Michael Spies

The Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (WMDC), chaired by Hans Blix, released its final report today at the UN in New York. Blix presented the report, titled Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms, to Secretary-General Kofi Annan and General Assembly President Jan Eliasson.

Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, Western States Legal Foundation, and Reaching Critical Will, in partnership with the Arms Control Association have formed a project to assess the report of the WMD Commission and analyze its implications, especially for turning around U.S. policy.

A preliminary response to the report is available on the project website, wmdreport.org.

Behind the Western Shoshone flag, protesters move down the road towards the Nevada Test Site gate, May 28, 2006

Andrew Lichterman

Sunday, I was at the Nevada Test Site, speaking at a demonstration against Divine Strake, a high explosive test that will detonate 700 tons of high explosive to simulate the effects of a low-yield nuclear explosion. One of the main points of my talk there was that mainstream debate about U.S. weapons programs remains largely confined to how best to pursue military dominance in service of what really is a global empire. Whether either empire or the use of overwhelming violence to sustain it are acceptable remains well outside the realm of “reasonable” discussion.

Yesterday, Exhibit A for the narrowness of Beltway discourse appeared in the New York Times: an article about the proposal to put non-nuclear warheads on Trident submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs; see Michael Gordon, “Pentagon Seeks Nonnuclear Tip for Sub Missiles,” The New York Times online, May 29, 2006) Much of the piece was devoted to the hyper-narrow debate in Congress, focused mainly on whether or not a non-nuclear SLBM launch might be mistaken for a nuclear attack on another nuclear weapons state (particularly Russia), resulting in a catastrophe for us (and really, who else do U.S. politicians care about, anyway?). The rest covered the barely broader perspectives offered by Washington arms controllers, some of whom apparently support the move to conventional strategic missiles, and some of whom do not. The most critical comment came from Steve Andreason, a former Nation Security Council staffer:

“‘Long-range ballistic missiles have never been used in combat in 50 years,’ Mr. Andreasen said. ‘Once the U.S. starts signaling that it views these missiles as no different than any other weapon, other nations will adopt the same logic.’” Gordon, “Pentagon Seeks Nonnuclear Tip for Sub Missiles.”

Bruce Blair, President of the World Security Institute and normally a sensible and insightful voice on arms control issues, offered views that were, if correctly reported, pretty disappointing. According to the Times, Blair described the development of highly accurate and destructive non-nuclear missiles with global reach as “a welcome trend toward substituting conventional weapons for nuclear systems, assuming that adequate safeguards can be worked out to avoid the risk of inadvertent nuclear confrontation.” The Times piece quoted Blair directly as saying

“‘They make a lot more sense than 14 subs loaded to the gills with nuclear-armed Trident missiles in this day and age.’” Gordon, “Pentagon Seeks Nonnuclear Tip for Sub Missiles.”

One can never know what someone really said to a reporter, or what the context was–reporters’ agendas frame the interview, and inevitably drive the choice of quotes. But to put it simply, anyone who thinks that its good for the U.S. to spend a single dime on new, more useable strategic weapons, whether nuclear or conventional, is not on the same side of the global struggle that I am. Further, under anything like the current distribution of wealth and power and with nuclear arsenals still numbering in the thousands, substituting a few highly accurate, destructive, and usable “conventional” missiles for nuclear ones will not reduce the nuclear danger. In the real world of a military industrial complex intertwined with thoroughly corrupt political and corporate elites firmly committed to global military dominance, we won’t get conventional strategic weapons instead of nuclear weapons. We will get dangerous numbers and varieties of both.

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Summer storm clearing over the Nevada Test Site

Andrew Lichterman

Divine Strake, a very large non-nuclear explosive test that is part of a program intended to “develop a planning tool that will improve the warfighter’s confidence in selecting the smallest nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage,” will be challenged in the coming weeks in court and at the Nevada Test Site gate. A lawsuit has been filed by two Western Shoshone tribes and affected individuals, challenging the adequacy of the environmental review for the test. Divine Strake has been postponed, and no new date for the test has been announced. According to a press release describing the lawsuit, Divine Strake could mobilize radioactive materials into the atmosphere, posing a risk to people downwind. The press release also noted that the lawsuit would address other implications of the test, stating that Divine Strake “reflects a doctrine of warfighting in which nuclear weapons could be used first, against states not possessing nuclear weapons, in an integrated fashion with non-nuclear forces” which “is wholly inconsistent with a ‘diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies’ agreed by the United States in 2000 and a central element of compliance with the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] disarmament obligation.” An expert declaration by John Burroughs, Executive Director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, filed in support of the lawsuit, provides an analysis of the international law implications of Divine Strake.

