British intelligence and the Soviet atomic bomb, 1945–1950

With relations with the Soviet Union growing ever ‘hotter’, it became essential for the British to comprehend Soviet atomic development. However, British intelligence had to rely on more overt methods of intelligence collection, which provided an inadequate basis from which to proceed. This was further hindered by the interpretation of such information on the basis of Anglo-American development and by the 1946 McMahon Act. Accordingly the first Soviet atomic bomb in August 1949 was not accurately predicted by the British. Meanwhile British war planning centred on the year 1957, based – it was argued – on strategic forecasts. Yet the impact of recently released intelligence material throws this into question, and instead reveals that the date reflected British war readiness, rather than when British intelligence predicted the Soviet Union would have achieved the nuclear capability to wage a successful war.     

The Power of the NPT: International Norms and Ukraine's Nuclear Disarmament

ABSTRACT

There is a lingering disagreement among scholars on how the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) affects nonproliferation and disarmament outcomes. Drawing on constructivist scholarship on international norms, this article examines the extent of the NPT's effect in the case of Ukraine's nuclear disarmament. In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, Ukraine found itself host to the world's third largest nuclear arsenal. Despite Ukraine's initial commitment to become a non-nuclear state, it proceeded along a difficult path toward NPT accession. Most controversial and directly at odds with the NPT was Ukraine's claim to ownership of its nuclear inheritance as a successor state of the Soviet Union. This article argues that, while much domestic discourse about the fate of these nuclear weapons was embedded in the negotiation of Ukraine's new identity as a sovereign state vis-à-vis Russia and the West, the NPT played an important, structural role by outlining a separate normative space for nuclear weapons and providing the grammar of denuclearization with which Ukraine's decision makers had to grapple.     

The ‘bomber gap’: British intelligence and an American delusion

For most of the 1950s, manned aircraft were the prime nuclear bomb delivery method, and were therefore a vital metric for British and American intelligence when calculating the Soviet threat. Each community reached very different conclusions from the same raw intelligence, generating the ‘bomber gap’ myth in the US but not in the UK. The information available was inconclusive, so in order to understand it estimators had to rely on their assumptions, which were different. Contrasting scopes for parochial capitalisation drew their conclusions further apart. Contrary to orthodox accounts of this episode, Soviet deception did not play a central role.     

How long until midnight? Intelligence-policy relations and the United States response to the Israeli nuclear program, 1959–1985

Why did the United States fail to stop Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons? Existing research argues that patrons such as the U.S. should have an easy time halting proliferation by militarily and economically vulnerable clients. Nevertheless, Israel acquired nuclear weapons with relatively little American opposition. Utilizing extensive primary source research, we argue that problematic intelligence-policy relations hindered U.S. efforts to arrest Israeli proliferation as (1) policymakers often gave mixed guidance to the intelligence community, resulting in (2) limited information on Israeli efforts that reinforced policy ambiguity. The results carry implications for understanding the dynamics of nuclear proliferation and intelligence-policy relations.     

CONTRIBUTORS

Conventional wisdom states that the stability-instability paradox does not explain the effect of nuclear proliferation on the conflict propensity of South Asia, and that nuclear weapons have had a different and more dangerous impact in South Asia than Cold War Europe. I argue that the paradox explains nuclear South Asia; that the similarities between nuclear South Asia and Cold War Europe are strong; and that conventional instability does not cause revisionist challenges in the long run. I develop and probe a psychological causal mechanism that explains the impact of nuclear weapons on Cold War Europe and South Asia. Following the ten-month mobilized crisis in 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf may have adopted a more moderate foreign policy toward India after experiencing fear of imminent nuclear war, as Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev did forty years earlier. I argue that the stability-instability paradox explains Cold War Europe and nuclear South Asia and will, conditional on Iranian and North Korean revisionism, predict the impact of nuclear weapon development on these states' conflict propensities.     

