Summary of Sen. Kyl’s Speech on Nuclear Weapons

The Center’s Executive Director, John Isaacs, recently put together a terrific summary of Sen. Jon Kyl’s talk yesterday on nuclear weapons, RRW, a world free of nuclear weapons, and space weapons at National Defense University. Check it out below.

As Kyl had recently spoken on missile defense to another audience, he focused on nuclear weapons in his talk.

Kyl said the U.S. needs a debate on nuclear issues; the other side (the anti-nuclear weapons forces) are dominating the debate. He particularly was critical of the Kissinger-Shultz et al position which is long on ideals but short on facts. Kyl said that their call for a world free of nuclear weapons is just a continuation of the old nuclear freeze movement. He is concerned that the U.S. is moving toward unilateral nuclear disarmament.

On the other hand, he praised the statement by five retired generals (including Shalikasvili) calling for the need to maintain a nuclear first strike.

Kyl complained that the U.S. used to maintain a robust nuclear force, technology, testing, and well-trained nuclear work force, but that that is currently being eroded. The U.S. has let its nuclear infrastructure wither away. It takes a long time to develop nuclear weapons. With the eroding work force, it is like having a brain surgeon who has never worked on brains.

Kyl complained that Congress killed the $90 million request to study the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program last year and cut half a billion from the nuclear weapons complex. It was all because of two Members of Congress, Visclosky and Hobson. This year, in an election season, the Bush Administration requested only $10 million showing how discouraged the Administration is and they are not trying hard any more. They are tired of hitting their heads against the wall.

Clinton and Obama have endorsed a radical nuclear agenda. This is true while so many other countries are building nuclear weapons including Russia, China, UK, France, Iran, North Korea, etc. They are building new nuclear weapons whether or not the U.S. builds nuclear weapons such as the RRW.

What the U.S. needs is an informed debate, not fuzzy notions. It is important to explain the consequences of no nuclear weapons.

Kyl pointed out that the Kissinger-Shultz op-ed calls for ratification of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He said the treaty was rejected because it could not be verified when the Senate considered it and it is still not verifiable (he appears to have recent confirmation of that view).

Congress should make a jurisdictional change; Energy and Water should not deal with nuclear weapons.

The loss of nuclear weapons from the Minot base shows there is an inattention to nuclear weapons, further proof that our nuclear weapons complex is eroding.

Kyl said we should focus on the total Regan legacy; Reagan called for a world without nuclear weapons but also warned against unilateral disarmament or wishing that this kind of step were true.

In response to questions, Kyl called the U.S. a giant tied down by Lilliputians such as non-governmental organizations, international bodies, etc. The U.S. is too constrained.

When asked why the Bush Administration is not fighting harder for RRW, Kyl said the Administration is too tired, disorganized, has no leadership, earlier was too arrogant, and is not getting enough support.

Kyl would not comment on the Iran NIE.

He criticized Hans Blix for saying that nuclear weapons in the hands of the British is the same as in the hands of the North Koreans.

Kyl said that Bush is not in a good position to lead the debate on nuclear weapons; he is not the most credible spokesman on the issue. Instead, McCain should take up nuclear weapons, but only as a side issue, not a major issue.

He called the abandonment of the ABM Treaty in 2001 the seminal achievement of 2001 except that it was overshadowed by the 9/11 attacks (someone in attendance suggested a resolution requiring an annual celebration of the U.S. exiting from the treaty.)

In 2008, Kyl's main hope on missile defense is to get the $10 million approved for the space based test bed. He wants to embed some progress on space. It is a silly idea that we should not weaponize space when there are already so many weapons in space.

George Shultz on Abolition

If you can get past the partisan material that plasters the National Review Online, Uncommon Knowledge's Peter Robinson recently held some interesting talks with former Secretary of State George Shultz on "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons." The interview online is composed of five segments, between two and eight minutes apiece, each addressing essentially one topic related to nukes.

Episode 1 discusses the inefficacy of using the Cold War's bipolar, state-centric deterrence model in today's world. First of all, there are now more and maybe increasing numbers of countries with nuclear weapons. We've seen a domino effect in cases like Iran, to which countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, and Jordan, have responded with the desire to enrich. While Shultz doesn't question their desire to produce nuclear power, the proximity between uranium enriched for power and weapons grade uranium leaves us in a dangerous situation. In addition, non-state actors are trying to get fissile materials, and these actors negate the deterrence theory. Non-state actors want nuclear weapons to use, not deter.

