By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The potential for an accidental or unauthorized nuclear missile launch in Russia or the United States has grown over the past decade despite warmer U.S.-Russian relations, according to a RAND report released yesterday.
The report describes three possible scenarios for such a launch, including a rogue commander or terrorist who intentionally fires a missile, a training accident or system malfunction that accidentally launches a missile, or an erroneous perception by one nation that it is under attack, leading it to order a counterattack.
Neglecting these risks “could produce possibly the greatest disaster in modern history, and possibly in world history,” said former Senator Sam Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which funded the report, Beyond the Nuclear Shadow: A Phased Approach for Improving Nuclear Safety and U.S.-Russian Relations.
The study offers a range of recommendations for reducing the danger, including the deployment of a “small” 250-interceptor U.S. national missile defense system that could address an accidental or unauthorized Russian launch.
The Bush administration is developing a missile defense system to defend against prospective threats from smaller countries, and so far has announced plans to deploy 20 interceptors.
Cold War Postures Remain
The danger of an unauthorized or accidental launch has persisted in part because the two countries have maintained elements of their Cold War nuclear weapons postures — in particular, thousands of nuclear warheads on high alert, the study says.
“Although both countries have significantly reduced their nuclear forces, they still retain nuclear postures and deterrence doctrines formulated when tension between them was much higher than it is today,” it says.
The danger of a launch has increased largely because many key Russian capabilities have deteriorated, including its missile-launch detection system, conventional weapons, nuclear weapons and the reliability of its military personnel, according to the report.
Increased U.S. nuclear capabilities may also have led Russia to perceive that its strategic forces are less able to survive a U.S. first strike, thereby prompting Russia to maintain a heightened alert status, according to the report.
It cited a growing U.S. strategic superiority, enabled in part by the advent of the Trident submarine. The vessel, with its “accurate missiles and powerful warheads, has allowed the United States to make a significant portion of those Russian [silo-based] forces vulnerable,” the report says.
Only 20 to 200 Russian nuclear weapons might survive a surprise U.S. nuclear attack, it says.
U.S. success with using precision-guided munitions, its continued attack submarine patrols near Russian home bases and submarine operating areas, and any plan for a large national missile defense system might also contribute to Russian insecurity, the report says.
Perceiving its forces as vulnerable, Russia may be implementing a “launch-on-warning” approach to warfare requiring rapid reaction, “probably within 10 or 15 minutes,” for launching some 3,000 warheads, it says.
“This means there is very little time to verify that early warning information from satellites and land-based radars is correct,” the report says, noting that U.S. nuclear weapons also could be launched in minutes.
Recommendations
The potential threat is so serious that it should be made a top priority later this month at the summit between President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Nunn said.
“Today, Presidents Bush and Putin must each ask the question: Are our weapons driving our policy? Have the machines taken over?” he said at report’s release yesterday.
Nunn urged each leader to order his defense leadership, through joint collaboration, to lower the alert status of each side’s nuclear forces. “That would reduce toward zero the risk of accidental launch or miscalculation and provide increased launch decision time for each president,” he said.
Nunn dismissed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty signed by Bush and Putin in May 2002 as a “faith-based” agreement, criticizing its requirement that each party implement the treaty restrictions for only one day in 2012.
The RAND report recommends a number of steps intended to build trust and reduce the risk over time, including:
* an immediate, unilateral stand-down of all U.S. nuclear forces to levels set out in the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty;
* the movement of U.S. ballistic missile and attack submarines away from Russia;
* a reduction in the launch readiness of some U.S. silo-based missiles, and eventually all nuclear forces;
* the installation of early warning sensors outside U.S. and Russian missile silos, as well as U.S. assistance for Russian early warning radar and satellites;
* the removal of W-88 nuclear warheads from Trident submarines;
* the installation of destruct-after-launch mechanisms on ballistic missiles; and
* the deployment of a “limited” U.S. national missile defense system — if proven to work — of 250 ground-based interceptors and as many as nine additional X-band radars to guard against an accidental or unauthorized Russian launch.
Missile Defense Option
The report describes such a missile defense system as “small” and says it could be effective if Russia did not perceive it as threatening Russian deterrence.
“The missile defense system presented in this option might be an effective tool for meeting nonproliferation and counterterrorism goals,” it says.
