Iran Nuke Talks to Continue, Sign of Progress
George Jahn, Associated Press - May 15, 2012
Negotiators for the U.N. nuclear agency and Iran say they have made progress in talks focused on the agency's probe of Tehran's alleged work on nuclear weapons. International Atomic Energy Agency chief negotiator Herman Nackaerts and Iranian envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh told reporters Tuesday that the two sides will meet again next week for more talks in Vienna.

Iran nuclear concession would test big power unity
William Maclean and Fredrik Dahl, Reuters - May 16, 2012
Facing an imminent toughening of sanctions, Iran is hinting at a readiness to give some ground in its long nuclear stand-off with world powers, but any flexibility could split their ranks and lead to protracted uncertainty about how to respond.

Living with a nuclear Iran
Charles Pena, McClatchy News Service (Op-Ed) - May 15, 2012
After months of heated rhetoric, the threat of a conflict with Iran over its nuclear program seems to be subsiding.

Korean Peninsula

China pushes North Korea to drop nuclear test plan
Benjamin Kang Lim, Reuters - May 16, 2012
China has been quietly and gently pressuring North Korea to scrap plans for a third nuclear test, said two sources with knowledge of closed-door discussions between the countries, but there is no indication how the North will react. If North Korea goes ahead with the test, China would consider taking some retaliatory steps, but they would not be substantive, a source with ties to Pyongyang and Beijing told Reuters.

Defense Budget

Panel Calls For Steep Cuts In US Nukes
Associated Press - May 15, 2012
An influential panel is calling for an 80 percent reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons and an elimination of all nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missiles. In a report for the advocacy group Global Zero, retired Gen. James Cartwright and others argue that the U.S. needs no more than 900 total nuclear weapons for its security in a post-Cold War world. The report chaired by Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff known to be close to President Barack Obama, comes at a time that the president is weighing a range of sharp nuclear reductions.

Obama administration threatens veto over Defense bill
Jeremy Herb, The Hill (Blog) - May 15, 2012
The Obama administration threatened Tuesday to veto the House version of the Defense authorization bill that's headed to the floor this week over restrictions on implementing the New START treaty, reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal and limiting the transfer of Guantanamo detainees.

United States

Military Curbs F-22 Flights Over Oxygen Concerns
Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times - May 15, 2012
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta on Tuesday ordered immediate restrictions on flights of the F-22 Raptor fighter jet after a “60 Minutes” program that profiled two pilots who refused to fly the planes because of fears of oxygen deprivation in the cockpit.

UK warns of more EU Iran sanctions if no change
Reuters  – May 14
The European Union will impose tougher sanctions on Iran if it fails to take concrete steps to allay international concerns over its nuclear programme, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Monday.

Iran, unable to sell oil, stores it on tankers
Joby Warrick and Steven Mufson, Washington Post – May 13
Hobbled by sanctions against its banks and a growing international boycott of its petroleum, Iran is seeing its revenue sag while its oil sits in storage depots and floats in tankers with nowhere to go, U.S. security officials and diplomats say.

NORTH KOREA
White House shoots down GOP proposal for nuclear weapons in South Korea
Julian Pecquet, The Hill (Blog) – May 14
The Obama administration has no intention of deploying tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea in response to North Korean provocations, the State Department reaffirmed on Monday. The comments come after Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee last week adopted an amendment to the 2013 spending bill that expressed support for more conventional forces and for the United States to “redeploy tactical nuclear weapons to the Western Pacific region” in response to nuclear weapons and missile tests by North Korea.

UNITES STATES
Why Spend Money on an Unneeded Facility?
Stephen Young, Roll Call – May 15
The Obama administration’s decision to delay for at least five years construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico […] is the right one.

The Canberra Commission, a group of international experts appointed by the Australian government, reported in 1996: “A nuclear weapon free world can be secured and maintained through political commitment, and anchored in an enduring and binding legal framework.” The political commitment necessary will depend on international public pressure to end a complacent reliance on weapons of unprecedented destructiveness and will require, as the commissioners stated, irrevocable treaty arrangements that are rigorously enforced.  

How feasible are those treaty arrangements is not clear at this time.  What is certain is that it will need a sea-change in international relations and adherence to international laws that is going to take generations and will not happen in one revolutionary step.

Ever since the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in August 1945, there has been a contest between those who believe nuclear weapons are the ultimate guarantors of national security and emblematic of a state’s importance in the world and those who regard them as morally indefensible or militarily useless or both, and oppose their proliferation.  

