WMD Occasional Papers

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  Future Directions for Great Power Nuclear Arms Control: Policy Options and National Security Implications

  T. Justin Bronder

  The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which represents the sole treaty currently limiting nuclear arms arsenals between the United States and Russia, will expire in 2026. What approach should the United States take as it seeks to maintain a “safe, secure, and effective” nuclear deterrent while also considering possible future negotiations on nuclear arms control and risk reduction agreements?

  This monograph by 2020 National Defense University-U.S. Strategic Command Scholar Lt Col Justin Bronder, USAF, assesses four different approaches for the United States to consider: 1) seek a bilateral U.S.-Russia agreement that maintains strategic nuclear forces at New START levels with some additional transparency measures on missile defenses and “tactical” nuclear weapons; 2) attempt to negotiate a multilateral legally-binding treaty aimed at significant reductions of nuclear weapons; 3) hold separate talks with Russia and China on bilateral, politically-binding agreements seeking to manage nuclear risks; or 4) unilaterally pursue nuclear superiority. The paper provides a detailed evaluation of each of these potential options across five categories: strategic stability (How might this approach affect arms race stability and first-strike stability?); proliferation (Will this affect whether other states consider developing or otherwise attempting to acquire nuclear weapons?); extended deterrence (How might U.S. allies respond? Will it affect their views of U.S. nuclear security guarantees?); cost (How might it affect the U.S. budget?); and competitive advantage (How might it affect the “direction and velocity” of strategic competition with Russia and China?).

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  A Short History of Biological Warfare: From Pre-History to the 21st Century

  W. Seth Carus

  This short monograph reviews the history of biological warfare (BW) from prehistory to the present. It covers what we know about the practice of BW and briefly describes the programs that developed BW weapons based on the best available research. To the extent possible, it primarily draws on the work of historians who used primary sources, relying where possible on studies specifically focused on BW. By broadening our knowledge of BW, such studies have enabled us to write about the topic with more accuracy and detail than could have been done even a few years ago.

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  The Soviet Biological Weapons Program and Its Legacy in Today’s Russia

  Raymond A. Zilinskas

  In its first Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Case Study, the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction (CSWMD) at the National Defense University examined President Richard M. Nixon’s decision, on November 25, 1969, to terminate the U.S. offensive biological weapons program.1 This occasional paper seeks to explain why the Soviet government, at approximately the same time, decided to do essentially the opposite, namely, to establish a large biological warfare (BW) program that would be driven by newly discovered and powerful biotechnologies. By introducing the innovation of recombinant DNA technology—commonly referred to as genetic engineering—the Soviets were attempting to create bacterial and viral strains that were more useful for military purposes than were strains found in nature.

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  The Future of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Their Nature and Role in 2030

  John P. Caves Jr. and W. Seth Carus

  The longstanding efforts of the international community writ large to exclude weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from international competition and conflict could be undermined in 2030. The proliferation of these weapons is likely to be harder to prevent and thus potentially more prevalent. Nuclear weapons are likely to play a more significant role in the international security environment, and current constraints on the proliferation and use of chemical and biological weapons could diminish. There will be greater scope for WMD terrorism, though it is not possible to predict the frequency or severity of any future employment of WMD. New forms of WMD—beyond chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons—are unlikely to emerge by 2030, but cyber weapons will probably be capable of inflicting such widespread disruption that the United States may become as reliant on the threat to impose unacceptable costs to deter large-scale cyber attack as it currently is to deter the use of WMD. The definition of weapons of mass destruction will remain uncertain and controversial in 2030, and its value as an analytic category will be increasingly open to question.

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  Defining "Weapons of Mass Destruction"

  W. Seth Carus

  In January 2005, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld directed that U.S. Strategic Command become “the lead combatant commander for integrating and synchronizing DOD [Department of Defense] in combating WMD [weapons of mass destruction].” This assignment was in response to the White House’s December 2002 National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction.
  
  The Secretary’s memorandum, however, raised a thorny definitional problem with clear bureaucratic implications: what are weapons of mass destruction? Unfortunately, that is not an easily answered question. There are numerous definitions of WMD with some official or semi-official standing (more than 40 are identified in this paper), although most are variations of 1 of 5 basic definitions. In fact, even DOD has adopted alternative and fundamentally inconsistent definitions, including some different from the one used by the White House in its strategy and policy documents.

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  Proliferation Security Initiative: Origins and Evolution

  Susan J, Koch

  On December 9, 2002, the United States and Spanish navies cooperated to interdict a North Korean vessel, the So San, in the Arabian Sea.¹ The operation initially appeared to be an unqualified success, a textbook example of interdiction to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), related materials, or delivery systems. According to press reports, the United States began tracking the vessel when it first left North Korea, believing that it was carrying a cargo related to Scud ballistic missiles. The So San flew no flag, making it a stateless vessel under international law, subject to interception and boarding by warships on the high seas.² The United States asked the Spanish navy to stop and search the So San when the ship reached the patrol area of Combined Task Force (CTF) 150, then under Spanish command. The mission of CTF 150 was “to promote maritime security in order to counter terrorist acts and related illegal activities” in the Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean.³ Thus, the United States proposed—and Spain agreed—to use a tool developed to combat global terrorism in a counterproliferation mission.