Add to this the short time between warning of a nuclear attack and the need for a retaliatory strike, and you can observe that the non-proliferation regime is "unraveling." To get it back, he says, we need the ultimate objective of a world free of nuclear weapons. Now, what does it take to get there?

In Episode 2, Shultz tackles the absurdity of the number of nukes possessed by the United States and Russia today. If a single nuke can incinerate Manhattan, what could possibly be the motivation for having thousands? Shultz does not, however, advocate unilateral disarmament, but an international consensus. Of course Russia and the United States - possessing together about 90% of the world's nuclear weapons - will need to take action from the beginning. One such step would be to vigorously renegotiate START before it expires in 2009.

In Episodes 3 and 4 , Shultz discusses the cases of Iran and North Korea. He first identifies that an international consensus for a world free of nuclear weapons will put immense pressure on these countries to refrain from starting or to abandon their nuclear weapons programs. The best strategy for dealing with North Korea? Lean on China and Japan. Thoughts on Iran? A nuclear-armed Iran may be unacceptable, but he cautions against the use of empty threats. His one piece of advice for the next President? Give consideration to changing the environment in which you're working by forming an international consensus among nuclear-weaponized states that we'll all be better off without them.

Shultz interestingly talks about John McCain - whom he supports for President - and his lack of discussion of these issues in the presidential campaign in Episode 5. But when asked if McCain should call for the elimination of nuclear weapons during his campaign, Shultz actually says no. What Shultz, Kissinger, Nunn, Perry, and two thirds of former national security officials are advocating is not meant to be bipartisan - it's meant to be non-partisan. He hopes that all candidates issue support for the group calling for abolition, and, if elected, will listen to them.

Overall, a basic, but well-reasoned and potentially quite useful (depending on your outreach on these issues) look at the movement calling for abolition. If you've only read about Shultz on paper or computer screen, I'd highly recommend a break to watch.

Missile Defense Highlights of Bush-Putin Sochi Meeting

On Sunday, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled a joint “U.S.-Russia Strategic Framework Declaration.”

The Declaration addresses a number of issues central to U.S.-Russia relations, including missile defense, the proliferation of WMD, arms control and disarmament, Iran, North Korea, achieving WTO accession for Russia, and climate change. The full text of the Strategic Framework can be found here and the transcript of the President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin news conference Sunday in Sochi can be found here. In this post I will focus exclusively on the implications of the Sochi meeting for U.S.-Russia missile defense cooperation.

The Strategic Framework declares that “Both sides expressed their interest in creating a system for responding to potential missile threats in which Russia and the United States and Europe will participate as equal partners.” Russia reiterated its opposition to the plan to deploy missile defense assets in Poland and the Czech republic and again floated its proposed alternative (which would allow the United States to (1) use data from Russian early-warning radars in Azerbaijan and Armavir, Russia and (2) station interceptors in Iraq, Turkey, or certain southern European locations). Nevertheless, Russia welcomed “the measures that the U.S. has proposed” and agreed that they would “be important and useful in assuaging Russian concerns.” Finally, the two sides resolved to step up their discussions “on issues concerning MD cooperation both bilaterally and multilaterally.”

Based on Monday's media reports out of Sochi, the immediate post-meeting conventional wisdom appears to be that while Bush and Putin did not reach an agreement on missile defense in Europe, they “left behind a road map for their successors.”

In his press conference with Bush, Putin admitted to having a “certain cautious optimism,” but warned that “the devil is in the details.” Bush went a step further, describing the Declaration as a “significant breakthrough.”

Though the tone of U.S.-Russia relations on missile defense has certainly been marked by less acrimony in recent months, characterizing Sunday’s Declaration as a “significant breakthrough” is wildly off the mark. In terms of the substance of the disagreement between the U.S. and Russia, no real progress was made. Said Putin: “I would like to be very clear on this. Our fundamental attitude to the American plans has not changed.”

In the end, the two sides agreed to continue to discuss various confidence-building measures and proposals (described here, here, and here) which, if agreed to, would “be important and useful in assuaging Russian concerns.” Yet as Putin noted, “the devil is in the details,” and the reality is that the details (1) remain embryonic and (2) could prove to be as controversial as the proposed system itself. In the words of White House Press Secretary Dana Perino:

We’re going to have to do more work after Sochi… No one has said that everything would be finalized and everyone would be satisfied with all the preparations because we haven't even started to work on the technical aspects of the system… We’re still in the early part of these discussions [emphasis mine].