The UN, whose charter was signed in June 1945 with no anticipation of the nuclear age, moved quickly to establish an Atomic Energy Commission reporting to the Security Council: in the summer of 1946, it convened to consider the Acheson-Lilienthal plan proposed by the United States.

This plan attempted to divide nuclear activities into ‘dangerous’ (those that could lead to the manufacture of atomic weapons) and ‘safe’ (eg electricity generation). An international agency would be set up to restrict the former, while promoting the latter.

The lead author of the Acheson-Lilienthal plan, Robert J Oppenheimer, stated that if it became an international treaty, the US senate in order to ratify it would have to accept the ‘partial abrogation of our national sovereignty’ – a price worth paying to establish international control and to diminish the risk of future nuclear war.

The head of the U.S. Army, General Dwight D Eisenhower, explicitly agreed with this sentiment. Furthermore, both men thought that atomic weapons could not simply be abolished and were alert to the prospect of other countries breaking their promise not to build them.

Oppenheimer wanted the U.S. to construct atomic power plants that could easily be switched from electricity generation to the manufacture of fissile material for bombs, while Eisenhower wanted to reserve the right for a coalition of law-abiding nations to use atomic bombs against a recalcitrant state that was threatening to use them in breach of any treaty.

After many months of listless debate the Acheson-Lilienthal plan failed, but it brought to the surface many issues that still have to be resolved in any international effort to prohibit nuclear weapons.

Once the Cold War was underway in earnest, adherents of nuclear weapons were in an almost unchallenged ascendancy and a spiral of nuclear warhead production ensued. The first break in the trend came in 1987, at a time when the combined arsenals of the two superpowers amounted to about 70,000 weapons.

The two leaders, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, had talked tantalizingly about the complete elimination of nuclear weapons at their summit in Reykjavik the previous year, but did manage to conclude the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that abolished a whole class of weapons carried by medium-range missiles.

In 1990, Gorbachev and President George W.H. Bush signed the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), against the determined resistance of their own defense establishments. The following year, they also effected radical cuts in their tactical nuclear weapons arsenals without going through official negotiations first.

Nearly 20 years elapsed before the new START agreement that restrict Russia and the U.S.  to no more than 1,550 deployed weapons with limits on the numbers of delivery vehicles, but it made no stipulations about the thousands of warheads each had stockpiled.

While other nations developed their own nuclear weapons (sometimes with outside help), none of these possesses more than several hundreds, and it seems improbable that there will be any international progress towards a nuclear weapon free world (NWFW) until the two leading Nuclear Weapons States (NWS) dispose of their enormous stockpiles.

Arms control agreements are impossible to reach during political conflicts, and it is hard to imagine that if the process of negotiating a NWFW is going to depend on the complete satisfaction of all the individual Nuclear Weapons States, it will ever be completed. In order for it to happen, there has to be a general recognition that all can benefit from improved collective security and the removal of such a destructive threat to the planet.

Robert McNamara, U.S. Defense Secretary during the Vietnam War, in his later years became a staunch anti-nuclear campaigner because he believed: ‘The indefinite combination of nuclear weapons and human fallibility will lead to a nuclear exchange.’

Nuclear deterrence that seemed an established reality in the bipolar Cold War era, is a much less convincing and straightforward concept in a world of multiple nuclear powers and in a time of extremist terrorist groups. The more fingers there are on nuclear buttons, the greater the risk of an unintended or accidental launch.

The advantages of collective security as opposed to individual national security are slowly being appreciated, at least in the West. The rhetoric of a NWFW has become respectable as evidenced by the 2007 Wall Street Journal article by four distinguished US former statesmen and President Obama’s electrifying 2009 speech in Prague. Inspirational words are a necessary stimulus for political action, but it is action that will determine the reality of a NWFW.

There are already international agreements, notably the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that is awaiting ratification by the U.S. and some other Nuclear Weapons States, and the simple policy commitment on all sides to No-First-Use would improve the atmosphere for negotiation.

The large number of nuclear weapons already in existence could be readily reduced without upsetting perceived military balances, but as has been long recognized, the significance of individual nuclear warheads would grow as the world’s supply approached zero.

The world will not stand still during the long period envisioned, but whatever political or military conflicts arise, as the stores of nuclear weapons diminish, there would be a lessening of one global existential threat. Monitoring and verification systems in a NWFW would have to be rigorous and, just as Eisenhower suggested in 1946, there would need to be immediate preventive military action against any potential aggressor who was violating the disarmament treaty.

