Foreign Policy In Focus

Despite being on the national security radar for 32 years, Ploughshares was still able to pull off a recent dazzling action.

Before dawn on Saturday, July 29, reports Frank Munger at his Knoxville News column Atomic City Underground,

"…three peace activists — including an 82-year-old nun — were able to sneak into the [Y12] nuclear defense installation [in Oak Ridge, Tennessee] and maneuver their way into the plant's highest-security area, where work on nuclear warheads takes place and where the nation's primary supply of bomb-grade uranium is housed. The trio, who labeled themselves the "Transform Now Plowshares," reportedly used bolt-cutters to slip through high-security fences.

"Once inside the so-called Protected Area, they attached protest banners to the uranium storage site, splashed it with human blood and spray-painted slogans and messages on the walls."

Of course, the groups intention wasn't to show terrorists how it's done or to, per se, shame the facility's security -- and 82-year-old nun! But (Munger again)

In an extraordinary effort to address growing security concerns following Saturday's break-in by protesters at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, the government's contractor shut down all plant nuclear operations, placed the stocks of enriched uranium in secure vaults, and set up a schedule for thousands of Y-12 workers to take refresher courses on security do's and don'ts. …The shutdown of operations is expected to last about a week, but officials said that's not been fully determined.

Some background on Ploughshares:

On September 9, 1980, the “Plowshares Eight” carried out the first of what have come to be known as plowshares actions. Eight peacemakers entered the General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where the nose cones from the Mark 12-A nuclear warheads were manufactured. With hammers and blood they enacted the biblical prophecies of Isaiah (2:4) and Micah (4:3) to “beat swords into plowshares” by hammering on two of the nose cones and pouring blood on documents. Thus, the name “plowshares” has been used to identify this action. The eight were subsequently arrested and tried by a jury, convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 1 ½ to 10 years. After a series of appeals that lasted 10 years, they were resentenced to time served—from several days to 17 ½ months.

As a disarmament advocate, I've long been in awe of the work Plowshares does. They not only dive headfirst into the legal system with significant risk of jail time, but what many don't know is that they risk their lives. On Thursday, Munger wrote:

A federal spokesman at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant said it was fortunate that nobody was hurt or killed …. Steven Wyatt of the National Nuclear Security Administration said deadly force is authorized against those who enter the area without permission. "The protesters put themselves at a high risk of losing their life in performing this act," Wyatt said. 

Does it mean protecting nuclear plants or using nuclear weapons for national security?

From the long-prevailing Japanese perspective, it's foolhardy for the state to consider developing nuclear weapons.

Twice victimized by their use, Japan is uniquely positioned to know how engaging in nuclear war inevitably results in attacks like the ones it experienced in World War II. It's also able to empathize with the prospect of another state struck by nuclear weapons and envision the negative karma (or gou in Japanese) their use generates.

Alas, many Japanese have focused on their victimization and, especially with North Korea nearby, bow down to the gods of deterrence in hopes of preventing another nuclear attack on Japan. In fact, as Yuri Kageyama reports for the Associated Press, arming Japan with nuclear weapons has long been part of the national and internal debate.

Historical documents released in the past two years show that the idea of a nuclear-armed Japan was long talked about behind-the-scenes, despite repeated denials by the government. …

In a once-classified 1966 document, the government outlined how the threat of China going nuclear made it necessary for Japan to consider it too, though it concluded that the U.S. nuclear umbrella made doing so unnecessary at the time.

In meeting minutes from 1964, 1966 and 1967, Japanese officials weigh the pros and cons of signing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which would mean foregoing the nuclear option. Japan signed the treaty in 1970.

The government denials continued, even after former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone wrote in his 2004 memoirs that, as defense chief, he had ordered a secret study of Japan's nuclear arms capability in 1970. The study concluded it would take five years to develop nuclear weapons, but Nakasone said he decided they weren't needed, again because of U.S. protection.

Lately confusion arose when

… parliament amended the 1955 Atomic Energy Basic Law in June, adding "national security" to people's health and wealth as reasons for Japan's use of [nuclear-energy] technology.  Given the secretive past, former diplomat Tetsuya Endo and others are suspicious about the June amendment adding "national security" to the atomic energy law. Backers of the amendment say it refers to protecting nuclear plants from terrorists. Opponents ask why the words aren't then "nuclear security," instead of "national security."

