In the wake of the release of the Obama administration’s FY 2011 budget request, which includes a ten percent increase in funding to maintain our nuclear weapons stockpile and supporting infrastructure, Greg Mello took to the online pages of the Bullet…
India Moving Forward on Nuclear Energy
In early February, President Obama issued a memorandum certifying that India has placed its civilian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards, thereby bringing the Indian Safeguards Agreement into force and moving the two nations another step closer toward cooperation in the field of nuclear energy under the auspices of the landmark U.S.-India deal.
Yet while progress is being made toward implementing the agreement, a few steps remain before U.S. firms such as Westinghouse Electric and G.E. Hitachi can begin nuclear trade with India…
On September 6, 2008, India, with the strong support of the U.S., secured a rare exemption from the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) allowing it to conduct civilian nuclear trade despite not being party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). A little over a month later, on October 6, President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed the United States-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Non-proliferation Enhancement Act.
Supporters of the cooperation agreement argue that U.S. backing for the exemption indicated “a new chapter of engagement with India.” During the Cold War the world’s two largest democracies were often at odds, as India was the leader of the non-aligned movement and at times sided with the Soviet Union. President Obama has noted that the agreement “will increase American exports and create jobs in both countries.”
Another argument made in defense of the deal is that because India has limited domestic uranium reserves, it needed the ability to trade with other nations to ensure a steady supply. Moreover, it requires India to place its civilian nuclear reactors under IAEA safeguards for the first time. The State Department argues that the initiative “will help meet India’s growing energy requirements and strengthen the non-proliferation regime by welcoming New Delhi into globally accepted nonproliferation standards and practices.”
Critics of the agreement, however, note that by providing India with additional nuclear material, New Delhi could choose to divert more of its domestic supply of uranium toward its weapons program, thereby fueling a potential arms race not only with Pakistan, but with possibly China as well.
They also cite concerns that it could do serious damage to international efforts to curb the spread of dangerous nuclear weapons technologies. While Article IV of the NPT affirms that all state parties in good standing under the Treaty have a right to benefit from the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, the deal allows India to reap rewards without being a signatory to the Treaty. Moreover, India has not stopped producing nuclear weapons-usable fissile material or signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Critics fear that extending special rights to India without simultaneously requiring it to make meaningful commitments toward disarmament could undermine the shaky bargain upon which the NPT is based.
India, for its part, continues to insist that all action, including application of IAEA safeguards to civilian nuclear facilities, is voluntary and that its military facilities will remain exempt from inspection.
A few obstacles remain before the U.S. and India can commence nuclear trade. First, India is demanding that the two sides complete an agreement regarding a nuclear spent fuel reprocessing facility. The terms of the U.S.-India deal grant India reprocessing rights under the condition that it establishes a facility to safeguard nuclear material monitored by the IAEA. Indian officials have expressed concern that the U.S. is trying to re-open discussion on the conditions under which it can suspend reprocessing consent rights to India. Current estimates are that such an agreement will be finalized by August of this year.
In addition, New Delhi must agree to join to the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, lest U.S. firms balk at engaging in nuclear trade with India. The Convention would shield U.S. and international suppliers from liability in the event of a nuclear accident and make plant operators responsible for damages from any accidents. While the Indian cabinet has approved the necessary legislation, the national legislature has yet to consider the proposal. Competitors to U.S. firms such as France’s Areva and Russia’s Rosatom are not similarly constrained because they are covered by liability protections from their home governments.
India is aggressively pursuing deals with other nations worldwide, especially those with large uranium reserves. Last week it was reported that Russia planned to follow-up the nuclear cooperation pact it already signed with India last December with a deal next month which would enable Moscow to construct additional power plants. In addition to the U.S. and Russian deals, India has inked agreements with the UK, France, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Namibia, and Canada.
As nuclear trade between the U.S. and India comes closer to becoming a reality, the Obama administration should be concerned that the U.S.-India deal, as well as agreements between India and other nuclear suppliers, could weaken the nonproliferation and disarmament regime at a time when strengthening this regime is a top Obama administration priority.