Andrew Brown - Andrew Brown is a practicing physician as well as a research associate with the Managing the Atom Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Brown is an adviser to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. His most recent book is ‘Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: the life and work of Joseph Rotblat’ (Oxford,2012)

On 21 March 1963, at what was then called a “news conference,” President Kennedy said that he was “haunted by the feeling that by 1970 … there may be ten nuclear powers instead of four, and by 1975 fifteen or twenty;” and in a subsequent response, he extended the estimate: “I can see the possibility in the 1970s … of a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these [nuclear] weapons. I regard that as the greatest possible danger and hazard.”

These comments were made in the context of President Kennedy’s support for a ban on the testing of nuclear weapons. In addition to his concern over the dangers of radioactive fallout, Kennedy believed that such a ban would prevent other countries from obtaining nuclear weapons. He had advocated a cessation of nuclear weapons testing since 1956, and had taken a strong stand on the issue during the 1960 presidential campaign; and following his election, he had pledged that the U.S. would not resume nuclear testing in the atmosphere.

Following more than eight years of sporadic negotiations, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States on 5 August 1963 signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, in space and under water. In deference to the Soviet Union’s adamant opposition to on-site inspections, underground testing was permitted so long as fallout would be confined to the geographic limits of the country conducting the test. The Senate approved the Treaty 80-19 on 23 September, and President Kennedy signed the ratification on 7 October, the month before he was assassinated on 22 November 1963.

It was not until almost a year later, on 1 November 1964, that President Johnson took action to address the issue of the prospective expansion of the number of states with nuclear weapons by announcing the appointment of a Committee on Nuclear Proliferation. Its members included prominent statesmen - Roswell Gilpatrick, as chairman, John McCloy, Allen Dulles and General Alfred Gruenther - and prestigious scientists, Herbert York and George Kistiakowsky.

It took the Committee less than three months to reach consensus, and it issued its report on 21 January 1965. The report warned that the world was fast approaching a point of no return in prospects for controlling the proliferation of nuclear weapon states; and it concluded that the U.S. government must accord non-proliferation “far greater weight and support” in a “concerted and intensified effort.” This laid the basis for U.S. leadership in negotiating the landmark Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed in 1968; by then, China’s acquisition of a nuclear capability had increased the
number of nuclear weapons states to five.

Today, there are nine states with nuclear explosive devices, with the addition of the three non-members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel, India and Pakistan; and the one country that has withdrawn from the Treaty, North Korea. This is a far lower number than the 25 states that President Kennedy feared would possess nuclear weapons as early as the 1970s. Yet globalization of information and technology has resulted in a situation similar to that confronted by President Kennedy, with the potential for many nations to reach a “breakout” capability to produce nuclear weapons on very short notice. We have come full cycle, with the need once again for “concerted and intensified efforts” to strengthen the non-proliferation regime.

---------

Lt. General Robert Gard (USA, Ret.) is currently the Senior Military Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC where he works on nuclear arms control and nuclear non-proliferation issues.  He retired after a distinguished 31-year career in the US Army.  Having served in Korea and Vietnam, Gen. Gard held distinguished posts during his military career, including as an executive assistant to then-Secretary of Defense McNamara, as the first Director of Human Resources Development, Commander General of the US Army Personnel Center, Commanding General of Ft. Ord, CA and the 7th Infantry Division and as President of the National Defense University.  

Hollande and Iran
John Vinocur, New York Times (Op-Ed) - May 9, 2012
In the run-up to the French presidential election, the Iranian newspaper Tehran Emrooz wrote that “emphasis must be given to the advantages of a victory by François Hollande.” "A victory will lead to a softening of Paris’ policies toward Iran,” it said. “France under Sarkozy was the strong voice in the European Union against Iran. Hollande’s victory will bring nuances to this approach.”

Group Sees Sign of Iran Cleanup at Nuclear Site
Rick Gladstone, New York Times - May 9, 2012
New commercial satellite imagery of an Iranian military site that has remained off limits to international nuclear inspectors shows recent activity that suggests the Iranians have tried to clean up a suspected explosives testing chamber there, a group that tracks nuclear proliferation said Wednesday.

Russia

Putin Pulls Out Of US Summit, Meeting With Obama
Associated Press - May 9, 2012
Russian President Vladimir Putin is skipping a planned visit to the United States this month for an economic summit and a much-anticipated meeting with President Barack Obama, the White House announced Wednesday.

