Research and Case Studies

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  China's Theater-Range, Dual-Capable Delivery Systems: Integrated Deterrence and Risk Reduction Approaches to Counter a Growing Threat

  Justin Anderson and Chris Andrews

  China has engaged in a dramatic buildup of its nuclear forces over the past decade. While much of the attention on China’s new nuclear arsenal has focused on its development and expansion of its strategic nuclear triad, this growth has also included significant numbers of theater-range, dual-capable delivery systems. These forces are not capable of reaching the U.S. mainland but can range U.S. and allied forces and bases across strategically significant swathes of the Indo-Pacific.

  This research project assessed the growing threat to the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies posed by these systems. It then considered ways and means to counter and deter this challenge. It also considered possible risk reduction options. The study team organized its work around three main research questions:

  1. What is the role of China’s theater-range, dual-capable delivery systems in its strategies and plans for countering U.S. intervention within a future Indo-Pacific security crisis or conflict?

  2. What “integrated deterrence” strategy or strategies:

  a. Can counter China from utilizing these systems to realize strategic and operational objectives by threatening the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies and partners with nuclear strikes?

  b. Can deter China from launching nuclear attacks with these systems in a future regional conflict?

  c. If deterrence fails, how can the United States defeat this capability and restore deterrence?

  3. What confidence-building and risk reduction approaches can reduce escalation risks and/or limit the threat to the U.S. and its Indo-Pacific allies posed by these systems?

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  Peril and Promise: Emerging Technologies and WMD

  Natasha E. Bajema and Diane DiEuliis

  Emerging technologies are transforming life, industry, and the global economy in positive ways, but they also have significant potential for subversion by states and nonstate actors. National security experts, lawmakers, and policymakers have become increasingly concerned about the interactions among a number of emerging technologies that could alter and increase the threats from weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Many emerging technologies have an indirect impact on the WMD space, but only a handful are likely to have direct enabling effects for state and nonstate actors seeking WMD. Such technologies are expected to have serious effects on both the nature of the WMD challenges faced by policymakers and options for countering WMD. Emerging technologies may create new WMD development pathways and/or enhance access to existing ones, leading to increased capabilities of state and nonstate actors to develop and use WMD. Moreover, these technologies might one day lead to a meaningful paradigm shift in how policymakers define WMD, view the threat of WMD, and counter WMD in the future. To assess the impact of various emerging technologies, it is important to understand how they may be game-changers for state and nonstate actors actively seeking to develop WMD and for policymakers attempting to prevent the proliferation and the use of WMD. Policymakers with responsibilities for countering WMD need answers to the following questions:

  • What are the national security risks posed by emerging technologies? What are their enabling effects for the WMD space?
  • What new opportunities or solutions do these emerging technologies offer to national security problems and/or the challenge of countering WMD?
  • How will these emerging technologies impact traditional tools and approaches for countering WMD? What new types of governance do we need to mitigate the risks?

  In its multi-year study entitled Emergence and Convergence led by Dr. Natasha Bajema and Dr. Diane DiEuliis, the WMD Center will explore the risks, opportunities, and governance challenges for countering WMD introduced by a diverse range of emerging technologies. On 13–14 October 2016, the WMD hosted a workshop at the National Defense University to explore the risks, opportunities, and governance challenges for the WMD space caused by emerging technologies—in particular, additive manufacturing, advanced robotics, nanotechnology, nuclear technology, and synthetic biology. About 100 participants from government, academia, industry, and the nonprofit sector took part in the workshop over the 2 days. This report provides a summary of the proceedings followed by a more in-depth treatment of the discussion for each technology group.

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  The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Negotiations: A Case Study

  Maurice A. Mallin

  On July 16, 1945, the United States conducted the world’s first nuclear explosive test in Alamagordo, New Mexico. The test went off as planned; a nuclear chain reaction, in the form of an explosion, could be created. Less than a month later, nuclear weapons were used to support Allied efforts to end World War II.