As you can see, much more than semantics, the term "nuclear security" may be obfuscation intended to throw up a smokescreen behind which to advance the development of nuclear weapons. In any event, the phrase is a riddle. But, unlike a koan,* which can lead to enlightenment, this phrase has the potential to help usher Japan into a post-apocalyptic world of darkness.

*koan A paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.

On July 2 at Truthout, Gareth Porter wrote:

For many months, the most dramatic media storyline on Iran's nuclear program has been an explosives containment cylinder that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says was installed at Iran's Parchin military base a decade ago to test nuclear weapons. The coverage of the initial IAEA account of the cylinder in its report last November has been followed by a steady drip of reports about Iran refusing to allow the agency's inspectors to visit the site at Parchin and satellite photos showing what are said to be Iranian efforts to "sanitize" the site.

But

… the images in question suggest something quite different from the "clean up" of the site reported in global news media.

As opposed to a sanitization or clean-up, the activities, Porter writes, may constitute a lure to induce the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit the site. Tehran may be thinking that

… the agency would be more open to compromise on its demand to … to continue investigating allegations of Iranian covert nuclear weapons work indefinitely, regardless of the information provided by Iran in response to its questions.

Former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley explained

… why that makes no sense. "The Uranium signatures are very persistent in the environment," he wrote in an article for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in May. "If Iran is using hoses to wash contamination across a parking lot into a ditch, there will be enhanced [not fewer, as one would think if Tehran was hiding activities -- RW] opportunities for uranium collection if teams are allowed access."

Meanwhile, David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security

… was back again in June with a new satellite image taken May 25 showing that soil had been moved from two areas north and south of the building said to have held the explosive chamber. … But it also showed that the same soil was dumped only a few hundred feet farther north of the building, making environmental sampling quite simple.

Assuming that Tehran doesn't know that leaving the soil beside the building or that, by washing "contamination across a parking lot into a ditch, there will be enhanced opportunities for uranium collection if teams are allowed access" strikes this observer as part of a pattern of underestimating the intelligence of Tehran. As Kelley wrote in a comment at Arms Control Wonk on June 19, "I think [Iran is] teasing the international community with these activities." (In the same comment thread, Albright defends his findings.)

The pattern on the part of the United States of underestimating and condescending towards Tehran -- and other states that aspire to develop nuclear-weapons programs -- can best be observed in two examples. The first is the New START treaty, which is long on confidence building but short on weapons reduction. The second is the $700 billion the United States expects to spend on nuclear weapons over the next ten years. While those realities may not drive it to develop nuclear weapons, they're not exactly lost on Tehran. 

Kenneth Waltz, the noted international relations scholar, wrote an article for the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, titled "Why Iran Should Get the Bomb" (behind a pay wall).* Not "We Can Live With an Iranian Bomb," but an actual declaration that "it would probably be the best possible result" of the "current standoff" -- the "one most likely to restore stability to the Middle East," in fact.

Before proceeding, this author feels compelled to state that he has no confidence whatsoever in the thesis that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. It seems to have ended its program since 2003 and any design work since has been negligible. Meanwhile, its enrichment of uranium is, in large part, intended to serve as a bargaining chip with the West. Those who see this as signs it's developing nukes are not only disingenuous but demonstrating willful ignorance for the purpose of inducing regime change in Iran. That said, here's why Waltz thinks an Iranian bomb would "restore stability to the Middle East. 

Iran's regional nuclear monopoly, which has proved remarkably durable for the past four decades, has long fueled instability in the Middle East. In no other region of the world does a lone, unchecked nuclear state exist. It is Israel's nuclear arsenal, not Iran's desire for one, that has contributed most to the current crisis. Power, after all, begs to be balanced. What is surprising about the Israeli case is that it has taken so long for a potential balancer to emerge.

Of course, it is easy to understand why Israel wants to remain the sole nuclear power in the region and why it is willing to use force to secure that status. In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq to prevent a challenge to its nuclear monopoly. It did the same to Syria in 2007 and is now considering similar action against Iran. But the very acts that have allowed Israel to maintain its nuclear edge in the short term have prolonged an imbalance that is unsustainable in the long term. Israel's proven ability to strike potential nuclear rivals with impunity has inevitably made its enemies anxious to develop the means to prevent Israel from doing so again. In this way, the current tensions are best viewed not as the early stages of a relatively recent Iranian nuclear crisis but rather as the final stages of a decades-long Middle East nuclear crisis that will end only when a balance of military power is restored.

