Together with Anthony Seaboyer I have set up a new, multi-author blog on nuclear and missile proliferation, which is called C x I (capabilities times intentions). Check it out!
I intend to continue posting at ACT.at … that’s the plan, I will see how things develop. 
At last week’s conference on “Nuclear Proliferation”, which was organized by the Student Initiative of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, I had the pleasure of participating at a workshop on nuclear disarmament. Among other issues, the workshop participants dealt with the (medical, environmental, and social) effects of a nuclear exchange and emphasized necessity to approach the topic from perspectives beyond military and politics in order to make people aware of the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.
Today, I came across an articles covering the environmental effects of nuclear weapons:
Robock, Alan, and Owen Brian Toon. “Local Nuclear War: Global Suffering.” The Scientific American (January 2010): 74-81. (download the article)
A barrage of nuclear attacks between the U.S. and Russia could plunge the earth into nuclear winter, but regional conflicts could do the same. India and Pakistan, long at odds, have more than 50 nuclear warheads apiece; if each country dropped that many bombs on cities and industrial areas, the smoke from fires would stunt agriculture worldwide for 10 years. (p. 77)
Steven Starr has an op-ed at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in which he also references other reports on the issue.
UPDATE (March 19) - Today, I incidentally found the following books on the effects of nuclear weapons. The latter two can be accessed at the section on Nuclear Weapons Effects at AtomicArchive.com.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Environment. London: Taylor & Francis, 1977.
Glasstone, Samuel, and Philipp Dolan. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. 3rd ed. Washington, DC: US Department of Defense, 1977.
The Effects of Nuclear War. Washington, DC: Office of Technology Assessment, 1979.
I would like to collect articles, reports, etc. on the effects of nuclear attacks – so if you know any, please share it with me in a posting below. Thanks!
Busy travel schedule, so only a short up-date: NTI reports that both Israel and Syria announced plans for civilian uses of nuclear energy.
The Carnegie Endowment has a map on “Global Reactor Capabilities” with three scenarios. Click here to view it.
I bought Michael Neufeld’s biography of Wernher von Braun – the first couple of pages promise an interesting read. The next biography waiting on the shelve is Oppenheimer’s.
UPDATE: David Albright of ISIS has published a book on the illicit nuclear trade (“Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America’s Enemies”):
With the global spread of technology and rapid growth in international trade, smugglers find it easier to ply their dangerous trade. It’s simpler now to obtain the materials, equipment, and know-how to produce nuclear weapons than it was ten years ago, and could be simpler still ten years from now… Over the next several years, many states in dangerous regions of the world, along with terrorist organizations, are expected to pursue nuclear weapons. Governments’ ability to detect and stop this perilous trade remains limited. Too often, major successes in thwarting nuclear proliferation have depended on the last line of defense—military attacks, intelligence operations, and cargo seizures. As important as these measures are, it is risky to depend on the last line of defense for our security. A former CIA official who was instrumental in busting the Khan network worries, “Can we count on intelligence when we need it again?” Finding new ways to thwart these efforts is critical.”
I am also looking forward to Matthew Kroenig’s book “Exporting the Bomb”.
Check out this timeline of nuclear explosions between 1945 and 1998. Sad but true …
After hosting last week’s BMD conference in Vienna (Our new media department is working on the videos and mp3s of the panel-speeches. Curious? ) and getting my course-plans ready for the next term, I finally have a few minutes to write a couple of lines.
