From 1977 thru 1980 I was seconded to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, ACDA, then headed by Paul Warnke, and reported to Adm Tom Davies organization as a senior technical adviser to staff the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) negotiations with the UK and the Soviets.
Thus I represented part of the "technical" team helping out the negotiations. and developing the systems to perform verification A great deal of time was spent understanding and developing means and methods to address the question of verification as well as the ways the Soviets could counter what we had proposed. I did not take the position of the Carter Administration and its NSC head as gospel and I approached the process of verification by assuming that you trusted no one. The "Trust but Verify" dictum was not yet uttered. Under Carter it appeared that the intent was "get a treaty no matter how bad".
Thus I bring a certain personal history and experience to the table when looking at the issue of nuclear treaty analysis and options. During the almost four year period I had several opportunities to deal one on one with the Soviets, and yes you could not trust them, and I was certain that they felt the same towards the US. Yet, on the other hand, we did discuss children and parents, for family was a common thread even between adversaries. There was a true cultural nexus despite the political gap.
Now to the present. Yesterday the UN Security Council issued Resolution 1887 (2009) which focused on the elimination of nuclear weapons. The resolution states:
"Unanimously adopting resolution 1887 (2009) in its first comprehensive action on nuclear issues since the mid-1990s, Council members emphasized that the body had a primary responsibility to address nuclear threats, and that all situations of non-compliance with nuclear treaties should be brought to its attention.
The Council reaffirmed, in particular, its strong support for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, calling on States that were not yet signatories to accede to it. It also called on States parties to comply fully with their obligations and to set realistic goals to strengthen, at the 2010 Review Conference, all three of the Treaty’s pillars -- disarmament of countries currently possessing nuclear weapons, non-proliferation to countries not yet in possession, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy for all.
While the resolution did not target specific countries, the Council demanded that parties involved in “major challenges to the non-proliferation regime” comply fully with their obligations, and reaffirmed its call on them to find early negotiated solutions to their issues.
The text underlined the right to pursue peaceful nuclear energy under IAEA supervision, but also urged States to curb the export of nuclear-related material to countries that had terminated their compliance with Agency safeguards agreements. It also called for the enforcement of strict controls on nuclear material to prevent it from falling into dangerous hands.
In addition, the Council called upon all States to refrain from conducting nuclear test explosions and to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in order to bring it into force as soon as possible. It called upon the Conference on Disarmament to quickly negotiate a treaty banning the production of fissile materials for explosive devices. "
The CTB they refer to is detailed at the CTBTO site. The US is a signatory but did not ratify, so too is Iran a signatory but did not ratify. Russia is a signatory and it ratified the treaty. China is a signatory and did not ratify. Thus the US under Clinton did sign the treaty but Congress did not ratify it, in fact it rejected it. The current President seeks to now have the Treaty ratified by Congress.
Thus the CTBT has been around for over thirty years. There are two critical problems that still exist. They are:
1. Verification and Compliance: This is the issue regarding how the CTBT signatories can ascertain whether a signatory has been in compliance or whether it has violated the Treaty. Can this be accomplished technically or does it require teams of inspectors all over the world poking into the affairs of countries?
2. Violations and Controls: If a violation occurs what are the consequences? This is the classic problem.
Now historically the CTBT was at most tripartite. It consisted of the US, UK and USSR. We knew where to look and they knew where to look. We knew how to respond and the same for the Soviets. The problem now is that with so many players we have a possibly unstable playing field. But more on that later.
In a 1982 article in Scientific American (when it was the scientific journal of record, not the flashy puff piece it seems to be today) Sykes and Evernden wrote on the issue of verification of a comprehensive nuclear test ban. Verification is always the first and often the most difficult step. Before discussing this seminal paper let me reflect on what the difficulty is with verification. In the 1970s there was concern about large weapons, the Mega Ton weapons, estimated at over 100,000 such weapons.
That would have been enough to destroy the world many times over. There mere thought of this massive amount of destructive power made anyone close to the process be terrified of any outcome. Nuclear war was and is the end of all life as we know it.
