Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

In recent weeks NNSA has hinted at how it plans to allocate the $2.321 billion appropriated by Congress in the final FY 2011 continuing resolution for the Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation account.  Recall that the final number for this account is …

In case you’ve missed it: A UN sanctions committee report submitted to the Security Council over the weekend suggests North Korea and Iran have been regularly sharing ballistic missile technology via air cargo in violation of UN sanctions against Pyon…

UPDATE: Under the supervision of Pakistani intelligence, U.S. investigators interviewed Bin Laden’s three wives late last week.

Two weeks ago, as you know, Osama Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs. The operation to take out public enemy number one, though successful, has fractioned an already capricious relationship between the United States and Pakistan.

Pakistan is less than pleased that President Obama ordered the raid without notifying Pakistani officials in advance.  Now, echoing past fissures in U.S.-Pakistani relations, Pakistan is being uncooperative in lieu of the news that Osama Bin Laden was essentially hiding in plain sight.

Although President Obama did not directly accuse Pakistan of harboring Osama Bin Laden for five years in the affluent city of Abbottabad, he did convey his belief that there was likely a network inside of Pakistan that helped to keep him hidden. Largely for this reason, the U.S. is demanding that Pakistan allow American investigators to speak with Osama Bin Laden’s three widows. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s response has been less than forthcoming.  

As a result, many in the United States argue that we should distance ourselves from Pakistan. Some even argue that we should cut off all aid to the country. On May 3, 2011, Representative Ted Poe (R-TX) introduced the Pakistan Accountability Act, which essentially freezes aid until Pakistan produces substantial evidence that it was unaware that Bin Laden was living in Abbottabad.  

But it is not that simple. The U.S. and Pakistan rely on each other. In a May 9th op-ed on U.S.-Pakistan relations South Asia expert Michael Krepon notes that, “It would be a serious error of judgment, to conclude that this relationship cannot be salvaged.”  Or as Senator Lugar said in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Pakistan is strategically vital.

There are a couple things that scare me about Pakistan, now more than ever. First things first, if we believe Pakistan when they assert they had no idea that Bin Laden was in Abottabad, like many, I regard that as equally unsettling that they were unable to detect Bin Laden’s presence when he was within walking distance of a major military academy. Additionally, due to the fact that there is an air of mystery regarding Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile and serious internal conflict within the country—I am less than confident that their weapons are safe and secure. Furthermore, they are rapidly increasing their nuclear stockpile in nuclear facilities that are located in areas populated by the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda.  Finally, as Tom Donilon recently stated, “more terrorists and extremists have been captured or killed in Pakistan than in any place in the world.”

In short, Pakistan is an unstable country—with a lot of nuclear weapons and terrorists. On the other hand, Pakistan is also our “war-on-terror” buddy, as I like to call them. We fund their military to help in counterterrorism.  

The U.S. is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to Pakistan. It is hard for me to believe Pakistan’s cries of ignorance about Osama Bin Laden. But regardless, if we cut funding and ties to Pakistan we probably lose what little influence we have in an unstable nuclear weapon state and we forego their help on counterterrorism initiatives.

The relationship we have with Pakistan is imperfect at best, but things would probably be worse if the relationship didn’t exist at all.  

I have an op-ed on Iran in The Register Citizen today. Take a look.  

Here are a few excerpts:

Last year, a powerful computer virus called “Stuxnet” targeted Iran’s nuclear program. By the time it was discovered, the virus had succeeded in setting back the country’s nuclear progress. Now, Iran claims to have identified a new threat. The virus, which Iran is calling “Stars,” may or may not be authentic. But no matter the outcome, Iran’s announcement could be good for the United States.

[snip]

Iranian leaders have called the Arab Spring an “Islamic awakening,” but the protest movements have been largely secular, calling for democracy and human rights — two issues on which Iran does not have a stellar reputation.

Beyond that, the protests have taken a turn for the worse, as far as Iran is concerned, threatening to unseat one of its greatest allies in the region, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Iran’s connection with Syria is crucial to its relationship with Hezbollah and, moreover, its ability to project power in the Middle East.

