Ulrika Grufman and I just published a piece on the status of NATO-Russia missile defense cooperation talks over at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation website.  They're not going well.  We write:  

The current impasse is particularly frustrating given that the planned European missile defense architecture is not a threat to Russia’s deterrent (at least not yet). Meanwhile, the technical and financial foundations of the system are dubious at best. As four experts aptly put it: “The tragedy, if this confrontation results in a breakdown of relations between Russia and the West, is that almost nothing that anybody claims to be worrying about is real yet.”

We conclude that despite the lack of progress to date, the two sides must try to continue to work through their differences on this issue even if not much is likely to be accomplished in 2012 given Presidential elections in both the U.S. and Russia.

Read the whole thing here.

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Nukes on a Blog, missile defense, Russia, Congress (all tags)

Prime Minster Vladimir Putin is running for President again, confirming suspicions that the plan to put Russia’s eight year president back in the saddle has been long in the making.  Current President Dmitri Medvedev, Putin’s protégé, announced that he fully supports Putin’s candidacy and will not run for a second term, but take up the post of Prime Minister held by Putin.

Better than swapping wives, but not much.

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Nukes on a Blog, Russia, Putin, Dimitry Medvedev (all tags)

The first Pyongyang-Moscow summit in nine years - aimed largely at deepening bilateral economic ties - concluded with no news on the nuclear front. Based on the available information reported on the August 24th summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Pyongyang merely reiterated its basic position without clear signs of taking any steps forward toward denuclearization.

However, it is difficult to make a complete and definitive assessment since the summit results were carried by the media, absent official word from North Korea. Closed door deals, if they exist, remain veiled. The other parties to the Six Party Talks have yet to be debriefed on the summit while chief nuclear negotiators from Seoul and Beijing are slated to meet on Thursday, August 25th.

At this point, only an initial and limited assessment can be made based on preliminary information delivered by the media: (Click “Read More”)

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Nukes on a Blog, North Korea, Russia, Kim Jong-il, Dmitry Medvedev, Six Party Talks (all tags)

By Lt. Gen. Robert Gard

True to past form, John Bolton and Paula De Sutter authored an op-ed in the 15 August 2011 Wall Street Journal advocating withdrawal by the United States from the landmark INF Treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which entered into force on 1 June 1988. A treaty signed by the sainted President Ronald Reagan, no less.  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the Treaty was extended to include the Soviet successor states.

This Treaty, with a highly intrusive and reliable verification regime, eliminated in slightly less than three years a total of 2,692 ground-launched cruise and ballistic missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. These nuclear-armed missiles, deployed in the European theater by NATO and the Warsaw Pact, were ready for launch on short notice.  This obviously was an inherently unstable situation with the danger of an unauthorized or accidental launch that could escalate into an unintended nuclear war.

Even though they have condemned treaties in general for limiting U.S. flexibility and options, why would Bolton and De Sutter recommend that the U.S. should withdraw from such a mutually advantageous agreement? While it’s difficult to believe, their rationale is that other countries, including China, Iran, and North Korea, are deploying short and intermediate range missiles that could threaten U.S. forces.

In their view, this requires us to deploy ground-based missiles prohibited by the INF Treaty to provide a second strike deterrent capability. It is by no means clear why they believe that a deterrent to the employment of cruise and ballistic missiles against our troops must consist of mirror-image weapons systems when we have more than ample military capability that can serve the same purpose. Unless, of course, because this is simply a convenient if illogical excuse to free the U.S. from constraints on adding to our weapons arsenal by deploying short and medium range missiles.

Bolton and De Sutter implicitly dismiss any significant impact on relations with Russia of U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty by asserting that since Moscow has announced that it is no longer bound by the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, it is likely to take the same action with regard to the INF Treaty. So we should pre-empt?

What would Ronald Reagan say?

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Nukes on a Blog, Russia (all tags)

Speculation is running high in the international media that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il may sit down with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Japan’s Kyodo News expects the summit to take place on Thursday, June 30th in the Far East city of Vladivostok while other reports say July 1st.  Media reports have also quoted Russian officials as saying preparations are underway for a summit, though Medvedev’s counterpart was not disclosed. President Medvedev is reportedly set to be in Vladivostok to check on preparations for the 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting.

If realized, it would be the first time in nine years the North Korean leader traveled to Russia for a summit with its Cold War ally with whom relations have frayed over the years.

Korea watchers are closely following Kim’s reported travel plans because the expected summit would come on the heels of a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan on June 24th during which the allies reaffirmed that inter-Korea relations must be improved before the resumption of Six Party Talks. Seoul officials say that since the envisioned inter-Korean denuclearization discussion has been delinked from seeking an apology for the sinking of the Cheonan and shelling of Yeongpyeong Island, it is now Pyongyang’s turn to come forward.

It is highly anticipated that economic issues would top the expected Pyongyang-Moscow summit, but would still have implications on the Six Party diplomatic front.

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North Korea, Russia, Kim Jong-il, Dmitry Medvedev (all tags)

The group Global Zero recently released a report assessing nuclear weapons spending worldwide. Their findings indicate that over the next decade, governments will significantly increase their nuclear weapons spending, eventually surpassing $1 trillion over the next decade.

