Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Thomas Graham Jr. served for nearly three decades as general counsel as well as acting director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He was President Clinton's Special Representative for arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament, with the rank of ambassador. Keith A. Hansen served in the course of three decades on various strategic arms control delegations (SALT II, INF, and CTBT), where he concentrated on verification issues as an expert on strategic nuclear force issues. He teaches classes on arms control and national security at Stanford University.

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PREVENTING CATASTROPHE

Stanford University Press

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments.................................................................................xiForeword by Paul R. Pillar..................................................................................xvIntroduction................................................................................................11 Motivations of Countries and Terrorists to Acquire WMD....................................................72 Detecting and Monitoring Clandestine WMD Programs.........................................................223 The Track Record Against Clandestine Proliferation........................................................434 Intelligence Community-Policymaker Relations: Playing as a Team?..........................................885 Intelligence on Iraqi WMD Programs and Policy Reactions...................................................1066 National and International Efforts to Thwart Proliferation................................................152Conclusion: Is It Possible to Prevent Future Proliferation?.................................................187Postscript: What If the International Community Fails to Prevent Further Proliferation?.....................195Epilogue....................................................................................................201Appendixes..................................................................................................205Notes.......................................................................................................267Bibliography................................................................................................282Index.......................................................................................................293

Chapter One

Countries and terrorist groups seek weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, for various reasons. According to Sidney Drell and James Goodby (The Gravest Danger), the cases of North Korea, Iran, and Iraq suggest that prestige and national security-through parity or regional dominance-has been the driver behind efforts to acquire nuclear weapon capabilities. To assert that a state is interested in nuclear weapons for security reasons usually means for strategic parity or deterrent purposes; for example, with Pakistan, to offset the superior forces of India, or with Israel, initially to nullify the numerical advantages of its Arab neighbors' conventional military forces. Some states believe that just by possessing nuclear weapons they will be perceived as the dominant state in their region. Iran is a case in point. The possession of nuclear weapons might enable Tehran to dominate at least its part of the Middle East. For purposes of prestige, nuclear weapons also have political value: a state in possession of nuclear weapons can be perceived as a great power. India is a case in point, while Japanese diplomats have complained that Japan is treated like a second-class nation in the international arena and is excluded from important diplomatic meetings because Japan does not have nuclear weapons.

One can argue that it was Saddam's WMD effort that ultimately led to Iran's decision to pursue nuclear weapons, although we believe that Iran probably has had other motives, such as prestige under the Shah, hostility with Israel after the 1979 revolution, and possibly deterrence against US military action. The defense of national sovereignty is a powerful motivation, and both Iran and North Korea appear to have pursued nuclear weapons for that reason.

While the term weapons of mass destruction normally includes chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, the principal attention should be on nuclear weapons (see Appendix B). Chemical and biological weapons should more properly be considered weapons of mass casualties; they do not have the same destructive power as nuclear weapons. Chemical weapons affect only a limited area when employed, and military forces have defenses against them. Biological weapons are essentially terror weapons (even the party deploying the weapons has little control over them once their use is initiated because of the possibility that infected individuals would travel and spread the disease before knowing they themselves were infected), and in advanced countries public health services may be able to develop defenses against them. However, while a first attack with biological weapons in an advanced country likely could be contained, it nevertheless would draw vast quantities of antidotes to the area where the biological agent was used. A series of attacks could place a heavy toll on the responder community (or country) and cause widespread panic. Moreover, the broad extent of international travel could spread a disease to other countries. No other weapon has a comparable capacity to create catastrophe anonymously. Even so, the use of nuclear weapons could be a potential "game changer": they are overwhelmingly destructive through blast and intense heat; they can change the relationship between states; they can be controlled by the deploying party; and there is little defense against them. Nuclear weapons are truly a thing apart, and terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda, dream of obtaining such a weapon.

States are also motivated to acquire nuclear weapons for strategic deterrence. The security issues may be regional, such as with India and Pakistan, or more global, as with the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, and China, especially during the Cold War. For other countries, such as Iran and North Korea, which deeply mistrust the West and fear that the United States will act impulsively and aggressively against their interests, their likely calculation is that nuclear weapons provide at least some deterrent value. After all, they saw how the United States and the Soviet Union used their nuclear arsenals to deter each other from initiating nuclear aggression during the Cold War. However, if unconstrained, the nuclear weapon programs of North Korea and Iran could lead to further nuclear proliferation within their respective regions and might actually decrease their security.

The Political Value of Nuclear Weapons. It became apparent early on that nuclear weapons, with their enormous destructive capacity and indiscriminate effects, could not be used as primary weapons of war; rather they were weapons of deterrence or of last resort. Nevertheless, nuclear weapons took on political value. The possession of nuclear weapons came to be seen as indicative of great-power status for a country, distinguishing it from states that did not have such weapons. For example, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are the five nuclear weapon states recognized by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The political value of nuclear weapons was graphically demonstrated by Britain and France many years ago. In February 1958 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, referring in a television interview to the British nuclear weapon program,...