This book assesses today's Russian military and analyzes its possible future direction.
The Russian Atomic Energy Agency announced on September 1 that additional troops had been dispatched to guard nuclear facilities throughout Russia.The troop move is a sign that Russia recognizes that the threat to its nuclear facilities. US programs to assist Russian nuclear security also need to recognize that the threat has changed and move to accelerate and expand ongoing efforts.
Last year, after European Union ministers won a freeze in Iran’s nuclear uranium enrichment activities, U.S. officials had an opportunity to exploit this breakthrough and negotiate an end to a potentially hostile program. The right combination of force and diplomacy might have worked to allow Tehran to build nuclear reactors, but not the nuclear fuel-fabrication processes that keep Iran’s nuclear bomb-making capabilities alive. Administration hardliners prevailed, however, and the United States pursued a more confrontational approach. They apparently believed that they had solid evidence of Iranian violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that would allow them to bring Iran before the UN Security Council, or provide justification for military strikes against the regime. But, it was no slam dunk.
Vice presidential nominee John Edwards affirmed that the highest national security priority of a Kerry-Edwards administration will be to prevent nuclear terrorism.
A little common sense shows that a Niger uranium sale--even if attempted--was always highly improbable and was never a serious threat.
Although detailed information about reprocessing was declassified by the United States and France in the 1950s and is generally available, it is still a complex procedure from an engineering point of view. Almost every nation that has tried to develop nuclear-weapons via the plutonium route—India, Iraq, Israel, and Pakistan—has sought outside help from the advanced nuclear-supplier countries.
Any long-term solution to ending the Iranian nuclear program will have to include limits to other national programs to enrich uranium, including that in Brazil. No nation will willing agree to a policy it sees as discriminatory; there will have to be one standard acceptable to all nations.
The following is adapted from the remarks of Dr. Hans Blix, chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, to the 2004 Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, June 21 and 22, 2004.
The 9/11 commission concluded that any strategy to combat terrorism must be combined with a comprehensive effort to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Following the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on pre-war assessments of Iraqi WMD, Carnegie has updated the four summary tables that appear in WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications on each type of suspected weapons: nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile and delivery programs. The summary tables show several key patterns.
The new reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee and the United Kingdom's parliamentary inquiry by Lord Butler offer devastating critiques of both nations' intelligence failures in Iraq.
President Bush fails to appreciate how all of the diplomatic, economic and political tools can be used to pursue an even more effective set of proliferation policies. The U.S. needs to use all of the tools at its disposal, now more than ever.
The following are excerpts from remarks by Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, to the 2004 Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, June 21, 2004.
Senator John Edwards detailed a strategy to combat proliferation that called for a new "Global Compact" to heighten security for existing nuclear facilities and material, toughen international inspections, limit production of nuclear bomb materials and nuclear fuel, and authorize strong, immediate punishment for any nation that violates and then quits the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
As background for the Senate Intelligence Committee's new report, we present below excerpts from the January 2004 Carnegie report, WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications. The report compared the intelligence assessments on Iraq with the UN inspectors' findings and what is now known. Why were the intelligence assessments so flawed? Were they based on faulty collection or analysis, undue politicization, or other factors? What steps could be taken to prevent a repetition? The shift between prior intelligence assessments and the October 2002 NIE suggests, but does not prove, that the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policymakers' views sometime in 2002. Although such situations are not unusual, in this case, the pressure appears to have been unusually intense.
More resources on Iraq and intelligence:
"A Tale of Two Intelligence Estimates," by Jessica Mathews and Jeff Miller, 26 March 2004
"Revisiting the Case for War," Foreign Policy Web Exclusive by Joseph Cirincione, Dipali Mukhopadhyay, Alexis Orton, Updated March 2004
"The Congress Shares Responsibility for War," by Joseph Cirincione and Michael O'Hanlon, Los Angeles Times Op-Ed, 19 November 2003
"The Intelligence Bell Curve," by Joseph Cirincione, 17 July 2003
The following are excerpts from remarks by Sam Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, to the 2004 Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, June 21, 2004.
North Korea has an active nuclear weapons program and may now possess several nuclear weapons. U.S. troops, allies in the region, and strategic interests are directly threatened by North Korea's growing nuclear capability, which has been pursued in violation of Pyongyang's commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other agreements. Given North Korea's economic strains, it is conceivable that for a high price Pyongyang might sell nuclear materials or weapons to other states or even terrorist groups, taking a regional threat to a global level. Such a scenario is so grave that U.S. policy makers could soon face a truly appalling choice between acquiescing in North Korea's transfer of its weapons technology and fighting a full-fledged war on the Korean peninsula.
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