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Better Safe Than Sorry
The Ironies of Living with the Bomb
By Michael Krepon STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2009 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-7098-9
CHAPTER 1
MASTER BUILDERS AND DECONSTRUCTIONISTS
THE GLOBAL SYSTEM created over many decades to prevent nuclear proliferation can be likened to a construction project. The construction is only as sturdy as the common resolve of the five nations with nuclear weapons that also enjoy permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council. As the world's strongest power, the United States has the most responsibility for building maintenance. If Washington walks away from this job, the construction site will become unsafe. But even if the United States does its job properly, Russia, China, France, and Great Britain still have to support the structure. When the five permanent members of the Security Council work in concert against the perils of proliferation, the construction provides reliable shelter. When they place other national security and commercial interests ahead of proliferation concerns, the construction becomes wobbly.
The building's load-bearing walls consist of agreements, rules, and norms designed to prevent proliferation. Treaties that set legally binding obligations constitute the steel beams that keep this structure erect. The most important rules are set by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (or Nonproliferation Treaty), which was negotiated in 1968. The Nonproliferation Treaty is built around two central bargains: States that possess the Bomb promise to disarm, and states without the Bomb promise continued abstinence—so long as they can reap the benefits of the peaceful uses of the atom. The Non-proliferation Treaty initially had only forty-three signatories. Adherence grew slowly. Two of the five permanent members of the Security Council, China and France, did not join until 1992. The Nonproliferation Treaty is now the most inclusive treaty of all—every state has joined, except Israel, India, and Pakistan.
This construction project continues to grow with the addition of new tenants, export controls, additional treaties, and administrative rules and regulations designed to prevent proliferation. The building managers are based in Vienna, where the International Atomic Energy Agency is based. The agency is overseen by a board of governors representing thirty-five countries. Important decisions require a two-thirds majority on the board. Enforcement decisions require the backing of the United Nations Security Council. National leaders provide the brick for this immense construction project, and international civil servants supply the mortar.
The creation of this global system to prevent proliferation was one of the great achievements of the cold war. It was not easy to convince nations to abstain from obtaining the most powerful weapons of all—weapons that many states had the capacity to build. Throughout recorded history, humans have sought clubs to use against enemies. When humans banded together to form tribes, they sought bigger clubs. And when tribes banded together to form nations, this impulse became stronger still. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate club, but this weapon is so powerful that abstinence became conceivable—under certain protections.
Abstinence needed to be a rational calculation and not an act of faith. The rational calculation was that, if more nations sought the Bomb, others would follow, and the net effect would be great insecurity. This rational calculation, in turn, depended on intrusive monitoring and the backup provided by states possessing the Bomb, especially the United States and the Soviet Union. Without their common resolve, this construction project would never have gotten off the ground.
Early construction included the first treaty limiting nuclear testing, new regulations dealing with nuclear exports, and rudimentary inspections and safeguards at nuclear facilities. To stabilize their nuclear competition and to shore up their end of the Nonproliferation Treaty bargain, Washington and Moscow agreed to modest limits on their nuclear forces and significant limits on missile defenses. By the end of the cold war, treaties mandating deep cuts and the abolition of entire categories of nuclear forces were negotiated, which also helped shore up the Nonproliferation Treaty.
Some construction on the first floor was only partly completed. One room for a treaty that would end nuclear tests for all time was built but never occupied; this treaty was negotiated in 1996 but remains in limbo because the United States, China, India, Pakistan, and others are balking at its terms. Other planned construction was never undertaken, especially a treaty banning the production of fissile material for weapons.
Constructing the first floor of this edifice required consensus, not only between the superpowers but also between weapon possessors and abstainers. During the first nuclear age, this foundation remained strong. Even though the nuclear arsenals of both superpowers rose to absurd levels, new additions to the nuclear club were kept reasonably in check. One country (Israel) covertly acquired the Bomb, and two more (India and Pakistan) positioned themselves on this threshold. But many more countries that seriously considered the nuclear option decided to throw their lot in with the Nonproliferation Treaty.
The second nuclear age began in 1991with the demise of the Soviet Union and the surprise discovery in Iraq of an advanced bomb program. Although U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals declined significantly, concerns grew over horizontal proliferation, especially in India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran. The scope of the proliferation problem also expanded to include extremist groups, profiteering middlemen, and transactions between outlier states.
