“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

The headlines tell us that President Obama is committed to working towards a nuclear weapons-free world. As is always the case in such matters, we would do well to look at the fine print. We should not expect that the United States, or any other country, will give up its nuclear weapons anytime soon. “This goal,” Obama tells us, “will not be reached quickly–perhaps not in my lifetime.” Further, he says, so long as nuclear weapons exist, the United States will maintain an “effective arsenal to deter any adversary.” In this, the justification for nuclear weapons remains the same: the elites of every nuclear-armed country always have insisted that nuclear weapons are only for “deterrence.” With enough nuclear weapons still in existence to destroy civilization and to damage irreparably all life on earth, its time to take a closer look at “deterrence.”

In significant ways, the discourse of nuclear “deterrence” resembles the discourse of torture. We can understand this parallel better if we substitute the term “enhanced interrogation techniques” for “torture,” as the Bush regime attempted to do (with some success, as manifested in widespread use of the term, often without criticism, in the mainstream news media).

The difference is that the success of those in power at placing the notion of “deterrence” at the core of nuclear weapons discourse has been far greater than the Bush regime’s effort to place the notion of “enhanced interrogation” at the center of discourse about torture. This is likely so because torture has existed for a very long time across a vast range of human experience, and hence is a well-known and relatively well-understood horror–opaque only to those in populations that have not in living memory been on the receiving end of it. Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, still are a new part of the collective human story, and were created and remain closeted still within powerful, secretive, institutions. Hence their perceived character and meaning have been subject to planful manipulation from the very moment of their creation. Elite efforts to define nuclear weapons–and to limit permissible meanings we may give to them–have been so successful that we have no easily available alternative to “deterrence.” We don’t even have our own word for the permanent presence of nuclear weapons in our lives.

So we must first solve the equation: “enhanced interrogation techniques” is to “torture” as “deterrence” is to “_______.” The horrors of nuclear weapons use are so great that it is hard to come up with an appropriate phrase. Constant threat of genocide and ecocide? (too clinical, lacks the deep reference in the concretely rooted collective imaginary of “torture”). “Hell on earth?” (Too abstract and theological, also completely omits the element of human intention that is at the core of whatever the permanent, constant brandishing of nuclear weapons by largely unaccountable elites for decades on end really means).

We can find our starting point, perhaps, in clues that suggest my analogy is appropriate. The intention of the Bush regime’s rhetorical move–calling torture “enhanced interrogation”–was to encapsulate the justification for an inherently awful, degrading, and unjustifiable practice in its new name. If this “move” is successful, then the purpose, the intention, behind torture will simply be assumed, rather than discussed. The “purpose” of “enhanced interrogation” obviously is to “obtain information.” Once this is accepted, the metaphorical battle is quite nearly won. And if the “information” to be obtained can be portrayed as essential to “national security” (another self-justifying phrase in great need of disaggregating), the battle is virtually over.

So too with “deterrence.” The word itself presumes not attack, but defense. It is implicitly passive, unless one linguistically and politically disaggregates it to reveal its terrorist roots. And if one accepts that the purpose of nuclear weapons is only to defend against attack, the purposes of nuclear weapons (and the intentions of those who control them) are already assumed, and assumed to be in the general interest of the nation-state that “possesses” the nuclear weapons. The only question left is whether deterrence “works,” and actually makes a country or the world (again assuming without scrutiny or debate that everyone has the same interests) “safer.” Here too, if this rhetorical move is successful, the argument is nearly over, and readily subject to pacification (another neologism whose real meaning is its opposite) via traditional rhetorical moves and tools of the powerful: deployment of legions of experts claiming privileged access to knowledges too complex and obscure for ordinary folk to understand and to secret “information,” and if necessary attacks on the “patriotism” of any who nonetheless persist in raising questions.

There are other parallels between the discourses of torture and constant- nuclear-weapons-threat (my clunky temporary stand-in for “deterrence”). Both abound with–and place at the center of popular discourse justifying these practices–empirically unlikely, even fantastic, narratives of existential threat, and protection against it by selfless (if secretive) public servants (yet another self-justifying phrase). For torture, there is the captured terrorist who has hidden the ticking time bomb, for nuclear weapons, there is the ever-present possibility of a bolt from the blue nuclear attack. And today, these two narratives converge: the ticking time bomb is nuclear, and anyone who would oppose our nuclear weapons with their own presumptively is a terrorist–and might give them a bomb. Actual, everyday uses of torture and constant-nuclear-weapons-threat–to intimidate and silence entire populations, to provide what American generals call the ultimate ‘top cover’ backing world-wide wars of aggression to sustain a global empire–remain largely unmentionable in a discourse where “reasonable” experts and politicians talk of “enhanced interrogation” and “deterrence.”

And even the central–and continuing–confrontation among nuclear-armed states is misrepresented in an increasingly dangerous and contradictory kind of circular reasoning unconsciously engaged in even by many advocates of nuclear disarmament. The possibility of wars among the most powerful states–the kind of wars that in modern times have been precipitated by the kind of broad, complex, economic and political crisis that we face again today–are treated as extremely unlikely, largely because most policy experts believe at some level that “deterrence works.” And yet we have not faced a moment in which the fundamental drivers of conflict among the most powerful states have been present–competition over key resources, intensifying political tension within states over wealth distribution, and general collapse of a prevailing “normal” order of international economic and political relationships–since before the dawn of the nuclear age. Wars among “great powers” are presumed to be largely obsolete–but this assumption is due in large part to a belief in deterrence rooted in the particular geopolitical conditions and experience of a Cold War nuclear confrontation rooted largely in ideology and the existence of the weapons themselves. The dangers presented by thousands of nuclear weapons in the hands of “great powers” thus are implicitly discounted, and most in the “arms control and disarmament community” remain comfortable talking about plans for nuclear disarmament in which truly meaningful progress–reduction to global nuclear weapons numbers below civilization-destroying numbers–is largely aspirational, a hazy distant goal many years, or even decades, in the future.

The result is that dominant opinion among experts and political leaders generates policy debate that viewed with even a smidgen of historical perspective appears increasingly absurd–and absurdly dangerous. President Obama’s White House web site tells us that “the gravest danger to the American people is the threat of a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon and the spread of nuclear weapons to dangerous regimes.” White House Web Site, “The Agenda: Foreign Policy,” accessed March 25, 2009. In this view, nuclear weapons that don’t yet exist are more dangerous then the thousands that already are in the hands of elites who today face growing threats to their hold on power–concrete social conflicts that also are euphemized myriad ways, from “global instability” to “populist anger” –unseen for a generation.

The hand that controls nuclear weapons is no different from the hand the tortures. The hood of the torturer and of those who threaten us all with death by nuclear annihilation must be removed, their true faces revealed. The legal historian Robert Cover wrote that “The torturer and victim do end up creating their own terrible ‘world,’ but this world derives its meaning from being imposed upon the ashes of another. The logic of that world is complete domination, though the objective may never be realized.” Robert Cover, “Violence and the Word,” (1986) 95 Yale L.J. 1601,1603 The practice of constant-nuclear-weapons-threat carries this logic to its existential, its apocalyptic, limit, a world in which those who strive to wield absolute power impose their will by threatening to reduce the world of all who stand in their way to literal, rather than metaphorical, ashes. This will to absolute power is the abiding purpose of those who wield both torture and nuclear weapons. Both torture and nuclear threat are intended to emphasize through terror that transcends all reason that the victim–or potential victim–is utterly vulnerable, and that the hand that wields the power of ultimate violence is not, is invulnerable, all powerful. The intention–and the effect–is to sustain a world in which most are powerless but some hold great power, most are poor but a few hold great wealth, most are vulnerable but a few can at least convince themselves that for the duration of their time here on earth they are not.

It is a story that those who wield this power tell us is as old as human history–implying as well that it will be with us always, that it is our inescapable fate. Insisting upon the eternal presence of boundless violence in that way only obscures the immense scale and reach of the particular horrors of our chosen modernity. “But even if things have always been so,” Theodor Adorno observed, “although neither Timur nor Genghis Khan nor the English colonial administration in India systematically burst the lungs of millions of people with gas, the eternity of horror nevertheless manifests itself in the fact that each of its forms outdoes the old.” Adorno concludes that “He who relinquishes awareness of the growth of horror not merely succumbs to cold-hearted contemplation but fails to perceive, together with the specific difference between the newest and that preceding it, the true identity of the whole, of terror without end.” Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, E.F.N. Jephcott, trans. (London: NLB, 1974) pp.234-235.

