NATO Territorial Ballistic Missile Defense and its Implications for Arms Control

ABSTRACT

Since 2002, NATO's territorial missile defense has evoked continuous debates between NATO states and the Russian Federation. Thirteen years have passed without reaching a common denominator. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the historical background of the debate and the technical details of the missile defense system, highlighting its shortcomings and the state of its deployment process. It also contrasts the military-technical and political arguments of both sides, before addressing the applicable norms of international law to highlight violations and the effect of this noncompliance on existing arms control measures.     

WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

Nuclear optimists and pessimists disagree on whether the odds of nuclear war are low or high. This viewpoint assesses the odds of nuclear war over the past sixty-six years, exploring three pathways to nuclear war: an international crisis leading directly to nuclear war, an accident or misperception leading to nuclear escalation or nuclear retaliation against an imaginary attack, and a general conventional war leading to nuclear war. The assessment is based on the application of Bayes's theorem and other statistical reasoning and finds that the expected probability of nuclear war during this historical period was greater than 50 percent. This level of risk is unacceptably high. It is therefore urgent that effective measures be taken to substantially reduce the risk of nuclear war.     

Nuclear Fusion Power for Weapons Purposes

Fusion reactors have the potential to be used for military purposes. This article provides quantitative estimates about weapon-relevant materials produced in future commercial fusion reactors and discusses how suitable such materials are for use in nuclear weapons. Whether states will consider such use in the future will depend on specific regulatory, political, economic, and technical boundary conditions. Based on expert interviews and the political science literature, we identify three of these conditions that could determine whether fusion power will have a military dimension in the second half of this century: first, the technological trajectory of global energy policies; second, the management of a peaceful power transition between rising and declining powers; and third, the overall acceptance of the nuclear normative order. Finally, the article discusses a few regulatory options that could be implemented by the time fusion reactors reach technological maturity and become commercially available; such research on fusion reactor safeguards should start as early as possible and accompany the current research on experimental fusion reactors.     

U.S. policy on preventive war and preemption

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina, the United States government has spent tens of billions of dollars to improve the nation's ability to respond to a natural disaster or terrorist attack, but the emphasis on immediate first response has left many long-term environmental, political, and technological challenges unaddressed. Although a dirty bomb attack is unlikely to yield the same amount of physical devastation and death as caused by Katrina or a nuclear weapon, the social, psychological, and economic impact would be enormous. At present, however, the United States lacks the technology necessary to decontaminate a large, densely populated urban area under time, political, and economic constraints. This article reviews past cleanup experiences and current decontamination capabilities to consider the long-term implications of a dirty bomb, identifies weaknesses in America's existing response capabilities, notes possible areas of political friction, and considers the implications of the failure to adequately prepare. Having the appropriate decontamination techniques established and long-term plans in place before an incident occurs will significantly improve the government's ability to protect public and environmental security, establish a viable decontamination strategy, allow residents to return to their homes, and get the local economy back on its feet.     

BUSTING OUT

This report explores Iranian popular opinion on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the determinants of Iranian attitudes. Using data from a 2008 survey of 710 Iranians administered by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, we find that that a significant minority of Iranians (10 percent in 2006 and 14 percent in 2008) would prefer that Iran withdraw from the NPT. Our statistical analysis shows that Iranians who fear a US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and distrust the International Atomic Energy Agency are more likely to want to quit the NPT. We therefore argue that those who do not trust other nations are most likely to oppose the NPT.     

Attacking the Atom: Does Bombing Nuclear Facilities Affect Proliferation?

Abstract

What are the consequences of military strikes against nuclear facilities? In particular, do they ‘work’ by delaying the target states ability to build the bomb? This article addresses these questions by conducting an analysis of 16 attacks against nuclear facilities from 1942 to 2007. We analyze strikes that occurred during peacetime and raids that took place in the context of an ongoing interstate war. The findings indicate that strikes are neither as uniformly fruitless as the skeptics would suggest, nor as productive as advocates have claimed. There is evidence that the peacetime attacks delayed the target's nuclear program, although the size of this effect is rather modest. The wartime cases were less successful, as attacks often missed their targets either due to operational failure or limited intelligence on the location of critical targets. In our concluding section we show that many of the conditions that were conducive to past success are not present in the contemporary Iran case. Overall, our findings reveal an interesting paradox. The historical cases that have successfully delayed proliferation are those when the attacking state struck well before a nuclear threat was imminent. Yet, this also happens to be when strikes are the least legitimate under international law, meaning that attacking under these conditions is most likely to elicit international censure.     

Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment. by William Inboden

This article predicts that the nuclear weapon states may opt sooner for nuclear elimination than generally expected. This delegitimation of nuclear weapons is due to five factors whose importance has grown since the mid-1990s: nuclear proliferation, the risk of nuclear terrorism, the nuclear taboo, missile defence, and the increased importance of international law. The article starts with categorizing nuclear weapons policies: nuclear primacy, maximum deterrence, minimum deterrence, existential deterrence, and post-existential deterrence. The nuclear weapon states will probably shift their policies from nuclear primacy (US), maximum deterrence (Russia), minimum or existential deterrence (UK, France, Israel, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea) to post-existential deterrence (or elimination), taking one step at a time.     

Why Culture Matters: Revisiting the Sino-Indian Border War of 1962

This article examines the nuclear command and control (C²) system implemented in Pakistan since 1998, and discusses its potential consequences for the risk of inadvertent or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons. I argue that troubled civil-military relations and Pakistan's doctrine of ‘asymmetric escalation’ account for the creation of a command and control system with different characteristics during peacetime and military crises. Although the key characteristics of Pakistan's nuclear C² system allow relatively safe nuclear operations during peacetime, operational deployment of nuclear weapons during military standoffs is likely to include only rudimentary protections against inadvertent or unauthorised nuclear release. The implication of this study is that any shift from peacetime to wartime command and control procedures is likely to further destabilise Indo-Pakistani relations during the early stages of a diplomatic or military standoff, and introduce a non-trivial risk of accidental escalation to the nuclear level.     

Nuclear Incoherence: Deterrence Theory and Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons in Russia

Russian reliance on its non-strategic nuclear arsenal has been an ongoing concern for security experts. What is the Russian de facto employment doctrine for this arsenal? This article argues that Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNW) have no defined mission and no deterrence framework has been elaborated for them. This study disentangles Russian thoughts and deeds about regional nuclear deterrence and the role of NSNW in it. Situating the Russian case in the comparative context, the article argues that establishing a coherent theater nuclear posture and streamlining it with the national level deterrence strategy is a demanding and frequently unfulfilled task. It is likely to remain as such for both current and prospective nuclear states that consider an asymmetrical deterrence posture.     

The 1958 Anglo-American Mutual Defence Agreement: The Search for Nuclear Interdependence

Written on the 50th anniversary, this article focuses on the negotiations between Britain and the United States which led to the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement and the beginning of the ‘special nuclear relationship’ which has lasted down to the present day. It is argued that the eventual success of the negotiations had a lot to do with the key roles of Eisenhower and Macmillan but that a transatlantic ‘advocacy coaltion’ of nuclear scientists, defence and intelligence officials also played an important part at the operational level in achieving and subsequently shaping the kind of relationship which developed. Attention is also given to the longer term significance of the agreement, especially in terms of the arguments about its impact on nuclear proliferation.