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  The Presidential Nuclear Initiatives of 1991-1992

  Susan J. Coch

  On the morning of September 28, 1991, then-Colonel Frank Klotz witnessed an historic moment at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. As he and other senior officers from the base bomber and missile units watched, the crews for the B-1 strategic bombers that had been on alert that day climbed into their cockpits, started the planes, and taxied one after another away from the alert aircraft parking area. That scene was repeated at all 11 Strategic Air Command (SAC) bases in the United States. By the end of the day, there were no U.S. bombers on alert for the first time in over 30 years.

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  The International Atomic Energy Agency's Decision to Find Iran in Non-Compliance, 2002-2006

  Nima Gerami and Pierre Goldschmidt

  On August 14, 2002, at a press conference in Washington, DC, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an exiled Iranian opposition group, drew worldwide attention when it publicly accused Iran of clandestinely developing nuclear weapons. Alireza Jafarzadeh, then-U.S. media spokesperson for the NCRI, described two “top secret” nuclear facilities being constructed in Iran at Natanz and Arak under the guise of front companies involved in the procurement of nuclear material and equipment. Noting that media attention had focused on Iran’s publicly declared civilian facilities, Jafarzadeh claimed that “in reality, there are many secret nuclear programs at work in Iran without knowledge of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” the international body responsible for verifying and assuring compliance with safeguards obligations under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

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  U.S. Ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention

  Jonathan B. Tucker

  On October 1, 1990, two months after Iraq’s surprise invasion and annexation of Kuwait had put the United States and other members of the international community on a collision course with the Saddam Hussein regime, President George H.W. Bush spoke to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York. He described Iraq’s brutal aggression against its neighbor as “a throwback to another era, a dark relic from a dark time.” Noting that Saddam Hussein had waged a “genocidal poison gas war” against Iraq’s restive Kurdish minority during the 1980s, President Bush hinted that if it ultimately proved necessary to liberate Kuwait by force, the United States and its allies could face Iraqi attacks with chemical weapons—highly toxic chemicals designed to incapacitate or kill.

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  The Origins of Nunn-Lugar and Cooperative Threat Reduction

  Paul I. Bernstein and Jason D. Wood

  In a 1999 interview, Ashton Carter, a key figure in helping to create and implement the threat reduction program initiated by Senators Sam Nunn (D–GA) and Richard Lugar (R–IN), recalled four visits between 1994 and 1996 to an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) base in Pervomaysk, Ukraine. Planted in the soil of this base were the most powerful rockets mankind has ever made, armed with hundreds of hydrogen bombs and aimed at the United States. In turn, Pervomaysk was itself the target of similar American missiles and weapons. Under the Nunn-Lugar program, the missiles deployed at Pervomaysk by the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and the silos that housed them were destroyed.

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  U.S. Withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty

  Lynn F. Rusten

  As President George W. Bush made these remarks in a speech at the National Defense University (NDU) on May 1, 2001, National Security Council (NSC) Senior Director for Proliferation Strategy, Counterproliferation, and Homeland Defense Robert Joseph listened attentively. Within just 4 months of taking office, President Bush was articulating one of his key national security priorities: setting the conditions for the United States to move full steam ahead on developing, testing, and eventually deploying a wide range of missile defense technologies and systems—a priority that in all likelihood would mean U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

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  President Nixon’s Decision to Renounce the U.S. Offensive Biological Weapons Program

  Jonathan B. Tucker and Erin R. Mahan

  The nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union was a prominent feature of the Cold War. A lesser known but equally dangerous element of the superpower competition involved biological weapons (BW), living microorganisms that cause fatal or incapacitating diseases in humans, animals, or plants. By the late 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had both acquired advanced BW capabilities. The U.S. biological weapons complex, operated by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, consisted of a research and development laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland, an open-air testing site at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and a production facility at Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas that manufactured biological warfare agents and loaded them into bomblets, bombs, and spray tanks.