Adorno wrote in the wake of a cataclysmic global war, with the age of nuclear weapons just beginning, and a world of constant-nuclear-threat still in the future. What has become clear is that humanity can not long survive a global order of things in which “terror without end” lies at the center of power, with those who rule most of us in most places still deploying limitless violence to keep things as they are. The conditions for another global cataclysm are quickening. Our technologies have brought us to the point where we can destroy ourselves and much of the chain of life that sustains us either quickly with nuclear weapons, or slowly simply by staying on the course that those in power insist upon, and insist on “defending” with a spectrum of violence that extends from the midnight knock on the door through the torture chambers to the incineration of cities, lands, and peoples. Even Martin Luther King’s call for “nonviolence or nonexistence” no longer is enough, now it also must be democracy or nonexistence, a full and final recognition of our collective vulnerability and our interdependence, one world, with every voice heard equally, or none.

In the October 2 vice-presidential debate, moderator Gwen Ifill ventured into a crucial area rarely touched by regular media. She asked:

Governor, on another issue, interventionism, nuclear weapons. What should be the trigger, or should there be a trigger, when nuclear weapons use is ever put into play?

Sarah Palin responded:

Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be all, end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet, so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period.

Our nuclear weaponry here in the U.S. is used as a deterrent. And that’s a safe, stable way to use nuclear weaponry.

But for those countries — North Korea, also, under Kim Jong Il — we have got to make sure that we’re putting the economic sanctions on these countries and that we have friends and allies supporting us in this to make sure that leaders like Kim Jong Il and Ahmadinejad are not allowed to acquire, to proliferate, or to use those nuclear weapons. It is that important.

When it was his turn, Joseph Biden did not answer the question, instead referring to John McCain’s vote against ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1999, and to Barack Obama’s work on “keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists.”

But Palin really did not answer the question either. She claimed that U.S. reliance on nuclear forces is “safe” and “stable” deterrence. One major question that comes to mind is whether Palin believes the eight other countries in the world with nuclear weapons also practice safe and stable deterrence. Her answer is no with respect to North Korea, and Biden also talked about the danger posed by Pakistan’s arsenal. That leaves six other countries (China, Russia, India, France, United Kingdom, Israel). Palin also said that “dangerous regimes,” Iran being one, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. But if deterrence works for the United States, why not for current nuclear have-nots?

More fundamental, though, and at the heart of the question posed by Ifill and not addressed by either Palin or Biden, is this: Deterrence is based on the will and capability to use nuclear weapons when deemed necessary. If you embrace deterrence, you embrace the possibility of use. Similarly, you can’t support the death penalty as a deterrent to horrendous crimes without supporting actual executions. Biden knows this. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed in June 2007 entitled “CSI: Nukes,” he stated that the “U.S. has long deterred a nuclear attack by states, by clearly and credibly threatening devastating retaliation.” He went on to argue that the United States should accelerate work on capabilities to trace the origin of fissile materials used in a terrorist nuclear attack, in order to be able to deter the country where the materials originate. He did not rule out U.S. use of nuclear weapons against such a country.

My organization, the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, this year released a statement, summarized here, that does answer Ifill’s question. In brief, the answer is it is never lawful, moral, or wise to use nuclear weapons, and therefore the United States should abandon the policy of deterrence premised on possible use and work hard for the global elimination of nuclear forces. We emphasize that nuclear use is incompatible with the present-day U.S. conduct of military operations in accordance (in the U.S. understanding) with legal requirements of necessity, proportionality, and discrimination. That is true in all the myriad circumstances (certainly not only in response to a nuclear attack) in which the United States holds out the option of use of nuclear weapons: preemptive or responsive use against biological and chemical as well as nuclear capabilities or attacks; in response to overwhelming conventional attacks; and even in response to “surprising” military developments.

Here are key passages from the summary:

Nuclear weapons cannot be used in compliance with the fundamental rules of discrimination, proportionality, and necessity acknowledged by the United States as requirements for lawful military operations. Nor is it lawful to threaten to use nuclear weapons. Further, rather than ongoing reliance on nuclear weapons, the United States is obligated under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to negotiate their elimination in good faith.

By recognizing the unlawfulness of nuclear weapons and working for their elimination, the United States would both fulfill its legal obligations and foster our security and that of nations and peoples throughout the world. In addition to reducing the risks arising from existing arsenals, taking this course of action would give a powerful boost to diplomatic and law-enforcement efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and their acquisition by terrorists.

Established Rules of Law Prohibiting the Use of Nuclear Weapons

The rule of discrimination prohibits the use of weapons that cannot discriminate in their effects between military and non-military targets. It is unlawful to use weapons whose effects cannot be controlled and therefore cannot be directed against a military target. The effects of nuclear weapons, including powerful and prolonged ionizing radiation with its continuing genetic and environmental as well as immediate effects, and the blast, heat, electromagnetic impulse, and escalation effects, are uncontrollable in space and time. They are not subject to the control of the user and cannot discriminate between lawful and unlawful targets. The use of nuclear weapons is therefore barred by the rule of discrimination. The rule is not subject to any balancing test and applies in every circumstance. As stated by the International Court of Justice in its 1996 advisory opinion, states must “never” use weapons incapable of meeting the “fundamental” and “intransgressible” requirement of discrimination. (Emphasis supplied.)

Under the rule of necessity, a state may only use that degree and kind of force as is necessary to achieve the military objective of a particular strike. Under the rule of proportionality, it is prohibited to use a weapon whose potential incidental effects on non-combatant persons or objects (civilian infrastructure) or damage to the environment would likely be disproportionate to the value of the military advantage anticipated from the attack. If the state cannot control such effects, it cannot ensure that the collateral effects of the attack will be proportional to the anticipated military advantage or that the force applied will only that necessary to achieve the military objective. The effects of nuclear weapons being uncontrollable, the weapons cannot be employed in compliance with the requirements of necessity and proportionality. If in extraordinary circumstances a contemplated nuclear attack is nonetheless deemed to meet those requirements, it remains barred by the requirement of discrimination.

Reprisal is not a justification for use of nuclear weapons. To be lawful, reprisals must be limited to a level of force necessary to cause the other side to cease its unlawful attack and must be proportional to that attack and necessary to address it. Due to their uncontrollability, nuclear weapons are not subject to being limited to such a level of force, nor could their effects be limited to what is proportional or necessary, nor could the effects meet the requirement of discrimination.

It may be news to some readers that the U.S. military follows, or claims to follow, the requirements of necessity, proportionality, and discrimination in its military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that is indeed the case; lawyers are even involved in approving particular strikes. This is laid out in some detail in the Human Rights Watch 2003 report, Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq. At p. 94, for example, the report states (footnotes omitted):

The Third Infantry Division established another layer of review by sending lawyers to the field to review proposed strikes, a relatively recent addition to the vetting process. “Ten years ago, JAGs [judge advocate general attorneys] weren’t running around [the battlefield],” said Captain Chet Gregg, Second Brigade’s legal advisor. The division assigned sixteen lawyers to divisional headquarters and each brigade. Lead lawyer Colonel Cayce, who served at the tactical headquarters, reviewed 512 missions, and brigade JAGs approved additional attacks, which were often counter-battery strikes. Although less controversial strikes, such as those on forces in the desert, were not reviewed, Cayce said, “I would feel pretty confident a lawyer was involved in strikes in populated areas.” Commanders had the final say, but lawyers provided advice about whether a strike was legal under IHL. Cayce said his commander never overruled his advice not to attack and sometimes rejected targets he said were legal.

Another passage provides insight into how targeting decisions were made (pp. 18-19, footnotes omitted):

Collateral damage assessments are a key way for the military to fulfill its obligations under international humanitarian law. International humanitarian law requires an attack to be cancelled or suspended if it is expected to cause loss of civilian life or property that “would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” Assessment of collateral damage is necessary to perform this proportionality test adequately.

