Andrew Lichterman

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

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

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

Andrew Lichterman

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

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

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

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

(more…)

Andrew Lichterman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Burroughs

In a stunning article, “The Iran Plans,” to appear in the April 17 New Yorker, Seymour Hersh reports that the Bush administration has intensified planning for bombing Iran; that it is giving serious attention to the option of using nuclear weapons to attack buried targets; and that U.S. combat troops are already in Iran preparing for military operations and recruiting local supporters from minority groups. As a whole, the article conveys that the administration is prepared to launch an attack should Iran not accede to U.S. demands, above all not to proceed with uranium enrichment activities. But the potential conflict goes beyond that: the administration seems committed to regime change regardless of whether the nuclear issues are capable of resolution (which they probably are, given any willingness to compromise on Washington’s part).

If executed, U.S. military action would apply the Bush doctrine of preventive war in an unprecedented way that would set the template for years or decades of regional and global violence, unrestrained by law. While the doctrine was a pretext for the Iraq invasion, that lawless action could at least be seen as a continuation of hostilities going back to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. U.S. use of nuclear weapons against Iran would be an atrocious act violating the existing near taboo that has held since U.S. devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That would in turn make it far more likely that the weapons will be used elsewhere as well–including against American cities.

The abhorrent consequences of military action, and of possible nuclear use, are referred to in the Hersh article and elsewhere. But it’s worth dwelling on issues relating to international law constraints that receive far too little attention in the United States (for example, they go unmentioned by Hersh).

First, as Andy Lichterman explained in a recent post, an attack on Iran would be an act of aggression, barred by the UN Charter and prosecuted at Nuremberg. That is, it would be aggression unless authorized by the Security Council or in response to an Iranian attack. (For in-depth analysis, see the piece I co-authored in Human Rights, and Peter Weiss’s presentation to the New York session of the World Tribunal on Iraq.) The Security Council, however, may not even be able to agree on a resolution requiring Iran to cease enrichment-related activities, let alone a resolution imposing sanctions. The Council barely was able to agree on the recent non-binding presidential statement, given Russian and Chinese reluctance to engage in a confrontational course. Absent some very major change in circumstances, a resolution authorizing force is out of the question.

Second, as I explained in a 2003 paper, a U.S. nuclear attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would violate international law requirements of necessity, proportionality, and discrimination acknowledged by the United States and affirmed by the International Court of Justice in its advisory opinion on nuclear weapons. The Court put the principle of discrimination, which it described as “fundamental” and “intransgressible,” as follows: “States must never make civilians the object of attack and must consequently never use weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets.” (emphasis added) Given the blast, heat and widespread radiation effects of an attack–the spread of radiation is elevated by an underground explosion by an earth penetrator–that requirement cannot be met. (more…)

Andrew Lichterman

The American Society of International Law adopted the following resolution at its recent annual meeting:

The American Society of International Law, at its centennial annual meeting in Washington, D.C. on March 30, 2006, Resolves:

1. Resort to armed force is governed by the Charter of the United Nations and other international law (jus ad bellum).

2. Conduct of armed conflict and occupation is governed by the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949 and other international law (jus in bello).

3. Torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of any person in the custody or control of a state are prohibited by international law from which no derogations are permitted.

4. Prolonged, secret, incommunicado detention of any person in the custody or control of a state is prohibited by international law.

5. Standards of international law regarding treatment of persons extend to all branches of national governments, to their agents, and to all combatant forces.

6. In some circumstances, commanders (both military and civilian) are personally responsible under international law for the acts of their subordinates.

7. All states should maintain security and liberty in a manner consistent with their international law obligations.

The fact that this resolution even should be necessary reflects the depths of our current crisis. As Scott Horton, a leading international lawyer, put it in a PBS interview following the Abu Ghraib revelations, “…if adherence to the Geneva Convention becomes a political issue in this country, we have fallen into a deep moral gutter.”

Regarding resort to armed force, the ASIL resolution similarly states what should be the obvious. When considering both the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and the possibility of military action against Iran, it is important to begin with the basic framework of modern international law. It is a framework this country played a major role in creating.

In the war crimes trials conducted after World War II, the United States and its allies declared aggressive war to be the most serious of all international crimes. Robert L. Jackson, the U.S. Representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, declared,

“We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.” Statement by Justice Jackson on War Trials Agreement; August 12, 1945.