A Nevada Test Site event protesting Divine Strake is on for this coming weekend, May 27-28. A schedule of workshops, speakers, and other activities, along with directions and logistical information, is posted at www.gput.org/events.shtml I will be speaking at the Test Site on May 28, and I hope to see some Disarmamentactivist.org readers there.

A revised version of the Western States Legal Foundation Information Brief, The Divine Strake Nuclear Weapons Simulation: A Bad Signal at a Bad Time, is now available, updated to reflect the postponement of the test. For more about the Nevada Test Site, see The Nevada Test Site: Desert Annex of the Nuclear Weapons Laboratories, Western States Legal Foundation and Nevada Desert Experience Information Bulletin (2005).

Jackie Cabasso

The April 29 March for Peace, Justice and Democracy was a huge success! Initiated by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), and with 8 major co-endorsing organizations forming an unprecedented coalition*, the organizers estimate that 350,000 people participated. Equally important was the tone of the day - spirited yet serious, and focused simultaneously on many issues of concern to the peace and justice movement.The morning started out rather dramatically for the Nuclear Disarmament tent at the Peace and Justice Festival site. Our set-up crew arrived at Foley Square, loaded down with boxes of literature and displays, to find - to our dismay - that tent assembly was running way behind schedule, and that only about half of the tents had been set up. Ours was not one of them. We also discovered that our location, in front of the Federal Courthouse, was located in a wind tunnel and shaded from the sun by the surrounding buildings.

As we huddled together in the cold, we watched our huge tent (something like 20 x 40 feet) being assembled. We were given the go ahead to start moving tables and chairs into the space when a sudden gust of wind literally blew the frame apart and the upended the tent on the courthouse steps! Fortunately no one was hurt, but the tent landed with such an impact that it literally ripped a street sign out of the concrete sidewalk. We couldn’t resist darkly joking among ourselves that the upside down shredded tent looked like the aftermath of a nuclear blast. The Police immediately told us we couldn’t have a tent in that location.

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Nevada Test Site, August 6, 2005

Andrew Lichterman

On May 20th, there will be a demonstration at Vandenberg Air Force Base, near Lompoc, California. Vandenberg is a major test facility for U.S. nuclear missiles and other strategic weapons and a command center for U.S. military space operations. It plays a continuing role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, coordinating the use of military space technologies to assist ground warfare, and likely will be used to test next-generation strategic weapons, both nuclear and conventional. It also is one of the two sites where mid-course ballistic missile interceptors have been deployed. For more information on Vandenberg Air Force Base, see the Western States Legal Foundation(WSLF) Information Brief, Vandenberg Air Force Base: Where the Present and Future of U.S. Warmaking Come Together. For updates and information on parking, car pools., etc. for the May 20th demonstration, visit the web site of the Vandenberg Peace Legal Defense Fund.

On May 28th, there will be a rally and demonstration against the Divine Strake weapons high explosive test at the Nevada Test Site. One of the main purposes of the Divine Strake test is to simulate the effects of low-yield nuclear weapons against underground structures. With strategic weapons research proceeding on a number of fronts ranging from the continued modernization of intercontinental ballistic missiles and research on next-generation missiles and bombers to refinement of plans for nuclear weapons use through experiments like Divine Strake, the United States is leading the world into another century of arms racing.

For more information on Divine Strake, see previous entries on this site; for a short overview see the Western States Legal Foundation Information Brief, The Divine Strake Nuclear Weapons Simulation: A Bad Signal at a Bad Time. For more on the role of the Nevada Test Site in weapons development past and present, see the joint WSLF/Nevada Desert Experience Information Bulletin, The Nevada Test Site: Desert Annex of the Nuclear Weapons Laboratories. For updates and logistical information about the May 28th Nevada Test Site event, check the Divine Strake pages at Citizen Alert, the Shundahai Network, and the Nevada Desert Experience.

I will be speaking at both of these events. If you are a DisarmamentActivist.org reader and are at either event, I hope we get a chance to meet.

Andrew Lichterman

On a media tour of the Nevada Test Site tunnel complex where the Divine Strake test is slated to take place, a Defense Threat Reduction Agency official implicitly acknowledged that the test data likely will be used to study nuclear weapons effects. According to the Las Vegas Sun,

“The detonation could simulate ‘a number of weapon concepts,’ said Doug Bruder, director of the counter-weapons of mass destruction program for the Defense Department’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

‘It could be nuclear or advanced conventional,’ he said. ‘A charge of this size would be more related to a nuclear weapon.’” Launce Rake, “Test blast linked to nuke weapons,” Las Vegas Sun, April 28, 2006.

