Fighting ProliferationIraq’s threatened chemical missile strikes against US forces, combined with its efforts to build nuclear weapons, have quite literally put issues about the proliferation of strategic weapons on the map. Indeed, after Operation Desert Shield, both the Bush and Clinton administrations focused considerable attention on the need to dismantle Iraq’s strategic weapons capabilities and to assure that the strategic weapons complex in the former Soviet Union doesn’t end up helping future Iraqs. Since Operation Desert Storm, though, additional proliferation concerns—devising an effective strategy against proliferation, coping with the spread of space technology, and curbing Iran’s and North Korea’s strategic programs—have emerged. Fighting Proliferation examines these challenges and their implications for US policy.
The first of these concerns—how best to reform existing non-proliferation efforts—is examined in part 1. With the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) indefinitely extended, just exactly how the treaty will be implemented remains unclear. The Clinton administration is on record arguing that the NPT is a model for how the US will curb the proliferation of not only nuclear but all other kinds of strategic weapons. But what does the NPT and its obligations actually mean? Its key proscriptions in Articles 1, 2, and 3 are ambiguous. The treaty also lacks any clear enforcement measures and is nearly impossible to amend.
Can the NPT be interpreted in some fashion that could address these weaknesses? The answer given in Fighting Proliferation’s opening essay, “What Does the History of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Tell Us about Its Future?” is yes. Tracing the negotiating history of the NPT, Henry Sokolski—executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center—argues that the NPT’s original objectives are still sound and sufficiently present in the treaty’s text to redeem its currently lax implementation. Len Weiss, Senate staff author of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978, details precisely what ambiguities such a reinterpretation would have to consider. Yet, without an effort to address these concerns, both authors argue, the NPT and the “model” it represents could fail or—worse—compound the very proliferation they were supposed to prevent.
Demonstration of this point is offered in an essay by Richard Speier, consultant to RAND and the Pacific Sierra Corporation and a US negotiator of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). In his essay “A Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty for Missiles?” Speier shows what can happen in attempting to turn technology-denial efforts, such as the MTCR, into an intent-based nonproliferation regime like the NPT. Using the example of Brazil, Speier shows how including countries with a troubled past and a desire to develop strategic weapons capabilities in nonproliferation regimes can actually accelerate proliferation.
This leads directly to the issue of what new threats the US will face if its nonproliferation policies fail. Part 2 covers this issue in four essays. The first, “How to Defeat the United States: The Operational Military Effects of the Proliferation of Weapons of Precise Destruction” by David Blair, a professor at Air University’s Air War College, focuses on how smaller nations may use high-leverage conventional weapons in the coming decade to defeat US expeditionary forces. The other essays in this section examine two specific weapons capabilities—improved satellite imagery and highly precise conventional cruise missiles. The second essay, by Steve Berner of B and L Associates in Washington, D.C., details the significant military implications of the continued spread of commercial satellites and satellite services to other nations. His analysis carefully explains how space imagery can be used to develop strategic intelligence, military maps, and precise targeting for crude cruise missiles in a manner previously not possible. This threat of cruise missile proliferation is detailed more closely in part 2’s third essay, by Dennis Gormley, vice president of Pacific Sierra and consultant to DOD’s Policy Advisory Board, and K. Scott McMahon, national security analyst for Pacific Sierra, who examine the emerging cruise missile efforts in the third world and end with a set of policy recommendations for how to control cruise missile technology more carefully.
A similar concern over what, if anything, should be done to control advanced nations’ export of commercial satellites and their related products and services is considered in part 2’s final offering—a debate between Brian Dailey, Lockheed’s vice president for congressional affairs and former director of Vice President Dan Quayle’s Space Council, and Edward McGaffigan, administrative assistant to Sen Jeff Bingaman (D-N.Mex.) and former Office of Science and Technology staffer in the Carter administration. As all these experts note, the policy challenges in these two areas will receive additional attention no matter who sits in the White House in 1996
Technological advances, though, are only part of the emerg- ing set of proliferation threats. In addition, two new truculent proliferators—North Korea and Iran—have emerged since Desert Storm. These two regional concerns are the focus of parts 3 and 4. Three essays are dedicated to North Korea. The first of these, written by Walter Slocombe, undersecretary of defense for policy, makes the case for the nuclear deal struck with North Korea in Geneva on 21 October 1994—the Clinton administration’s current approach to the North Korean nuclear threat.
This analysis is followed by two different analyses. The first, by Victor Gilinsky, former nuclear regulatory commissioner (1975–84), examines the problems that the deal’s nuclear reactor offer is likely to present to the South Koreans. The second, by Paul Wolfowitz, dean of the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and undersecretary of defense for policy in the Bush administration, analyzes the deal in the broader context of US–East Asian security and concludes that the deal could undermine regional security unless its implementation is properly conditioned.
This, then, brings us to the book’s consideration of Iran in part 4. It consists of three offerings. The first is an analysis of the threats Iran is likely to present to US interests; its author is Geoffrey Kemp, former Reagan National Security Council (NSC) staffer and currently the Nixon Center’s resident Near East expert. The second—“Opportunities for Change in Iran”—is by Ken Timmerman, director of the Iran Data Project; he argues that the US should support efforts to overthrow the current Iranian government. The third—“The Stalemate in US-Iran Relations”—is by Gary Sick, former NSC staffer and currently professor of Near Eastern politics at Columbia University; he makes the case for the US increasing its cooperation with the current Iranian regime.
The debate over what sort of regime the US wants to see in Tehran and how likely such a regime is to emerge points toward the more general need for US officials to develop a long-term diplomatic, political, economic, and military strategy against proliferation. This is the focus of the book’s last three essays in part 5. The first of these evaluates our current effort to devise a military response to proliferation under the Defense Department’s Counterproliferation Initiative (DCI). Announced by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin on 7 December 1993, the DCI was supposed to neutralize these threats. But as Chris Williams—House National Security Committee nonproliferation staffer—explains in his analysis, the DCI has had a number of difficulties. He suggests that the DCI can overcome its detractors but only if it adopts a more competitive approach than merely preempting other nations’ use of strategic weapons or limiting damage.
The debate over what sort of regime the US wants to see in Tehran and how likely such a regime is to emerge points toward the more general need for US officials to develop a long-term diplomatic, political, economic, and military strategy against proliferation. This is the focus of the book’s last three essays in part 5. The first of these evaluates our current effort to devise a military response to proliferation under the Defense Department’s Counterproliferation Initiative (DCI). Announced by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin on 7 December 1993, the DCI was supposed to neutralize these threats. But as Chris Williams—House National Security Committee nonproliferation staffer—explains in his analysis, the DCI has had a number of difficulties. He suggests that the DCI can overcome its detractors but only if it adopts a more competitive approach than merely preempting other nations’ use of strategic weapons or limiting damage.
As Williams points out, if the US is to win against proliferators, it will have to get beyond the negative goal of limiting possible damage and pit its comparative advantages against proliferators’ comparative weaknesses. What this more competitive strategy will entail is explained by David Andre, who helped develop and implement DOD competitive strategies against the Soviet Union during the Reagan administration. The key questions US policy planners must answer in devising such strategies are presented in his essay “Competitive Strategies: An Approach against Proliferation.” Finally, the intelligence requirements for pursuing such an approach are spelled out in Henry Sokolski’s essay “Fighting Proliferation with Intelligence.” In it, he argues that we need to work backwards from the most likely and most threatening scenarios involving the proliferation of strategic weapons to determine what can be done to mitigate or eliminate such threats. Working backwards from these futures, we should be able to prevent the worst.