On my way back from Vienna, I skimmed through the latest issue of Foreign Policy and, of course, John Mueller’s article on nuclear weapons caught my attention. I had bought Mueller’s book “Atomic Obsession” a couple of weeks ago (unfortunatley, it is still collecting dust in the shelf but I promise to read it … soon 
) and so I curiously studied his arguments in FP. There are three points I would like to raise (Ken Adelman already responded to Mueller’s piece – you can read his article here):
1) Mueller argues that treaty-based agreements are not needed for the reductions/elimination of nuclear weapons:
But all of this is scarcely needed. Nuclear weapons are already disappearing, and elaborate international plans like the one Obama is pushing aren’t needed to make it happen. During the Cold War, painstakingly negotiated treaties did little to advance the cause of disarmament — and some efforts, such as the 1972 SALT Agreement, made the situation worse from a military standpoint. With the easing of tensions after the Cold War, a sort of negative arms race has taken place, and the weapons have been going away more or less by themselves as policymakers wake up to the fact that having fewer useless things is cheaper than having more of them. By 2002, the number of deployed warheads in Russian and U.S. arsenals had dropped from 70,000 to around 30,000, and it now stands at less than 10,000. “Real arms control,” wistfully reflected former U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control Avis Bohlen in an essay last May, “became possible only when it was no longer necessary.” (emphasis added)
Well, is it really that easy? While it is true that we have seen the reduction of the over-kill capacity, the tough phases of reduction are still lying before us. Given the fear of cheating and break-out, which would be more serious in a world with fewer nucler weapons, reductions below a certain level cannot and will not be achieved without treaties. Moreover, Mueller’s view that nukes are “useless things” is – unfortuntely – still not shared by many decision-makers around the world and nukes are still seen as the ultimate means to ensure national security. It is one thing to judge the utility of nuclear weapons as a professor and conclude that they are useless, but is quite another thing to do so a decision-maker.
2) In a later section of the article, Mueller cites French and British reductions and notes that “the Chinese have built far fewer of the nuclear weapons than they could have – they currently stock just 180.” Is this really good news? You could also put it like this: China keeps modernizing its nuclear arsenal (to ensure its reliability and survivability) and is estimated the deploy between 50 and 100 ICBMS by 2015 (see the report by P. Podvig and H. Zhang on “Russian and Chinese Responses to U.S. Military Plans in Space”, p. 51-52). The numbers could even be higher (around 200 warheads on ICBMs, according to H. Zhang), if Beijing decides to speed up modernization/extension as a reaction to US missile defenses. Not quite a negative arms race, right?
3) Mueller also addresses the impact of a nuclear explosion on the American society and economy:
Although former CIA chief George Tenet insists in his memoirs that one “mushroom cloud” would “destroy our economy,” he never bothers to explain how the instant and tragic destruction of three square miles somewhere in the United States would lead inexorably to national economic annihilation. A nuclear explosion in, say, New York City — as Obama so darkly invoked — would obviously be a tremendous calamity that would roil markets and cause great economic hardship, but would it extinguish the rest of the country? Would farmers cease plowing? Would manufacturers close their assembly lines? Would all businesses, governmental structures, and community groups evaporate?
Americans are highly unlikely to react to an atomic explosion, however disastrous, by immolating themselves and their economy. In 1945, Japan weathered not only two nuclear attacks but intense nationwide conventional bombing; the horrific experience did not destroy Japan as a society or even as an economy. Nor has persistent, albeit nonnuclear, terrorism in Israel caused that state to disappear — or to abandon democracy.
Even the notion that an act of nuclear terrorism would cause the American people to lose confidence in the government is belied by the traumatic experience of Sept. 11, 2001, when expressed confidence in America’s leaders paradoxically soared. And it contradicts decades of disaster research that documents how socially responsible behavior increases under such conditions — seen yet again in the response of those evacuating the World Trade Center on 9/11.
But what about the scenario of a nuclear explosion in one US city (e.g. New York) followed by the threat (!) of a terrorist organization to detonate nuclear explosives in two or three other cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, or Washington – or, even worse, two or three unspecified cities? I doubt that reactions of US citizens during and after the attacks of 9/11 are a good indicator for what would happen in situation like this. The discussion about whether terrorists could succeed in obtaining/constructing a nuclear weapons is of course a different story.