Yet there was also another concern, the small weapon issue. This was the 1-10 Kilo Ton weapon, the one we now call the brief case weapon, the one we saw then as a tactical weapon used in a land war in Europe. That could be tested and and the testing done so in an almost secret manner. Ironically it is the same low yield weapon which concerns us now from the perspective of a terrorist attack and from the perspective of an Iranian or North Korean launch or sale. Low yield weapons are quite deadly, they resemble the one at Hiroshima, a 20 KT yield, more likely 10-12 KT. It did real damage, it killed hundreds of thousands.
Thus the verification problem simply stated is to detect a low yield test amongst a background of seismic and other noise. Anyone desiring to develop such a small weapon must test them. One cannot just build a weapon and then hope the design works. It must be tested.
The testing then opens the door for verification of compliance. These tests can be conducted generally underground and thus can be hidden from most means of verification. In the 1960s and 1970s the DoD had several VELA programs focused on detecting such nuclear tests. They ranged from VELA underground to VELA Hotel program, a satellite program, run partly by the National Reconnaissance Organization, "NRO", the joint DoD and CIA satellite entity. These programs have continued over the past thirty plus years and are yet the best way still to verify and validate compliance is via seismic sensing.
Back to the Sykes and Evernden article. They start by stating:
"Two treaties put into effect over the past 20 years have set limits on the testing of nuclear weapons. The Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which has been signed by more than 120 nations, prohibits nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, the oceans and space, allowing them only underground. The Threshold Test Ban Treaty of 1976, a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., prohibits underground tests of nuclear weapons with a yield greater than 150 kilotons. In the present climate of widespread pressure for more effective control of nuclear arms the idea of a comprehensive ban on all nuclear testing is receiving renewed attention.
Such an agreement would be an important measure. It might inhibit the development of new weapons by the major nuclear powers, and it might also help to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons technology to other countries. A halt to all testing was the original goal of the negotiations that led to the 1963 Limited Test Ban. New talks with the aim of achieving a total ban were begun in 1977 by the U.S., the U.S.S.R. and Britain, but the talks were suspended in 1980. In both cases the main impediment to a comprehensive treaty was the contention by the U.S. and Britain that compliance with the treaty could not be verified because sufficiently small underground nuclear explosions could not be reliably detected and identified.
In July the Reagan Administration announced that the test-ban negotiations with the U.S.S.R. and Britain will not be resumed. Once again the primary reason given was a lack of confidence
in methods of verifying compliance."
They conclude by stating:
"A comprehensive test-ban agreement should not be regarded as a substitute for disarmament. Meaningful reductions in the nuclear threat must include a continuing and serious process of arms control; in this process, however, a comprehensive test-ban treaty could have an important part. The problems of negotiating such a treaty are overwhelmingly political rather than technical and must be recognized as such.
Before the suspension of negotiations between the U.S., Britain and the U.S.S.R. in 1980 tentative agreement had been reached on a number of issues. All three nations agreed that a test-ban treaty would include a prohibition of all tests of nuclear weapons in all environments, a moratorium on peaceful nuclear explosions until arrangements for undertaking them could be worked out, provisions for on-site inspections, a mechanism for the international exchange of seismic data and the installation of tamper proof seismic stations by each country in the territory of the others. The proposed treaty would have a term of three years. The agreements on the long-standing issues of on-site inspection, peaceful explosions and the placement of monitoring stations in each country represented important breakthroughs. It would be a setback for the cause of international security if this hard-won ground were now lost. "
We agree, that today even more than thirty years ago, we have the technical means to verify. Yet those means will also require inspection, on site open inspection, since the systems available provide high probability of a test or violation but on site inspection is the sine qua non gold standard. It must be open and timely. That then becomes the political issue.
The second political issue is what does one do if there is a violation. That becomes the ultimate concern. In the days on the Cold War it mean the side finding the violation was then free to resume its own testing. It was a two player game, where the next step was simple. That no longer works since the game is now a multi-player game.