U.S. air forces carry out a collateral damage estimate using a computer model designed to determine the weapon, fuze, attack angle, and time of day that will ensure maximum effect on a target with minimum civilian casualties. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reportedly had to authorize personally all targets that had a collateral damage estimate of more than thirty civilian casualties.

Asked how carefully the U.S. Air Force reviewed strikes in Iraq for collateral damage, a senior U.S. Central Command official responded, “with excruciating pain.” He told Human Rights Watch,

[T]he primary concern for the conduct of the war was to do it with absolutely minimum civilian casualties. . . . The first concern is having the desired effect on a target. . . . Next is to use the minimum weapon to achieve that effect. In the process, collateral damage may become one of the considerations that would affect what weapon we had to choose. . . . All of the preplanned targets had a CDE done very early in the process, many months before the war was actually fought. . . . For emerging target strikes, we still do a CDE, but do it very quickly. The computer software was able to rapidly model collateral effects.

Strikes with high collateral damage estimates received extra review. According to another senior CENTCOM official,

CENTCOM came up with a list of twenty-four to twenty-eight high CDE targets that we were concerned about. . . . They had a direct relationship to command and control of Iraqi military forces. These [high CDE targets] were briefed all the way to Bush. He understood the targets, what their use was, and that even under optimum circumstances, there would still be as many as X number of civilian casualties. This was the high CD target list. There were originally over 11,000 aim points when we started the high collateral targeting. Many were thrown out, many were mitigated. We hit twenty of these high collateral damage targets.

Of course, it is subject to dispute whether U.S. forces in fact do comply with legal requirements. Human Rights Watch, in a fairly conservative approach, did find violations, especially with respect to use of cluster munitions and to attacks against “leadership targets.” Others are much more critical. One can also challenge current rules of warfare as too permissive in relation to the kinds of regime-toppling, counterinsurgency wars the United States now engages in. (On this point, see “You Don’t Get the War You Want,” 16 Peace Review, Fall 2004, by Andrew Lichterman and myself, unfortunately not available online except for a charge.) Further, in Iraq at least, U.S. military operations were carried out to prosecute an illegal war of aggression.

The point here, though, is that it is inconceivable that nuclear attacks can be carried out within the framework of military operations now employed by the U.S. military. Nuclear explosions, as the one-time weapon designer and later nuclear abolitionist Ted Taylor used to say, are “off the human scale.” Though a natural process, they are supernatural in their effects. As the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy statements explain, it is well past time for the United States to come to grips with this reality, and wean itself and the world from the addiction to nuclear weaponry and the illusory safety of “deterrence.”

With the collapse of the Nehruvian paradigm, consisting of democracy, secularism, non-alignment and “socialism,” the top ten to fifteen percent of Indians, the upper-crust of society, have set their face against the rest, especially the poor. Culturally, economically, and politically, they are closer to Northern elites and their own kin in North America and Europe. Strongly influenced by social-Darwinist ideas, they see the poor as a drag on “their” India. They want a shortcut to high global stature. What better route than the military one? Greatness here is defined purely in terms of power untempered by civilized conduct or compassion. Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik, New Nukes: India, Pakistan, and Global Nuclear Disarmament (New York: Interlink Books, 2000), p.136.

Last summer, the Bush Administration completed an agreement with India, initially negotiated in 2005, that would allow expanded trade in nuclear fuel and technology. It is now before Congress. If approved, the deal could allow India to expand its nuclear arsenal more easily by using scarce domestic uranium for weapons production while buying fuel for its power reactors on the international market. It will also undermine an already shaky Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty(NPT) regime by giving a country that developed nuclear weapons outside the Treaty the benefits of international nuclear trade. In general, the deal reinforces the legitimacy of nuclear weapons and weakens global rule of law, as the United States, the world’s leading military power and a country that ignores its own NPT obligations to negotiate for the elimination of its nuclear arsenal, also claims the right to choose which countries are sufficiently “responsible” to have both nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

In addition, the U.S.-India nuclear deal is an effort by elites in both countries to bolster nuclear energy programs that long have been unable to fulfill the promises made by their advocates of cheap, reliable nuclear-generated electricity. The risks posed by nuclear accidents and long-term storage of highly radioactive spent fuel remain unsolved. Expanded energy production and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions can be accomplished more flexibly and in a way that serves a broader spectrum of India’s population via the development of a variety of decentralized renewable energy technologies. Trade and investment in such technologies also would benefit the United States, helping to accelerate the development and use of renewable energy here as well.

Neither the press nor most U.S. arms control analysts have paid much attention to the broader changes in the U.S.-India relationship that elites in both countries are seeking, each with an eye to maximizing their own wealth and power. The 2006 U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review declared that “India is emerging as a great power and a key strategic partner.” U.S. Military planners envision India as a possible forward base for operations from South Asia to the Middle East, and perhaps as a junior partner in those operations as well. Arms makers see huge potential profit from increased arms sales, with India being one of the world’s largest importers of high-tech weapons. U.S.-based multinationals are gearing up for expansion into India, hoping to use the enhanced “security” partnership as a wedge to further open India to foreign investment and sales, not only in nuclear technology and services but in everything from banking to food and agriculture to big box retail stores.

The ambitions of elites in the two countries to strengthen an array of military and economic ties is reflected in the set of initiatives announced by U.S. President Bush And India’s Prime Minister Singh in July 2005 together with the agreement in principle on nuclear trade and cooperation. A few weeks earlier, the two countries had agreed to a “New Framework for the U.S.–India Defense Relationship.” The “New Framework” called for increased military cooperation across a wide range of activities, from joint exercises and intelligence exchanges to increased weapons trade to collaboration in missile defense development. The July 2005 agreements also established a “CEO Forum” to “harness private sector energy and ideas to deepen the bilateral economic relationship,” an agreement for closer cooperation in space technology and commercial space activities and a “Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture.” The U.S. private sector members of the Agricultural Knowledge Initiative governing board are Archer Daniels Midland, a diversified giant that takes agricultural products from the world over and turns them into commodities ranging from processed foods to biofuels and industrial chemicals, Biotech giant Monsanto, and Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer.

A significant part of the CEO Forum’s agenda is to greatly expand the degree to which foreign banking and financial services companies can do business in India. This position was duly echoed by the U.S. government, with a Treasury Department fact sheet stating that

the development of the financial sector and trade in financial services will play a key role in promoting private-sector led growth and economic stability in India. Opening the financial sector to foreign participation would make additional long-term financing available for infrastructure development.

In light of the spiraling collapse of the U.S. financial sector, the notion that opening India to its particular brand of radically deregulated, short-term profit-driven “financial services” will promote “economic stability” is dubious at best.

The socioeconomic impact of these proposed new arrangements–how they will affect the mass of the populations in India, the United States, and world-wide–remain almost entirely outside the ambit of U.S. discussion of the nuclear deal, although they have not escaped the notice of commentators in South Asia. The effect of the U.S.-India deal–or deals–will be to bind India to a development path favorable to particular elements in the U.S. political and economic elite, and to their Indian counterparts. In this future, India’s development will center on production of goods and services that serve global supply chains controlled by multi-national corporations. In addition to consumer goods and export crops that are mass commodities available to many in a few wealthy countries, but are luxury items available only to a fraction of the world’s population as a whole, there will be further expansion of “service industries” such as back-office corporate operations ranging from call centers to billing and information technology support. Also part of this global circuit of trade and investment are armaments and the capital goods, and engineering and construction services necessary to build new infrastructure to sustain components of these global production chains in “underdeveloped” regions. Increased U.S.-India trade and cooperation in high tech weapons, space, and nuclear technology will reinforce this pattern, producing few jobs for those below the top 20% of either country in income and little development that benefits the majority of the population in either country, further increasing wealth disparities, and consolidating the power of narrow elites in both states.

Nuclear technology is a prototypic element of this global system–and in the future envisioned by the elites of many countries is poised to become more important as supplies of fossil fuels are depleted. Producing energy in large, expensive centralized facilities, nuclear power is most useful for serving the emerging production and service centers of the global corporate capitalist metropole. It has far less promise, however, for improving living conditions among the many hundreds of millions of rural poor in India and world wide who neither can afford to buy much that global corporations have to offer nor are likely to be served by centrally-generated electricity anytime soon.

