Books and Book Chapters

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  The World's Most Destructive Weapons: Thirty Years of the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

  Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

  NDU’s Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction (CSWMD), part of the Institute for National Strategic Studies, has been a trusted resource on WMD challenges to senior Defense and other interagency policy leaders for 30 years. Combining deep expertise, extensive policy experience, and a wide-ranging professional network, the Center helps stakeholders across the WMD community unpack hard problems and frame solutions. Just as important is the Center’s work in preparing the next generation of military and civilian leaders and contributing to original research and the creation of new knowledge in the WMD field.

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  The Role of Special Operations Forces in Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction

  Brendan Melley

  This chapter, published in Strategic Latency Unleashed: The Role of Technology in a Revisionist Global Order and the Implications for Special Operations Forces (Center for Global Security Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 2021), asserts that at a time when international norms and other constraints on the use of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons have grown weaker, they are becoming more accessible and attractive to adversaries because of their potential utility against a range of vulnerable targets. The WMD-related objectives identified in the national and DOD strategies rely implicitly on the roles of U.S. special operations forces (SOF), whose capabilities are critical for competing and winning in this WMD-infected security environment. Core SOF capabilities work to shape the operating environment in the current “steady state” landscape in a manner that serves to deter, dissuade, and frustrate adversaries from pursuing or acquiring WMD. With their global presence, reach, and capabilities, SOF remain a critical tool for meeting the United States’ priorities for countering WMD.

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  Book Review: Biosecurity in Putin's Russia

  Amanda Moodie and Michael Moodie

  In the early 1990s, the world was rocked when defectors from the Soviet Union revealed the existence of a massive civilian and military biological-weapons program that had employed more than 65,000 people from 1928 to 1992, directly contravening the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). In 2012, Raymond Zilinskas, a leading biological-weapons expert, coauthored with Milton Leitenberg a comprehensive account of the program, The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History, a reference source so thorough that it ran to nearly a thousand pages. Last year, Zilinskas, in collaboration with Philippe Mauger, produced Biosecurity in Putin’s Russia, a sequel of sorts in which the cautionary note that Zilinskas and Leitenberg sounded earlier—that Russia’s relationship with biological weapons remained complicated, and that the current status of its old programs could not be verified—proved to have been foreshadowing.

  The book, then, is a fitting capstone for the career of Ray Zilinskas, who passed away in 2018. It is a reflection of the depth, breadth, and tenacity of his research, and his strong commitment to ending the scourge of biological weapons.

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  Book Review: The End of Strategic Stability?: Nuclear Weapons and the Challenge of Regional Rivalries

  Justin Anderson

  The term “strategic stability” originated from the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. It referred to the idea that, despite their global competition, Washington and Moscow had a vested self-interest in establishing a stable, balanced deterrent relationship between their respective military forces and avoiding nuclear war. Reducing incentives for nuclear arms racing or launching a preemptive nuclear strike thus became central organizing principles for Cold War diplomacy and the pursuit of superpower detente.

  Despite decades of talks, however, a fully realized and jointly shared understanding of strategic stability proved elusive. Both parties agreed strategic stability was an important end state, but neither could agree on a concrete definition of the term. As Adam N. Stulberg and Lawrence Rubin discuss in their introduction to this edited volume, this phenomenon persists in the Great Power competitions and regional rivalries of today. The concept of strategic stability remains a touchstone for scholars and policy makers attempting to understand the complex role played by nuclear weapons in contemporary international affairs. But it also remains devilishly difficult to define, negotiate, and implement between today’s nuclear rivals.

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  Iran's Strategic Culture: Implications for Nuclear Policy

  Nima Gerami

  This book chapter, published in Crossing Nuclear Thresholds: Leveraging Sociocultural Insights into Nuclear Decisionmaking (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), assesses the principal drivers of Iran's strategic culture and their broader implications for the country's nuclear decisionmaking processes in light of the 2015 nuclear agreement—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—between Iran and the P5+1. Explaining the "great civilization" lens through which Iran sees itself as a peer with global superpowers, Nima Gerami discusses aspects of the Iranian nuclear narrative which "fuel its sense of entitlement to advanced nuclear fuel cycle technologies." Gerami argues that, even if the JCPOA remains intact, "the question of Iran's nuclear intent will grow increasingly important over the next decade." Affirming the salience of cultural context in assessing nuclear intent, Gerami emphasizes the primacy of Iranian cultural factors in decisionmaking. He explores these factors through the lens of the so-called Cultural Topography Analytical Framework, offering insights concerning leverage points the United States might apply in its engagements with Iran.

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  Alternative North Korean Nuclear Futures

  Shane Smith

  This chapter, published in Alternative East Asian Nuclear Futures, Volume I: Military Scenarios, takes stock of what we know about North Korea’s nuclear motivations, capabilities, and ambitions to explore where it’s been and where it might be headed over the next 20 years. Drawing on available evidence, it maps one path it may take and explores what that path might mean for the shape, size, and character of North Korea’s future arsenal.

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  North Korea's Strategic Culture and Its Evolving Nuclear Strategy

  Shane Smith

  This book chapter, published in Crossing Nuclear Thresholds: Leveraging Sociocultural Insights into Nuclear Decisionmaking (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), assesses how North Korea’s peculiar strategic culture might impact its decisions over nuclear doctrine and command and control arrangements, should Pyongyang continue its drive for an operational nuclear weapons capability.