If you read one thing on New START and verification in the coming weeks and months…
…read Arms Control Association Senior Fellow Greg Thielmann’s most recent threat assessment brief. It’s a comprehensive and outstanding take on the purpose of verification and how to think about it in the context of the (hopefully) soon to be signed New START agreement, especially the hand wringing over Votkinsk and telemetry. I’ve been trying to make many of the same points here at NoH, but Greg seamlessly ties it all together in less than 8 pages.
The bottom line, as Greg notes, is that while New START will draw upon much of what was in START I, the new treaty will contain new rules and limits. New rules and limits in turn require verification provisions that are actually pegged to those new rules and limits, not rules and limits from a treaty that was negotiated during the 1980s and early 1990s…
These new rules and limits will be rooted in the fact(s) that:
(1) U.S. defense planning is no longer guided by many of the (oftentimes crazy) scenarios vis-à-vis Russia (e.g. think protracted nuclear war) that dominated our thinking during the Cold War,
(2) the U.S. is starting with a lot more information about Russia’s strategic forces now than it did in the late 1980s and early 1990s when START I was negotiated and signed, and
(3) our own national technical means of monitoring and verification have vastly improved.
Consequently, what we’re likely to get in New START is an updated and streamlined system of verification procedures that will allow the U.S. to effectively verify Russia’s compliance with the new treaty. Elaine Grossman wrote a good story last week on what New START’s provisions on telemetry might look like. Hint: they’re going to be simpler!
Senator Lugar, who unlike some of his Republican colleagues has always taken verification seriously, recently expressed legitimate concerns that over time our information about Russia’s nuclear forces could diminish without the kind of intelligence we got from START I’s verification provisions.
Of course, our intelligence community would probably prefer to retain all of START I’s provisions (e.g. on continuous monitoring at Russia’s mobile missile production facility at Votkinsk and telemetry). Yet as Greg points out, while cooperative verification measures supplement and confirm information gleaned from national technical means, “enhancing collection per se is not a legitimate rationale for including them [verification provisions] in a treaty.”
If the purposes for which the Votkinsk and telemetry provisions were crafted in START I are no longer going to exist in New START, then it’s tough to make the case, particularly to the Russians, that these same provisions (at least in their current form) are necessary to build confidence and verify compliance this time around.
Is Operation Moshtarak really protecting civilians?
The International Security Assistance Force – otherwise known as the American-led NATO force in Afghanistan – launched Operation Moshtarak in the Helmand province last week. The largest military operation in Afghanistan since the initial invasion in 2001, Operation Moshtarak is the debut of ISAF’s new “civilian-friendly” attitude.
NATO announced that their new strategy was to center on protecting civilians and building up local support rather than focusing predominately on pursuing insurgent militants without explicit consideration for the largely non-combatant populations in which they take refuge.
However, the strategy has proven messier to implement than the military’s rhetoric suggested. In Marjah, civilians have been used as human shields, while the economic and social infrastructure of the town has been riddled with bullets and laced with improvised explosive devices. The Associated Press reported that:
Shops were riddled with bullet holes. Grocery stores and fruit stalls had been left standing open, hastily deserted by their owners. White metal fences marked off areas that had not yet been cleared of bombs.
Avoiding negative impacts on civilians during a massive urban operation is impossible, it seems.
However, while an explicit effort to minimize civilian casualties is to be lauded, General McCrystal’s strategy seems to have wholly neglected the displacement of civilians that his operation has caused. For instance, General McCrystal rapidly apologized to President Karzai after a NATO airstrike today killed at least 27 civilians – most, if not all, of whom were women and children– but has been silent on the forced internal migration that the operation has caused.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that the number of displaced due to Operation Moshtarak has doubled over the past four days, reaching close to 25,000 people who have fled the conflict. Many are reported to have fled abruptly, without food or water.
The population of Marjah has halved — from 80,000 to 40,000 — according to OCHA. Those who remained in the town are stuck due to mines and the threat of being caught in the crossfire, according to the Afghan Red Crescent Society.
The internally displaced persons newly created by the operation have no camp to go to, and the innocent men, women, and children who have been fled the conflict in fear are streaming into a void of humanitarian assistance.
Add to this the uproar in the international humanitarian assistance community over General McCrystal’s “government in a box” theory, and suddenly the outlook for displaced civilians is grim.