Only the nuclear cooperation deal itself is before Congress this week. But its purpose and likely effects need to be reevaluated in light of the mounting evidence that the dominant neoliberal global development model–which the set of U.S. India deals reached in recent years largely are designed to promote and enforce–is a disaster, leading to a global economic typhoon that capsizes all but the sturdiest boats rather than raising them.

The Bush administration is trying to push approval of this complex and important matter through Congress in the few days left before its session ends on September 26 (although the Congressional session could be extended). Unfortunately, the Democratic Party congressional leadership seems inclined to rubber stamp the deal, despite the lack of time for study or debate in the closing days of a session dominated by a financial crisis of historic proportions. This is a bad deal for most people in the U.S. and India, and likely for the rest of the world as well. At the very least, it deserves extensive, well publicized discussion before going forward.

For more information on the U.S.-India nuclear deal and the broader energy and security context, see

Rushing into the Wrong Future: The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal, Energy and Security, by Andrew Lichterman of the Western States Legal Foundation, Oakland, California, and M.V. Ramana of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore, India.

For more detail on the nuclear weapons proliferation impacts of the agreement, see the commentary and resources provided by the Arms Control Association.

And for more in-depth background:

Zia Mian and M. V. Ramana, “Wrong Ends, Means, and Needs: Behind the U.S. Nuclear Deal With India,” Arms Control Today, January/February 2006

Aspects of India’s Economy No.41, ‘Global Power’, Client State: India’s Place in the US Strategic Order
Achin Vanaik, “Post cold war Indian foreign policy,” Seminar web edition #581 January 2008

After technical difficulties caused by an avalanche of comment spam, DisarmamentActivist.org is up and running again, or at least visible. Having failed to come up with any solution to the comment spam problem that does not require regular attention at levels that exceed the time available, we have for the moment disabled the comment feature of the site. Now up are all those posts that were retrievable (basically everything to May 2007). Our thanks to Michael Veiluva, who provided valuable commentary on the ebb and flow of the slow-motion Iran nuclear crisis in this space over the past year. His Iran Daily Opinion Service now can be found at its own site here.

For the moment the future of this site remains uncertain. Those who have written for it have many other commitments, or are (like most people on the planet) struggling with the basics of everyday life amidst the growing economic crisis. Here’s hoping that we can build movements that recognize that the struggles for peace, economic justice, and an ecologically rational way of life are one.

The Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva is notorious for evoking frustration, rage, and despair among the members of civil society and the diplomatic community. Mandated to negotiate multilateral disarmament treaties (the only standing body that can do so), it hasn’t even agreed on a program of work for over ten years. It operates on consensus, meaning all 65 member states have to be in agreement for anything to happen. Every year the disarmament community gears up for another round of deliberations, hoping this year is the year that the stalemate will end and the deadlock will be broken. However, some of the major military powers continuously block the creation of new global security arrangements, choosing further military development over arms control, disarmament, and security.

There has been a long-standing dispute in the CD among the five (recognized) nuclear weapon states over the issues on the CD’s table: a fissile materials ban, prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS), nuclear disarmament, and negative security assurances. The US wants to begin negotiations on a Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), but until this year has refused to allow substantive discussions on outer space (it is now willing to allow discussions on PAROS in the CD, without reference to the possibility of an agreement). China maintains the opposite position. While it actively promotes an international legal agreement on PAROS, it has been cautious and even hostile towards an FMCT.

On 23 March 2007, the six presidents of the CD put forward a proposal of work and a draft decision. The draft decision is a package approach (it includes action on all four issues simultaneously), it is carefully worded, and it accommodates conflicting priorities among member states. However, China (and a few other states) began making noise immediately, stalling the Conference from taking a decision on the proposal by arguing they needed more time to consult with their capitals. The first session of 2007 ended without a decision, and when the CD reconvened on 15 May, several states, including China, maintained they still needed more time to decide if they can accept the proposal.

Without intending to ignore the other states responsible for the delay, it is important to note that China’s response to the draft proposal in particular is reflective of the major problems facing all attempts to negotiate or even discuss disarmament measures: hyper-militarism among the major powers, and the capacity for geostrategic concerns to impede progress in negotiating treaties that could actually help shift the (im)balance.

Of the five nuclear weapon states, China has the least amount of fissile material stocks; if its production were banned, it would never be able to catch up to the other states. China’s objection to this appears, at first glance, rather ironic, considering China is the only nuclear weapon state that regularly calls for nuclear disarmament in its official statements at the United Nations. This concern, however, is determined by the parameters of power in the international community, which are currently set by the US, its foreign policy, and its quest for a “prompt global strike” capacity. It wants its military to be able to “hit targets anywhere on earth in an hour or two,” giving it unprecedented (and unmatched) dominance over the world’s affairs. In this context, China and other major and emerging powers believe they are faced with a choice: acquiesce, or keep up. Meanwhile, the US carefully makes strategic alliances with some of these powers that create the impression of further insecurity for others. For example, the US and India signed an agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation that, if approved by US Congress, will allow India to import foreign uranium for its civilian programme while using more of its indigenous uranium to make nuclear weapons. The agreement undermines every international non-proliferation agreement and resolution, and of course, makes China and Pakistan nervous.

In addition, if a fissile materials ban were to include verification measures as the majority of the international community demands it should, this would grant the US access to concrete information about China’s nuclear capabilities, which they have thus far carefully shrouded in ambiguity. China worries that the more the US knows about its capabilities, the more vulnerable it is to preemptive attack–the US could decide China’s arsenal is a threat to international security, and would know how big of an attack was needed to ensure it eliminated China’s second-strike capabilities.

As long as China, and many others, believe they need to protect themselves from the US and its allies, they aren’t going to cooperate when it comes to reducing and eliminating their weapons and weapon materials–elements they view as crucial to countering US domination. Yet a fissile materials ban might actually work to China’s benefit in some ways, such as limiting India’s ability to produce fissile materials (though if both a fissile materials ban and the US-India nuclear deal are established, it’s difficult to guess how one might affect the other).

Which brings us back to the CD.

A draft FMCT proposed by the US does not call for the reduction of existing fissile material stocks, but only for the cessation of future production of fissile materials, and specifies that only fissile materials produced after the Treaty enters into force cannot be used in nuclear weapons. The US also argues that a treaty calling for the elimination of existing stocks would not be verifiable and, therefore, should not contain any verification provisions. Working from the US draft, an FMCT would be more of a non-proliferation treaty than a disarmament treaty, clearly biased in favour of nuclear weapon states–and further biased in favour of the US over China. Most states do not support the US draft, and call for a return to the 1995 Shannon Mandate, “to negotiate a non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty.” This approach, however, lacks US support, demonstrating the potential for further deadlock even if a programme of work is adopted in the CD–and further proliferation in the meantime. The US might be willing to move forward on the draft proposal, but it is still blocking consensus.

Note: To follow the CD’s activities (or lack of them), read Reaching Critical Will’s CD Report. The next session is scheduled to begin on 15 May 2007. Also see RCW’s Guide to the CD for background information. In addition, an article published by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 1995 outlines China’s concerns about an FMCT, and its possible benefits and drawbacks to China’s security. Though the article is twelve years old, its assessment is still relevant today–which is indicative of how long and drawn out this deadlock has been.

Trident missile launch from sea.

by Andrew Lichterman

On May 11, a National Academy of Sciences panel issued an interim letter report on equipping Trident submarine launched ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. ArmsControlWonk.com provides an easy to download copy of the report here.

Congress requested that the NAS provide an analysis of conventional Trident in the conference report accompanying the 2007 Defense Appropriations Act. A final report from the NAS committee is scheduled to be issued in 2008. The reports are not limited to the conventional Trident proposal, but will “consider and recommend alternatives that meet the prompt global strike mission in the near-, mid-, and long-term.” The NAS panel recommended that research and testing of the conventional Trident should proceed with funding levels sufficient to keep the program on course to allow deployment in three to five years. It advised against full funding for production and deployment, because other “global strike” technologies also being researched may prove more promising in the long run, and because various technical and policy issues, including the danger that a conventional Trident might be mistaken for a nuclear launch, remain unresolved.

