Michael Spies

Less than a week after the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution condemning North Korea for test launching several ballistic missiles, the United States is set to launch an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile on Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The missile, carrying three dummy warheads, will be fired across the Pacific toward the missile test range at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, with a flight time of about 30 minutes.

According to the Santa Maria Times, the test scheduled for early Wednesday morning is intended to test the reliability and capability of the missile system. The United States currently deploys 500 Minuteman III missiles, kept on high alert and each carrying a single nuclear warhead with a yield, depending on the configuration, of 170 kT or 335 kT, respectively 10 or 20 times more powerful than the U.S. atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima.

This test is the latest in an ongoing series of regularly scheduled ballistic missile tests conducted by the U.S. military. In the period between January 2000 and the present, the U.S. has test launched at least 23 Minuteman III ICBMs from Vandenberg. The last test of a Minuteman III occurred on June 14th. Regarding the purpose of the test, Andrew Lichterman pointed out that according to the 30th Space Wing, the goal was to “provide key accuracy and reliability data for on-going and future modifications to the weapon system, which are key to improving the already impressive effectiveness of the Minuteman III force.” He further noted that “as this blog has documented, this is only one small part of a wide-ranging effort to develop the next generation of U.S. strategic weapons, with the intention of being able to strike targets anywhere on earth in hours or less.”

The ongoing conduct of these tests represents yet another example of U.S. exceptionalism; the U.S. feels no embarrassment in criticizing others for the same activities it or its allies engage in. For instance, days after the North Korean tests the Bush Administration “offered an unprecedented defense and rationalization of India’s missile test and nuclear programme” following India’s test launch of a nuclear capable Agni-III missile. The tests of such weapon systems is ill-timed following the international chorus of condemnation, partially led by the U.S., of the North Korean tests. In the regional context of the Korean Peninsula, given the heightened tensions surrounding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the U.S. test of a nuclear capable missile is unambiguously provocative. In the global context, the U.S. missile test is blatant hypocrisy, symptomatic of a dangerous foreign policy based on the imposition of discriminatory, self-serving norms backed by the threat and use of force.

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Air Force personnel filming protesters, Vandenberg Air Force Base, May 2005

Andrew Lichterman

This week brought another in the long line of disclosures of government spying on Americans in the name of “security.” This time it was the California Office of Homeland Security, revealed by the Los Angeles Times to have compiled information about peaceful antiwar protests. These events included several discussed in previous entries here, such as the Walnut Creek, California demonstration on the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion and a demonstration supporting MacGregor Eddy, arrested protesting the many activities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in support of U.S. aggressive war making.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the California Office of Homeland Security intelligence reports on political demonstrations were prepared by a private contractor, SRA International Inc. The media coverage hasn’t told us much about SRA International, but a quick internet search reveals that they are a large information services company that has many contracts with the federal government. Among their services are “data and text mining,” and among their clients are a number of Defense Department organizations and “various intelligence agencies.” As SRA International’s web site notes, “text mining” for “Homeland Security and Intelligence” applications can include “Surveillance of the Web, e-mails, or chat rooms.” SRA International claims its text-mining techniques allow extraction “from free-text document entities such as persons, organizations, places, artifacts, and other concepts of interest, as well as key links between, and events involving, these entities.”

Although the Times reported claims by the California officials that the monitoring of peaceful protests was done in error, the story really raises more questions than it answers. How did this “mistake” happen? If, as state officials assert, there is no ongoing monitoring program that would sweep up the activities of peaceful protesters in its data-gathering net, what is a high powered (and undoubtedly high-priced) contractor that provides such services as “data and text mining” being paid to do? What kinds of precautions, if any, has the state taken to insure that monitoring that encompasses peaceful protest will cease? Was SRA International involved in the collection of raw data, or only in the analysis of data collected by public agencies? If the former, has SRA been told to stop gathering data on peaceful political protests, or only to stop including such information in its reports to the state? If the latter, who was collecting raw “intelligence” in a manner that swept up information about peaceful protests? It’s not enough simply to tell the contractor not to report information they collect on peaceful protesters (which is all the state appears to have done so far).

