project Sapphire at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), David Hoffman and Andy Weber, along with Laura Holgate (Senior Director of WMD Terrorism and Threat Reduction at the National Security Council) spoke of last year’s removal and destruction of chemical weapons from Syria under the auspices of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as the “child” of Project Sapphire and an example of how interagency cooperation and technical experts working together has made the world a safer place.
The destruction of Syrian chemical weapons and Project Sapphire were as much logistical successes as examples of how diplomacy is just as important to our security enterprise as military action. Speaking at the Department of Defense in March 1995, former Defense Secretary William Perry spoke of Project Sapphire as “defense by other means.”
Projects like the National Nuclear Administration’s (NNSA) Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) established in 2004 have demonstrated the power of defense by other means.In the past 10 years, the GTRI has shut down 49 HEU reactors in 25 countries and disposed of more than 4,100 kilograms of HEU and plutonium. But some of the most difficult countries to extract from, such as Belarus and South Africa, still have weapons-usable nuclear materials.
In his historic 2009 Prague speech, President Obama reinvigorated efforts to secure rogue nuclear materials:
“Today I am announcing a new international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years. We will set up new standards, expand our cooperation with Russia, [and] pursue new partnerships to lock down these sensitive materials.”
The administration surged funding for the GTRI after the President’s 2009 and since, funding for non-proliferation programs such as GTRI has been on the decline. For the third year in a row the FY 2015 budget request for the NNSA was slashed.
While it is all fine and good to celebrate the success of GTRI and its predecessor programs in helping secure loose nuclear material, the program’s progress should be measured not by how much material has been secured, but by how much could potentially end up in the hands of terrorists. Funding for nuclear weapons programs at the expense of non-proliferation efforts is counterproductive to U.S. national security.
As Obama mentioned in his 2009 speech, cooperation with Russia is integral to reducing nuclear threats worldwide. At the CSIS event, Laura Holgate spoke of the need for the non-proliferation advocacy community to be creative in encouraging Congress to engage diplomatically with Russia. It is in the interest of U.S. national security to continue working with Russia on areas of consistent cooperation such as the elimination of chemical weapons from Syria, and as members of the P5+1 and Iran negotiations.
An amicable relationship between Russia and the United States is not only good for national security but for the world.
U.S. will attend Vienna Conference
The U.S. announced this evening that it will attend the third Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.
The Conference, set to take place on December 8-9, 2014 in Vienna, Austria, aims to strengthen the global nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime, highlight the health and environmental dangers of nuclear weapons use, and underscore the urgency for progress on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) action plan.
Up to this point, the “P5” nuclear weapons countries (Russia, China, U.S., U.K., and France) have boycotted the conferences, fearing that they might be used as a forum to push for the elimination of their stockpiles. North Korea and Israel also skipped the two previous events, while India and Pakistan attended the second.
What the U.K. or the rest of the P5 will choose to do, however, is still an open question.
No other P5 countries have confirmed attendance at the December conference, but they could be influenced by the U.S. move. At an Arms Control Association event in October, Lord Des Browne, Secretary of State for Defence under the previous British Labour government, said that, “From the point of view of the United Kingdom, if the U.S. agrees to go, we will go.” He continued on to say that it was “no coincidence that we have not made up our mind for each of the last two conferences until immediately after the United States made its decision.”
For its part, the U.S. has made clear that its participation in no way implies that the country supports the beginning of a diplomatic process that would lead to a ban on nuclear weapons or a convention on their elimination. Rather, U.S. participation in the Vienna Conference will help to reaffirm American commitment to the process laid out in the NPT.
Finalizing the FY 2015 National Defense Authorization (NDAA): Key Issues for Congress
For the third year in a row, the United States Senate is unlikely to approve its own version of the critically important Fiscal Year 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). So much for being “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” After voting on September 18 on a bill to keep the government running through mid-December and […]
Chicken Little Panics: Russia Plus One Nuke
Last week, the State Department published its New START Treaty Aggregate Numbers of Strategic Offensive Arms report, and it’s got wild-eyed defense spending enthusiasts up in a different sort of arms. About what, you might ask? As of September 1, Russia has more deployed strategic nuclear warheads than the United States for the first time since 2000.
One more, or 0.00061% more warheads, that is.
The report shows that the Russian Federation has 1,643 deployed strategic nuclear warheads — precisely one more than the United States’ 1,642 warheads. The strategic significance of this disparity is, well, zero–except to provide an excuse for nuclear hawks to cry for more nuclear weapons.
The current situation reminds one of the chaos that ensues in the 1966 movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming over a false alarm about a Russian invasion of New England.
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed by Russia and the US entered into force in February 2011.
Since then, Russia has increased its deployed warheads by 144, while the US has drawn down its force from 1,722 to 1,642. The treaty obliges both countries to limit their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 by 2018.
The Washington Times columnist Bill Gertz led the Chicken Little Caucus, writing in The Washington Times, “Russia has more deployed nuclear warheads than U.S.“ Yes indeed, by one. We should surrender immediately.
The article quotes former Pentagon strategic weapons analyst Mark Schneider saying, “All U.S. numbers have declined since New START entered into force…The fact that this is happening reflects the ineffectiveness of the Obama administration’s approach to New START.”
What? You mean the Obama Administration is reducing nuclear weapons as called for by a treaty to reduce nuclear weapons? What kind of logic is that?
If the purpose of the treaty is to reduce the U.S. and Russia’s nuclear weapons stockpiles, the decline in the U.S. arsenal to which Schneider refers as ‘ineffective’ is, in fact, quite effective. In fact, it’s in accordance with fulfilling our treaty obligations.
Another important fact: this miniscule numerical superiority of Russia’s arsenal is temporary. According to Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, “…these changes do not reflect a build-up of the Russian nuclear arsenal. The increase results from the deployment of new missiles and fluctuations caused by existing launchers moving in and out of overhaul.”
You know when you go to the doctor for a 3:00pm check-up and you’re two pounds heavier than you were yesterday morning? Imagine these warhead stockpile numbers as your post-lunch, jeans-on weigh-in. The U.S. just went for the salad.
The big picture significance of Russia’s one extra nuclear warhead is the ongoing confrontation between Russia and the U.S. since the Russian seizure of Crimea and its invasion of Ukraine. While Putin talks big about nuclear weapons, both countries have arsenals far beyond any necessary to deter a nuclear war or to respond to a nuclear attack. Many experts argue that 100 or 500 nuclear weapons would be more than an adequate nuclear deterrent – or destroyer of worlds.
In 1983 Carl Sagan said, “Imagine a room awash with gasoline. And there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has 9,000 matches, the other has 7,000 matches. Each of them is concerned about who’s ahead.”
Today it’s more like 1,642 matches to 1,643, but the metaphor is just as applicable.