Despite some reservations about nuclear ambiguity and the relationship of new conventional long-range systems to nuclear arsenals, the NAS panel appeared enthusiastic about pushing ahead with a new generation of strategic weapons. It endorsed further exploration of a variety of other concepts, such as a new sea-launched global strike missile design, high speed cruise missiles, and hypersonic boost glide vehicles with intercontinental range. It concluded that “[t]he committee believes it is preferable to consider all proposed CPGS weapons as elements of a portfolio, one that needs balancing in terms of technical risk and time to deployment.”

These programs, intended to yield highly accurate delivery systems with global reach for conventional weapons, are proceeding with little public debate. Further, the barriers to using improved or new non-nuclear long-range delivery systems for nuclear weapons are largely made of paper. Buried in its discussion of the danger that a conventional long-range missile might be mistaken for a nuclear one, the NAS committee acknowledges this, stating that “[i]ndeed, the ambiguity between nuclear and conventional payloads can never be totally resolved, in that any of the means for delivery of a conventional warhead could be used to deliver a nuclear warhead.” [emphasis added]

U.S. research on new strategic weapons continues apace, with advances in delivery systems and in supporting technologies used to find and track targets and to guide weapons to them appearing more significant than anything (or at least anything publicly known) happening in nuclear warhead development programs. Yet most NGO arms control and disarmament work concerning U.S. strategic weapons programs remains focused on a narrow set of nuclear weapons design and production activities. Is it more likely that there will be some development in nuclear warheads as opposed to delivery systems that affects the nuclear strategic/political calculus–including everything from the level of U.S. military commitment to nuclear weapons to the way potential adversaries view U.S. capabilities and intentions to the likelihood of nuclear weapons use–in ways that adversely affect disarmament prospects? If new, more accurate delivery systems are developed that can be paired with existing nuclear weapons (perhaps with modifications) to destroy difficult targets that the majority of Congress members (and likely still a majority) repeatedly have voted to find ways to destroy, will Congress deny the military such capabilities? Why should we believe this? I have yet to see much of a discussion of such issues in the “arms control and disarmament community,” much less their implications for disarmament strategies. But perhaps I am not looking in the right places.

These questions, however, beg even larger and more important ones. How much do the details of all of this matter? If we believe that nuclear weapons are fundamentally immoral and that a global empire ultimately underwritten by weapons with global reach is fundamentally illegitimate, why do we allow ourselves to be caught up in debates about the minutiae of one or another weapons program? These are debates that those who hold long-term power usually win even when they appear to lose, the sci-tech-military-industrial complex leviathan surging inexorably on, growing insatiably regardless of whether we knock off a barnacle or two.

“You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions.” Sven Lindqvist, “Exterminate all the Brutes”: One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide (New York: The New Press, 1996), p.2

For more on the U.S. “Prompt global strike” programs, see the preceding entry, “Next generation strategic weapons and the possibility of arms races to come.”

Trident missile launch photo from U.S. Navy, Vision… Presence… Power: A Program Guide to the U.S. Navy - 2000 Edition

In its current budget request, the military is pushing ahead with its proposals for “prompt global strike,” a broad effort aimed at giving the United States the ability to hit targets anywhere on earth in an hour or two. In the near term, the military wants to deploy conventional warheads on Trident submarine launched ballistic missiles, taking advantage of accuracy improvements resulting from programs conducted in recent years that have received little public attention. In the current proposal, two missiles on each ballistic missile submarine would be conventionally armed. At the same time, the U.S. is exploring other technologies and weapons concepts, ranging from land-based missiles with accurate, maneuverable re-entry vehicles to hypersonic glide vehicles that could deliver a variety of weapons. Although the technologies that would be developed in the Global Strike program currently are slated to be used to deliver only conventional weapons, there is nothing, aside from current policy, to prevent them from being adapted for nuclear weapons delivery in the future, potentially resulting in significant increases in the capabilities of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Together with initiatives to rebuild the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex and to design new warheads with the flexibility to be fitted to a variety of delivery systems, the pieces are being put in place for a renewed arms race in the 21st century, with the U.S. leading the way.

In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces subcommittee last week, high ranking military officers and administration officials insisted that the United States absolutely must have the ability to strike targets inside any country, anywhere, anytime, in short order. Rear Admiral Stephen Johnson, Director of Navy Strategic Systems Programs noted that the budget request “frontloaded the funding,” asking for $175 million for FY2008 in order to allow the Conventional Trident to be deployed by 2010. Statement of Rear Admiral Stephen Johnson, Director of Navy Strategic Systems Programs before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, March 28, 2007, p.5. Johnson noted that considerable development and flight testing of technologies allowing the requisite accuracy already has been done:

“CTM [Conventional Trident] will use existing D5 missiles, MK4 reentry bodies equipped with aerodynamic controls, GPS-aided terminal guidance, and a conventional warhead. Advanced error-correcting reentry vehicles with GPS-aided Inertial Navigation Systems have been flight proven in a previous D5 test program. Total time from decision to weapons-on-target is about 1 hour. CTM technology can be rapidly developed and deployed within 24 months.” Johnson Statement, p.5

Strategic Command (STRATCOM) Commander James Cartwright lamented the lack of “the means to deliver prompt, precise, conventional kinetic effects at inter-continental ranges.” Statement of General James E. Cartwright Commander United States Strategic Command Before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, March 28, 2007, p.14. Neither Cartwright nor any other witness thought it relevant to mention that no other country has any such capability, or shows any signs of developing one). Cartwright noted that in addition to the Conventional Trident, the “Air Force Space Command is developing a promising concept for a CONUS [Continental United States] -launched conventional strike missile (CSM), which capitalizes on the maneuverability and precision-to-prompt-effects offered by maneuvering flight technology to produce effects at global distances.” (Id., pp.14-15). Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategic Capabilities Brian Green told the subcommittee that the Defense Department also “is considering other, longer-term solutions, both sea- and land-based, to broaden the portfolio of prompt, non-nuclear capabilities. The additional concepts include sea- and land-based conventional ballistic missiles and advanced technologies, such as hypersonic glide vehicles, employing precision guidance, advanced conventional weapons, and propulsion.” Statement of Mr. Brian R. Green Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Strategic Capabilities for The Senate Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces Subcommittee Hearing Regarding Global Strike Issues, March 28, 2007, p.8. Conventional Prompt Global Strike, Green concluded, “is critical to meeting evolving U.S. security needs in the 21st Century.” id. p.11.

At the same time that work is beginning on a variety of Global Strike concepts with global reach, the military also is pushing for a new paradigm for nuclear weapons production, dubbed the Reliable Replacement Warhead” (RRW). The RRW is intended to be produced by modernized nuclear weapons production facilities, the product of a rebuilding process for the nuclear weapons complex already almost two decades old. The latest plan for this endless project is called Complex 2030, the target date for completing new core nuclear weapons facilities–giving a good indication that U.S. national security elites plan to keep large numbers of nuclear weapons more or less forever.While repeatedly assuring Congress that current plans call for the RRW to merely replace existing nuclear warheads without changing their capabilities, the program and the modernized nuclear weapons complex is intended to assure that new nuclear weapons capabilities could be developed, should the government make a decision to do so. The November 2006 National Nuclear Security Administration FY2007-2011 Stockpile Stewardship Plan Overview calls for a “responsive nuclear weapons infrastructure.” “Responsive” is defined there as “the agility of the nuclear weapons enterprise’s capabilities to respond to unanticipated events, such as a technical issue in the stockpile or the emergence of a new threat, as well as the ability to anticipate and counter innovations by an adversary before the Nation’s deterrent is degraded.” The Stockpile Stewardship Plan Overview makes this muddy verbiage a bit more clear by stating its intention to “[i]mprove the capability to design, develop, certify, and complete production of new or adapted warheads in the event of new military requirements.” (At pp.6-7). And as the Defense Science Board noted in a 2004 report, Future Strategic Strike Forces, nuclear weapons with a variety of new capabilities, including lower yield and earth penetrating ability, could be developed and deployed without underground testing, mainly by adapting already tested designs.

At the Strategic Forces subcommittee hearing, STRATCOM Commander Cartwright noted that one of the military’s main goals for the RRW concept was its ability to fit a variety of delivery systems:

“Modularity and interoperability remain top warfighter priorities for the RRW concept. These attributes will significantly increase the operational flexibility and responsiveness of the nuclear weapons stockpile and improve our ability to introduce new technologies and respond to technological and/or geopolitical surprise.” Cartwright Statement, March 28, 2007, pp.18-19.

