BANNING BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) underpins the international regime to control biological weapons. The strength of the treaty however relies on national implementation. The first step for many states party to the Convention is drafting appropriate national laws and regulations. So far, 32 countries in Africa are signatory to the BTWC. More recently, in 2004, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1540, which requires all UN Member States to put in place legislation to prevent the illicit trafficking of material that could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction. The need for such wide-ranging legislation is recognised African countries but its creation and implementation pose specific challenges.     

FOOD AID

Abstract

This paper seeks to critically appraise Africa's position within the United Nations Security Council from the inception of the UN in 1945 until the end of 2010, spanning the entire history of the world body. A few factors make such an appraisal a useful exercise. These include the ongoing debates about the reform of the Council in particular and the UN as a whole, and the growing interest that many African students and observers of and actors in international relations seem to have developed in recent years in the working of the world body. In this appraisal, emphasis will be placed on the origin and rationale behind the establishment of the Security Council as well as the use of the veto power by its permanent members, with a special reference to Africa.     

The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region

In April 2012 a number of former rebels who had been integrated into the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) mutinied and formed the Movement of March 23, better know as the M23 rebel group. The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) has been mediating between Kinshasa and the M23 rebel group since 2012, without much success. In August 2013, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) issued a communiqué after its 33rd Summit of Heads of State and Government, stating that while it commends the ICGLR efforts, the talks have become protracted and a deadline needs to be set. The summit also called for an urgent joint ICGLR–SADC summit to address the crisis in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In addition to this development, the chair of the ICGLR is to be rotated in December 2013, when President José Eduardo Dos Santos of Angola replaces President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. To date, the mediation has been headed by Uganda and this has raised concerns over the credibility of the ICGLR-led process, since Uganda has been accused of supporting the M23 rebellion in a report released in November 2012 by the United Nations Group of Experts on the DRC. One could question whether the Angolan leadership will bring anything new that could have an impact on the crisis. Many expect that the perceived neutrality that Dos Santos could bring to the negotiations may be a positive step towards reviving the talks that have all but stalled at this point. Another issue of interest is whether the joint ICGLR–SADC summit could instil new life into the mediation process.     

EDITOR'S NOTE

This article offers a survey of risks that might arise for strategic stability (defined as a situation with a low probability of major-power war) with the reduction of US and Russian nuclear arsenals to “low numbers” (defined as 1,000 or fewer nuclear weapons on each side). These risks might include US anti-cities targeting strategies that are harmful to the credibility of extended deterrence; renewed European anxiety about a US-Russian condominium; greater vulnerability to Russian noncompliance with agreed obligations; incentives to adopt destabilizing “launch-on-warning” strategies; a potential stimulus to nuclear proliferation; perceptions of a US disengagement from extended deterrence; increased likelihood of non-nuclear arms competitions and conflicts; and controversial pressures on the UK and French nuclear forces. Observers in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states who consider such risks significant have cited four possible measures that might help to contain them: sustained basing of US nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Europe; maintaining a balanced US strategic nuclear force posture; high-readiness means to reconstitute US nuclear forces; and enhanced US and allied non-nuclear military capabilities. These concrete measures might complement the consultations with the NATO allies that the United States would in all likelihood seek with respect to such important adjustments in its deterrence and defense posture.     

SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON THE SPACE RACE IN ASIA

Asia's Space Race: National Motivations, Regional Rivalries, and International Risks, by James Clay Moltz. Columbia University Press, 2012. 290 pages, $35.     

SHADOW WARS

The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World's Most Dangerous Terrorist Power, by Ronen Bergman. Free Press, 2008. 432 pages, $28

Fallout: The True Story of the CIA's Secret War on Nuclear Trafficking, by Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz. Free Press, 2011. 304 pages, $26.

The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year War with Iran, by David Crist. Penguin Press, 2012. 638 pages, $36.

Israel vs. Iran: The Shadow War, by Yaakov Katz and Yoaz Hendel. Potomac Books Inc., 2012. 254 pages, $30.

Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secret Wars, by Dan Raviv. Levant, 2012. 356 pages, $17.

Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, by David E. Sanger. Crown Publishers, 2012. 476 pages, $28.     

EXTRAORDINARY VISITS

North Korea has the bomb but not much of a nuclear arsenal. For fifty years, it pursued the plutonium path to the bomb in parallel with its pursuit of nuclear electricity. My visits to North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex provided a window to its plutonium capabilities. After having made six visits to North Korea, Pyongyang surprised me during my seventh visit last November by showing me a small, modern uranium enrichment plant, which I was told was needed for its new indigenous light water reactor program. However, the same capabilities can be used to produce highly enriched uranium bomb fuel. Following a pattern of having made poor risk-management decisions during much of the past twenty years of diplomacy dealing with the North Korean nuclear threat, Washington remains in a standoff with Pyongyang.     

US Advanced Conventional Systems and Conventional Prompt Global Strike Ambitions:

ABSTRACT

The dangers and risks of employing a Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) capability greatly exceed the benefits. More suitable, if less prompt, alternatives exist to deal with fleeting targets. Even a niche CPGS capability—consisting of approximately twenty systems—carries risks, to say nothing of proposals to develop hundreds or more. Most dangerously, CPGS could stir the pre-emption pot, particularly vis-à-vis states that correctly perceive to be within the gunsights of US CPGS weapons; other states, too, may feel emboldened to emulate this US precedent and undertake their own form of prompt, long-range strike capability. Compressed circumstances surrounding such a scenario could foster unwanted erratic behavior, including the misperception that the threatening missile carries a nuclear weapon. But the true Achilles's heel of the CPGS concept is the unprecedented demands it places on the intelligence community to provide decision makers with “exquisite” intelligence within an hour timeframe. Such compressed conditions leave decision makers with virtually no time to appraise the direct—and potentially unintended—consequences of their actions.     

Re-thinking the Unthinkable: Arms Control in the Twenty-First Century

ABSTRACT

Since the end of the Cold War, arms control proponents tried to make the case for deep nuclear reductions and other forms of security cooperation as necessary for strategic stability. While different versions of strategic stability analysis did sometimes produce innovative proposals, constructive negotiations, and successful ratification campaigns in the past, this analytical framework has become more of a hindrance than a help. Treating arms control as a predominantly technical way to make deterrence more stable by changing force structure characteristics, military operations, relative numbers of weapons on either side, or total number of nuclear weapons gives short shrift to political factors, including the fundamental assumptions about world politics that inform different arms control logics, the quality of political relations among leading states, and the political processes that affect negotiation, ratification, and implementation. This article compares two logics for arms control as a means to enhance strategic stability, one developed by the Cambridge community in the 1960s and one used by the Reagan administration and its successors, with current perspectives on strategic stability in which flexibility and freedom of action are preferable to predictability and arms control. It also contrasts what the Barack Obama administration has tried to achieve through strategic stability dialogues with Russia and China with how they envision security cooperation. It then presents an approach developed during the Cold War by Hedley Bull for thinking about both the technical and the political dimensions of arms control, and suggests that the logic of Cooperative Security (which shares important features with Bull's approach) is a more appropriate and productive way to think about arms control in the twenty-first century than strategic stability analysis is.     

Beyond Iran: Containing Nuclear Development in the Middle East

ABSTRACT

Several states in the Middle East have noted their interest in nuclear energy programs, but current cost and timeline estimates understate the difficulties that these states will face. A state-level analysis of nuclear development capacities in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates suggests that building nuclear infrastructure in the region will, in fact, be a lengthy and expensive endeavor, due to concerns such as export constraints, public opposition, a lack of human resources, and high overhead costs. This has implications for nuclear weapon nonproliferation: first, fears that these developing nuclear energy capabilities may facilitate possible weapon proliferation are premature, and second, there is time to ensure that any burgeoning nuclear infrastructure in the region remains safe and civilian in nature.