The structure built to prevent proliferation during the first nuclear age was not designed to deal with new members of the nuclear club or the threat of nuclear terrorism. Some expected it to fall down. North Korea declared its withdrawal from the treaty in 2003, and Iran could be headed for the same exit. At the same time, none of the five permanent members of the Security Council acted like strong stakeholders during the second nuclear age. At best, they paid lip service to their commitment to eliminate the Bomb, and they had difficulties forming a common front to stop the Iranian nuclear program. The other central bargain of the Nonproliferation Treaty—that abstainers deserved help in acquiring the peaceful uses of nuclear energy—was misused. Nuclear commerce helped North Korea build nuclear weapons, a path that Iran is following.
The Nonproliferation Treaty was designed for an earlier era, before the advent of a single dominant military power, underground networks of nuclear commerce, and terrorist cells seeking nuclear weapons and fissile material. The Nonproliferation Treaty was far sturdier in a bipolar world when the superpowers could impose discipline when they agreed with each other. The first nuclear age was an exercise in establishing norms against proliferation. The norms helped to apply leverage on states that were fence-sitters. The norms did not prevent rule breaking, but they did make it easier to isolate or sanction rule breakers. During the second nuclear age, these norms were weakened, and there was less discipline to reinforce them.
The structural weaknesses of the first floor were exposed by the self described "father" of Pakistan's bomb, A. Q. Khan, whose network supplied bomb-making equipment to Iran, North Korea, Libya, and perhaps other procurers. Other veterans of Pakistan's nuclear establishment had traveled to Afghanistan to meet with Osama bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda and Taliban operatives. The paramount threats of nuclear proliferation and terrorism were clear for all to see when al Qaeda struck on September 11, 2001. Compensating for the weaknesses of the Nonproliferation Treaty's structure required exceptional measures.
The inner circle of the George W. Bush administration held jaundiced views about the effectiveness of global nonproliferation norms and the utility of treaties. They wanted to build a second floor to address new proliferation challenges, using different tools. Rooms on the second floor would not require consensual building permits, because the second floor required the coercive instruments that the first floor lacked.
Some of this construction worked reasonably well. The Bush administration placed new emphasis on codes of conduct in combating proliferation. These codes took the form of political agreements among like-minded states to band together to prevent dangerous activities. President Bush launched the Proliferation Security Initiative in May 2003 with the declared goal of seizing weapons of mass destruction or their components when in transit. A core group of states, eleven in number, agreed to a statement of interdiction principles four months later. The core group then invited other nations to associate themselves, with varying degrees of attachment, to these principles.
Another one of the Bush administration's accomplishments has been to establish a global norm criminalizing proliferation. The criminalization statute is embedded in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540, which was unanimously approved in April 2004. This resolution imposes binding obligations on all member states "to take additional effective measures to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery." It also calls on all nations to establish effective domestic controls, including criminal statutes, to prevent proliferation. The administration also supported The Hague Code of Conduct to strengthen a global norm against the proliferation of ballistic missiles capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction. Completed in 2002, The Hague Code of Conduct calls on states to exercise restraint in ballistic missile testing and development. Most countries have signed on to these principles; China, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Syria, and Iran have not.
In addition, the Bush administration took essential steps to increase the geographic scope of programs to provide training and equipment to prevent proliferation. In June 2002, the United States and other industrialized countries announced the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction. In July 2006, President Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin announced the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, which focused on improved protection, control, and accounting of deadly materials, increased cooperation for detecting and suppressing illicit trafficking, and enhanced capabilities to deal with the consequences of terrorist acts.
Constructing a second floor of the global nonproliferation system was needed, and the Bush administration deserves much credit for these initiatives. The Bush administration's design, however, had a fundamental flaw: It focused almost entirely on the second floor while leaving the first floor to its structural weaknesses. The administration focused on the second floor precisely because it fundamentally disagreed with previous builders over what constituted the first floor's load-bearing walls.
The master builders of the global nonproliferation system considered these load-bearing walls to be the norms against using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, testing these devices, and producing the fissile material that made these weapons so lethal. Some—but not all—of these norms are embedded in treaties. The architects of the first floor believed that the structural integrity of their building required the rebar provided by treaties—especially the treaty banning nuclear tests.