[snip]

Ultimately, Iran looks to be losing ground, and its announcement of the Stars virus is one more problem on a growing list. Either Iran has shown its susceptibility to another damaging virus with the potential to set back its nuclear program yet again, or its announcement is an attempt to draw attention away from those issues it sees as far more damaging.

Yesterday the House Armed Services Committee marked up (i.e. wrote) the Fiscal Year National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).  As was the case last year, Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH) led the charge in offering risky amendments that could undermine American nuclear policy.  Capitalizing on the new Republican majority in the House, the amendments adopted this year were even more extreme than last year.  

This defense bill is scheduled to be debated on the House floor the week of May 23.

During the strategic forces section of the mark up the committee addressed (by my count) a total of 13 amendments.  Two of these amendments were accepted by voice vote, three were withdrawn, two were accepted without any debate, one was defeated on a voice vote, and five particularly controversial amendments were approved almost entirely by party line roll call votes.  

One of the amendments on ground based midcourse defense system prompted two GOP defections.  

Democrats on the committee made a valiant effort to talk some sense into their GOP colleagues, but their ears were closed.

It seems that Republicans on the committee have a love affair with nuclear weapons.  They find even modest treaties that enjoy overwhelming bipartisan support difficult to accept, and want to prevent further nuclear weapons cuts.

Republicans yesterday kept using the figure of 1,550 U.S. nuclear weapons. That is the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons allowed by the New START Treaty, but in fact as of 2010 the U.S. retains a total of 5,113 nuclear bombs, almost all of which are much larger than those that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and can destroy a city.

Many of the Republican amendments were drawn from a bill introduced by Rep. Turner on May 5 known as the New START Implementation Act – which should more aptly be described as the New START Undermining Act.  

According to Turner, the purpose of the bill (H.R. 1750; full text here) is to hold the Obama administration accountable to the long-term commitments it made on modernization and missile defense during the Senate’s consideration of the New START treaty and limit the administration’s ability to pursue nuclear weapons reductions below New START levels.  

Senator Kyl plans to introduce his own version of H.R. 1750 in the Senate soon.  

Turner’s bill contains many egregious provisions, the most harmful of which is the section containing limitations on the implementation of New START and potential future nuclear reductions even if such reductions would strengthen U.S. national security.  The clear intent of the provision is to interfere with the Pentagon’s ability to implement the New START treaty and undercut the authority of the President and senior military leaders to determine U.S. nuclear policies…

Section 4 of H.R. 1750 would delay the reductions in deployed forces under New START until the Secretaries of Defense and Energy certify that the plan to modernize the nuclear weapons complex and delivery systems is being carried out.   Supporters of this provision describe it as an effort to put speed bumps in the way of New START implementation.  

Section 4 also states that no funds may be obligated to retire, dismantle, or eliminate any non-deployed strategic or non-strategic nuclear weapon until the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) nuclear facility and the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) are fully operational and capable of producing 80 plutonium pits, the core unit of a  nuclear weapon, and 80 canned subassemblies per year (which house the uranium secondary of a nuclear warhead), respectively. These buildings are not scheduled to be operational until at least 2024. 

Finally, section 4 prohibits any reductions below the limits of 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and 700 deployed delivery vehicles (missiles and bombers) in the New START treaty unless such action is sanctioned by a treaty approved by the Senate or authorized by an Act of Congress.  All of these provisions, some of which were amended for clarity, were included in the House Armed Services Committee’s mark of the defense bill. UPDATE: The amendments can be viewed here.

