Nuclear Subsidies and Proliferation: Clarifying the Link

ABSTRACT

In March 2015, the South Australian state government established a royal commission to investigate the financial, social, technical, diplomatic, and nonproliferation benefits and risks of expanding its nuclear industry, including activities related to uranium mining; enriching, reprocessing, and fabricating nuclear fuels for both domestic use and export; producing nuclear power; and storing radiological waste, including foreign spent reactor fuel. Given its enormous uranium reserves and current mining activities, some Australians have argued that Australia could benefit financially by expanding the mining sector and by adding value to its uranium exports by enriching the material and fabricating it into reactor fuel assemblies. Others have maintained that Australia can realize significant economic benefits by recycling and storing foreign spent fuel and producing carbon-free nuclear power. In the end, the commission recommended that Australia consider opening up a high-level waste repository to take in foreign spent fuel. It did not recommend any other nuclear activities at this time. The following viewpoint is based on testimony I delivered to the commission on the nuclear weapon proliferation implications of the proposed activities. If Australia wants to avoid the temptation of selling nuclear goods to states that might use these goods to make bombs, it should only consider new nuclear activities that can be entirely financed by the private sector and turn a profit without having to resort to foreign sales. This policy would also enable Australia to set an important, new international nonproliferation standard.     

NUCLEAR STABILITY AT LOW NUMBERS

Chinese writings on the workings of nuclear stability, deterrence, and coercion are thin and politicized. Nevertheless, it is possible to glean, from direct and inferential evidence, rather pessimistic conclusions regarding Chinese views of nuclear stability at low numbers. While China has been living with low numbers in its own arsenal for decades, today it views missile defense and advanced conventional weapons as the primary threat to nuclear stability. More generally, China views nuclear stability as wedded to political amity. Because none of these would be directly addressed through further US and Russian arsenal reductions, China is unlikely to view such reductions as particularly stabilizing. While there is little in Chinese writing to suggest lower US and Russian numbers would encourage a “race to parity,” there are grounds to worry about China becoming more assertive as it gains confidence in Beijing's own increasingly secure second-strike forces.     

THE MORAL PERMISSIBILITY OF AUTOMATED RESPONSES DURING CYBERWARFARE

Automated responses are an inevitable aspect of cyberwarfare, but there has not been a systematic treatment of the conditions in which they are morally permissible. We argue that there are three substantial barriers to the moral permissibility of an automated response: the attribution, chain reaction, and projection bias problems. Moreover, these three challenges together provide a set of operational tests that can be used to assess the moral permissibility of a particular automated response in a specific situation. Defensive automated responses will almost always pass all three challenges, while offensive automated responses typically face a substantial positive burden in order to overcome the chain reaction and projection bias challenges. Perhaps the most interesting cases arise in the middle ground between cyber-offense and cyber-defense, such as automated cyber-exploitation responses. In those situations, much depends on the finer details of the response, the context, and the adversary. Importantly, however, the operationalizations of the three challenges provide a clear guide for decision-makers to assess the moral permissibility of automated responses that could potentially be implemented.     

Countering global insurgency

This article suggests that the War on Terrorism is actually a campaign against a globalized Islamist 1 1 In this article, the term ‘Islamist’ describes the extremist, radical form of political Islam practiced by some militant groups, as distinct from ‘Islamic’, which describes the religion of Islam, or ‘Muslim’, which describes those who follow the Islamic religion. In this article the term is used to refer primarily to Al Qaeda, its allies and affiliates. View all notes insurgency. Therefore, counterinsurgency approaches are more relevant to the present conflict than traditional terrorism theory. Indeed, a counterinsurgency approach would generate subtly, but substantially different, policy choices in prosecuting the war against Al Qaeda. Based on this analysis, the article proposes a strategy of ‘disaggregation’ that seeks to dismantle, or break, the links in the global jihad.2 2 This article uses the short form of the Islamic term jihad to mean ‘lesser jihad’ (armed struggle against unbelievers), rather than ‘greater jihad’ (jihad fi sabilillah), i.e. moral struggle for the righteousness of God. View all notes Like containment in the Cold War, disaggregation would provide a unifying strategic conception for the war – a conception that has been somewhat lacking to date.     

Past as prologue: USMC small wars doctrine

Africa is arguably the most important regional setting for United Nations peacekeeping challenges. In the 1990s, extensive efforts have been made by the United Nations in the fleld of peacekeeping with the speciflc aim of reducing the levels of conflicts on the continent. Another significant development relates to the fact that organisations in Africa have started to feature as important peacekeeping instruments in recent years as it is increasingly being accepted that there is a need for such institutions to take care of their own security requirements. However, a key issue at stake is the need to achieve greater consistency with regard to third-party intervention in African conflicts. A look at the more glaring examples of multinational operations in the name of peace and security gives a sense of the magnitude and difficulties often experienced during such endeavours. In addition, both past and current operations have brought to light certain perspectives and lessons that require careful analysis and study. In this article, an overview is given of some of the perils and challenges associated with multinational operations in the realm of peace and security. Specifically, the focus is on Africa and on key issues and challenges regarding the strategic and operational management of such operations in view of the need to consider a more integrated approach towards multinational operations in support of peace and security in Africa.     

Through the Looking Glass: The Soviet Military-Technical Revolution and the American Revolution in Military Affairs

The roots of the information technology Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) can be traced to the mid-1970s, when the West capitalized on scientific-technological developments to neutralize the threat posed by Soviet second echelons. However, the cultivation of the technological seeds of the American RMA preceded the maturation of the conceptual ones. Although it was the US that was laying the technological groundwork for the RMA, Soviet, rather than the American military theorists, were the first to argue that the new range of technological innovations constituted a fundamental discontinuity in the nature of war, which they dubbed the ‘Military-Technical Revolution’ (MTR). About a decade later, this fundamental Soviet approach to the transformations in military affairs was analyzed, adapted and adopted by the US, and designated the RMA. This article deals with the intellectual history of the Soviet MTR and the American RMA.     

France and the Gulf War of 1990–1991: Political‐military lessons learned

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Edward Van Der Rhoer, The Shadow Network: Espionage as an Instrument of Soviet Policy, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983. Pp.359. $19.95.

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Trevor Taylor, European Defence Cooperation (Chatham House Papers, No. 24). London: Routledge &; Kegan Paul for RIIA, 1984. Pp.97; £4.95.

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Daniel Frei, Assumptions and Perceptions in Disarmament. New York and Geneva: United Nations, 1984. Pp.xiv + 321; NP.

Joseph Rotblat and Alessandro Pascolini (eds.), The Arms Race at a Time of Decision, Annals of Pugwash 1983. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984. Pp.xxiv + 291; £20 (hardback) and £7.95 (paperback).

Philip H. Frankel, Pretoria's Praetorians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Pp. xx + 215; £23.50.

Brian May, Russia, America, the Bomb and the Fall of Western Europe. London: Routledge &; Kegan Paul, 1984. Pp.vii + 248. £11.95.

Robert Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984. Pp.203; $19.95.     

British Armour and rearmament in the 1930s

This paper considers the contribution of military publishing to the nineteenth-century military revolution leading to the Great War. The subject is addressed in four contexts. The first is informational, analyzing the role of military publications in making available data and ideas that increased military effectiveness. The second is syncretic, evaluating the effect of military publications on cohesion within increasingly large, complex armies, and between armies and their societies. The third is internal. It discusses the contributions to professional insecurity generated by print, and by its electronic extensions the telegraph and the telephone. Finally, the paper considers the print revolution's influence on actual war-fighting