Most of what debate there is about U.S. nuclear weapons programs focuses on whether the warheads that will be built in the “reliable replacement warhead” program are “needed,” and on assuring that their capabilities will not exceed those of existing warheads. At the same time, however, development of the next generation of long-range delivery systems is proceeding, with the express goal of providing a variety of new capabilities, nuclear as well as conventional. The 2002 Air Force Space Command Final Mission Need Statement, Land Based Strategic Nuclear Deterrent stated that

“…a future credible land-based strategic nuclear deterrent force must be capable of rapidly holding at risk a wide range of surface and subsurface targets to include, but not limited to, fixed soft and hard targets; hard and deeply buried targets; chemical and biological production, storage, and delivery system facilities; strategic relocatable targets; heavily defended targets; and targets that emerge unexpectedly on short notice. The land-based strategic nuclear deterrent force must be structured to counter these existing and emerging targets on a global scale by providing on-demand force application, flexible force application, and flexible effects. Quantum advances in information processing and advanced technologies may produce warfighting capabilities that include delivery means for payloads with self-contained sensors; accuracy to enable sufficient lethality within the sub-kiloton yield; search, loiter, and redirection capability; and/or enhanced defense penetration. Not only must the future land-based strategic nuclear deterrent force continue to provide the robust capabilities which exist today (i.e., responsiveness, damage expectancy, payload margin, operational flexibility, and cost-effectiveness), but it must also take advantage of emerging technologies to ensure deterrent effectiveness in an uncertain future strategic environment.” (at p.3)

For now, the Air Force apparently has decided to go forward with incremental upgrades to the existing Minuteman III land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. (See written Presentation of Major General Roger Burg to the Senate Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces subcommittee, March 28, 2007, p.4). As the Land Based Strategic Deterrent Final Mission Need Statement noted, even a system based on upgrades to the existing Minuteman missiles might be able to provide significant new capabilities:

“As sub-systems are replaced, updates in component technology may be inserted to meet emerging requirements. To augment the current ballistic delivery of reentry vehicles, a new post-boost section incorporating advanced technologies could be designed into the existing missile system to provide additional operational flexibility. Potential payloads could include the Mk12A, Mk21, a newly designed reentry vehicle that could incorporate low or multiple yield weapons, and a trajectory shaping vehicle (TSV) carrying weapons capable of holding at risk the range of targets previously described and each delivered with enhanced accuracy.” at p.5.

A “Global Strike” program that has been considered in the past for both conventional and nuclear roles and that is slated for continued funding in the fy2008 budget request is the Common Aero Vehicle (CAV). (See Air Force RDT&E Budget Item Justification
0604856F Common Aero Vehicle, February 2007) A gliding reentry vehicle that would be able to deliver a variety of munitions, CAV could be launched by missile or could be delivered by more exotic means, such as an unmanned reuseable launch vehicle or an orbiting satellite platform. The generic CAV concept, with versions that vary in size and in range, appears to have a considerable amount of momentum. It has its own joint program office for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Air Force program integration, and has been kept alive through a combination of government funding and contractor initiatives for over a decade. Last year, the Congressional Budget Office evaluated several versions of CAV in a lengthy report on alternatives for long range strike, comparing its strengths and weaknesses with other options such as new, stealthy medium and long range bomber aircraft. See Alternatives for Long-Range Ground-Attack Systems, Congressional Budget Office, March, 2006.

CAV also illustrates the fact that the separation between conventional “prompt global strike” missile and reentry vehicle technologies and nuclear weapons delivery systems is maintained mainly by policy–policy that can change. The 1997 Air Force Space Force Application Mission Area Development Plan discussed the CAV’s potential to provide new nuclear, as well as non-nuclear capabilities, stating that “Common Aero Vehicles (CAVs) can deliver both nuclear and non-nuclear weapons to targets anywhere on the globe from CONUS [continental U.S.] bases with appropriate deployment systems.”. (Obtained via the Freedom of Information Act by Western States Legal Foundation, p.38). Nuclear weapons listed in the Space Force Application Mission Area Development Plan as potential payloads for the CAV included the W78 and the W87, both existing high yield nuclear missile warheads missiles, the “B- 61 [a versatile bomb design with many variants, including a limited earth penetrator] or penetrator,” and an unspecified “low-yield nuclear weapon.” at pp.38-39. The purely political divide separating a nuclear from a non-nuclear CAV was accentuated by a message stamped on the cover of the 1997 Space Force Application Mission Area Development Plan. It read:

“References to using the Common Aero Vehicle (CAV) to deliver nuclear weapons should be disregarded. AFSPC is no longer considering using the CAV to deliver nuclear weapons. Where CAV is mentioned for nuclear weapons, the term Maneuvering Reentry Vehicle (MaRV) should be used. (Refer to the 1996 development plan.) These changes reflect current political realities and were brought to light after printing.”

Concerned about the possibility that long range missiles carrying conventional payloads could spark a nuclear war if mistaken for a nuclear launch by another nuclear power, Congress has restricted work on the CAV, prohibiting tests with actual weapons payloads. Congress last year expressed similar reservations about the Conventional Trident proposal. According to Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Green’s Strategic Forces subcommittee testimony, the Departments of State and Defense submitted a classified report to Congress in February addressing these concerns. In his public statement, Green downplayed the dangers, asserting that few states can detect and track a missile launch, and that the Russians (who do have this capability) would easily be able to distinguish a conventional strategic missile launch from a nuclear attack on their territory. Green Statement, pp.8 et seq. Green also argued that “the United States and the Russian Federation now have a more cooperative and less adversarial relationship than during the Cold War, and this new relationship provides a much-changed context in which any launch of a ballistic missile would be understood.” Green Statement, p.9.

It should be noted in this context that there is an unacknowledged contradiction in the government’s position on strategic weapons. It argues that a constantly modernized arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons and production complex capable of producing yet more must be sustained in case relationships with existing nuclear powers worsen dramatically or new adversaries emerge, but at the same time claims that the risks of accidental war posed by highly capable new strategic delivery systems can be “managed” in large part due to the absence of tensions among the major military powers . There is no reason to believe that a U.S. conventional ballistic missile launch years or decades into the future will be properly “interpreted” by Russia, China, or some other unspecified adversary in some unforeseen future crisis. In addition, even if U.S. does not equip new, highly capable delivery systems with nuclear weapons, very accurate, powerful conventional weapons capable of destroying some targets previously targeted with nuclear weapons could have profound and so far largely unanalyzed effects on the military balance among the existing nuclear weapons states. As General Cartwright put it two years ago,

“If you can put effect precisely on target, you really change the dynamic. Now this is a duh for the Air Force, but the reality here is it’s not that well understood. If you can use just one safe, sure, reliable, secure weapon for the right effect–whether that weapon be nuclear, conventional, or non-kinetic–and you can do it in minutes and seconds, you start to change the fundamental characteristic of the stockpiles, you start to change the fundamental characteristic of the delivery platforms, and it ripples on down.” General James Cartwright (USMC), Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, speech at Air Warfare Symposium - Orlando, Florida, February 18, 2005

One lesson we should have learned from the Cold War is that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to stop a full-blown arms race in mid-course. The nuclear armed powers may not be engaged in the kind of confrontation, military probing, skirmishing, and proxy wars that dominated most of the second half of the last century, but there is no guarantee that more intense antagonisms among major powers will not emerge in the future. The general shape and tenor of global economics and politics, in fact, tend more and more towards the conditions that in the past have led to such antagonisms, and to global wars. These include not only competition between established and emerging economic powers, but profound disparities in wealth within states of a kind that in the past have been symptomatic of a focus by ruling groups on foreign trade and investment rather than on the social and economic development of their own populations. These social stresses only will be intensified by competition for diminishing supplies of fossil fuels and other key resources, and by environmental disruptions caused by global warming and other effects of a global economic system whose central organizing principles engender constant, largely uncontrolled growth. The relative lack of conflict among leading industrialized states of the post Cold War period may prove to be only the last portion of a longer phase in which such wars driven by economic and resource competition were unlikely, a period that now may be ending.

