Archive | April, 2010

FAS and the 2010 NPT Review Conference

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by: Alicia Godsberg

The 2010 Review Conference of the States Parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (or NPT RevCon) will be taking place at the United Nations in New York from 3-28 May.  You can follow the events of the RevCon here on the SSP blog, which will be updated every other day.  This Sunday FAS will be participating in an International Day of Action with a table at the civil society-organized peace and disarmament festival – if you are in New York please come visit us under the tent (see link for more info).  Our new NPT RevCon page is up and running as well for more RevCon information.  A full length report and issue brief on FAS’s recommendations for the U.S. delegation to the RevCon, as well as a podcast on the NPT and Conference, are all online and available now.  Stay tuned for more!

“A Nuclear Weapons Free NATO”

NATO, Nuclear Weapons
Imagine that: a nuclear weapons free NATO working for nuclear disarmament?

By Hans M. Kristensen

While NATO struggles with whether and how it can discuss the future of nuclear weapons in the alliance, the Obama administration timidly avoids addressing the issue head on, and NGOs try to play government by proposing sensible steps such as consolidation and gradual reductions, three U.S. active duty military officers have taken the leap and written a thought-provoking and visionary article in American Diplomacy in which they argue that the United States should withdraw its nuclear weapons from Europe and NATO adopt a nuclear weapons-free policy.

The core of their proposal is for NATO to “talk the talk” and “walk the walk” by ending the Cold War nuclear structure of direct allied involvement in nuclear planning and leave potential nuclear missions in support of Article V to US, British, and French national nuclear capabilities outside of the NATO Command and Control architecture. NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group and SHAPE’s Nuclear Operations Branch would be disestablished and a Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Group established in Brussels to lead the international effort of reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons.

Now that’s what I call a vision!

Additional information: Kleine Brogel Nukes

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

Documentary “Paths to Zero” Premiering at the NPT RevCon

Nuclear Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons

by: Alicia Godsberg

On Tuesday May 11 FAS will be premiering our documentary, “Paths to Zero,” at the United Nations during the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT RevCon).  The screening will be part of FAS’s official UN Office of Disarmament Affairs side event for the RevCon, which will be held from 10 am – 12 pm in Conference Room A of the North Building.  To attend, you must be registered for the RevCon, but after the Conference FAS will be screening Paths to Zero in Washington, DC and we will be uploading the video to our website.

The world’s combined stockpile of nuclear weapons remains at a high and frightening level – over 24,000 – despite being two decades past the end of the Cold War. In the documentary film Paths to Zero, Federation of American Scientists Vice President Dr. Ivan Oelrich explains the history of how the nuclear-armed world got to this point, and how we can begin to move down a global path to zero nuclear weapons.


U.S. Defense Department sold more than $15 billion in arms in the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2009, report reveals

Arms Trade, United States

By Matt Schroeder

Arms sold by the Defense Department to foreign recipients totaled more than $15 billion in the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2009, according to a report obtained by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). The quarterly report, which is dated February 2009 and is required by Section 36(a) of the Arms Export Control Act, indicates that defense articles and services sold through Defense Department Security Assistance programs from October through December 2008 were worth approximately $15.79 billion[1]. The United Arab Emirates was the largest buyer, accounting for $7 billion of sales. Saudi Arabia was a distant second with $1.87 billion, and Iraq was third with $947 million in sales. The remaining top ten recipients are listed in the table below. Sales to the top ten countries accounted for more than 80% of total sales, and nearly 89% of unclassified arms sales. These data show that a handful of countries continue to account – in dollar value terms – for the vast majority of arms sold through the US Defense Department.

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Is The US Prepared For Bioweapons Decontamination?

Biosecurity, United States

A new report by the UPMC Center for Biosecurity suggests that the US remains unprepared for the task of decontaminating the site of a major biological weapon attack.  Decontamination after the comparatively small-scale Anthrax attacks of 2001 is estimated to have cost hundreds of millions of dollars, while shuttering some facilities for as long as two years.  By comparison, the costs of a larger scale attack on a major city could be staggering.

In particular, the report singles out several major problems:

-          Multiple Federal agencies have potentially conflicting responsibilities in the aftermath of an attack.  For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would be sampling the site for a criminal investigation, the Environmental Protection Agency would be working on decontamination and the Department of Health and Human Services (home of the Centers for Disease Control) would be tracking the epidemiology of any disease outbreak.

-          Research into the problem is split between at least five federal agencies with major programs that examine decontamination.  This work is also comparatively underfunded in the context of broader biodefense spending.

-          A number of potentially crucial issues remain unanswered; there are limited techniques for taking samples of large, outdoor areas, and it is unclear how much danger there might be of further spreading infectious material during a cleanup effort.

