Book Offers More Careful View on Restricted Weapons

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Drawing lessons from mistaken conclusions about alleged prewar Iraqi arms, a newly revised book by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace aims to offer a more precise, better-supported assessment of global chemical, biological and nuclear arms capabilities (see GSN, Jan. 25).

A 2002 version of the book stated that Iraq likely had active nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, and that Iraqi chemical and biological weapons posed a more serious threat than those of any other country (see GSN, Oct. 17, 2002). A U.S.-led inspection team last year determined Iraq had no such weapons and that its unconventional weapons programs had not operated for years.

In Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats, written by Joseph Cirincione, Jon Wolfsthal, and Miriam Rajkumar, government intelligence assertions are no longer taken at face value or repeated unchecked. 

“The failure to find nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in Iraq underlined how little outsiders can know about what happens within member states without inspectors on the ground,” says the book, which was released today.

As in the previous edition, distinctions are made between capabilities for developing or producing arms, developmental programs, and actual weapons, as well as the degree to which such activities are suspected or confirmed. 

“Milton Leitenberg points out that official assessments rarely distinguish between suspected, capability, developing, and weapon,” it says, citing a University of Maryland scholar.

The term “weapons of mass destruction,” so commonly used as shorthand for diverse chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, is discarded.

“A failure to differentiate these threats can lead to seriously flawed policy.   For example, the repeated use of the term ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to describe the potential threat from Iraq before the 2003 war merged the danger that it still had anthrax-filled shells, which was possible, with the danger that it had nuclear bombs, which was highly unlikely,” they wrote.

The book is a 490-page update to the widely praised 2002 text, which presented what the authors deemed was the best publicly available information on global nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and missile programs.

The new edition meant to encourage a more precise public understanding and portrayal of suspected proliferation.

“I think we are mindful that the public perception and the public discussion about these issues has an influence on policy and we want to try and be as precise as possible in providing facts about these issues in order to produce better policy,” said Wolfsthal, deputy director for nonproliferation at the organization, in an interview.

Without really saying so, the book also aims to reform its own errors committed in the previous edition — in particular, by stating commonly accepted conclusions not sufficiently supported by available evidence.

“It’s something that we have talked about internally and I think did lead directly to the process and the method that we have in place,” Wolfsthal said.

“I don’t think it’s unfair to say that earlier editions of Deadly Arsenal did not provide precise enough data and in many ways simply took American intelligence documents as fully authoritative. And that’s something that is no longer done,” he said.

Versions of the book before 2002 were published under a different title.

Many of the book’s updates result from the emergence of new facts, sometimes driven by major developments over the past three years, it says. 

New chapters were written on Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, and the global state of nonproliferation affairs.

“Since the first Deadly Arsenals came out in 2002, the landscape has entirely changed, so we’ve had to reflect that,” said Wolfsthal. “We talk about North Korea’s recent plutonium production and extraction, as well as the allegations about an HEU [highly enriched uranium] program,” he said.

“We catalogue as best we can Iran’s enrichment program, developed through the [former Pakistani nuclear weapons program leader] A.Q. Khan network, and provide up to date references and sources and details on that,” he added. 

“It now appears that the entirety of their uranium enrichment program, which is the core of their alleged weapons pursuit, all came through Pakistan,” he said. 

Following his detention by Pakistani authorities, Khan gave first details of years of nuclear transfers to Iran, Libya and North Korea in February 2004.

Other changes in the book result from more careful sourcing and drawing of conclusions about such weapons programs, according to Wolfsthal.

“While in the past we were willing to take U.S. intelligence assessments at face value, we now basically indicate ‘U.S. intelligence has indicated, or claims. However there is no corroborating evidence’ or ‘Secondary sources aren’t available,’” he said.

The impetus is so “people have the ability to assess these things for themselves, as opposed to falling into the echo box,” he said, providing a euphemism for oft-repeated, unsupported conventional wisdom.

The book is careful not to conclude the Pakistani proliferation network’s operation has necessarily ended.

“It is not clear if this network has shut down or merely gone further underground,” it says.

The book also is cautious not to conclude that North Korea has been able to build a nuclear weapon or, as the Bush administration has argued, that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program.

“Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, but for more than two decades Tehran has secretly pursued the ability to produce nuclear materials that can be used in weapons,” it says. “U.S. officials and intelligence services in several other nations have concluded that Iran is embarked on a nuclear weapon program, although no direct evidence of weapon activities has been made public.”

The 2002 edition of Deadly Arsenals — published as the Bush administration was alleging an active Iraq nuclear weapons program as justification for possible military action — appeared to commit the “echo box” error repeatedly, stating for instance that Iraq probably had restarted a nuclear weapons program after U.N. inspectors withdrew in 1998.

“International inspectors destroyed most of Iraq’s nuclear program after the Gulf War, though it has most likely restarted since Iraq blocked inspections in 1998,” it said.

That edition also declared Iraq “the most serious proliferation threat” for biological weapons.

“Despite having signed the BWC [Biological Weapons Convention] in 1972 and ratified the accord in 1991, Iraq has clearly pursued an active bioweapons program,” it said.

It further listed Iraq at the top “in order of concern” of a list of 11 countries with the “most significant remaining national [chemical weapons] programs.”

A CIA-commissioned report last year concluded Iraq had no active nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs in the years prior to the March 2003 U.S. invasion.

“We drew conclusions that went beyond what the evidence supported,” Wolfsthal said, regarding the opening, analytical chapter of the 2002 Deadly Arsenals.

“There was a reflection of the public debate,” he said.

He said the technical analyses deeper in the book were more precise about what was known and not known about countries’ suspected activities.

“I think when we look at the detailed chapter on Iraq, I think we’re very comfortable about how we caveated it,” he said.

He added, “I don’t think anyone would suggest that we went as far as the administration and I think it matters not only what sort of conclusions you draw, but also what sort of recommendations you have.”

Cirincione and other Carnegie experts in a report in early 2003 disputed that Iraq posed an urgent threat to the United States warranting military attack.

“We were the only major organization that was questioning openly the Bush administration’s intelligence assessments and that we were actively pushing alternative to the military conflict in Iraq coercive inspections,” Wolfsthal said.

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