Those in power in the United States are responding to these uncertain prospects by seeking to control them with overwhelming, technologically perfected violence. For the great majority of the people of this planet, for whom life and the future of humanity is more important than holding tight to great wealth and privilege, the logical response must be to seek to eliminate the most dangerous weapons, those that pose a fundamental threat to any future at all: nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery. In this light, it is alarming how much ground has been lost. The much-touted post Cold War reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal have only pared away rubble-bouncing extremes driven by ideology and profit. The thousands of nuclear weapons still deployed could end human civilization in a day, and there are no proposals for new rounds of nuclear arms control. There is little talk by governments, or even in the U.S. “arms control and disarmament community,” about controls on the ballistic missiles of the major powers. A decade ago, in contrast, the Canberra Commission, whose members included such figures as Robert McNamara, who had served as U.S. Secretary of Defense, and General Lee Butler, who had been commander of U.S. Strategic Command, as well as ex-diplomats and military officials from several other nuclear weapons states, stated:

“A global treaty controlling longer range ballistic missiles would provide a universal means of addressing the dangers to international security posed by ballistic missiles; it would also avoid the potential destabilising effect of ballistic missile defence systems. It would increase the confidence of nuclear weapon states that nuclear disarmament will not damage their security, and it would improve the security environment in a number of regions by eliminating destabilising missile arms races. Pending development of such a regime, confidence building measures such as a multilateral ballistic missile launch notification agreement and a ballistic missile flight test ban could be explored.” Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, Part 2

Universal controls on ballistic missiles, beginning with a universal flight test ban (a relatively easy to verify and effective measure) remain a more practical and less risky response to purported missile threats than hundreds of billions of dollars in missile defenses, global surveillance networks, and “global strike” technologies. Such arms control measures, however, are far less profitable than an endless stream of high-tech weapons, cannot be used to expand power by coercive means, and reduce rather than sustain the climate of omnipresent fear and threat central to the current order of things; we should not expect them to be taken seriously any time soon.

In the early 1990’s, the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to provide an opportunity to escape the dynamic of arms racing in nuclear weapons, their delivery systems, and the globe-girdling complexes of ground and space-based surveillance and communications that the nuclear arms race spawned. It has become clear that endless development and production of high tech weapons, including nuclear weapons, strategic delivery systems, and other weapons designed to project power far beyond the borders of a state, was not driven solely by the Cold War confrontation. The U.S. military-industrial complex has proved to be a vast, insatiable arms racing machine, demanding to be fed hundreds of billions of dollars a year and endlessly generating new “weapons concepts,” some of which must be developed and built if this immensely profitable and powerful enterprise is to continue. But it is only part of the constellation of powerful interests that have turned the United States into a country permanently at war, its foreign policy reduced almost entirely to the threat and use of force, the generation of military power valued over all other priorities at home. The first step towards any sensible disarmament strategy must be the identification of the organizations, institutions, and segments of society that sustain the permanent pursuit of global military dominance, with the ultimate instrument of national power being the threat of annihilation.

Some additional resources:

Amy F. Wolf, Conventional Warheads for Long-Range Ballistic Missiles: Background and Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service Report, Updated February 9, 2007).

Hans Kristensen, Global Strike: A Chronology of the Pentagon’s New Offensive Strike Plan, Federation of American Scientists, 2006.

The Global Free Fire Zone: “Prompt Global Strike” and the Next Generation of U.S. Strategic Weapons Disarmamentactivist.org February 10, 2006.

Andrew Lichterman, Zia Mian, M.V. Ramana, and Juergen Scheffran, Beyond Missile Defense, International Network of Engineers and Scientists Briefing Paper #10, by updated October 2002.

Andrew Lichterman, Missiles of Empire, Western States Legal Foundation Information Bulletin, Fall 2003.

Andrew Lichterman, The Military Space Plane, Conventional ICBM’s, and the Common Aero Vehicle: Overlooked Threats of Weapons Delivered Through or From Space, Western States Legal Foundation Information Bulletin, Fall 2002.

It should be no surprise that the media coverage in the west on this has limited itself to a superficial recap of the narrow propaganda points put out by the US and UK governments- basically parroting outrage at Iran’s parading of the soldiers in front of the media and emphasizing that Iran is interfering with a UN-authorized operation. Given that most of the diplomacy is happening outside the view of the public, it is even more difficult than usual to discern what Iran’s intention’s might have been and what the significance or consequences of this might be, but it is possible to connect up the dots to come up with some plausible theories.

Thought 1: The first thing we can exclude is the knee-jerk comparison to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. From my perspective the current situation represents more a sign of an impending conflict, rather than an incident that will lead to conflict. While this move certainly heightens existing tensions, the Iranian conduct here has been very measured and deliberate. Unlike the nuclear situation, where it’s been very obvious there are multiple factions vying to push their own agendas, here the regime has largely been able to speak with one voice, and that voice generally has not been coming from Ahmadinejad, though his often-incendiary comments tend to attract the lion’s share of the coverage. Other items that point in this direction are the facts that Iran’s video releases of the soldiers have been broadcast in Arabic - so not for a domestic audience - and their extensive efforts to manipulate perception of the crisis through the media: the (botched) attempt to provide alternative coordinates for the capture; the steady progression of letter releases and video confessions; etc.

So what’s going on?

As this crisis has been unfolding, the AP has reported on a purportedly confidential letter from Iran to the IAEA, where Iran cites the threat of a U.S. attack as rationale for its curtailing of cooperation with the Agency. Iran’s perception of a threat from the U.S. is not a new development and in the context of the nuclear crisis can be traced back to May 2003 when Iran first offered it’s “grand bargain” to the U.S. through diplomatic channels. Here, chief among Iran’s goals was to obtain security assurances from the U.S., something that has been conspicuously absent from all proposals made by the E3 and P6 to Iran, and also something the Bush administration has explicitly ruled out regardless of Iran’s response to the nuclear question.

Thought 2: Iran’s actions can be read as it taking action to better position itself internationally in the face of what some in Iran view as an inevitable confrontation with the U.S. It has been no secret that the U.S., supported by Israeli intelligence, have been conducting military operations inside Iran for several years, initially to turn up evidence of Iran’s alleged nuclear duplicity, but more recently to gather information on potential targets and to “promote democracy.” In response to the present hostage crisis, Iran’s official news agency has released a list of alleged violations of Iranian territory by the UK Navy. A letter sent by Iran to the UK embassy in Tehran echoed these allegations. Given Iran’s historic animosity and lingering suspicions of Britain (and the fact that the UK was the only major power to back the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq), it’s not a difficult stretch to believe they see a British role in any future military confrontation.

But could Iran’s actions be seen as a calculated effort to undermine any British contribution to U.S. war planning? Beyond that, could it even be aimed at preventing the formation of a second “coalition of the willing?” The present crisis has certainly been an embarrassment for the UK government. But would this embarrassment be enough to deter it from further “provocative” military actions on Iran’s borders? Certainly at the very least we can expect the British Navy to be a bit more cautious when it comes to future operations near Iranian territory. And the tepid UN response to the British demand for strong Security Council action suggests that Iran has managed to keep international opinion on its side, although this point is unashamedly ignored by the Western media.

Although some attention has been paid to the theory that Iran’s actions are in response to the U.S. raid in January of its consulate, and the arrest of five staff members purportedly associated with the Revolutionary Guard, it is perhaps more reasonable to see that connection as nothing more than a potential face-saving solution and not a motivation. The real objective here is for Iran to puff out its (war) chest, draw a line in the sand (or waterway in this case), and to broadcast the unequivocal message that it is not intimidated by the U.S. military buildup or even the very real and ever-escalating prospects for armed conflict. Had the Iranians attempted this gambit with U.S. forces, by now we would have be one week into the next regional war. Anticipating the cautious and measured response of the British, perhaps the Iranians are also trying to signal that the present course of the U.S./Iranian conflict is leading to war. So if the British are truly keen to avoid this outcome (as they have been very careful to rule out in the context of the UN), the message here is that a badly needed negotiated solution will required real diplomacy, not the type conducted in the shadow gunships.