The Schwarznegger administration’s first response to getting caught with its hand in the civil liberties cookie jar (again) has been to allow the press (and the press alone) to review redacted copies of the series of reports in question, but apparently not to copy them. This response manifests another casualty of the current “security” frenzy, which is government openness. The California Public Records Act does not permit the state to release documents only to the press; once records have been released any claimed exemptions to public access are waived. Further, I know of no provision in the act allowing the state to release records for inspection without allowing them to be copied. Despite the statutory presumption in favor of releasing records, California officials (like most officials) are trying to get away with as little openness as they can probably with the hope of making this story as difficult for the press to cover as possible short of outright stonewalling. The ACLU has, however, filed a comprehensive public records act request for relevant documents, including SRA International’s contract with the state.

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Andrew Lichterman

The headlines in recent weeks have been full of the latest “threat,” this time a possible missile test by North Korea. The Bush administration has filled the airways once again with bellicose rhetoric, ranging from the now-routine “all options are on the table” to threats to shoot the missile down with U.S. ballistic missile defense interceptors. As Jeff Lewis and Victoria Sampson argue persuasively in a series of posts at Armscontrolwonk.com, the shoot-down talk is almost certainly an empty threat, intended only for consumption by those who know nothing about either ballistic missile defense or the likely trajectory of North Korean missile tests.

Not to be outdone, leading Democratic Party “national security” figures, including Clinton-era Defense Secretary William Perry, are suggesting a pre-emptive strike against the North Korean launch site, claiming that the outcome of this unvarnished act of aggression would be not only predictable but positive. The mainstream media and U.S. political elites seem permanently locked in a deadly symbiotic embrace: for the media, “if it bleeds it leads,” for the political elites, “if we kill it sells.” Or so it seems, more and more in this grim new American Century, where “diplomacy” seems to mean little more to those who wield American power than threatening force for a bit longer before using it.

The confrontation between the U.S. military behemoth and North Korea’s possible nuclear weapons and its still-theoretical long range missile capability works well enough, in any case, for the elites of both states, each growing progressively more isolated from the rest of the world, although in different ways. What each may fear most is their own growing irrelevance: North Korea to the world as a whole, the United States to East Asia, where convincing key states– such as Japan and South Korea–that it remains an “indispensable nation” is a critical element in slowing U.S. descent from the zenith of its power (now clearly in the rear-view mirror of the U.S. juggernaut, however much we may debate how many mileposts have passed since the peak). For North Korea, fueling up the missile (if that is what they actually are doing) gets the world’s attention by slapping the “rogue leader with nukes (maybe)” bargaining chip on the table once more, particularly with the U.S. government and its echo-chamber media playing the role of both predictable antagonist and massive message amplifier. Thomas Schelling, Henry Kissinger and company may have invented the “madman theory” of deterrence and diplomacy, but no one has gotten more mileage off less fuel with it than North Korea.

As for U.S. elites, the North Korean “threat,” particularly with the added fillip of an endless nuclear and missile crisis, is a good excuse for the U.S. to maintain its massive military presence in the region. It also is a major selling point for ballistic missile defense, both at home and abroad. Defenses against strategic missiles are an arms contractor’s dream: arcane, extremely expensive technology, for which there is a potentially unlimited demand, that is unlikely to be tested in any battle likely to be followed by rational debate over its success or failure. In this regard, the current round of North Korea missile-threat fear mongering may already have served its purpose. Last week the United States and Japan inked a pact for further cooperation on missile defense development, and this week Japan agreed to the deployment of Patriot 3 missiles, designed for defense against aircraft, cruise missiles, and shorter range missiles. While neither of these agreements may have been caused by the current North Korea missile test scare, they may provide useful political cover for the government of Japan, where increased cooperation with the U.S. military is controversial.

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John Burroughs

I managed to get an op-ed about the Blix report published in the June 17 Chicago Sun-Times, “This time, let’s listen to Blix on WMD.” It shouldn’t be that hard to place informed and reasonably well-written op-eds on a topic of great, arguably supreme, importance (nuclear weapons), but it is, I can say from experience over the years. The op-ed traces the U.S. rejection of disarmament commitments, observing that:

“In the longer term, stopping the spread of nuclear weapons requires reversing proliferation where it began, in the United States. We led the world into the nuclear age during World War II; now we must lead it out. Unfortunately, since the treaty banning all nuclear test explosions was negotiated in 1996, the United States has abandoned the multilateralism necessary to the exercise of leadership. The Senate rejected ratification of the treaty in 1999. In the 2000s, the Bush administration has repudiated commitments the United States made under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] to work with other nations to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in security postures and to pursue verified, irreversible reduction and elimination of nuclear arsenals.”