The report says the proposed system would be able to intercept only a small number of Russian warheads and could “be rendered useless if Russia deploys countermeasures on its missiles that can penetrate the defense.”
Russia might nevertheless regard a large U.S. missile defense system “as a threat to their strategic deterrent and thus feel compelled to take steps more apt to lead to an accidental or unauthorized launch.”
The report also says the system could negate China’s current nuclear deterrent, possibly provoking it to “substantially increase the size and readiness of its nuclear arsenal,” producing a Cold War-type U.S.-Chinese nuclear relationship and a “serious degradation of global nuclear safety.”
[EDITOR'S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group, Inc.]
By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The United States and Russia should consider implementing a number of long-term confidence-building measures to help develop a better strategic partnership, according to a draft working paper prepared by U.S. and Russian nonproliferation think tanks released yesterday.
Despite recent tensions in the U.S-Russian relationship resulting from the recent war in Iraq, the two countries are still capable of developing a strategic partnership and of moving away from the Cold War-era doctrine of mutually assured destruction, says the paper, prepared by analysts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington and the Institute for Applied International Research in Moscow (see GSN, April 10).
To do this, however, a “new and positive agenda” — including joint missile defense development and a reduction in the readiness of the two countries’ nuclear arsenals — needs to be developed based on transparency, confidence-building and cooperation, the paper says.
At a discussion yesterday at the Carnegie Endowment, IAIR Deputy Director Yury Fedorov said current U.S.-Russian tensions were causing a “quite serious” crisis, but hopefully “a short one.” The planned summit between U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin to be held in St. Petersburg June 1 will hopefully mark the beginning of the end of the crisis, he said.
U.S. and Russian analysts have determined two key areas where U.S.-Russian interests coincide and where better cooperation could be achieved — missile defense and early warning of missile strikes, according to the paper (see GSN, May 21). In the area of missile defense, while initial stages of U.S.-Russian cooperation has begun, Russian scientific and technical capabilities in the field could be further exploited, the paper says, highlighting Moscow’s active missile defense system.
Russia also possesses well-developed technical capabilities to detect missile activities that could be better be exploited through improved U.S.-Russian cooperation, the paper says. It notes the wide geographical area Russia can monitor for missile activity through radar stations positioned in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Siberia (see GSN, Nov. 1, 2002).
“Despite the weakened capabilities of the space arm of the Russian warning system, the satellites and ground centers in the system can be an important addition to the American space network, which does not possess equally strong capabilities across all regions for global monitoring,” the paper says.
In addition to joint missile defense and early warning of missile activity, the United States and Russia could engage in more advanced, longer-term cooperative projects, the paper says. One such project could be the joint development of new strategic systems, it says, noting that both the United States and Russia will have to replace older sea- and land-based strategic missiles.
Transparency and Confidence-Building
For the United States and Russia to improve cooperation and thereby develop a better strategic partnership, they must first improve transparency with regard to their strategic doctrines, the paper says. “Without this, it is hard to eliminate mistaken interpretations — and therefore, suspicion,” it says.
The Carnegie-IAIR paper outlines several possible measures to improve transparency between Moscow and Washington, including joint discussions of nuclear policies; mutual notification of approaches to nuclear targeting, nuclear weapons development and deployment of reserve nuclear command structures; information exchanges of the nuclear potential of other nations; and full exchange of information on detected missile activity by other nations (see GSN, April 17, 2002).
One important confidence-building measure could be a decision by both Washington and Moscow to reject ICBM launches based solely on information received from early warning systems, the paper says. The rejection of launch-on-warning plans could be confirmed by several technical measures undertaken by both countries, including the dismantlement of devices that ensure a rapid opening of missile launch silos and the removal of on-board electrical batteries from missiles, it says.
“The continuing existence of such plans … once more emphasizes the obvious discrepancy between surviving aspects of nuclear deterrence and the new relations between the U.S. and Russia,” the paper says.
The United States and Russia also need to share more information about their ballistic missile submarines, which can approach targets undetected and attack quickly, according to the paper. Such information-sharing could vary in levels of detail — from information on where a submarine is located at a particular time to information noting that at specific times certain submarines will not be in the vicinity of their home bases, the paper says.