The final issue is the old Dr. Herman Kahn issue of Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD. Both the US and the USSR were to some degree rational players. They were not driven by religious fatalism and a willingness to sacrifice all for a belief. That type of a mindset changes the game dynamics. Indeed the whole process can be considered a game, a very deadly game. That type of consideration, one focused on a religious belief, was never a consideration in any of the studies in the Cold War. When looking at a psychological profile of any Soviet counterpart one always saw a family, a belief set, a basis in reality. Despite the Soviet and American rhetoric, the fear was more one of some wild card error rather than a deliberate confrontation. Now we have just the opposite.
The problem of managing and controlling nuclear weapons is in a sense a true example of game theory. The key element of the game is the definition of what winning is. The reason why the US and USSR never came to blows was that both sides had understood the concept of a win, namely world dominance, and both sides had come to the realization that nuclear war meant world destruction and thus it was a game in which no one side could ever win. Both sides were rational and both sides had a common understanding of both what a win was and what the rules of the game were.
In the case of Iran and others the concept of what "the win is" is not anywhere near what it was with the US/USSR game. For them total destruction is the win. Thus the game is unbalanced. This is what makes the game with Iran a very dangerous game, it is a game being played in many ways by zealots. Unless the strategists understand this fully, then only dire consequences will result. It seems clear that Israel understands this, it is not at all clear that the US current Administration does.
Thus the approach by the current Administration in some ways resembles the Pollyanna approach by Carter and that led to no reasonable path. It took Reagan and his poker playing that brought rationality to bear. Yet the very nature of the game has changed, wild cards have been introduced, and the tools we have developed to handle this dangerous game are no longer viable. Reagan poker playing will not work. The other side will not be bluffed into an agreement, the other side may not have a rational base of belief consistent with that of the US. Nuclear weapons have a place if the other side has a value system which abhors the results as much as we would. If on the other hand the other side or sides seek the ultimate destruction, or further believe that the ultimate destruction is an eschatological necessity, the game changes totally. A Treaty may not be the straight forward solution, nor frankly is a war. This creates a very complex game, and a very dangerous one.
Thus I represented part of the "technical" team helping out the negotiations. and developing the systems to perform verification A great deal of time was spent understanding and developing means and methods to address the question of verification as well as the ways the Soviets could counter what we had proposed. I did not take the position of the Carter Administration and its NSC head as gospel and I approached the process of verification by assuming that you trusted no one. The "Trust but Verify" dictum was not yet uttered. Under Carter it appeared that the intent was "get a treaty no matter how bad".
Thus I bring a certain personal history and experience to the table when looking at the issue of nuclear treaty analysis and options. During the almost four year period I had several opportunities to deal one on one with the Soviets, and yes you could not trust them, and I was certain that they felt the same towards the US. Yet, on the other hand, we did discuss children and parents, for family was a common thread even between adversaries. There was a true cultural nexus despite the political gap.
Now to the present. Yesterday the UN Security Council issued Resolution 1887 (2009) which focused on the elimination of nuclear weapons. The resolution states:
"Unanimously adopting resolution 1887 (2009) in its first comprehensive action on nuclear issues since the mid-1990s, Council members emphasized that the body had a primary responsibility to address nuclear threats, and that all situations of non-compliance with nuclear treaties should be brought to its attention.
The Council reaffirmed, in particular, its strong support for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, calling on States that were not yet signatories to accede to it. It also called on States parties to comply fully with their obligations and to set realistic goals to strengthen, at the 2010 Review Conference, all three of the Treaty’s pillars -- disarmament of countries currently possessing nuclear weapons, non-proliferation to countries not yet in possession, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy for all.
While the resolution did not target specific countries, the Council demanded that parties involved in “major challenges to the non-proliferation regime” comply fully with their obligations, and reaffirmed its call on them to find early negotiated solutions to their issues.
The text underlined the right to pursue peaceful nuclear energy under IAEA supervision, but also urged States to curb the export of nuclear-related material to countries that had terminated their compliance with Agency safeguards agreements. It also called for the enforcement of strict controls on nuclear material to prevent it from falling into dangerous hands.