Moreover, construction during the first nuclear age was built on the core principle that rules needed to apply to all. This principle was essential to bridge the divides created by nuclear weapons and by a bipolar world. The entire first floor could never have been built had its builders chosen to construct one set of rules for responsible states and another for bad actors because the construction crew couldn't agree on who belonged in which category: The two primary architects for the first floor were, after all, Washington and Moscow. No rules preventing proliferation could have been written by differentiating good guys from bad actors and without the commitment to abolition by all states possessing the Bomb.
The Bush administration used fundamentally different building principles for the second story. It has postulated a new guiding principle for proliferation: that the fundamental problem was not related to the Bomb but to the bomb holder. The character of the state mattered most, not whether the state was building bombs. Consequently, the administration has proposed a loose set of rules for responsible states such as India and tight rules for bad actors such as Iran. It rejected ratification and entry into force of a treaty banning all nuclear testing for all time while carving out exceptions to global rules on nuclear commerce for India, a responsible state.
The Bush administration also significantly qualified a norm-based approach to nonproliferation: Rules and norms were good, except where norms constrained U.S. freedom of action or the actions of U.S. friends and allies, especially those who might serve as counterweights to China or Iran. Informal arrangements established in codes of conduct were good, but formal rules embedded in new treaties were to be avoided. Because a treaty ending fissile material production for bombs would impose restraints on responsible, but not irresponsible, states, it was hardly a priority. The Nonproliferation Treaty obligation on nuclear weapon states to disarm need not be taken seriously, but far more serious penalties were required for new bomb seekers.
The adoption of such a structurally unsound approach to strengthening the global nonproliferation system could only have occurred in a country that enjoyed dominant power and that was prone to black-and-white formulas. America's closest allies and the lead architects of the global nonproliferation system were dismayed by these formulas—and somewhat confused by them as well. They were familiar and comfortable with bedrock conservative principles, especially the need for rules and regulations that provided order while permitting freedom of action that was not harmful to others. Indeed, the global non-proliferation system was built on these conservative principles.
No reputable construction company would build atop a shaky foundation without strengthening its load-bearing walls, but the Bush administration questioned the value of some of these walls. It argued that the cold war was over, that the United States needed to maximize its freedom of action, and that rules could be bent for responsible states. Treaties were irrelevant for bad actors, who would cheat. Verification was either impossible or ineffectual. Nor did the Bush administration think highly of diplomatic engagement, deterrence, and containment—hallmarks of success during the cold war—against bad actors. Traditional American conservatism became one of the casualties of 9/11.
The results of the Bush administration's new approach to the global non-proliferation system were not pretty to look at. The first floor of the global nonproliferation system was built along classical lines, and the second story was designed by deconstructionists. No matter how useful the rooms were on the second floor, the construction as a whole did not work properly. Worse, the architectural principles for the second story were antithetical to those used for the first. The entire construction became wobbly because the architects of the first floor and the Bush administration pursued fundamentally different principles of design.
The Bush administration was right to conclude that the Nonproliferation Treaty needed to be shored up and that a more proactive approach was needed in light of the new threats of proliferation and nuclear terrorism. On balance, however, the Bush administration has done more harm than good to the global system it inherited to prevent proliferation. Its war of choice to prevent nuclear proliferation in Iraq accelerated nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran, which, in turn, accelerated nuclear hedging strategies elsewhere. Reinforcing the building's foundations as well as constructing a second story were both required. The Bush administration's approach has left much repair work for its successor.
CHAPTER 2
APOCALYPTIC WARNINGS
A CONSTANT DRUMBEAT of messages reminds Americans that they live in scary times. Television ratings appear to depend on discomforting viewers sitting in easy chairs. Local news broadcasts lead with stories about murder, mayhem, and random acts of violence. The national and international news is relentlessly grim, filled with suicide bombings, killer storms, combat deaths, and the murder of the innocent. Even weather forecasts prey on viewer insecurities. Commercials offer no respite, focusing on the fear of infirmities, hair loss, sexual impotency, and weight gain. More anxiety awaits in doctors' offices and transportation hubs. Washington, in particular, is awash in anxiety. Members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, trumpet warnings and preparedness shortfalls, just as, in the wake of Sputnik, "the nation's legislators leaped forward like heavy drinkers hearing a cork pop." The reverberations of attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon are with us still.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Better Safe Than Sorry by Michael Krepon. Copyright © 2009 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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