Highlighting the importance of information-sharing related to ballistic missile submarines is a concern that rogue states or terrorist groups may acquire one to use in an attack on either the United States or Russia, the paper says. Improved information sharing could help prevent “regrettable U.S. or Russian reactions to provocation by third parties,” it says.
Quietly held U.S.-Iranian talks — that included discussion of Iran’s nuclear activities — have broken down after the terrorist bombings of several housing complexes in Saudi Arabia last week, USA Today reported today (see GSN, May 21).
In a break from long-term hostility, U.S. and Iranian diplomats have met three times in Geneva this year and discussed a range of topics, including Iran’s nuclear development (see GSN, May 12). The last meeting was held May 3, but both sides have recently accused the other of supporting terrorism, and Washington canceled a scheduled meeting in Geneva yesterday, the USA Today reported.
The United States has alleged that Iran is sheltering al-Qaeda terrorists involved in last week’s attacks in Saudi Arabia. Iranian officials say the United States has failed to take appropriate action against the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, an anti-Iranian group based in Iraq that Washington calls a terrorist organization.
“Our information is that you have not disarmed the Mujahedin, and it is the height of hypocrisy for the United States to be criticizing Iran, which has captured more al-Qaeda than any other country,” said a senior Iranian diplomat (Barbara Slavin, USA Today, May 22).
The latest barbs traded between the two countries come a day after Iranian U.N. Ambassador Mohammed Javad Zarif said Tehran had arrested several al-Qaeda members.
“We have carried out several important operations against several cells, and we have captured them and put them in prison,” Zarif said. “We now have a large security net in the eastern provinces to find suspicious elements. We have done this at a cost of several operations against us by people connected with al-Qaeda,” he added.
U.S. officials, however, claim that high-ranking al-Qaeda members are currently in Iran.
“There’s no question but that there have been and are today senior al-Qaeda leaders in Iran, and they are busy,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said (Robin Wright, Los Angeles Times, May 22).
Russia and representatives from several European nations and insitutions signed an agreement yesterday to clear the way for Russia to receive assistance dismantling its nuclear submarines and disposing of the subsequent nuclear waste.
Signed in Stockholm, the Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Program for the Russian Federation resolves long-standing tax and liability issues that have hindered European assistance efforts.
“Concluding this agreement is an important step. It will allow us to make available 40 million euro for projects tackling the pressing issue of nuclear waste cleanup in Northwestern Russia,” said European Union spokesman Chris Patten (European Union release, May 21).
There are 100 decommissioned Russian submarines, carrying 8,000 nuclear fuel assemblies, rusting in the waters off the Kola Peninsula in Northwest Russia, Interfax reported.
Negotiations on the agreement lasted for more than three years, with a major issue being the taxation of foreign participants involved in projects under the agreement. Last month, Russia decided to exempt these entities from taxation, leading to the completion of the agreement (Interfax/BBC Worldwide Monitoring, May 21).
Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh said the agreement would help prevent terrorists from obtaining the spent nuclear fuel in the decommissioned submarines (BBC News, May 21).
In addition to reducing environmental and security concerns, Russia also believes the agreement can serve as a basis for the establishment of bilateral agreements within the Group of Eight Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, which was signed last year (Interfax).
An independent review team is investigating an explosion last month at a nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee, Energy Daily reported today (see GSN, April 16).
Three workers at the U.S. Energy Department’s Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., caused an explosion and a fire April 15 while attempting to demonstrate a new uranium processing technique.
The Energy Department and plant operator BWXT have sent the review team to the plant to look into the incident, which lightly contaminated the workers and forced personnel to evacuate the building, Energy Daily reported. The contaminated workers are healthy and the contamination did not spread outside of the building, according to Energy Daily.
The new processing method had previously succeeded, and officials were attempting to repeat those results on a larger scale. The researchers were using depleted uranium instead of the enriched uranium used for nuclear weapons, according to Pam Horning, manager of engineering and technology at the plant.
The explosion occurred because a chemical reaction inside a uranium canister lasted longer than workers expected, creating pressure in the canister and blowing open the glovebox that housed the experiment. A fire broke out when the uranium powder was exposed to oxygen and caught fire.
“We knew the hazards that were present from the materials (used in the test),” Horning said. “Our investigation is going to look at … what were the processing conditions. We have not come to a root cause. We want to make sure we strengthen our (planning) process,” she added (George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, May 22).
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