STRATEGY FOR A NEW NUCLEAR AGE

Current U.S. nuclear weapons strategy, force structure, and doctrine contribute to the threat of nuclear terrorism in several ways. First, the U.S. nuclear stockpile presents opportunities for nuclear terrorists to seize the materials they need. Second, U.S. nuclear forces remain a key justification for Russia's maintenance of similar nuclear forces that are less well protected. Third, America's continued embrace of nuclear weapons encourages and legitimizes other states to seek nuclear weapons that they will have difficulty securing from terrorists. The national security interests of the United States would be better served by a strategy to shrink the global footprint of nuclear weapons and provide the highest possible levels of security for the most minimal possible deterrent forces. Given the inability to secure nuclear weapons and materials perfectly or to eliminate terrorism in the foreseeable future, reducing the global inventory of nuclear weapons and materials is the most reliable way to reduce the chances of nuclear terrorism.     

Timely exposure of a secret project: Which activities to monitor?

A defender wants to detect as quickly as possible whether some attacker is secretly conducting a project that could harm the defender. Security services, for example, need to expose a terrorist plot in time to prevent it. The attacker, in turn, schedules his activities so as to remain undiscovered as long as possible. One pressing question for the defender is: which of the project's activities to focus intelligence efforts on? We model the situation as a zero‐sum game, establish that a late‐start schedule defines a dominant attacker strategy, and describe a dynamic program that yields a Nash equilibrium for the zero‐sum game. Through an innovative use of cooperative game theory, we measure the harm reduction thanks to each activity's intelligence effort, obtain insight into what makes intelligence effort more effective, and show how to identify opportunities for further harm reduction. We use a detailed example of a nuclear weapons development project to demonstrate how a careful trade‐off between time and ease of detection can reduce the harm significantly.     

前苏联发展反卫星武器的回顾

随着军用卫星的种类变化和性能提高 ,以及为谋求外层空间作战的军事优势 ,前苏联一直在积极发展反卫星武器。介绍了前苏联反卫星武器的组成、特点、技术方案及其发展情况 ,最后归纳了关于前苏联反卫星武器的几点看法。     

Deterrence Beyond Downunder: Australia and US Security Guarantees since 1955

ABSTRACT

From 1944 to 1973 Australia attempted to acquire atomic weaponry. This ambition was driven by the desire to contribute to defending British interests in Asia, fears of invasion by China, Indonesia, and Japan, great-power war, and the belief that nuclear weapons were merely bigger and better conventional weapons, that they would proliferate, and that US security assurances lacked credibility. Although the pursuit of the bomb was eventually abandoned, this was not the result of US assurances. Rather, geopolitical changes in Australia’s environment meant that a major attack on the continent was unlikely to occur outside the context of a confrontation between the US, China, and the Soviet Union. This article argues that Australia may soon have to rethink its policies towards US extended deterrence and instead focus on developing its own deterrent.     

Reactor-grade plutonium and nuclear weapons: ending the debate

The claim that reactor-grade plutonium cannot or will not be used to produce nuclear weapons has been used to justify non-nuclear-weapon states’ large stockpiles of plutonium that has been separated from highly radioactive spent fuel. However, by using reduced-mass plutonium cores, it is possible to manufacture reliable nuclear weapons with reactor-grade plutonium. These weapons can have the same design, size, weight, and predetonation probability as weapons using weapon-grade plutonium and would require no special cooling. The increased radiation from reactor-grade plutonium could be easily managed by shielding and operational procedures. Weapons using plutonium routinely produced by pressurized-water reactors could have a lethal area between 40 percent and 75 percent that of weapons using weapon-grade plutonium. In the past, both Sweden and Pakistan considered using reactor-grade plutonium to produce nuclear weapons, and India may be using reactor-grade plutonium in its arsenal today. Despite claims to the contrary, the United States used what was truly reactor-grade plutonium in a successful nuclear test in 1962. The capability of reactor-grade plutonium to produce highly destructive nuclear weapons leads to the conclusion that the separation of plutonium, plutonium stockpiling, and the use of plutonium-based fuels must be phased out and banned.     