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  Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

  Paul I. Bernstein, John P. Caves Jr., and W. Seth Carus

  Nearly 20 years have passed since the United States began worrying in earnest about the risks of regional weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation. In the run-up to Operation Desert Storm in 1990, the Department of Defense (DOD) had no systematic understanding of or approach to prosecuting a regional war against an adversary armed with and prepared to use nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. The improvisational efforts to prepare for possible Iraqi WMD use gave way after the war to a concerted effort during the Bill Clinton administration to prepare the Armed Forces to confront WMD-armed regional adversaries, while working to defuse such threats through diplomacy—coercive and otherwise. The George W. Bush administration brought to the WMD problem a different set of assumptions and beliefs that led to new areas of emphasis and new approaches, many of them shaped by the need, after the attacks of 2001, to confront more directly the threat of WMD use by violent nonstate actors. The following traces the general evolution of the countering WMD enterprise in the Clinton and Bush administrations.

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  International Partnerships to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction

  Paul I. Bernstein

  Building international partnerships is a central element of U.S. strategy to combat weapons of mass destruction (WMD). U.S. policy recognizes that the proliferation problem is far too large, complex, and important for any one nation to tackle alone. Meaningful and sustained progress in combating WMD requires active collaboration among all states that have a stake in managing the problem and the will and capacity to contribute. Current policies build on a foundation of global cooperation that dates back decades, even as they reflect significant changes in emphasis to adapt to contemporary proliferation challenges.
  
  These challenges result in large part from the ongoing and in some respects intensifying impact of globalization. As many have observed, the phenomenon is twofold—technological and political—and both dimensions are making the WMD proliferation problem more complex and difficult to manage. Technologies with broad legitimate uses that could be applied to unconventional weapons continue to spread globally at a rapid rate, and the growing demand (and competition) for energy, in particular, has the potential to fuel nuclear proliferation pressures in strategically important and sometimes unstable parts of the world. Politically, globalization has contributed to the erosion of traditional state power and boundaries and served to empower both smaller states that are seeking to challenge the status quo and nonstate actors—ranging from individuals to transnational networks—with independent and often extremist agendas. The results are clear enough: significant proliferation challenges from states whose WMD programs confer on them disproportionate strategic importance; growing interest on the part of terrorists to acquire WMD; and weak states and poorly governed spaces where illicit radical and criminal networks flourish. As these phenomena converge, new proliferation pathways are likely to emerge.

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  The Future Nuclear Landscape

  Paul I. Bernstein, John P. Caves Jr., and John F. Reichart

  In important ways, the world is at a nuclear crossroads. The complex and dynamic nuclear landscape presents us with challenges along at least four axes: regional nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, great power nuclear relations, and the security implications of increased interest in nuclear energy. These problems are interrelated in ways that the national security community does not fully understand. Strategy and policy frameworks do not address them in sufficiently integrated fashion. New conceptual thinking is required to develop a more unified understanding of and approach to managing the risks and opportunities posed by these 21st-century nuclear challenges.
  
  Today, more than at any other time in the nuclear era, nuclear capacity and potential (knowledge, technology, and materials) are accessible to a growing number of actors with more ambitious goals. The result is a high degree of nuclear latency that challenges traditional thinking about nuclear threats. Whereas 30 or 40 years ago, only a handful of countries were assumed to know how to acquire nuclear weapons, as many as 35 or 40 nations currently are believed to be in the know, and many more could become so based on their participation in civilian nuclear energy programs.

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  Can al Qaeda Be Deterred from Using Nuclear Weapons?

  Lewis A. Dunn

  The use of a nuclear weapon would be the ultimate al Qaeda terrorist outrage. Over the past decade, however, the prevailing assessment of the likelihood of terrorist acquisition and use of nuclear (specifically), biological, chemical, or radiological (NBC/R) weapons has been reversed.1 In the 1990s, most policymakers and analysts were highly skeptical of warnings of terrorist use of these weapons. Today, the widespread assumption is that al Qaeda’s acquisition of NBC/R weapons would be rapidly followed by their use—that is, employment via the release of an agent, the dispersal of radiological materials, or the detonation of a nuclear explosive. This paper explores that proposition. In so doing, it seeks to illuminate the conditions and calculations that could shape al Qaeda’s posture regarding employment of NBC/R weapons, as well as to highlight possible contributions to the overall U.S. war on terror “at the margin” of deterrence.

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  Iraq and After: Taking the Right Lessons for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction

  Michael Eisenstadt

  Recent proliferation surprises in the Middle East—the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, Libya’s decision to eliminate its WMD, and evidence of significant progress by Iran toward a nuclear weapons capability—underscore the need for the nonproliferation community to reassess some of its key assumptions about WMD proliferation and the nature of the evolving international landscape.
  
  Such a reassessment must be highly speculative. Much about Iraq’s WMD programs is likely to remain a mystery due to the destruction of records and the looting of facilities following the fall of Baghdad, as well as the continuing silence of many Iraqi weapons scientists and former government officials.¹ Likewise, the calculations driving key proliferationrelated decisions by Libya and Iran remain murky. This lack of knowledge, however,should not inhibit attempts to grasp the implications of these developments for U.S. nonproliferation and counterproliferation policy.

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  Eliminating Adversary WMD: What's at Stake?

  Rebecca K.C. Hersman

  The failure to find substantial evidence of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in Iraq has exposed serious weaknesses in the U.S. understanding of the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threat posed by its adversaries as well as in its ability to deal effectively with these threats. A rancorous and highly politicized debate, primarily about the intelligence assessments of Iraqi WMD capabilities before Operation Iraqi Freedom, has dominated national discussion for months. Unfortunately, the current preoccupation with intelligence might mask other issues and shortcomings in the American ability to eliminate the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction in the hands of its enemies.