Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

You are here: Home / Archives for Non-Proliferation

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.

Senate Appropriators Defy Administration On Nukes

Kingston Reif and I have a new analysis on the Center website of the FY 2015 Senate Energy and Water Appropriations bill. Here is an excerpt:

A new Senate bill released in late July contains a number of small but critically important victories, most notably in the realm of funding nuclear material security and nonproliferation.

As a budget battle between the President and Congress rages on, there is a conspicuous difference in the level of funding requested by the White House versus that approved by Senate Appropriators for programs that make us safer from the threat of nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism. It is hard to understand why the Obama administration, whose stated priorities make nuclear nonproliferation a top priority, has for the past three years cut the budget for these very activities. Luckily, the Senate continues to restore the funding, as evidenced by its recent action. However, in past years the higher Senate funding levels have not survived in the final spending bills passed by Congress.

The contradiction between the President’s words about preventing nuclear terrorism and the dwindling resources he has requested in his budget submissions is concerning because it represents an unsustainable punt to Congress at a time when lawmakers are mandating significant reductions in government spending. Despite the Senate’s best efforts, Congress has not restored funding to sufficient levels in its final spending bills. What’s more, even the Senate’s current prioritization of nonproliferation programs could evaporate if the Senate changes hands next year.

Read the full analysis here

Remembering Szilard: 75th Anniversary of Einstein-Szilard Letter to Roosevelt

“In the course of the last four months it has been made probable…that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable- though much less certain- that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed.”

On August 2, 1939, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard sent this warning to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a letter signed by none other than Albert Einstein.

Saturday marked the 75th anniversary of the Einstein-Szilard letter. And yet the dangers Szilard warned against in his letter 75 years ago still loom over society: now in the form of over ten thousand nuclear warheads spread across the globe. In revisiting the writings of Leo Szilard, it is chilling to note how many of his words, drafted in a different era, still apply to the world today. Much has changed since the Einstein-Szilard letter arrived on the doorstep of President Roosevelt 75 years ago; leadership has risen and fallen, technology has progressed in leaps and bounds, wars and revolutions have sparked and faded. Yet still the threat of nuclear war remains. Worse, that threat has proliferated.

Scientists have always played a complex role with regard to nuclear weapons. While nuclear physicists were the individuals immediately responsible for the weapons’ design and creation, the same nuclear physicists were often the individuals protesting the government’s use of these weapons and warning against the inevitability of their eventual proliferation. Such was the case with Leo Szilard, a man vital to the atomic bomb’s construction.

Among Szilard’s numerous scientific innovations, he was the first to conceptualize and later successfully test a controlled uranium nuclear chain reaction, a chemical process integral to creating an atomic explosion. It was this discovery that compelled him to draft the Einstein-Szilard letter on August 2, 1939, cautioning the President on the new implications for nuclear weapons and urging Roosevelt to act. Roosevelt took the letter to heart; his choice of action was to charge Szilard and a team of other scientists with the Manhattan Project, a project with the ultimate goal of creating an atomic bomb for the United States.

However, when we remember Szilard today, it is not solely for his role as a physicist in constructing the first atomic bomb. It is also for his role as an advocate, in championing messages of peace and disarmament to a world that seemed set on war and destruction. In this way, Szilard embodies the kind of scientists who have fought and continue to fight for a responsible and ethical approach towards nuclear weapons. Today, organizations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, Scientists for Global Responsibility, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists continue to warn of the dangers that nuclear weapons pose to society. Where Szilard first cautioned against nuclear threats from Germany and later from the Soviet Union, scientists today point towards a multitude of possible disaster scenarios: tensions in South Asia and the Korean peninsula resulting in nuclear exchanges, non-state actors obtaining nuclear weapons through theft, and nuclear terrorism in the Middle East are just a handful of the frightening possibilities.

The Einstein-Szilard letter may have been the beginning, but Leo Szilard continued to write extensively on the topic long after the Manhattan Project concluded. He wrote against the use and spread of nuclear weapons following the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, protesting their usefulness during the Cold War. In Szilard’s 1961 speech “Are We on the Road To War”, he stated his argument succinctly:

             “If we intend to drop our bombs on Russia in case of war and expect Russia
              to drop her bombs on us, so that both countries would be wholly devastated,
              then our threat to drop bombs on Russia is tantamount to a threat of murder and
              suicide.”