While this figure is significant, it must also be taken with a grain of salt. First, the trillion dollar figure is what Global Zero calls the “full cost” of nuclear weapons, as opposed to the “core cost.” Core costs refer to "researching, developing, procuring, testing, operating, maintaining and upgrading the nuclear arsenal." Full costs are derived from a more holistic approach, including "unpaid/deferred environmental and health costs, missile defenses assigned to defend nuclear weapons, nuclear threat reduction, and incident management". The report’s figure for the core cost of nuclear weapons over the next decade rests at about $670 million, therefore falling short of the $1 trillion dollar figure.

Another concern is that the report’s figures have a wide margin of error. Quantifying even broad defense spending for countries like Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea is problematic, and as such, speculating about their total nuclear spending is near impossible. Global Zero admits this, but fairly argues that these programs are “small enough that inaccuracies in estimates would have negligible effect on the general conclusion." At current levels, "the nine nuclear weapons countries are spending approximately one trillion dollars per decade."

Methodological concerns aside, what the report succinctly expresses is that world-wide investment in nuclear weapons is greater than ever.

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Global Zero, Defense Spending, USA, Russia (all tags)

Recently, former C.I.A. director R. James Woolsey warned of  President Obama’s underhanded attempts to purchase Russian cooperation on missile defense with sensitive U.S. missile defense technology. Mr. Woolsey argued against ceding critical defense secrets and operational “red button” authority to an unpredictable rival at a time when the United States faces a heightened threat from Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

Of course, the Obama administration has no intention of giving Russia such red-button rights.

U.S. negotiations with Russia on missile defense cooperation have centered largely on the potential sharing of early warning data on missile launches from other states such as Iran. Under discussion is a Joint Data Fusion Center, which would mitigate the risk of false alarms or miscalculation and allow NATO officers to access early-warning data on missile launches from Russian radar sights along the Iranian border.

Mr. Woolsey’s anxiety about any kind of missile defense cooperation with Russia is surprising in light of the more geopolitically astute assessment he offered in 2009, as one of twelve members of the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States:

“For more than a decade the development of U.S. ballistic missile defenses has been guided by the principles of (1) protecting against limited strikes while (2) taking into account the legitimate concerns of Russia and China about strategic stability. These remain sound guiding principles. Defenses sufficient to sow doubts in Moscow or Beijing about the viability of their deterrents could lead them to take actions that increase the threat to the United States and its allies and friends . . .

. . . Cooperative missile defense efforts with allies should be strengthened and opportunities for missile defense cooperation with Russia should be further explored.”[emphasis mine]

Though only Woolsey can explain his change of heart, we can only assume that at some point between 2009 and 2011 bilateral cooperation became a zero-sum game and the Russian Federation degenerated into the “evil empire” of 1983...

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Nukes on a Blog, Missile Defense, Russia, R. James Woolsey (all tags)

In a The Wall Street Journal article published on November 30, Adam Entous and Jonathan Weisman allege that Russia has moved tactical nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.  In light of the administration’s attempt to secure Senate approval of the New START treaty during the lame-duck’s final moments, the authors have stirred up longstanding GOP concerns about the issue of tactical nuclear weapons.

Jeffrey Lewis, Nikolai Sokov (see the comments section of the aforementioned Jeffrey Lewis piece), and Pavel Podvig have already done an excellent job refuting Entous and Weisman’s assertions, noting that this “breaking news” is nothing more than a red-herring leaked with the intention of derailing New START ratification.  In lieu of rehashing what they have already addressed, I want to focus on how entry into force of New START is integral to paving the way for a subsequent agreement with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons...

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Russia, New START, tactical nuclear weapons, Kaliningrad (all tags)

By Lt. General Robert Gard, Jr. and Candice DeNardi

On Monday, November 8, 2010, two Armenians—Sumbat Tonoyan, a retired physicist, and Hrant Ohanyan, a failed businessman—pleaded guilty during a secret trial held in Tbilisi to smuggling 18 grams of highly enriched uranium (HEU) into Georgia.

In March 2010, a month before the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington D.C. where 47 world leaders pledged to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years, Tonoyan and Ohanyan were arrested for smuggling HEU into Georgia.  The two Armenians placed the 18 grams of uranium, enriched to a weapons useable level, in a pack of Marlboro cigarettes lined with strips of lead to fool radiation detectors at the Georgian border.  Tonoyan and Ohanyan then smuggled the HEU via a train bound from Yerevan to Tbilisi, and attempted to sell it to someone they thought was an agent representing Islamic radicals; instead, he turned out to be an undercover agent of Georgia’s radioactive materials investigations team.    

There are several disturbing facts about this incident.  It illustrates the very real threat of the theft, smuggling, and sale of nuclear materials to prospective buyers, especially terrorists.  But what’s equally chilling about this case, and others for that matter, is that the uranium the men were smuggling wasn’t even missed.  No one knows where exactly it came from, although most suspect it originated in Siberia, perhaps even up to ten years ago.  During the Cold War, many Soviet factories produced and stockpiled excess quantities of HEU or plutonium in order to make up for potential shortfalls in production quotas for future accounting periods (you didn’t want to fall behind on quotas in the Soviet Union, lest you be sent to the GULag).  Much of this was unaccounted for; it is impossible to know for sure, therefore, how much of this material was produced, where it is located, how it is stored, and—most importantly—how much is missing.

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Nuclear Smuggling, HEU, Georgia, Russia, New START (all tags)

Honestly, I'm a little ashamed of myself for spreading this past the pages of the Heritage Foundation's 33 minutes blog... but I couldn't help it.  Big hat tip to Page for sending this along.  

There are so many things to say but, well, let's just let it speak for itself...

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Nukes on a Blog, Missile Defense, Iran Watch, China, Russia, Heritage, New START (all tags)