McCrystal is increasingly involving the military in state-building endeavors, from building schools and distributing food to assisting in the creation of a local government. On the face of it, this strategy seems to be a good idea: the military is engaged in good works that could help win over the support of the local population. However, as Oxfam elucidates, “in some cases, military involvement in development activities is, paradoxically, putting Afghan lives further at risk as these projects quickly become targeted by anti-government elements.”
As a result, the United Nations is refusing to deliver aid in conjunction with the Helmand operation for fear of tainting their objectivity and independence in the delivery of humanitarian aid to a distressed population.
This twin effect of massive displacement and militarization of aid has led to a high cost to pay for the civilian population of Marjah as a result of Operation Moshtarak.
The rebuilding of schools, provision of humanitarian aid, and emergency medical attention should be left in the expert hands of neutral humanitarian aid organizations like OCHA, Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, and Oxfam.
So when the new NATO intention to prioritize respect for the civilian population and minimize civilian deaths, one has to ask why so little attention is being paid to the massive civilian displacement that has been the result of Operation Moshtarak. Refugees are civilian victims of war, and the loss of one’s home, livelihood, safety and sense of security due to war and displacement are a devastating cost to pay. If General McCrystal and NATO really want to respect the civilians of Afghanistan, then they should consider the massive displacement that results from such large operations.
NATO should also leave humanitarian assistance to the purview of neutral international aid organizations that have the experience and technical capacity to serve the local population without further endangering their safety. Aid should not be militarized; this only further endangers the safety and livelihoods of an already distressed population.
IAEA Reports Multiple "Concerns" in Iran
The IAEA released its latest Safeguards Report on Iran’s nuclear program today, following up a shorter statement released last week. The report confirms that Iran has begun to enrich uranium at a level of 20 percent at its Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) at Natanz.
On 14 February 2010, Iran, in the presence of Agency inspectors, moved approximately 1950 kg of low enriched UF6 from [its Fuel Enrichment Plant] to the PFEP feed station. The Agency inspectors sealed the cylinder containing the material to the feed station. Iran provided the Agency with mass spectrometry results which indicate that enrichment levels of up to 19.8% U-235 were obtained at PFEP between 9 and 11 February 2010.
To explain why it is much faster and easier for Iran to go from 20 percent to 90 percent enriched uranium, which would be required to produce a bomb, than from 5 percent to 20 percent, I defer to a true Arms Control Wonk.
Essentially, though, Iran has moved nearly its entire stock of LEU to PFEP, where a single cascade is currently producing 20 percent enriched uranium for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR). “‘This is way more than the TRR needs and raises concerns about why Iran would be planning to convert so much’ of its low enriched uranium stockpile to higher enriched uranium,” says Jacqueline Shire of ISIS to Laura Rozen at POLITICO.
Further, the report notes that:
Contrary to the relevant resolutions of the Board of Governors and the Security Council, Iran has also continued with the construction of the IR-40 reactor and related heavy water activities. The Agency has not been permitted to take samples of the heavy water which is stored at UCF, and has not been provided with access to the Heavy Water Production Plant.
Before centrifuge technology for enriching uranium became available, the plutonium route using heavy-water reactors was the common choice for aspiring nuclear weapons states. India’s Cirrus reactor, Pakistan’s Khushab reactor, and Israel’s Dimona reactor are all large, heavy-water reactors. Since Iran’s civil nuclear power program is based on light-water technology, the use of a heavy-water production facility and a heavy-water “research” reactor have caused many experts to take note.
Iran has ignored multiple IAEA requests to cease its heavy-water program at Arak and previously refused an offer by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to replace its 40-megawatt heavy-water reactor with a light-water research reactor.
In response to the implications of these combined current activities, the IAEA has stated its “concerns” for the first time:
The information available to the Agency in connection with these outstanding issues is extensive and has been collected from a variety of sources over time. It is also broadly consistent and credible in terms of the technical detail, the time frame in which the activities were conducted and the people and organizations involved. Altogether, this raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.
This change may have been partially influenced by the leadership of Yukiya Amano, who became IAEA head in December, since the report appears to be more directly critical of Iran’s refusal to cooperate with the IAEA than most issued under his predecessor, Mohamed ElBaradei.