There wasn’t space to refer to some of the unflinching statements of the Hans Blix-led Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction regarding the regressive U.S. role. Notably, the report says:

“Some of the current setbacks in treaty-based arms control and disarmament can be traced to a pattern in US policy that is sometimes called ’selective multilateralism’ - an increased US skepticism regarding the effectiveness of international institutions and instruments, coupled with a drive for freedom of action to maintain an absolute global superiority in weaponry and means of their delivery.” (p. 25)

The report also says:

“It is easy to see that the nuclear-weapon states parties to the NPT have largely failed to implement this commitment [to nuclear disarmament] and failed to ‘pursue negotiations in good faith’ on nuclear disarmament as required of them under the NPT. Indeed, all states that have nuclear weapons are still seeking to modernize their nuclear capabilities.” (p. 94)

From one vantage point, that of the media-starved disarmament activist, coverage of the release of the report was pretty good. There was an excellent story in the New York Times, and Blix did interviews on Fresh Air and Meet the Press and an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune. From a more objective standpoint, it was fairly limited in extent (the Washington Post ran only a wire story, as Andrew Lichterman noted on this blog) and short in duration. There was certainly no pounding away at different aspects of the story day after day, week after week! What coverage there was seemed motivated partly by Blix’s status as a quasi-celebrity due to his role prior to the U.S. invasion as UNMOVIC chief inspector investigating alleged Iraqi programs involving biological and chemical weapons and missiles. It also tended to focus on what Blix had to say about the U.S./Iran situation.

For selected media coverage and other items regarding the report, including a summary and preliminary commentary and a list of key implications for U.S. policy, see www.wmdreport.org, the website of the project of “civil society review” of the report initiated by the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, Western States Legal Foundation, and Reaching Critical Will.

Michael Spies

The New York Times recently reopened the issue of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s notorious appeal to “wipe Israel off the map”. The Times piece focuses exclusively on the translation — or possible mistranslation — of the statement in order to determine if it constituted a threat against Israel and a call for war. The original phrase in Farsi, borrowed from rhetoric used by Ayatollah Khomeini, lacks a direct literal equivalent in English. The closest expression is to remove from the “pages of time of history”. Despite this, the Times noted that Ahmadinejad’s personal translators chose the wording “wipe off the map” in the posting on the President’s web site. The Times concludes that it remains an open question of whether Ahmadinejad called for war against Israel.

In a recent Washington Post Op-Ed, David Rifkin argued that this statement alone constituted an illegal threat to Israeli territorial integrity, and political independence, in contravention of Article 2.4 of the UN Charter. He reasoned that the utterance alone is sufficient grounds for Israel to exercise its right to self defense, preserved in Article 51 of the Charter. Moreover, he argued that Ahmadinejad’s statement, taken with his prediction of a coming “nuclear conflagration”, equates to a threat to commit genocide, in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Rifkin reiterated this argument Monday night at the New York Bar Association at an event examining the legality of the use of force by the United States against Iran. The event was inspired by Seymour Hersh’s article, “The Iran Plans“. The other panelists included Gary Solis, a professor of law who formerly taught at West Point, and Charles Moxley, a professor of law at the Fordham Law School. After their presentations John Burroughs, (Executive Director of Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy and a contributor to this blog) asked the panel a straightforward, but challenging, legal question: what constitutes a threat under international law?

There is little guidance in the body of international law on the question of what constitutes a threat. Article 2.4 of the UN Charter stipulates that “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” Yet there is no definition of threat provided in the Charter or other international instruments.