A last note: You may have heard that Libya’s Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi called for a Jihad against Switzerland …
Greg Mello has an op-ed on the web-page of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in which he argues that the increase of funding for nuclear weapons in the federal budget request contradicts President Obama’s stated goal of a world without nuclear weapons. Now here is my take on a second Obama disarmament paradox:
Reading through the DoD’s BMD Review Report the other day, two things caught my eye:
First: In the section on co-operation with the Russian Federation, the report states that “the Administration will continue to reject any negotiated restraints on U.S. ballistic missile defense.” (p. 34) This sounds like there will be rough times ahead for further offensive reductions as Russian political and military elites have repeatedly linked further reductions to an agreement on missile defense (if you have the common “Russia has to disarm anyway”-argument in mind, you should drop by Pavel Podvig’s blog and let yourself convince of the contrary)
Second, and even more interesting: The report also notes that the US needs to put an emphasis on the development and deployment of
missile defenses that are both relocatable and scalable. Relocatable assets can be surged to a region in times of crisis, providing increased capability against a larger threat raid size. This feature will also allow missile defenses to be brought to bear in regions relatively swiftly. Scalable assets can be integrated into existing regional architectures. (p. 27)
In addition, the DoD intends “to develop an ‘engage on remote’ technology that includes not only launching on data from a remote sensor track but also the ability to uplink data from assets other than the Aegis radar. This will allow the interceptor to engage the threat missile at greater ranges.” (p. 22) An illustration on the same page shows a forward-based X-band radar and a space-based sensor providing information to an Aegis ship.
Alright, now here is a brief passage of Dean Wilkening’s 2000 Adelphi Paper “Ballistic Missile Defense and Strategic Stability”:
Only when upper-tier interceptors are guided in flight beyond the range of their tracking and fire control radars can THAAD or NTW [Navy Theater Wide] provide substantial coverage of the US. For example, if accurate track data is obtained early in the trajectory of an intercontinental missile by sensors such as upgraded early-warning radars located outside the US or SBIRS-Low, and this track data is communicated to interceptors in flight, then the hypothetical THAAD footprint against ICBMs increases to a circle about 1,100km in diameter. This implies that 10-12 sites could cover the continental United States. Between three and four NTW footprints would be required under these circumstances. Currently, neither THAAD nor NTW is being designed to accept track data in flight except from their ground- or sea-based radars. However, if SBIRS-Low is deployed, Russian planners fearing the worst might believe that upper-tier TMD interceptors could be guided in flight using its track data, especially if the in-flight interceptor communications system is deployed as part of a future US NMD system. [emphasis added]
On balance, it is hard to imagine that Russia or China would be willing to considerably reduce their offensive arsenals, if the US retains the ability to boost the homeland defense by relocating and/or connecting TMD systems with remote sensors.
Oh yes, I’m really looking forward to discussing these issues at next week’s conference. Anyway, I would also appreciate earlier – online – comments on missile defense break-out and global zero
As the United States and its regional allies are beefing-up missile defenses in the Gulf, Iran announces the development of a light plane called “Faez” (Fars News, February 8 2010) and the inauguration of two production lines for two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). According to Fars News (February 8, 2010),
[t]he two hi-tech drones named ‘Ra’d’ (Thunder) and ‘Nazir’ (Harbinger) are capable of conducting long-range reconnaissance, patrolling, assault and bombing missions with high precision.
Ra’d which is a UAV of choice for assault and bombing missions has the capability to destroy the specified targets with high pinpoint precision.
Experts believe that once the UAV enters the scene of aerial missions, it would enhance the reconnaissance, patrolling and defensive power of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Armed Force.
Yes, I am suggesting a connection here. As I understand it, small planes and stealthy drones could be used to overcome missile defense systems (either in concert with or prior to an attack with ballistic missiles).
Iran also sends a message to Russia: Heshmatollah Kasiri, a high-ranking commander of the Iranian Air Force, was quoted as saying that Iran will develop an air defense system which will be superior to Russia’s S-300.