United States

House panel OKs missile defense site on East Coast
Robert Burns and Donna Cassata, Associated Press - May 9, 2012
The House Armed Services Committee has voted to build a missile defense site on the East Coast even though the Pentagon says the facility is unnecessary.

Don't let foxes guard our nuclear henhouse
Katherine Fuchs, The Hill (Blog) - May 9, 2012
Today the House Armed Services Committee will debate the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), possibly overturning 25 years of safety standards at our nation’s weapons facilities. During this debate members of this committee will have a choice – they can protect communities around nuclear sites and the employees who work there or they can go on record as turning their back on those safety standards.

House to vote on GOP plan that would forestall Pentagon cuts
Rosalind Helderman, Washington Post - May 9, 2012
The House is expected to vote Thursday on a Republican plan that would spare the Pentagon from the deep across-the-board spending cuts envisioned as part of last summer’s debt-ceiling agreement, reviving what has been an emotional debate in Washington about the best ways to reduce the federal budget deficit.

Bomber Should Be Nuclear-Ready From Start, Lawmakers Say
Roxana Tiron, Bloomberg - May 9, 2012
House lawmakers pressed the U.S. Air Force to ensure its planned new bomber can carry nuclear weapons as soon as it is operational.

These alphabet soup  Washington programs and agencies are not household names the way MEDICARE and MEDICAID are but their existence is vital to make sure that countries with nuclear weapons are responsible about getting rid of their nuclear weapons, including nuclear warheads and missile launchers. warheads.

Beyond the important issue of nuclear control and reduction, the Lugar defeat has important political consequences for the Republican Party and its inextricable connection to the Tea Party , a voice of political extremism. The Tea Party, in snake-like fashion, has its arms and legs wrapped around the Senate and House Republican Parties. So far Governor Romney, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, has not separated himself from the Tea Party.

I. Senator Lugar's Legacy

Senator Lugar is a strong conservative who believes in government that is accountable, responsive, efficient and effective. He is a builder, not a destroyer.  As a conservative he believes that a foreign policy must be stable as it reduces risk and prevents chaos. He cares about his country before stoking partisan wars.  As a conservative, he believes in the use of American power and at the same time recognizes the need for restraining that power. Lugar regularly voiced warnings about the adverse consequences of committing U.S. troops to foreign wars. He wanted us to have an exit strategy before we committed ourselves to long troop commitments fighting abroad.

Lugar stood up to special interests. Nobody fought the wasteful subsidies associated with our farm program as hard as he did. As a farmer, he advocated against his own economic interest. We liberals knew that his conservatism was a sharp area of disagreement as he regularly opposed critical domestic safety net programs or important innovations such as the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

Lugar though believed in the necessity of government. He was one conservative who recognized that raising the debt ceiling was not a liberal or conservative issue.  When Democratic appointees were competent he supported them as he did Justices Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan. Lugar consistently gave his constituents his judgment as he vigorously represented their interests.

Responsibility and deliberation is part of what Lugar will be remembered for. That combination is now lacking in too many of our elected officials.

II. Lugar's Initiatives: Part of the Legacy

Senator Lugar, with his ally Senator Nunn (D-Ga), then the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, created a congressional initiative that influenced the direction of our foreign policy as the Soviet Union was falling apart. These Senators had the foresight to create the Cooperative Treat Reduction (CTR) program and house it in the Defense Department. They persuaded their congressional colleagues in the Senate and House to support the legislation which was accomplished two weeks before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Their careful work gained the support of then-President George H. W. Bush, his cabinet and particularly military officials in the Pentagon. At the time, bi-partisanship was still not an endangered idea. Its bi-partisanship and conception made it a significant innovation. Results matter. CTR deactivated hundreds of nuclear weapons. Better yet the legislation led to de-nuclearizing of three states in the former Soviet Union--Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. These states possessed more nuclear weapons than China, France and Great Britain combined.

Lugar and Nunn did not rest on their laurels. They have stayed at it, Lugar as a Senator, and Nunn through Georgia Tech's Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and Nuclear Threat Initiative. They worked on practical ways to stop threats posed by nuclear, chemical and biological materials.

III. Senator Lugar and the New Start Treaty

Lugar was a prompt supporter of the New Start Treaty. He played no games. This is politically important because as the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, he is subject to a Senate Republican caucus vote. That threat of discipline from hard line Republicans, who follow a policy of no cooperation with Democrats, has made other ranking members quake in their boots. Not Lugar on New Start.