(more…)

Andrew Lichterman

The Washington Post ran a story Friday headlined Pentagon to Test a Huge Conventional Bomb.

According to the Post,

“A huge mushroom cloud of dust is expected to rise over Nevada’s desert in June when the Pentagon plans to detonate a gigantic 700-ton explosive — the biggest open-air chemical blast ever at the Nevada Test Site — as part of the research into developing weapons that can destroy deeply buried military targets, officials said yesterday.”

It appears possible, however, that the Post missed the real story. There is considerable evidence that one of the main purposes of the “Divine Strake” test, if not the only one, is to use a large conventional high explosive charge to simulate the effect of a low yield nuclear weapon, although the picture is blurred a bit by recently released budget documents. February 2005 Department of Defense budget documents reveal plans to conduct a “Full-Scale tunnel defeat demonstration using high explosives to simulate a low yield nuclear weapon ground shock environment at Department of Energy’s Nevada Test Site” in fiscal year (FY) 2006. The descriptions of the same program in February 2006 (FY 2007) documents continue to state that the program of which the test apparently is a part “will develop a planning tool that will improve the warfighter’s confidence in selecting the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage.” But the descriptions of specific activities in the current budget document deletes references to nuclear weapons, substituting vague general language about weapons effects (details and document links below; click on “more” to continue). (more…)

Andrew Lichterman

One of the over 500 demonstrations against the Iraq war held last Saturday took place in Walnut Creek, California, a San Francisco Bay Area suburb. Organized by East Bay groups, the event drew a crowd reported by the media at over 3,000. Demonstrators marched from the local Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station to a downtown park, where there was a rally featuring a variety of speakers and musicians, including Congressman George Miller, Norman Solomon, Medea Benjamin, Country Joe McDonald, and rapper Boots Riley. A number of local organizations had booths in a nicely organized space directly behind the rally. The event was one of at least four in the Bay Area Saturday, the others being in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Vallejo.

The Thursday before I had been part of a panel discussion titled “War and Peace: Connecting the Dots,” the first in a series of informal “think tank” sessions sponsored by the Socially Responsible Network, a network of over 200 community-based organizations in Oakland and the surrounding East Bay. Aimee Allison, a Gulf War veteran currently doing counter-recruitment work (and a candidate for the Oakland city council) expressed reservations about the constant round of rallies that have been a main focus of organizing against the war, and argued for putting more resources into face to face organizing efforts, and particularly into counter-recruitment and support for the growing number of people in the military who also oppose the war. This sparked a broader discussion about organizing approaches, ranging from the usefulness of mass rallies in big cities to the recent emphasis on coming up with a “progressive” version of right-wing “public relations” (i.e. propaganda) strategies. (more…)

Andrew Lichterman

Two recent articles featured criticism from nuclear establishment insiders of the Department of Energy’s plan for a new approach to designing and making nuclear weapons, the “Reliable Replacement Warhead” (RRW) program. The Albuquerque Journal covered a talk by Richard Garwin, a bomb designer and long-time weapons lab consultant, in which Garwin labeled the RRW as “not necessary” because current designs work just fine and can be replaced. See John Fleck, “Bomb Designer Questions U.S. Nuclear Policy,” Albuquerque Journal, March 13, 2006 (subscription required). In the Oakland Tribune, ex-Sandia laboratory weapons program executive Bob Peurifoy also declared the existing stockpile safe and reliable, and said, “This is gigantic hoax on the taxpayer. It is stimulated by the self interest of NNSA and the (weapons) design labs based on the desire to extract ever more money from the taxpayer,” he said. “You think our weapons don’t work? Go stand under one. But don’t take your wife and kids.” Stanford physicist Sydney Drell, a long-time mainstay of government advisory panels on all things nuclear, also endorsed the existing nuclear stockpile, and worried that new designs could lead to a resumption of underground nuclear testing. see Ian Hoffman, “Weapons adviser supports nuke plan, Former lab director fears U.S. nuclear arsenal may see defects,”The Oakland Tribune, March 13, 2006

These articles are OK as far as they go, but what they leave out is more important than what they include. None of the ‘critics’ quoted challenge the assumption that the U.S. should keep nuclear weapons for many decades to come, despite its Non-Proliferation Treaty obligation to negotiate in good faith for the elimination of its nuclear arsenal. Further, none of them address the potential of the RRW effort to produce nuclear weapons with new capabilities, despite the fact that being able to do so is an express purpose of the program. National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks recently set forth the vision for the RRW program and its supporting nuclear weapons complex:

