The disarray of US non-proliferation policy

Survival

Volumn 41, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 42-61

  Andréani, Gilles ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0040813055     PISSN: 00396338     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. The November 1995 national intelligence estimates of emerging threats to North America during the following 15 years excluded a ballistic-missile threat to the US during that period.
2. John E. Rielly (ed.), American Public Opinion and US Foreign Policy 1999 (Chicago, IL: The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 1999), p. 15 (available at www.ccfr.org/publications/opinion/ opinion.html). Awareness of non-traditional threats had increased significantly since the last survey (1994). Interestingly, the rating of India and Pakistan as 'friendly countries' did not seem to have been much influenced by the tests (p. 32).
3. 'Defense Secretary William Cohen held up a five-pound bag of sugar on national television to dramatize how, with an equivalent amount of anthrax, 2.2 kilograms, Iraq could eliminate at least half the population of Washington', Bradley Graham, 'Pentagon Takes First Steps to Prevent Any Germ Attacks by Terrorists', International Herald Tribune, 15 December 1997, p. 3.
4. Webster's Dictionary defines proliferation as 'Growth by rapid production of new parts, cells, buds, or offspring'.
5. Judith Miller and William J. Broad, 'Clinton Sees Threat of Germ Terrorism', International Herald Tribune, 23-24 January 1999, p. 1.
6. Quoted in Flora Lewis, 'The New Anti-Terrorism', New York Review of Books, 4 December 1998; For a remarkable and fairly objective account of the current - very limited - record of WMD terrorist attempts and presumed capabilities, followed by more radical and questionable prescriptions, see Richard A. Falkenrath, Robert D. Newman and Bradley Thayer, America's Achilles' Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998); the prescriptions are very similar to those offered by Ashton Carter, John Deutch, and Philip Zelikow in their article 'Catastrophic Terrorism', Foreign Affairs, vol. 77, no. 6, November/ December 1998.
7. Quoted in Flora Lewis, 'The New Anti-Terrorism', New York Review of Books, 4 December 1998; For a remarkable and fairly objective account of the current -very limited - record of WMD terrorist attempts and presumed capabilities, followed by more radical and questionable prescriptions, see Richard A. Falkenrath, Robert D. Newman and Bradley Thayer, America's Achilles' Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998); the prescriptions are very similar to those offered by Ashton Carter, John Deutch, and Philip Zelikow in their article 'Catastrophic Terrorism', Foreign Affairs, vol. 77, no. 6, November/ December 1998.
8. Quoted in Flora Lewis, 'The New Anti-Terrorism', New York Review of Books, 4 December 1998; For a remarkable and fairly objective account of the current - very limited - record of WMD terrorist attempts and presumed capabilities, followed by more radical and questionable prescriptions, see Richard A. Falkenrath, Robert D. Newman and Bradley Thayer, America's Achilles' Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998); the prescriptions are very similar to those offered by Ashton Carter, John Deutch, and Philip Zelikow in their article 'Catastrophic Terrorism', Foreign Affairs, vol. 77, no. 6, November/ December 1998.
9. Foreword to Proliferation: Threat And Responses, Office of the Secretary of Defense, November 1997. This was not an isolated statement: the Quadrennial Defence Review states that 'US dominance in the conventional may encourage our adversaries to use asymmetric means' (Washington DC: US Department of Defense, May 1997), p. 4.
10. See note 5.
11. Russel Travers, 'A Strategic Breathing Space', Washington Quarterly, Spring 1997.
12. See Jason Ellis, 'Nunn-Lugar's Mid-Life Crisis', Survival, vol. 39, no. 1, Spring 1997, pp. 84-110, which claims that it was only in 1995 that the Department of Defense managed to spend more than half the funds earmarked to the programme. See also, for example, 'Effort to Reduce Russian Arsenal May Cost More, Achieve Less Than Planned', General Accounting Office 99-76, April 1999.
13. See Jason Ellis, 'Nunn-Lugar's Mid-Life Crisis', Survival, vol. 39, no. 1, Spring 1997, pp. 84-110, which claims that it was only in 1995 that the Department of Defense managed to spend more than half the funds earmarked to the programme. See also, for example, 'Effort to Reduce Russian Arsenal May Cost More, Achieve Less Than Planned', General Accounting Office 99-76, April 1999.