This week, two fights are going on, one in Washington and the other in New York, the outcomes for which might largely affect the likelihood for armed conflict with Iran. In Washington, backsliding below the zero point to a new low from their campaign promises to end the current war, the House democratic leadership has decided to pull language from their Supplemental Appropriations bill (funding the Bush administration’s escalation in Iraq), which would have required the President to seek explicit congressional approval prior to any military operations in Iran.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation has set up a phone number that can connect constituents to their congress people in order to tell them to reinsert the Iran provision: see FCNL.org for more information. The National Iranian-American Council has also set up an online page where you can send a similar (customizable) electronic message to your congress person.

Meanwhile in New York, Russia and China are sparring with the Western members of the Security Council over the severity of sanctions on Iran that would be imposed over its failure to suspend its uranium enrichment program as required by resolution 1737. There is a tendency to see the actions of the Security Council as legitimizing the actions of the United States, but as I detail in this piece here on Iran and the evolving role of the Security Council, the Council’s actions on crucial matters affecting the peace have increasingly represented little more than the raw exercise of the power, not the triumph of the rule of law. The United States has increasingly used the Council as an instrument to create hegemonic international law whenever it suits its own interests as its most powerful member.

It is said that law is a tool of the powerful, but it can also be its master. Most of those who work toward strengthening international law tend to emphasize how the UN and law constrains the United States. But, since the end of the cold war arrow has been moving almost entirely in the opposite direction. In this period the Council has drastically extended both its activities and its authority. Exemplified by the progression of the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program, the Council continues to innovatively adapt the rules to assert the will of the United States in the name of the international community, even when these acts require rewriting, reinterpreting, or violating existing law.

Since China tested a kinetic energy anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon on 11 January 2007, arms control and space experts, along with the media, have delivered a range of analyses. The New York Times declared the test marks China’s “resolve to play a major role in military space activities,” while the Council on Foreign Relations argued it put “pressure on the US to negotiate agreements not to weaponize space.” Theresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information called it an “irresponsible and self-defeating act.” The White House topped them all, declaring China’s “development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area.”

Of course, the US has demonstrated through word and deed that it has little spirit of cooperation when it comes to security in outer space. The new US National Space Policy authorized by President Bush in August 2006 explains that the US will “preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space; dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intending to do so; take those actions necessary to protect its space capabilities; respond to interference; and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to US national interests.”

Furthermore, the US space policy firmly opposes “the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit US access to or use of space,” and insists that “proposed arms control agreements or restrictions must not impair the rights of the United States to conduct research, development, testing, and operations or other activities in space for US national interests.” During the UN General Assembly’s First Committee on Disarmament and International Security held each year in October, the US has faithfully rejected resolutions proposing the negotiation of a treaty to prevent an arms race in outer space (PAROS), arguing there is no such arms race, and it would therefore be a waste of time to negotiate a PAROS treaty.

While condemning China’s ASAT test, the Department of Defense requested more than a billion dollars from the US budget for fiscal year 2008 to continue working on its own space weapons. US contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman are currently developing technologies that would allow the US to dominate space militarily, including lasers, sensors, missiles, delivery vehicles, and ground- and sea-based mission centers. The US military frequently denies these multi-million dollar enterprises are for space weapons, but the technology is widely believed by industry experts to at least have space weapon applications. Dual-use technology: the preferred way to have your cake and eat it too in the twenty-first century.

Of course, the US’ hypocritical reaction to China’s ASAT weapon is not surprising. The Bush Administration wanted to be the first kids on the block to have such cool new toys — upgrades from the Cold War hand-me-downs they already have. And it wants to dominate space before any other country develops the technology to interfere with its weapons, in order to shut down hostile programs before they really get off the ground. The US’ principal goal of supremacy in outer space is ensuring the global “full spectrum dominance” of its military. Superiority in conventional warfare relies on military assets in space, especially satellites, which are used for intelligence, remote sensing, navigation, and monitoring, among other things. Since the US currently asserts its political will through force, protection of its own space assets and disturbance of others’ is key to guaranteeing US dominance.

Most experts expected China to follow the US and Russia in working on anti-satellite weapons technology and were aware that China had been improving its situational awareness in space, giving it “the ability to track and identify most satellites.” However, China has been one of the most vocal enthusiasts for negotiating a PAROS treaty at the United Nations. In October 2006, H.E. Ambassador Cheng Jingye of China argued in the First Committee, “outer space is the common wealth of mankind (sic); the exploration and peaceful utilization and exploitation of outer space is the common right of all peoples; and maintaining a peaceful and clean outer space is the common obligation of mankind (sic).”

One of the key conditions for keeping space clean and accessible is keeping it free from debris. As the Space Security Survey 2007 acknowledges, “there is widespread recognition, in light of tracking efforts and recorded on-orbit collisions, that space debris is a growing threat.” China is one of many space-faring states that have developed national debris mitigation standards. The use of ASAT weapons creates a dangerous amount of space debris — making the Chinese test incredibly irresponsible.

According to a NASA model and calculations by Wang Ting and David Wright, the FY-1C satellite in China’s ASAT test, which weighed 954kg, would lead to nearly 1000 debris fragments of size 10cm or larger, nearly 50,000 debris fragments with a size of 1cm or greater, and 2.6 million fragments greater than 1mm. They believe that roughly half of the debris fragments 1cm or larger would stay in orbit for more than a decade.

This irresponsible behavior is damaging to China’s moral authority and international standing, and to the security of its own space assets. The results of its actions are exactly what space security experts have been forewarning in their attempts to dissuade the US from pursuing space weapon programs.

So then why would China test an anti-satellite weapon for the world to see? If it was a strategy to force the US to consider negotiating a PAROS treaty, was it a good strategy? On one hand, the US’ argument that there are no weapons in space cannot stand when another powerful nation uses a weapon in space. The Administration will have to come up with another reason why a PAROS treaty is irrelevant. Or, even better, they might actually think about why such a treaty might be relevant after all. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. US rhetoric on space weapons and PAROS hasn’t changed since China’s test, and the government has maximized what little highground the event gave them. The Bush Administration suspended plans to develop joint space projects with China, rather smugly declaring, “clearly it makes it more difficult to go down the path of cooperation when they’re testing ASAT weapons.”

The Bush Administration is not the only group to refute the relevance of PAROS. Michael Krepon and Michael Katz-Hyman of the Henry L. Stimson Center have contended that an arms race in outer space is unlikely. They correctly argue that the “interconnectedness of the economic and military aspects of space power” means any country’s economic ambitions will be jeopardized if it starts destroying satellites in space. However, they believe this means that rather than bankrupt itself in a military competition, China will “compete asymmetrically and cost-effectively,” and “contest the Pentagon’s objective of space control using weapons of its choosing,” resulting in “old-fashioned proliferation, not new-fangled arms races.”

The problem with this argument is that a traditional, Cold War-esque arms race is not the only way to weaponize space. As Krepon and Katz-Hyman themselves point out, a “modest arsenal” of kinetic energy weapons could pose an extraordinary threat to the international community’s space assets. Perhaps the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space should be changed to the Prevention of the Weaponization of Space, but the underlying concept remains unchanged: the international community is concerned that weapon-industry powerhouses, such as the United States, will develop an arsenal of weapons capable of destroying satellites and other space assets. Whether or not a second, third, or hundredth state competitively develops similar weapons is less the issue than the development of any space weapons by any state. The development of such weapons threatens every state’s ability to function. The reason this issue is generally addressed as an arms race concern is because in the history of modern warfare, no state has even been able to build up its arsenal without a reaction from its neighbors. In outer space, everyone is your neighbor.

If it would affect US policy to change calls for a treaty on PAROS to calls for a “code of conduct for responsible spacefaring nations” as Krepon and Katz-Hyman suggest, the international community would surely accept that. Unfortunately, given the US declaration that it will oppose all attempts to create legal regimes affecting outer space, it’s unlikely that a mere change in messaging will make a difference.

So nice try China, in trying to convince the US they need to join the PAROS bandwagon. It seems all the test really did was leave a giant, 2.651 million fragment mess behind — and a piece of China’s moral authority. As Jeffrey Lewis points out, in the long-term the test might demonstrate why we don’t want anti-satellite weapons, but “in the short-term, the Chinese will simply not be credible partners in efforts to keep space peaceful.” Moreover, the move may actually instigate an arms race after all — while China’s single test against an old weather satellite doesn’t exactly scream space dominance, the US won’t want to to risk being left behind.