In other words, Israel's development of nuclear weapons, as well as its failure to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or even acknowledge the program, has long been an "i" waiting to be dotted. Proliferation, however, is not the answer to proliferation. I'd say that Waltz, despite his exalted status, undermines his credibility when he closes with this statement:

… policymakers and citizens in the Arab world, Europe, Israel, and the united States should take comfort from the fact that history has shown that where nuclear capabilities emerge, so, too, does stability.

But Waltz has long claimed that, as he states in the closing line of the Foreign Affairs article "When it comes to nuclear weapons, now as ever, more may be better."

If the only sure way to make a state respect another's sovereignty is to risk blowing both off the face of the earth, that's a pretty sad commentary on not only international relations, but humanity itself.

*Thanks to Focal Pointer Michael Busch for bringing it to my attention.

At Foreign Policy in Focus Stephen Zunes reports on a resolution (HR 568) that the House passed in a show of bipartisanship (401-11) that couldn't have come at a worse possible time (as is usually the case with bipartisanship these days). He explains that HR 568 calls for "the president to oppose any policy toward Iran 'that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.'"

… Congress has essentially told the president that nothing short of war or the threat of war is an acceptable policy. Indeed, the rush to pass this bill appears to have been designed to undermine the ongoing international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.

Even Colin Powell, as quoted by Dennis Kucinich, "has stated that this resolution 'reads like the same sheet of music that got us into the Iraq war.'"

First, the vote shows yet again that Democratic congress-persons would rather pander to their donors (in this case, lobbying groups such as AIPAC) rather than represent their constituents. Sure, talk tough on defense, especially with respect to Iran, plays well with most American voters. But many of those voters don't understand, as congress-persons do -- or would if the psyches of many of them weren't as compartmentalized as they are -- the extent to which such talk can pave the way to catastrophic war. Besides, though best left to legal scholars, HR 578 smells either illegal or unconstitutional.

What escapes most observers -- Professor Zunes conspicuously excepted -- is that as apocalyptic as war with Iran would be, the implications of HR 568 are even more sweeping. He writes:

The language of this resolution, however, significantly lowers the bar [for taking military action against Iran] by declaring it unacceptable for Iran simply to have "nuclear weapons capability" — not necessarily any actual weapons or an active nuclear weapons program. 

Nuclear weapons capability, which isn't technically illegal under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is also known as "virtual deterrence," because the program has yet to become "bricks and mortar." One can't help but wish that the missiles and bombs with which we threaten Iran were also virtual and it were all a videogame.

More to the point, writes Professor Zunes:

There is enormous significance to the resolution’s insistence that containment, which has been the basis of U.S. defense policy for decades, should no longer be U.S. policy in dealing with potential threats. Although deterrence may have been an acceptable policy in response to the thousands of powerful Soviet nuclear weapons mounted on intercontinental ballistic missile systems aimed at the United States, the view today is that deterrence is somehow inadequate for dealing with a developing country capable of developing small and crude nuclear devices but lacking long-range delivery systems.

Indeed, this broad bipartisan consensus against deterrence marks the triumph of the neoconservative first-strike policy, once considered on the extreme fringes when first articulated in the 1980s.

According to this line of thinking, no need to rely on deterrence alone with non-nuclear weapon states: we're free to mount an offensive attack, as well. Meanwhile, with nuclear-weapons states, first strikes are almost entirely out of the question -- not only nuclear strikes, but conventional. Thus do states that aspire to nuclear weapons draw the inevitable conclusion that they need to develop a nuclear-weapons program to avoid offensive attacks and "qualify" to be handled with a deterrence policy by the United States.

In a similar vein, Martin Hellman, arguably the world's clearest quantifier of nuclear risk and proprietor of the site Defusing the Nuclear Threat, recently wrote:

The logical inconsistency – and danger – of nuclear deterrence should be obvious, but it still forms the foundation of our national security strategy. Yet, for nuclear deterrence to work:

• we must be irrational enough for our adversary's threats not to deter us, yet
• our adversary must be rational enough that our threats will deter them. 

As I commented at Defusing the Nuclear Threat in response:

I think I've got it: The rational us are supposed to act irrational in hopes the irrational them acts rational. Makes perfect sense!