The report calls for the government to clarify the roles of Federal agencies, as well as building owners, in the aftermath of an attack.  It also recommends increased investment in research and infrastructure, especially trained first responder personnel.

What’s Wrong with What’s Wrong with the Nuclear Posture Review

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On Tuesday, the Secretary of Defense released the new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).  I was quite disappointed in the document, thinking it is timid and gradualist.   So you can imagine how distracting it is when I am part way through writing a blog trashing the new doctrine for not going far enough that I see a flurry of articles about how the new doctrine goes way too far.  So now I have to divert my valuable time to defending the NPR.  (I will still finish the other blog, promise.)  Some of the criticism is simply inane but most comes from not reading, or perhaps not even caring what’s in, the actual report.  Still, it is probably a preview of the assaults to come.

Let’s begin with Sarah Palin, who said, “No administration in America’s history would, I think, ever have considered such a step that we just found out President Obama is supporting today. It’s kinda like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, ‘Go ahead, punch me in the face and I’m not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want to with me.’”

Where does one start? Let’s begin with the big picture:  Nuclear weapons are, by far, the most destructive instruments in human history, able to blow down entire cities within seconds, to kill millions at a shot, to end—quite literally—human civilization as we know it.  Is a playground quarrel between a pair of schoolchildren a useful analogy?  If we really wish to pursue the analogy then it would be more accurate to say that the NPR’s doctrine is equivalent to a child’s saying, “Even if you punch me, I will punch you back and perhaps beat you unconscious, I may even kill you, but I will not use a hand grenade to do it.”  I believe that a no-hand-grenades-on-the-playground policy is something that many parents would endorse.

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Twenty Percent Solution: Breaking the Iranian Stalemate

Iran, Nuclear Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons


by Ivanka Barzashka and Ivan Oelrich

Iran and the rest of the world are stalemated. Obama’s deadline for Tehran to address concerns about its nuclear program passed at the end of 2009, so the White House is moving to harsher sanctions. But the US is having trouble rallying the needed international support because Iranian intentions remain ambiguous. The deadlock includes negotiations on fueling Iran’s medical isotope reactor. With no progress on that front, Iran has begun its own production of 20-percent uranium for reactor fuel, a worrying development that could put Iran closer to a nuclear weapon. Yet, even while talk of sanctions escalates, Tehran says it is still interested in buying the 20 percent reactor fuel from foreign suppliers.

The Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) deal has backfired. The offer, to trade a large part of Iran’s low enriched uranium (LEU) for finished TRR fuel elements, was meant to abate the potential Iranian nuclear threat by reducing Iran’s stockpile of enriched nuclear material. By artificially coupling two distinct problems, re-fueling the TRR and Iran’s enrichment program, the US, France and Russia have given Tehran a reason, even a humanitarian one, to enrich to higher concentrations. The move to 20 percent enrichment will reduce by more than half the time needed for Iran to get a bomb’s worth of material. Continue Reading →

The Nuclear Posture Review

NATO, Nuclear Weapons, United States
The Nuclear Posture Review enshrines nuclear disarmament as a real goal for U.S. nuclear weapons policy for the first time.

By Hans M. Kristensen

It’s finally here! Hot off the press after a three months delay. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the United States has published a Nuclear Posture Review report.

Granted, it’s a sanitized version, but the Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) contains strong language that commits the United States to work for nonproliferation. And for the first time, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons is enshrined into the NPR.

By incorporating a broader range of policy issues in setting the nuclear posture, the review represents a break with the Bush administration’s NPR, which was more focused on military capabilities. As such, the new NPR is more a nuclear policy review than a nuclear posture review.

At the same time, the new NPR comes across as a surprisingly cautious document that recommends curtailing the U.S. nuclear posture further in the future but for now preserves many of the key nuclear weapons force structure and policy elements of the previous administration. Continue Reading →

Soviet Bioweapon Researchers Discuss Past, Future

Biosecurity, Russia

Two leading Russian biological weapons scientists presented their inside view of the Soviet bioweapons program at a March 29th panel sponsored by the George Mason University Biodefense Program.  Dr. Guennady Lepioshkin, who headed the Anthrax production plant at Stepnogorsk in Kazakhstan, and GMU Professor Sergey Popov, who headed projects at the Vector Institute and other laboratories in Obolensk, Russia, presented candid personal accounts of life as bioweapons researchers.   Beyond their individual tales, the session offered several lessons that remain relevant to the modern discussion of biosecurity – cautionary tales about the publication of dual use research and the destructive potential of synthetic biology. Continue Reading →