What is under appreciated is that the legacy of CTR, and its being housed in the Defense Department, led the way to the military officials understanding the value of New Start. Their solid support for its ratification put senior military officials and Lugar and the Obama Administration in the same place on New Start. That contributed to the support from Senator Alexander (R-TN) which brought further support for New Start.

The changes among Senate Republicans is far-reaching. In the midst of the cold war, a majority of Senate Republicans approved the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963. Long after the Cold War ended, a majority of Republicans opposed the New Start Treaty in spite of the military's enthusiasm for it. Their principal reason was they were opposed to any achievement for President Obama.

IV. Ugly Politics

The Lugar defeat shows that conservatives are not exempt from the fanatic zealotry of the Tea  Party. Voting for New Start, lifting the debt ceiling, voting to confirm Justices Sotomayor and Kagan are now considered mortal sins that require excommunication.

Obama's praise for Lugar for the work they did together on nuclear non-proliferation, when Obama served in the Senate, was distorted into making it appear that Lugar was an Obama lackey. As an old timer, I recall conservative George Smathers attacking liberal Claude Pepper in the Florida primary by saying over and over again in rural Florida that Pepper's sister was a thespian. Facts and quotes, even if by themselves are truthful, can lead to fear or a lie as it did with Lugar and Obama.

Republicans who win landslide elections as Lugar and Olympia Snowe of Maine did are now threatened in primaries because they do not measure up to ideological purity. Snowe chose to not fight. Senator Hatch (R-Ut) prided himself once on working with Senator Kennedy on anti-smoking legislation and juvenile delinquency issues. He races the other way now, abandoning the Dream Act which Lugar did not do.

The Lugar defeat shows that conservatives who speak softly, and carry a nuanced stick, are an endangered species. Being conservative is no protection against excommunication.

With it the Republican leadership--McConnell, Kyl, Boehner and Cantor-- are paralyzed by the Tea Party. In every respect they are intertwined with the Tea Party. The Republican Congressional leadership, by their silence and weakness, aid and abet political extremism. Governor Romney's silence on extremism makes him one who aids and abets political extremism.

V. The Future

If President Obama is elected to a second term, I hope he finds a way of involving Senator Lugar in his Administration. There is a place for statesmen of Richard Lugar's quality who will give advice without fear or favor.

Others need to take up the mantle on Cooperative Threat Reduction. I hope that Senator Levin (D-Mi), the Armed Services Committee Chairman, and Senator Kerry (D-Mass) the Foreign Relations Chairman, do so. Their task is to engage Republicans who will not be fearful. One such possibility is Senator Alexander (R-TN), who stepped up on New Start, and has been mentored by another statesman, Howard Baker.

That bi-partisan combination will provide a living legacy to Senator Lugar's contributions.

David Cohen,
Washington DC

Mideast Nuclear Conference in Jeopardy
George Jahn, Associated Press - May 8, 2012
Hopes dimmed Tuesday for staging major nuclear talks later this year between Israel and its Muslim rivals, as Iran and Arab countries at a 189-nation conference accused Israel of being the greatest threat to peace in the region and Egypt warned that Arab states might rethink their opposition to atomic arms.

Iran Seeks to Scuttle U.S. Pact With Kabul
Nathan Hodge and Habib Khan Totakhil, Wall Street Journal - May 8, 2012
Iran is raising pressure on Afghanistan to scuttle a newly signed security accord with the U.S., threatening to deport Afghan refugees and migrant workers if Afghanistan's parliament ratifies the deal.

New Israel Partner Offers Moderate Voice on Iran
Isabel Kershner, New York Times - May 8, 2012
Less than two weeks ago, Yuval Diskin, the recently retired chief of Israel’s internal security agency, carried out a blistering verbal assault on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, questioning their judgment in handling what they regard as an Iranian nuclear threat and accusing them of making decisions “based on messianic feelings.”

Missile Defense

GOP plans East Coast missile defense shield
Jeremy Herb, The Hill (blog) - May 8, 2012
A new Republican plan to set up a missile defense site on the East Coast has attracted election-year fireworks, with Democrats accusing the GOP of pushing the idea to undercut President Obama’s national-security credentials.

Afghanistan

As The Clock Ticks, Americans Train Afghan Troops
Tom Bowman, NPR - May 8, 2012
Just outside Kandahar, the main city in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military is starting a new program it hopes will wean Afghan troops off American assistance. A dozen or so American soldiers make up one of the Security Force Assistance Teams, and the goal is to help the Afghan army plan for operations and supply itself in the field. But the mission is still a work in progress.