“Today, we are building all our air defence weapons by ourselves … the only thing we wanted to import was the Russian S-300 which so far they have not delivered for some unacceptable reasons [...] But our air defence experts and scientists found a way and in very near future we will produce an air defence system which has the capabilities of the Russian S-300 or even more.” (Middle East Online, February 8, 2010)
Returning from a short holiday I found my mailbox and feed-reader stuffed with news … a lot of new input for the upcoming missile defense conference:
A lot of stuff to read for the next week I wish you a nice week-end!
Missile defense afficinados know that the recent test of GMD failed. In addition to a video of the launch I want to share Riki Ellison’s (Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance) impressions and thoughts on the test, failure, and – of course – the need to do more in the realm of missile defense:
Dear Members and Friends,
On a perfect sunny winter afternoon in California standing on the flat rocks of the Ronald Reagan Memorial overlooking the missile silos on the Pacific shoreline at Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) engines light up with brilliance and the rocket disappears for a few seconds in the clouds of exhaust. The rocket reappears, accelerating and ripping through the clear sky with a single white vapor trail arching overhead as the low thunder sound doesn’t catch up to what you are watching.
[…]
The Ground-Based Interceptors in Vandenberg, California and Fort Greely, Alaska are our only defense against the long-range ballistic missile threat fast coming upon us. As President Obama said to our nation last week, “the greatest danger to the American people… is the threat of nuclear weapons.”
We need more than ever “True Grit” and determination for Missile Defense.
Respectfully,
Riki Ellison
In a speech in Paris, Secretary Clinton emphasized Washington’s readiness to co-operate with Russia on BMD (after similar statements by Lavrov):
We are working with our allies to ensure that NATO has the plans it needs for responding to new and evolving contingencies. We are engaged in productive discussions with our European allies about building a new missile defense architecture that will defend all of NATO territory against ballistic missile attack. And we are serious about exploring ways to cooperate with Russia to develop missile defenses that enhance the security of all of Europe, including Russia.
Missile defense, we believe, will make this continent a safer place. That safety could extend to Russia, if Russia decides to cooperate with us. It is an extraordinary opportunity for us to work together to build our mutual security.
The New York Times reports on US plans to deploy Patriot batteries in four Middle Eastern states (maybe Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait – click here to download a graphical overview of the deployments provided by The Guardian) and two AEGIS cruisers in the Persian Gulf.
In this context, Travis Sharp’s two posts on the vulnerability of AEGIS destroyers and David Gormley’s recent ACT article on the proliferation of cruise missiles (see also his book “Missile Contagion“) are very insightful. For a discussion of missile defense in the Middle East see my recent article in Middle East Policy… Anyway, the main deterrent will not be Patriot but US personnel operating the batteries.
On the week-end I also came across a report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) comparing different missile defense options for the protection of Europe and the United States. Remember my earlier posts (here and here) on missile defense deployments in Turkey? The report weighs four options, the third option being
Land-based SM-3 Block IIA interceptors operating from mobile launchers at two existing U.S. bases: Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany and Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey. Tracking would be provided by forward-based transportable X-band radars in Azerbaijan and Qatar. This system would be available around 2015. (p. xiii)
As far as the ability to defend Europe and the US is concerned, the report notes the following:
The other alternatives in this analysis (Options 2, 3, and 4) would provide broad defense of most of Europe against all modeled missile threats. All of those options include interceptor locations nearer to Iran than the proposed European Interceptor Site in Poland and thus would provide more extensive defense of southeastern Europe. (emphasis added; p. xvii)
The options with sea-based and land-based SM-3 Block IIA interceptors (Options 2 and 3) would provide some additional defense of the United States against liquid-fuel ICBMs but none against solid-fuel ICBMs. Those options could provide about the same level of U.S. defense as MDA’s proposed European system if they added launch sites for SM-3 Block IIA interceptors in the United States. (p. xviii)
Here is the report’s graphical summary (p. xix) for the defense of Europe (click here to enlarge):
P.S. The four horsemen ride on video:
You can order the film at th The Nuclear Tipping Point web-page.