John Burroughs has suggested (see Legal Framework, p. 30), from an orthodox point of view, that core elements of a threat are a demand that another state do or refrain from doing something coupled with the statement that military action will be taken if the demand is not complied with. Taking off from that basic point as well as international relations theory, I would identify several criteria for determining what is a threat in the context of Article 2.4. States employ many available foreign policy tools to achieve a desired policy outcome, including the use of force. To constitute a threat, a state must show intent, through either its actions or statements, to use force to achieve its policy. Intent to use force could come through a demand or ultimatum to another state, stipulating explicit consequences for a failure to comply. Intent can also be revealed through a pattern of behavior, appropriate for achieving the policy goal, such as building up armed forces or engaging in arms races, or otherwise preparing for the use of force. Other factors can mitigate or aggravate the perception of threat, such as previous foreign policy practice, more precise articulations of the policy in question, or doctrines governing the threat or use of force. Credibility is key to intent and to the question of threat. If the state making the threat lacks the capability to achieve its policy through the use of force, any threat it makes lacks credibility and constitutes nothing more than belligerent, hard-line rhetoric.

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Figure from Weapons Of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms, Report of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, p.36.

Andrew Lichterman

“So long as any state has nuclear weapons, others will want them. So long as any such weapons remain, there is a risk that they will one day be used, by design or accident. And any such use would be catastrophic. The accumulated threat posed by the estimated 27,000 nuclear weapons, in Russia, the United States and the other NPT nuclear-weapon states, merits worldwide concern. However, especially in these five states the view is common that nuclear weapons from the first wave of proliferation somehow are tolerable, while such weapons in the hands of additional states are viewed as dangerous.” Weapons Of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms, p.60.

As noted in the previous entry, the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, chaired by Hans Blix, released its report, Weapons Of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms, at a press conference at the United Nations Thursday (download the full report in pdf here). The Washington Post online ran a Reuters story on the report predictably tracking mainstream Washington’s obsessions and repressions, focusing on Iran (who has no nuclear weapons) and its relationship to Israel (who does). The immense nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia, and those of the other original nuclear weapons states, are an afterthought, relegated to a few paragraphs at the end.

A good place to start in turning this skewed world view right side up is by remembering that nuclear weapons are the true “weapons of mass destruction.” And it is worth contemplating the magnitude of the danger presented by the arsenals of the existing nuclear powers, still big enough to destroy most, perhaps all, of human civilization in a day.

A single U.S. ballistic missile submarine, armed with 12 Trident missiles each capable of carrying up to eight separate nuclear warheads, can deliver as many as 192 nuclear weapons in short order. Independent analysts estimate that the average missile load today is 6 warheads, which means 144 warheads on a single boat. Each of these weapons will have a yield of either 100 or 475 kilotons, depending on which of the two SLBM warheads are employed. The yield of the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima was, by comparison, estimated to be at most 15 kilotons– so these modern warheads range from more than 6 to almost 32 times the size of that first city-destroying weapon.

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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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Andrew Lichterman

The National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) announced today that it is withdrawing its Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for the massive Divine Strake high explosive test, originally slated to be conducted at the Nevada Test Site on June 2. The NNSA press release announcing the FONSI withdrawal mentioned no new date for the test, which apparently has been delayed indefinitely.

Divine Strake has sparked widespread opposition in the region, based in part on worries that it could mobilize radioactive materials at the site, which was used to conduct both above ground and underground nuclear explosive tests for four decades. Many also oppose the test as unnecessary and provocative, because government budget and planning documents show that one of its main purposes is to simulate the effects of low-yield nuclear explosions on underground structures.

The NNSA press release fails entirely to mention that Divine Strake would occur at a test range where the United States conducted the vast majority of its nuclear tests– 100 above ground tests and over 800 underground tests:

“This action is being taken to clarify and provide further information regarding background levels of radiation from global fallout in the vicinity of the Divine Strake experiment. Atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons by several countries in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in the dispersion of radioactive fallout throughout the northern hemisphere. The efforts of the Nevada Site Office are focused on explaining, in a means clearly understandable to all, what background radiation from this fallout means with respect to the contemplated DIVINE STRAKE experiment.” NNSA Press Release, “NNSA Withdraws FONSI for Divine Strake Experiment,” May 26, 2006.

For more on Divine Strake, see the previous entries on the topic on this site.

UPDATE: Associated Press story in the Las Vegas Sun on the test postponement and the status of the Divine Strake lawsuit.

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).