But Bruder also continued the DTRA non-denial denials apparently aimed at diverting attention from the nuclear weapons effects testing purposes of Divine Strake, emphasizing that the test “‘does not replicate any existing or planned nuclear weapon.’” id. Bruder noted, however, that

“‘There are some very hard targets out there and right now it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to defeat with current conventional weapons. Therefore there are some that would probably require nuclear weapons.’” Las Vegas Sun, “Test blast linked to nuke weapons,” April 28, 2006

According to the Las Vegas Sun piece, some or all of Bruder’s statements were caught on tape by CNN. So far as I have been able to determine, CNN Burder’s remarks did not make it into CNN’s broadcast coverage (see CNN transcript, “On the Story,” “U.S. Tests Non-Nuke Bombs in Nevada Desert,” aired April 30, 2006)

To the extent that they confirm the nuclear weapons research and planning applications of Divine Strake, Bruder’s statements are consistent with previous government descriptions of the test series of which the test is a part. DTRA budget requests and other government documents reveal ongoing research aimed at better understanding how low-yield nuclear weapons can be used to destroy underground targets, and at upgrading strike planning techniques for determining what kind of weapon, whether conventional or nuclear, can best be used to destroy particular types of targets. For more analysis and document references, see previous posts regarding Divine Strake on this site.

UPDATE: Part of Bruder’s remarks were broadcast in another CNN segment: The Situation Room, April 27, 2006 (transcript here).

Andrew Lichterman

I have written a two page information brief, “The Divine Strake Nuclear Weapons Simulation: A Bad Signal at a Bad Time,” for the Western States Legal Foundation. The information brief is available on the WSLF web site as a pdf file (click here). It summarizes some of the material regarding Divine Strake previously posted here, and provides contact information for the coalition opposing the test.

Previous Divine Strake posts:

“Divine Strake” and the talk of a nuclear attack on Iran

The “Divine Strake” low-yield nuclear weapons simulation: government denials and responses

Did the WashPost Miss Explosive Story?

Andrew Lichterman

There have been two related sets of news stories in the past week involving nuclear weapons. Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker, and the Washington Post ran stories regarding planning for a possible use of nuclear weapons in an attack on Iran. The reported rationale for considering nuclear weapons use is that some underground Iranian facilities might be difficult to destroy with conventional weapons. A scattering of newspapers have reported that a large conventional test explosion called “Divine Strake,” planned for June at the Nevada Test Site, will simulate nuclear weapons use. One purpose of the program of which that test is a part, according to Department of Defense budget documents, is to “develop a planning tool that will improve the warfighter’s confidence in selecting the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage.”

Both reports subsequently were denied by government sources. Nonetheless, It is virtually certain that they are to a large extent true. There undoubtedly are plans being prepared for possible attacks on Iran, and that process likely includes examining (if not choosing) nuclear options for hard to destroy facilities. All the evidence except the government denials themselves suggests that data from the “Divine Strake” test will be used to refine understanding of nuclear weapons effects on underground structures, and that such understanding will be incorporated into the tools and procedures used to plan and execute nuclear strikes (In a previous post I provided a summary of the Divine Strake coverage, including government denials and responses to them).

What is important is what these two chains of events mean. They can be understood along a continuum that ranges from the normal grinding along of an immense military apparatus that always is refining its understanding of nuclear weapons and always is preparing contingency plans to attack a variety of potential adversaries, to danger signs of a near-term attack on Iran that could involve nuclear weapons use if certain factions within the government have their way. I would place these events somewhere in the middle of this range, with nuclear weapons use still highly unlikely but some kind of attack on Iran growing steadily more likely, although not on the immediate horizon. This is an extraordinarily secretive administration, making its intentions difficult to discern. It is also a very fluid political moment domestically, with an ongoing constitutional crisis that evidently is viewed by the incumbent government mainly as a political problem to be managed using all the tools at its disposal, which could include the distraction of a conveniently timed, and, from its perspective, “manageable” use of military force. This is a government that has shown itself willing to roll the dice, and it may include dominant elements (and not only in the Executive branch) who believe that the worst outcome– widespread war in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region and some measure of global economic chaos– will one way or another allow it to consolidate an increasingly autocratic form of rule. (more…)

Andrew Lichterman

In my Friday March 31 entry “Did the WashPost miss an explosive story?” I provided evidence that the “Divine Strake” experiment which will detonate 700 tons of explosive in the Nevada desert is intended to simulate the effects of a low-yield nuclear blast on underground structures. Since then, there has been a round of investigation and commentary by various reporters and arms control experts, summarized below. In the early rounds the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) confirmed that Divine Strake was indeed the “Full-Scale tunnel defeat demonstration using high explosives to simulate a low yield nuclear weapon ground shock environment at Department of Energy’s Nevada Test Site” described in last year’s budget request. Later, DTRA changed its story, claiming that language suggesting that the purpose of the “Divine Strake” test had changed, and that language regarding its nuclear weapons applications had been left in this year’s budget request by mistake.