In addition, the Council called upon all States to refrain from conducting nuclear test explosions and to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in order to bring it into force as soon as possible. It called upon the Conference on Disarmament to quickly negotiate a treaty banning the production of fissile materials for explosive devices. "
The CTB they refer to is detailed at the CTBTO site. The US is a signatory but did not ratify, so too is Iran a signatory but did not ratify. Russia is a signatory and it ratified the treaty. China is a signatory and did not ratify. Thus the US under Clinton did sign the treaty but Congress did not ratify it, in fact it rejected it. The current President seeks to now have the Treaty ratified by Congress.
Thus the CTBT has been around for over thirty years. There are two critical problems that still exist. They are:
1. Verification and Compliance: This is the issue regarding how the CTBT signatories can ascertain whether a signatory has been in compliance or whether it has violated the Treaty. Can this be accomplished technically or does it require teams of inspectors all over the world poking into the affairs of countries?
2. Violations and Controls: If a violation occurs what are the consequences? This is the classic problem.
Now historically the CTBT was at most tripartite. It consisted of the US, UK and USSR. We knew where to look and they knew where to look. We knew how to respond and the same for the Soviets. The problem now is that with so many players we have a possibly unstable playing field. But more on that later.
In a 1982 article in Scientific American (when it was the scientific journal of record, not the flashy puff piece it seems to be today) Sykes and Evernden wrote on the issue of verification of a comprehensive nuclear test ban. Verification is always the first and often the most difficult step. Before discussing this seminal paper let me reflect on what the difficulty is with verification. In the 1970s there was concern about large weapons, the Mega Ton weapons, estimated at over 100,000 such weapons.
That would have been enough to destroy the world many times over. There mere thought of this massive amount of destructive power made anyone close to the process be terrified of any outcome. Nuclear war was and is the end of all life as we know it.
Yet there was also another concern, the small weapon issue. This was the 1-10 Kilo Ton weapon, the one we now call the brief case weapon, the one we saw then as a tactical weapon used in a land war in Europe. That could be tested and and the testing done so in an almost secret manner. Ironically it is the same low yield weapon which concerns us now from the perspective of a terrorist attack and from the perspective of an Iranian or North Korean launch or sale. Low yield weapons are quite deadly, they resemble the one at Hiroshima, a 20 KT yield, more likely 10-12 KT. It did real damage, it killed hundreds of thousands.
Thus the verification problem simply stated is to detect a low yield test amongst a background of seismic and other noise. Anyone desiring to develop such a small weapon must test them. One cannot just build a weapon and then hope the design works. It must be tested.
The testing then opens the door for verification of compliance. These tests can be conducted generally underground and thus can be hidden from most means of verification. In the 1960s and 1970s the DoD had several VELA programs focused on detecting such nuclear tests. They ranged from VELA underground to VELA Hotel program, a satellite program, run partly by the National Reconnaissance Organization, "NRO", the joint DoD and CIA satellite entity. These programs have continued over the past thirty plus years and are yet the best way still to verify and validate compliance is via seismic sensing.
Back to the Sykes and Evernden article. They start by stating:
"Two treaties put into effect over the past 20 years have set limits on the testing of nuclear weapons. The Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which has been signed by more than 120 nations, prohibits nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, the oceans and space, allowing them only underground. The Threshold Test Ban Treaty of 1976, a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., prohibits underground tests of nuclear weapons with a yield greater than 150 kilotons. In the present climate of widespread pressure for more effective control of nuclear arms the idea of a comprehensive ban on all nuclear testing is receiving renewed attention.
Such an agreement would be an important measure. It might inhibit the development of new weapons by the major nuclear powers, and it might also help to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons technology to other countries. A halt to all testing was the original goal of the negotiations that led to the 1963 Limited Test Ban. New talks with the aim of achieving a total ban were begun in 1977 by the U.S., the U.S.S.R. and Britain, but the talks were suspended in 1980. In both cases the main impediment to a comprehensive treaty was the contention by the U.S. and Britain that compliance with the treaty could not be verified because sufficiently small underground nuclear explosions could not be reliably detected and identified.