It is no longer 1961, but the irrational dual threat of murder and suicide lingers. Although we no longer teeter on the brink of a Cold War, the dangers of nuclear proliferation still pose a real threat.

On this 75th anniversary of the Einstein-Szilard letter, we would like to commemorate Leo Szilard, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and all the atomic scientists who condemned nuclear weapons as unethical and impractical. We would like to thank the many scientists today who still demand greater nonproliferation efforts, collaborate on possibilities for disarmament, and write on the dangers of nuclear weapons. Finally, we would like to keep in mind that although many years have passed since 1939, there is still much work to be done to create a world safe from the threat of nuclear destruction.

Uranium Seizure in Iraq Sheds New Light on Abysmal Nonproliferation Budget

Iraq’s ambassador to the U.N stated in a July 8 letter to U.N Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that roughly 88 pounds of uranium compounds had been seized by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) after the group took control of the city of Mosul.

The nuclear material was being used for scientific research at a university in Mosul.

Any loss or theft of enriched uranium, plutonium or other types of radioactive material is potentially alarming, as terrorist groups could try to use them to fashion a crude nuclear device or a “dirty bomb.”

Fortunately, the IAEA reported last Thursday that the material in question was low grade (either natural or depleted uranium), and thus useless for terrorist groups seeking to make a nuclear bomb or a dirty bomb. Furthermore, it is not clear whether the incident demonstrates a genuine interest by ISIS in acquiring nuclear material for a bomb, or whether the group simply looted whatever happened to be present at the university.

While many in the international community will be tempted to exhale a sigh of relief and focus their attention on the next crisis that will inevitably plague the region, the incident deserves attention because it sheds light on the larger and more important issue of nuclear security.

As Matthew Bunn pointed out in an excellent piece in the National Interest last week, the Islamic State’s newly found control over huge swaths of strategic territory in Iraq and Syria has opened the floodgates for the creation of a safe haven for hostile groups and countries to train and plot attacks. He notes that for having a giant, lawless playground—as the situation in Iraq and Syria is certainly shaping up to be—makes a huge difference in terrorists’ ability to execute a really complicated plot, such as building a nuclear bomb.

Such concerns do not exist in the realm of impossibility or fantasy. Al Qaeda’s interest in carrying out a nuclear or radiological attack on a Western target has been well documented. Al Qaeda operatives have made repeated attempts to buy nuclear material for a nuclear bomb, or to recruit nuclear expertise—including two extremist Pakistani nuclear weapons scientists who met with bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to discuss nuclear weapons. Today, ISIS or others who seek sanctuary in the group’s territory may well try and take advantage of the region’s chaos to go down a similar path.

At a time like this, we should be grateful that the Obama administration’s stated policy is to keep wayward nuclear weapons and radioactive material out of the hands of terrorists, right?

Well. Not really.

Unfortunately, in its Fiscal Year 2015 budget request, the Administration shocked many by running completely contrary to its stated non-proliferation priorities. The White House made it overwhelmingly clear through its request that it would not accelerate the securing of nuclear and radiological materials around the globe despite the growing need to do so.

Overall, the FY 2015 budget request cut $534 million in funding (relative to the enacted Fiscal Year 2014 funding level) for nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear terrorism prevention programs at the Department of Defense and the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Some of the most critical and effective threat reduction and non-proliferation programs, such as the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) and the International Materials Protection and Cooperation (IMPC) program, were slashed nearly eighteen percent. This is the third year in a row the NNSA budget submission has put core nuclear and radiological material security programs on the chopping block.

This year’s deep cuts to non-proliferation are particularly incomprehensible given President Obama’s statement a few months ago that “loose nukes” were the main thing keeping him up at night.

So while the uranium seizure in Iraq last week was not a nuclear threat in and of itself, the incident once again underscores the need to make securing dangerous nuclear material around the globe—particularly in those areas of the world beset by instability and conflict—a top priority.

India Makes Small Non-proliferation Progress

On June 23, 2014, India ratified the Additional Protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), six years after committing to allow IAEA inspectors access to its civilian nuclear program. Under the Additional Protocol, India commits to placing all 14 of its civilian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards by the end of the year, allowing more intensive and intrusive IAEA inspections.