In the initial round, John Fleck of the Albuquerque Journal wrote the first piece on April 2, drawing on material from this site. Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists got the first official confirmation that the Divine Strake test is the one referred to in the budget documents provided in my analysis last Friday. He wrote on the FAS Strategic Security Project Blog that

“The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) today confirmed to FAS that the upcoming Divine Strake test widely reported in the media to be a non-nuclear event is in fact a low-yield nuclear weapons calibration simulation against an underground target….

In response to an email earlier today, a DTRA spokesperson confirmed that Divine Strake is the same event that is described in DTRA budget documents as being a low-yield nuclear weapons shock simulation designed to allow the warfighters to fine-tune the yield of nuclear weapons in strikes on underground facilities.”

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Andrew Lichterman

Jeffrey Lewis at Armscontrolwonk.com responded today to the Seymour Hersh article on U.S. preparations and planning for an attack on Iran. Hersh reports that a debate is raging in the government over use of nuclear weapons against certain hard to destroy targets. Lewis suggests that it is unlikely that use of nuclear weapons is under consideration, arguing that the underground facility built for Iran’s uranium enrichment operations can be destroyed with existing U.S. conventional weapons. But there remain unanswered questions, and Hersh’s report that vigorous debate regarding nuclear weapons use against Iran is going on inside the government is as important as how “practical” such use might be.

First, Hersh is not the only one reporting that the government is considering nuclear weapons use in its ongoing planning for a possible attack on Iran. The Washington Post had a passage, buried far down in its story on U.S. options for an attack on Iran today, stating

“Pentagon planners are studying how to penetrate eight-foot-deep targets and are contemplating tactical nuclear devices. The Natanz facility consists of more than two dozen buildings, including two huge underground halls built with six-foot walls and supposedly protected by two concrete roofs with sand and rocks in between, according to Edward N. Luttwak, a specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
‘The targeteers honestly keep coming back and saying it will require nuclear penetrator munitions to take out those tunnels,’ said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA analyst. “Could we do it with conventional munitions? Possibly. But it’s going to be very difficult to do.’”

This is a bit garbled regarding potential target depth, perhaps referring to one of the sources also cited by Lewis, stating that the Natanz facility is 8 meters (not feet) underground. GlobalSecurity.org reports, however, that Natanz has been reinforced substantially since that time:

“By mid-2004 the Natanz centrifuge facility was hardened with a roof of several meters of reinforced concrete and buried under a layer of earth some 75 feet deep.”

The 75 feet figure is consistent with Hersh’s story. Lewis notes the diverse accounts regarding depth, and believes that Natanz likely could be destroyed with conventional earth-penetrating weapons. Natanz has been the main focus of public discussion regarding possible nuclear targeting; one unanswered question is whether there are other hard to destroy underground targets in Iran on the U.S. target list.

Hersh’s discussion of planning for possible nuclear weapons use is not limited, however, to inferences from the nature of Iran’s facilities, and what it might take to destroy them. What caught my attention in his piece were the detailed comments (although from anonymous sources) regarding the heated debate over potential nuclear weapons use at the top levels of government:

“The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in policy circles. He called it ‘a juggernaut that has to be stopped.’ He also confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue. ‘There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,’ the adviser told me. ‘This goes to high levels.’ The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran. ‘The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks,” the adviser said. “And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen.’”

In the end, the internal debate as Hersh reports it supports the view that use of nuclear weapons in a “counterproliferation” attack against Iran remains unlikely, if only because the military itself would be strongly opposed. But if it is true that a significant faction at the top levels of government is seriously contemplating nuclear weapons use here, it should be a matter of the utmost concern, and should be met with unambiguous condemnation. A “preventive” war against Iran, a country that has attacked neither us nor its neighbors and shows no imminent signs of doing so, would be illegal, another act manifesting the rejection by the United States of the international legal framework that it played a leading role in constructing after World War II. An unprovoked nuclear attack would be an atrocity of historic proportions, definitively marking the United States as an outlaw state, ruled by criminals deserving of comparison with the most terrible regimes of the past.