PREVENTIVE ATTACKS AGAINST NUCLEAR PROGRAMS AND THE “SUCCESS” AT OSIRAQ

Advocates of the preventive use of force against emerging nuclear, biological, or chemical programs often look to the allegedly successful 1981 Israeli airstrike against Iraqi nuclear facilities at Osiraq. According to the conventional wisdom, this attack may have prevented Iraq from going nuclear before Operation Desert Storm in 1991. This article assesses the claim that the 1981 attack substantially delayed Iraqi acquisition of nuclear weapons, both by revisiting older debates and by introducing new evidence from Iraqi scientists. The article casts doubt on the conclusion that the attack was successful for three reasons: (1) the reactor itself was not well equipped to generate plutonium for a nuclear weapon; (2) illegal plutonium production would likely have caused a cutoff in the supply of nuclear fuel and an end to weapons activities; and (3) the attack may have actually increased Saddam's commitment to acquiring weapons. These conclusions have implications for the Bush Doctrine, as the lack of success in 1981 casts doubt on the possible success of future attacks against nuclear programs.     

VISIONS OF FISSION

For many years, non-nuclear weapons states have sought binding commitments from nuclear armed states that they would not be the victim of either the threat or use of nuclear weapons—so-called negative security assurances (NSAs). The nuclear weapon states have traditionally resisted granting such unconditional NSAs. Recent U.S. efforts to use nuclear deterrence against the acquisition and use by other states of chemical, biological and radiological weapons, however, have further exacerbated this divide. This article analyzes the historical development of NSAs and contrasts U.S. commitments not to use nuclear weapons with the empirical realities of current U.S. nuclear weapons employment doctrines. The authors conclude that NSAs are most likely to be issued as unilateral declarations and that such pledges are the worst possible manner in which to handle the issue of security assurance.     

‘Stay-Behind’ in France: Much ado about nothing?

Stay-behind networks in France were set up starting in 1948 and were aimed at responding to the possibility of a Soviet armed attack into Western Europe. Participants were identified, and arms and explosives cached, to be activated in case of hostilities. This activity became folded into a multilateral effort under the Allied Coordination Committee (ACC) of NATO. In France, the network was run as a highly compartmented activity under the French external intelligence service (DGSE). As the Soviet threat receded, the stay-behind activity became more and more dormant, and in 1990 it was quietly disbanded, immediately after the P-2 scandal broke in Italy.     

New Sources on the Role of Soviet Submarines in the Cuban Missile Crisis

Drawing on evidence collected from eyewitness interviews, new Russian secondary sources, as well as recently declassified documents from both sides, the author significantly widens the academic understanding of the maritime dimension of this gravest crisis of the Cold War. Most significant is her conclusion that Soviet commanders were led by complex and challenging tactical circumstances, including unreliable communications and malfunctioning equipment, which might have prompted them to contemplate a resort to tactical nuclear weapons on more than one occasion. Almost as disturbing is the revelation that US forces were not aware of this particular threat. This research reveals how a chain of inadvertent developments at sea could have precipitated global nuclear war, underlining the extreme danger of the crisis.     

Fire Brigade or Tocsin? NATO's ACE Mobile Force,Flexible Response and the Cold War

During the Cold War, NATO planners created the Allied Command Europe Mobile Force (Land) to implement proto-flexible response strategies. Originally conceived as a means to plug gaps in the NATO Central Region "Shield" forces with portable tactical nuclear weapons, ACE Mobile Force evolved into a signalling device intended to forestall an escalatory situation with Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces on NATO's northern and southern flanks. The story of ACE Mobile Force is a lens from which to view the implementation of Flexible Response, particularly in the mature period of the 1970s and 1980s.     