Section 4’s language on New START is daft:

• Implementation of the New START treaty is legally binding on the United States in domestic and international law.  
• Section 4 could infringe on the Department of Defense’s flexibility to implement the New START treaty and structure U.S nuclear forces.  It could require the military to spend scarce financial resources to retain deployed nuclear forces longer than it would prefer to keep them.
• Withholding funding for implementation of the reductions required by the New START treaty could prompt Russia to follow suit.  This could leave Russia with a larger number of nuclear warheads with which to target the U.S.
• Continued efforts to link New START to nuclear modernization are redundant. This issue is already addressed in Condition 9 of the New START Resolution of Ratification.
• While the Obama administration’s budget requests for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) in Fiscal Year 2011 and Fiscal Year 2012 and its ten-year plan to modernize the stockpile as required by the Section 1251 report demonstrate its strong commitment to nuclear modernization, it was House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rogers who proposed to slash these funds by over $300 million in H.R. 1 earlier this year.
• Implementation of New START should not be held hostage to unforeseen events such as a decision by a future Congress to limit funding for NNSA (as was the case in H.R. 1), delays in the completion of a life extension program or the construction of a new facility (a recent GAO report found that such delays are common and due to many factors), the discovery of efficiencies that could allow for the completion of programs at a reduced cost, or new geopolitical/military/economic circumstances that might alter current plans.

The prohibitions on reductions of the stockpile of nuclear weapons not currently deployed on missiles and bombers and potential unilateral reductions below New START levels are equally dubious:

• Previous Republican administrations have unilaterally reduced the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal unencumbered by extreme preconditions.  For example,in 1991, in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, President George H.W. Bush announced that the U.S. would dramatically reduce its arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, which led the Soviet Union to take similar steps, dramatically increasing U.S. security.  Furthermore, the George W. Bush administration announced in 2004 that it planned to unilaterally reduce the U.S. nuclear stockpile by “nearly 50 percent” by 2012.  This reduction was achieved in December 2007, five years early, at which point the administration also stated that an additional 15 percent reduction would be completed by 2012.
• The provision could prevent the retirement of the TLAM-N as mandated by the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, an archaic non-strategic nuclear weapon the Navy says it no longer needs.
• According to Russian scholar and former State Duma member Alexei Arbatov, Russian strategic nuclear forces will shrink dramatically because Moscow is retiring older systems faster than it is adding new weapons.  As it implements the New START reductions, Russia is likely to reduce its forces well below the treaty’s limits, perhaps to as low as 350-400 deployed delivery vehicles and 1,000-1,100 deployed warheads (according to New START’s counting rules).  Neither this President nor a future President should be precluded from considering reductions to meet Russia at such levels, especially if doing so might encourage Moscow not to build its strategic forces back up to New START levels.  
• As my colleague Nick Roth points out, depending on how one defines “non-deployed,” Section 4 could halt vital dismantlement activities until at least 2024 when the new nuclear facilities are scheduled to be operational, in effect forcing the Department of Energy to retain old warheads it doesn’t need. UPDATE: The amendment accepted by the Committee includes an exception stating that the limitation shall not apply to weapons currently awaiting dismantlement. Even as revised, however, the provision could prevent the Department of Energy from dismantling additional weapons from the active stockpile that it determines it no longer needs or requires to perform surveillance activities in support of maintaining the stockpile.

The practical effect of Turner’s legislation would be to lock in the status quo on nuclear policy for the next 10-15 years.  According to a growing number of national security experts from both parties, this status quo is increasingly untenable.  The bill could force military leaders to maintain an excess number of nuclear weapons when it no longer makes strategic or financial sense to do so.  

Finally, I would note that this legislation is in keeping with Republican efforts in the mid/late 1990s to impose legislative constraints on the ability of President Bill Clinton to reduce the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal below the limits in the START I treaty, which forced the Navy and the Air Force to spend money to keep weapons, including 4 Trident submarines and 50 Peacekeeper missiles, that they no longer needed, when the resources could have been better used elsewhere.  While this constraint barred President Clinton from making reductions, it was removed without Republican opposition in the FY 2002 defense bill in part to accommodate President George W. Bush’s desire to unilaterally eliminate the Peacekeeper missiles and remove the Trident submarines from the nuclear force.

The FY 2012 defense bill now moves to the House floor, where the Republican majority will prevent the removal of these damaging amendments from the bill.  Let us hope that cooler heads prevail when the Senate takes up the defense bill this summer.