14. Proliferation: Threat And Responses, Office of the Secretary of Defense, November 1997, p. 53.
15. Acquisitions 'related' to counter-proliferation were worth $4.9bn in FY1998, of which about two-thirds was for air and missile defence, making it extremely difficult to assess how much of it corresponded to new or increased funding resulting from the 'counter-proliferation' initiative proper. See Proliferation: Threat And Responses, Office of the Secretary of Defense, November 1997, pp. 71-74.
16. Strategic Comments, vol. 5, issue 3, April 1999.
17. Falkenrath et al. in America's Achilles' Heel have argued that proliferation concerns ought to justify the US in claiming more than parity in strategic arms vis-à-vis Russia. They have also claimed that the requirements of deterring proliferators should discourage the US from lowering their arsenal below 3,000-3,500 warheads.
18. 'Indeed the knowledge that the United States has a powerful and ready nuclear capability is a significant deterrent to the use of these [NBC] weapons', Proliferation: Threat And Responses, Office of the Secretary of Defense, November 1997, p. 53.
19. David Gompert, 'Rethinking the Role of Nuclear Weapons', Strategic Forum, May 1998; The Goodpaster Committee, An Evolving Nuclear Posture (Washington DC: Stimson Center, December 1995).
20. David Gompert, 'Rethinking the Role of Nuclear Weapons', Strategic Forum, May 1998; The Goodpaster Committee, An Evolving Nuclear Posture (Washington DC: Stimson Center, December 1995).
21. As part of the extension of the NPT, the US and the other weapons-states have renewed their political pledge not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear parties to the NPT. There are various qualifications to these pledges, which were also taken in the context of Nuclear Weapons Free Zone treaties in binding form. Consideration of general, legally binding negative-security assurance is part of the non-proliferation and disarmament agenda agreed in the NPT extension, but would hardly be compatible with the current US posture of ambiguity.
22. For example, to prevent proliferation, to reverse it should it occur, to defend the US against the resulting threat and to be prepared to prevail should a conflict occur that involved possessors of NBC weapons (Quadrennial Defense Review).
23. See David Reese, 'North Korea's "Nuclear Card"', Chapter 2 of The Prospects for North Korea's Survival, Adelphi Paper 323 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the USS, 1998), pp. 39-58.
24. Including a reported tension between the US and the IAEA, when the latter's insistence on carrying out its job became an obstacle to the conclusion of the framework agreement, David Reese, The Prospect for North Korea's Survival, p. 48
25. As a result, the Senate and the House have conditioned funding of the KEDO to confirmation by the president that North Korea has respected its nuclear obligations under the framework agreement, and not transferred missiles to countries on the US terrorist list: see Strategic Comments, vol. 4, no. 8, October 1998.
26. The US and its allies chose to override India's veto in the Geneva Convention on Disarmament (a body normally governed by consensus) and bring the treaty to the General Assembly for approval, a move which was taken as a national humiliation by India.
27. The Pressler Amendment mandated US sanctions and an arms embargo if the US administration could not certify the compliance of Pakistan with non-proliferation objectives and norms.
28. Implicit in the 1991 Middle East arms-control initiative of President Bush, which endorsed the goal of a WMD-free zone for the region.
29. Owing to a recognition of Egypt's and other Arab countries' concerns in a Declaration on the Middle East, which they deem forms an integral part of the agreement to extend the Treaty, allowing them to readdress the issue as part of the strengthened review process agreed in 1995.
30. In addition, a structural bureaucratic factor has to be taken into account: the 1994 attempt was driven by the Pentagon, which was seeking to promote its counter-proliferation initiative, and was willing to engage its counterparts in European ministries of defence. However, these were generally less influential in shaping their countries' non-proliferation policies than the Pentagon, resulting in whatever could be achieved in NATO carrying relatively little weight, at least on the European side of the Atlantic.
31. 'Proliferation, Threat and Responses', p. 62.
32. They have supported unreservedly the threat-reduction initiative, which probably lends itself to more international cooperation.