Disregarding the Bear: How US Intelligence Failed to Estimate the Soviet Intervention in the Egyptian–Israeli War of Attrition 1

This article analyzes the main factors that contributed to the failure of the US intelligence community to alert against Soviet intentions and the intervention in the Egyptian–Israeli War of Attrition in 1969–70. Based on fresh archival sources, this research describes the US intelligence conception concerning the USSR; explains the crystallization of the intelligence estimate on the probability of Soviet intervention in 1970; deals with the intelligence data that were acquired but eventually ignored; and concludes with several plausible explanations for the intelligence blunder.     

THE AMBIVALENT NEUTRAL

Traditional analyses of Switzerland's nuclear weapons program often explain both its beginning and its end by merely subsuming it under the broad logic of security calculations: the country originally developed an interest in nuclear weapons due to its precarious security environment after the end of World War II; it ended its nuclear ambitions roughly two decades later when it felt less threatened by external powers. Yet this depiction of the Swiss case brushes aside the historical political context in which Switzerland's nuclear decision-making was embedded. Drawing upon studies in sociology and political theory, this article argues that understanding the Swiss debate on nuclear weapons is possible only if we manage to comprehend the significant political and cultural changes that took place within Swiss society. These changes deeply affected the country's defense and foreign policy conceptions and also altered prevalent notions of neutrality, thereby ultimately foreclosing the nuclear option. In more abstract theoretical terms the article moreover suggests that we need to overcome depictions of objectively given threats or predetermined interests and develop analytical tools that help us disentangle the complex, non-linear ways in which threat perceptions, identities, and preferences evolve and shape states’ proliferation policies.     

Nuclear Weapons and the Vietnam War

This article analyzes why US leaders did not use nuclear weapons during the Vietnam War. To date, there has been no systematic study of US decision-making on nuclear weapons during this war. This article offers an initial analysis, focusing on the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Although US leaders did not come close to using nuclear weapons in the conflict, nuclear options received more attention than has previously been appreciated. Johnson's advisers raised the issue of nuclear weapons and threats on several occasions, and Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser, looked into nuclear options to bring the war to an end. Ultimately, however, both administrations privately rejected such options. The conventional explanation for the non-use of nuclear weapons during the Cold War – deterrence – is insufficient to explain the Vietnam case. This article analyzes the role of military, political and normative considerations in restraining US use of nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War. It argues that while military and political considerations, including escalation concerns, are part of the explanation, a taboo against the use of nuclear weapons played a critical role.     

EXPLORING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROLIFERATORS

This theoretical analysis explores which countries might constitute the next generation of nuclear proliferators, using Venezuela as a case study of one of the possible next nuclear weapon states. Three alternative theoretical frameworks or models are used to analyze the preconditions that might or might not drive Venezuela to pursue nuclear weapons in the near future. This study finds that there is little evidence to support the alarmist claims surrounding a future Venezuelan nuclear weapons program. These findings are important for both devising an accurate US national security strategy for identifying and combating the next generation of proliferators and also for implementing effective policies for the future of US-Latin American relations.     

ADVANCING THE GOALS OF NPT ARTICLE VI

International technical cooperation on issues relevant to the challenges of nuclear disarmament can demonstrate commitment to obligations under Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, strengthen the security of fissile materials and weapons, and develop technical approaches to support more ambitious disarmament activities in the future. Including non-nuclear weapon states would ensure that their views are taken into account and would invest them in developing solutions to key challenges. This article discusses three areas for technical cooperation that would build on past activities and that could produce such benefits as improved protection, control, and accounting of nuclear weapons and fissile material; enhanced transparency for nuclear weapon complexes; and mechanisms for international management of sensitive civilian nuclear facilities. International cooperation in each of these areas could provide a technical basis for pursuing possible future disarmament negotiations and substantively demonstrate commitment to Article VI.