In other missile defense news, during last week’s NATO Summit in Bucharest, it was announced that the United States and the Czech Republic reached an agreement on placing an early warning radar base in the Czech Republic. However, as was noted in this space last month, it is likely to take some time before the base is deployed. What’s more, it remains to be seen how Prague will react to a formal U.S. proposal to allow Russia access to the radar base, which is one of the confidence-building measures currently being discussed by U.S. and Russian officials.

National Security Legislative Wrap-up

Congress returns this week from recess.

On April 8 and 9, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will testify before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees and the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs Committees. These hearings will provide the focus for questions about the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Click on The Iraq Insider early and often for live blogging during the hearings.

The first mark-up or writing of the second portion of the Fiscal Year 2008 Supplemental Appropriations bill totaling more than $100 billion is likely to begin next week or the week after in the House Appropriations Committee. That bill is expected to be the vehicle for many legislative fights on ending the Iraq war, including a deadline for troop withdrawal, mandates for training and equipping troops, longer rest time between deployments, blocking long-term commitments to the Iraqi government and increasing education benefits for veterans.

Has NATO Really Endorsed U.S. Plans for Missile Defense?

Friday’s media reports out of Bucharest suggest a major triumph for President Bush on missile defense. According to the Washington Post:

President Bush advanced his plans Thursday to build a controversial missile defense shield in Eastern Europe by winning the unanimous backing of NATO allies and sealing a deal with the Czech Republic to build a radar facility for the system on its soil.

Bush’s success in winning over once-skeptical European governments bolsters his position heading into talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has denounced the shield as the start of a new arms race. The alliance said the system should be expanded, with participation of NATO countries and Russia, to protect all of Europe.

Yet the picture painted by the Post doesn’t comport altogether comfortably with what has actually transpired at the NATO summit.

According to global security consultant Martin Bucher, who is covering the proceedings in Bucharest and Sunday’s upcoming Bush-Putin meeting in Sochi for the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, NATO will not offer an endorsement of the Bush administration’s plan before 2009. The official report on the Romanian Summit website merely notes that:

The Secretary General of the Alliance, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, mentioned in a press conference that the allied leaders decided for NATO to develop “options for a defense architecture” that should cover the states which are not in the protection range of the USA project. These options are to be discussed in 2009, explained Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

As Bucher aptly observes,

This falls short of actual endorsement by the Alliance of the system, and represents “the best we could get and short of what we wanted”, according to Czech government sources speaking a few weeks ago when the formula was put to Foreign ministers… [M]any Europeans are content to wait and see what happens next year before actually committing themselves.

Russian Nuclear Weapons for Belarus?

Blogging on the NATO Summit in Bucharest, the Acronym Institute’s Martin Butcher recently posted this interesting tid-bit on a possible nuclear defense pact that would allow Belarus to host Russian nukes:

Russian Nuclear Weapons for Belarus?

Lithuanian paper Respublika is summarised in English by Ria Novosti on the possibility of a nuclear defence link between Russia and Belarus.

"The media are quoting Belarusian political analysts as saying that Washington is violating the 2004 Budapest memo under which signatories may not impose sanctions against Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan; this violation could provoke Minsk into a renouncement of nuclear neutrality. "Experts are emphasizing that this does not mean that Belarus will go nuclear. But Minsk will receive a legal opportunity to host Russian nuclear weapons on its territory. Now, if the United States toughens its economic sanctions, Belarus will be able not only to use this 'nuclear right,' but also to demand that Russia should extend such a guarantee to all members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization." (Respublika, March 29)."

In truth, NATO would be hard put to object to such a development without the strong taint of hypocrisy. The United States maintains around 350 nuclear weapons in Europe. A good proportion of those are allocated for the use of nominally non-nuclear NATO states in time of war. Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey all train their air forces for nuclear missions under NATO's nuclear sharing programme. The US stores B61 bombs at these nations air bases and could hand the weapons over if NATO was attacked.

This Cold War arrangement has been severely criticised at Non-Proliferation Treaty meetings as fundamentally against the treaty obligations of these countries. This is not the first time that Belarus has been suspected of wanting to enter into a similar arrangement with Russia. NATO needs to end nuclear sharing immediately, and look for ways to eliminate the US arsenal in Europe. Then, and only then, could they address this subject from the high ground.