In 2030, our Responsive Infrastructure can also produce weapons with different or modified military capabilities as required. The weapons design community that was revitalized by the RRW program can adapt an existing weapon within 18 months and design, develop and begin production of that new design within 3-4 years of a decision to enter engineering development — again, goals that were established in 2004. Thus, if Congress and the President direct, we can respond quickly to changing military requirements. Linton Brooks, Speech to the East Tennessee Economic Council March 3, 2006

Essentially, everybody quoted in these articles is making “lawyer’s arguments” narrowly addressing the palatable title and superficial rationale for the program — making the nuclear stockpile more “reliable.” The new matter here, such as it is, is ex-weapons designers getting frustrated enough to denounce the program as pure pork. Unfortunately, it isn’t– those in power really do have missions in mind for nuclear weapons. Of course, visions for future military technologies encounter far less resistance when they follow money flows already firmly established.

But in any event, no arguments limited to the utility of a weapons system or the means of its development are truly significant in the current political context. There has, for example, been almost four decades of technical critique of missile defenses, making arguments that still largely stand unrefuted. Last time I looked (a couple of days ago while writing a fact sheet for activists about Vandenberg Air Force Base), the government was installing operational mid-course interceptors at Vandenberg and Fort Greeley, Alaska while spending many billions more on every potential BMD technology they can dream up. (more…)

Andrew Lichterman

MacGregor Eddy, a California central coast activist, goes on trial in Santa Barbara, California this Thursday, March 16. Eddy, who believes that activities at Vandenberg Air Force Base violate international law by providing direct support to an Iraq war she believes to be illegal, has been accused of attempting to enter the base unlawfully. At the time, she was carrying written materials supporting her views which she hoped to deliver to base authorities. More information about the trial and about ongoing organizing activities related to Vandenberg can be found at the Vandenberg Peace Legal Defense Fund web site.

Vandenberg, an immense base occupying thirty five miles of California coastline, launches and operates satellites that provide U.S. forces on the ground with space services ranging from weather reports and communications to Global Positioning System (GPS) guidance for bombs. In addition to its everyday support for U.S. military forces fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Vandenberg tests intercontinental ballistic missiles and missile defense interceptors, and is likely to play a role in development of the next generation of “prompt global strike” strategic weapons. Vandenberg, along with Fort Greeley, Alaska, also are the first deployment sites for land based mid-course ballistic missile interceptors. I have written a short overview of Vandenberg’s role in the U.S. policy and practice of preventive war for Western States Legal Foundation, Vandenberg Air Force Base: Where the Present and Future of U.S. Warmaking Come Together.

John Burroughs

On a listserv dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons on which I participate, there’s been a lot of chatter over the past few weeks about the possibility of U.S. use of nuclear weapons against Iran. Some cite this possibility as a major reason, even the main reason, for opposing military action. I offered the following comment:

“Military action, probably of a different kind (special forces, bombings) than we saw with Iraq, is well within the realm of possibility over the next weeks, months, or years re Iran; the longer term seems more likely to me. A U.S. nuclear attack as part of the opening stages of military action is not within the realm of possibility. The nuclear danger arises from the fact that wars are unpredictable. Just because in the 60 years since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in numerous wars, the United States did not consider the circumstance to arise where nuclear use was appropriate, doesn’t mean that the circumstance cannot develop in future conflicts. But it would be a very dire situation – use your imagination – involving escalation drawing in other states, or large-scale attacks in the US, or etc.. So what we need to do is to work to prevent military action and also to support outcomes that help or at least don’t hurt non-proliferation/disarmament.”

My reasons for saying U.S. nuclear attack as part of opening stages of military action would not happen:

First, “strategists” in the United States are well aware (how could they not be?) that a U.S. nuclear use anywhere in the world, but certainly in the Middle East, raises very dramatically the odds that a nuclear explosive will be detonated in a U.S. city one day, in months, years, or decades.

Second, while the Bush administration is obviously quite impervious to world and domestic public opinion (perhaps less so now than a few years ago), still even they cannot fail to take into account the incredibly deleterious effects that a nuclear use would have on US standing in the world and on the viability of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the UN, and other international institutions/arrangements. Regarding domestic opinion, they would have to make a huge propaganda effort to manage it; however, this is possibly within their capability. (Another large-scale terrorist attack in the US would be a possible occasion, regardless of whether it was clearly established who perpetrated it.) (more…)