In July the Reagan Administration announced that the test-ban negotiations with the U.S.S.R. and Britain will not be resumed. Once again the primary reason given was a lack of confidence
in methods of verifying compliance."
They conclude by stating:
"A comprehensive test-ban agreement should not be regarded as a substitute for disarmament. Meaningful reductions in the nuclear threat must include a continuing and serious process of arms control; in this process, however, a comprehensive test-ban treaty could have an important part. The problems of negotiating such a treaty are overwhelmingly political rather than technical and must be recognized as such.
Before the suspension of negotiations between the U.S., Britain and the U.S.S.R. in 1980 tentative agreement had been reached on a number of issues. All three nations agreed that a test-ban treaty would include a prohibition of all tests of nuclear weapons in all environments, a moratorium on peaceful nuclear explosions until arrangements for undertaking them could be worked out, provisions for on-site inspections, a mechanism for the international exchange of seismic data and the installation of tamper proof seismic stations by each country in the territory of the others. The proposed treaty would have a term of three years. The agreements on the long-standing issues of on-site inspection, peaceful explosions and the placement of monitoring stations in each country represented important breakthroughs. It would be a setback for the cause of international security if this hard-won ground were now lost. "
We agree, that today even more than thirty years ago, we have the technical means to verify. Yet those means will also require inspection, on site open inspection, since the systems available provide high probability of a test or violation but on site inspection is the sine qua non gold standard. It must be open and timely. That then becomes the political issue.
The second political issue is what does one do if there is a violation. That becomes the ultimate concern. In the days on the Cold War it mean the side finding the violation was then free to resume its own testing. It was a two player game, where the next step was simple. That no longer works since the game is now a multi-player game.
The final issue is the old Dr. Herman Kahn issue of Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD. Both the US and the USSR were to some degree rational players. They were not driven by religious fatalism and a willingness to sacrifice all for a belief. That type of a mindset changes the game dynamics. Indeed the whole process can be considered a game, a very deadly game. That type of consideration, one focused on a religious belief, was never a consideration in any of the studies in the Cold War. When looking at a psychological profile of any Soviet counterpart one always saw a family, a belief set, a basis in reality. Despite the Soviet and American rhetoric, the fear was more one of some wild card error rather than a deliberate confrontation. Now we have just the opposite.
The problem of managing and controlling nuclear weapons is in a sense a true example of game theory. The key element of the game is the definition of what winning is. The reason why the US and USSR never came to blows was that both sides had understood the concept of a win, namely world dominance, and both sides had come to the realization that nuclear war meant world destruction and thus it was a game in which no one side could ever win. Both sides were rational and both sides had a common understanding of both what a win was and what the rules of the game were.
In the case of Iran and others the concept of what "the win is" is not anywhere near what it was with the US/USSR game. For them total destruction is the win. Thus the game is unbalanced. This is what makes the game with Iran a very dangerous game, it is a game being played in many ways by zealots. Unless the strategists understand this fully, then only dire consequences will result. It seems clear that Israel understands this, it is not at all clear that the US current Administration does.
Thus the approach by the current Administration in some ways resembles the Pollyanna approach by Carter and that led to no reasonable path. It took Reagan and his poker playing that brought rationality to bear. Yet the very nature of the game has changed, wild cards have been introduced, and the tools we have developed to handle this dangerous game are no longer viable. Reagan poker playing will not work. The other side will not be bluffed into an agreement, the other side may not have a rational base of belief consistent with that of the US. Nuclear weapons have a place if the other side has a value system which abhors the results as much as we would. If on the other hand the other side or sides seek the ultimate destruction, or further believe that the ultimate destruction is an eschatological necessity, the game changes totally. A Treaty may not be the straight forward solution, nor frankly is a war. This creates a very complex game, and a very dangerous one.
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