Upcoming Bush-Putin Meeting Could be Momentous

George W. Bush and Russian President Valdimir Putin are scheduled to meet this Sunday in the Russian city of Sochi to discuss missile defense and a multi-point strategic framework document to guide U.S.-Russian relations in the near and medium term. Sunday’s meeting comes on the heels of this week’s NATO summit in Bucharest, and will be the last scheduled meeting between Bush and Putin as heads of state.

Reports have been circulating during the past few weeks that recent talks between U.S. and Russian officials, including a visit to Moscow by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last month, have closed the gap between the two countries on missile defense. Washington has reportedly proposed to halt activation of the system until an agreement can be reached with Russia as to what constitutes an “imminent” Iranian threat and has offered to allow Russia access to missile defense sites in the United States and Europe. Nevertheless, the United States and Russia are still far away from an agreement, and it remains to be seen if Sunday’s meeting will include a discussion of these compromise proposals and/or further movement on Russia's suggestions for alternatives to a missile defense system in Europe.

The Bush administration’s proposed plan, which would consist of 10 interceptors in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic, has provoked virulent opposition from Russia. In response, Moscow has already suspended compliance with the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty. It is also threatening to abrogate the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which could pave the way for the reintroduction of large numbers of ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with intermediate ranges in Europe. Moreover, Russia has suggested that it may target Poland and the Czech Republic and deploy medium-range ballistic missiles in Kalingard on the Polish border.

In sum, Sunday’s meeting is an event that merits paying close attention to.

North Korea Nutshell: Here We Go Again

“Our military will not sit idle until warmongers launch a preemptive strike. Everything will be in ashes, not just a sea of fire, once our advanced preemptive strike begins.”

If nothing else, you can always count on the North Koreans to spice up international diplomacy with some apocalyptic rhetoric. This most recent statement came in response to the South Korea’s top military official commenting that the South would counter-attack against the North’s nuclear sites if the South were to be attacked by nuclear weapons. Normally, these sorts of statements are taken in stride when dealing with North Korea. For example, the North also began threatening to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire” back in 1994 and has used the term many other times when discussing U.S. military installation in the South, with no tangible action in either case. But this time, the statements come at a time when nuclear negotiations are at a standstill and tensions between the two Koreas seem to be increasing by the day.

When South Korea elected their new conservative President, North Korea was strangely silent despite the fact that it was clear that 10 years of engagement policy towards the North was coming to an end. First, there was the announcement that the Unification Ministry, which was fairly controversial as the lead agency behind the “Sunshine” policy towards the North, would be closed. This decision was reversed, but it looks as if most of the decision-making towards North Korea will be given to the Foreign Ministry. Later on, after President Lee officially took power, vitally important fertilizer and farm aid to North Korea was delayed while the new government reassessed whether it would offer this aid while nuclear negotiations remained stalled.

That silence has now been broken with statements such as the one above, as well as several actions that seek to initiate a game of brinkmanship. First, the North kicked out 11 South Korean officials from their joint North-South industrial project in Kaesong. Then, the North fired 3 Soviet-era ship to ship missiles and continued a series of jet flyovers near the DMZ border region. When even this type of dangerous behavior did not lead to South Korea to retreat from their new policy path, the North announced that it was considering ending North-South negotiations and slowing down the process of disabling its nuclear reactor even further.

For anyone who has followed U.S.-North Korean negotiations over the last two decades, these types of activities represent a frustrating kind of “standard operating procedure”. Anytime North Korea feels that it is getting a raw deal or having its honor compromised, it will respond with threats and actions that are supposed to put their opponents on the defensive so that the North can move in and issue further demands for a return to normalcy. Hopefully, some resolution can be found to the current stalemate before the North takes even more drastic steps.

Recently, reports concerning new leaks about the Israeli bombing of a base in Syria have begun to surface. David Ignatius of the Washington Post has apparently spoken to a “senior intelligence official” who confirmed to him the nuclear connection between North Korea and the work going on in Syria at that site. For its part, the Chosun Ilbo reports that the U.S. has obtained a list of nuclear engineers who were “involved in the supple of nuclear technology to Syria, through various intelligence networks.” They claim that Chris Hill showed the list to his North Korea counterpart when they met recently in Geneva. The North Koreans continued to deny any nuclear proliferation to Syria after this meeting.

Although there is still much to be learned about what happened with this incident, I’m still fairly skeptical about reporters that cite unnamed sources. All the governments involved have done a thorough job in keeping information on this event on lock down and there are far too many people with ideological agendas on this issue to simply trust what we find in these reports.