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  Are We Prepared? Four WMD Crises That Could Transform U.S. Security

  Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

  This report, written by the staff of the National Defense University Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the fall of 2008 and the early winter of 2009, was conceived initially as a transition paper for the new administration following the 2008 American Presidential election.
  
  This report presents four weapons of mass destruction (WMD)-related scenarios that could plausibly occur and radically alter American domestic and national security agendas. Moreover, these scenarios, for which the United States is underprepared, portray challenges that the United States will not overcome shortly. Developing, institutionalizing, and supporting those policies, capabilities, and technologies to successfully overcome these challenges in all likelihood will take years. Consequently, we believe that this paper will continue to have relevance to policymakers, warfighters, responders, and the larger combating WMD community over the coming decade. For this reason, the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction has chosen to publish this report for a wider audience. We believe that the challenges, concepts, and recommended solutions herein will provide insight to students and practitioners alike. — John F. Reichart February 2009

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  Combating WMD: Challenges for the Next 10 Years

  Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

  One need only glance at newspaper headlines each morning to appreciate that the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threat environment is dynamic. President George W. Bush has identified WMD in the hands of rogue states and terrorists as the greatest security threat to the United States. The pace of WMD events in recent years has been truly remarkable. Taking stock of what has occurred since the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction was issued nearly 2 years ago, it is clear that combating WMD is a difficult but far from hopeless task. Important progress has been made, though major challenges continue to confront the United States. The threats that dominate the near-term vision are those posed by hostile state and nonstate actors that seek or possess familiar forms of WMD. But the longer-term vision must remain focused on the ways in which technology potentially can transform the nature of the threat—perhaps in ways that will redefine the conception of weapons of mass destruction.

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  At the Crossroads: Counterproliferation and National Security Strategy

  Center for Counterproliferation Research

  The continued proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) represents the most serious threat to U.S. national security and an enormous challenge for the entire international community. In the hands of rogue states, failing states, or substate terrorist groups, these weapons threaten not only U.S. forces, friends, and allies abroad, but also the U.S. homeland. Rogue states armed with WMD threaten the security of regions that are vital to the United States and raise the costs and risks of U.S. military operations intended to protect those interests. Forming international coalitions to defend shared interests is also more difficult in the shadow of the rogue state WMD threat. WMD in the hands of regional rivals exacerbate long-standing conflicts and increase the potential for escalation and conflict. Finally, terrorist interest in WMD and the threat of terrorist use of such weapons appear to be growing.

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  Toward a National Biodefense Strategy: Challenges and Opportunities

  Center for Counterproliferation Research

  The United States is re-learning an important lesson in the first decade of the 21st century: adversaries may attack the United States, its interests, or those of friends and allies with biological weapons (BW). The last century witnessed the purported use of glanders by the Germans in World War I and the use of dysentery, plague, and typhus by the Japanese in World War II. But biological weapons were not constrained to wartime settings in the last century. The Rajneeshees, a religious cult in Oregon, employed salmonella to advance their own political agenda. States such as Iraq and the former Soviet Union developed wide-ranging biological warfare capabilities, subnational entities such as Aum Shinrikyo devoted considerable effort and resources to the acquisition of biological agents, and the al Qaeda terror network remains interested in biological capabilities. According to the Director of Central Intelligence, evidence from Afghanistan suggests that al Qaeda was pursuing a “sophisticated biological weapons research program.”
  
  The 21st century opened with the startling use of anthrax spread deliberately through the United States mail system, resulting in 5 dead, at least 17 infected, and more than 30,000 on preventative antibiotics. It also led to substantial disruptions in normal activities, the revision of long-standing procedures, and the expenditure of several billion dollars for decontamination efforts. At present, the intelligence community assesses that “approximately” a dozen states maintain offensive BW programs and that interest among particular subnational organizations is high. Looking ahead, current trends will be facilitated and made more complex by the ongoing revolution in biotechnology, the continuing spread of dual-use technologies, the potential for diversion or leakage of expertise, evident weaknesses in international accords designed to prevent BW development and use, and the broaching of the perceived moral barrier against use. Protecting United States forces, facilities, and civilians at home and abroad from biological weapons is a pressing national priority.

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  The Counterproliferation Imperative: Meeting Tomorrow's Challenges

  Center for Counterproliferation Research

  The proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons poses major strategic and operational challenges to the United States and an important political challenge to the international community. In the hands of hostile states, these weapons threaten stability in key regions, put U.S. forces at risk, and undermine the U.S. ability to project power and to reassure friends and allies. Increasingly, the American homeland is at risk as well. U.S. intelligence officials routinely warn that more than a dozen states are actively pursuing offensive chemical or biological weapons programs. Moreover, the 1998 Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests, as well as lingering concerns over the status of the North Korean program, underscore the continuing nuclear aspirations of key states. Many states also seek ballistic and, increasingly, cruise missiles or other platforms capable of delivering NBC payloads. Proliferation trends point to a problem of growing complexity: a deepening of NBC capabilities among current proliferators; the spread of NBC-relevant technologies that comprise “virtual” capabilities for wouldbe future proliferators; and the growing potential for subnational or statesponsored NBC terrorism.