Excerpt from the report on "Nuclear Disarmament"

By Jennifer Weeks, October 2, 2009

OVERVIEW

Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 23, President Barack Obama pledged his administration would work with other nations to strengthen world peace and prosperity.

“First, we must stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and seek the goal of a world without them,” Obama said. “If we fail to act, we will invite nuclear arms races in every region, and the prospect of wars and acts of terror on a scale that we can hardly imagine.”

It is an ambitious goal, especially for the United States. Nuclear weapons have been integral to U.S. defense policy since the end of World War II. Even today, nearly 20 years after the Cold War ended, the United States still spends more than $50 billion every year on nuclear armaments and related programs, including weapons systems, missile defenses and environmental and health costs from past nuclear weapons production.

Many civilian and military experts say abolishing nuclear weapons is impossible. Moreover, they argue, doing so would make the world less safe, because rogue states and terrorists would feel freer to threaten other countries.

But in 2007, four men who had shaped U.S. national security policy for decades – both Democrats and Republicans – warned that relying on nuclear weapons to keep the peace was “becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.” The problem, said former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, was that countries like India, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran were seeking the bomb, and a global black market in nuclear materials was expanding. Instead, they argued, the best way to reduce nuclear dangers was to work toward completely eliminating nuclear weapons.

President Obama agrees. His proposed fiscal 2010 budget eliminates funds for designing new nuclear warheads, which his predecessor, George W. Bush, had argued were needed to replace older weapons in the U.S. arsenal. On April 5, in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Obama laid out a broad agenda for moving toward nuclear abolition. First, he said, the U.S. would reduce the role of nuclear weapons in its own security strategy by:

* Negotiating new strategic (long-range) arms reductions with Russia;

* Ratifying a treaty ending nuclear weapons testing; and

* Seeking a new international treaty to end production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons.

Obama also proposed strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), under which 188 nations have pledged not to seek nuclear weapons, by:

* Giving international inspectors more authority;

* Agreeing on consequences when nations break the rules; and

* Creating an international nuclear-fuel bank so countries with nuclear power reactors would not need nuclear technology to produce their own fuel.

Finally, Obama announced new actions to keep nuclear weapons away from terrorists, including measures to secure vulnerable nuclear materials worldwide and stronger programs to detect nuclear smuggling.

“I’m not naïve. This goal will not be reached quickly – perhaps not in my lifetime,” Obama said. “But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change.”

Obama took another important step in mid-September, canceling Bush administration plans to deploy antimissile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. The installations were intended to defend Europe against missile strikes from Iran. But Russian leaders saw them as a provocative intrusion into Eastern Europe and argued that the system might be expanded and reconfigured to threaten Russia. Instead, the Obama administration said it would field shorter-range interceptors, initially based on ships, which could be targeted more easily against Iranian threats.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called Obama’s move a “correct and brave decision.” But conservatives said Obama was undermining U.S. security commitments to European allies. “Given the serious and growing threats posed by Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, now is the time when we should look to strengthen our defenses, and those of our allies,” said Republican senator and former presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona. “I believe the decision to abandon [the land-based system] unilaterally is seriously misguided.”

On Sept. 24 the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution urging all countries to work toward nuclear reductions and disarmament and to put tighter controls on nuclear technologies and materials. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon welcomed the council’s new resolve and urged states to follow through on the resolution. “Together we have dreamed about a nuclear-weapon-free world. Now we must act to achieve it,” he said.

Other heads of state who had long supported faster nuclear reductions echoed the secretary-general. “While we sleep, death is awake. Death keeps watch from the warehouses that store more than 23,000 nuclear warheads, like 23,000 eyes open and waiting for a moment of carelessness,” said Oscar Arias Sanchez, president of Costa Rica.

The world has lived with nuclear threats for more than 60 years, but today’s challenges differ dramatically from those during the Cold War, when the greatest global security risk was war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Under the doctrine of “mutual assured destruction,” each country fielded tens of thousands of nuclear weapons to ensure that it could survive a first strike and still inflict catastrophic damage on its enemy. The policy kept the peace, advocates argued, by making each side afraid to start a war.

But accidents and misread signals nearly caused nuclear explosions more than once, when nations came close to nuclear exchanges or troops mishandled their own nuclear weapons. Many experts still worry that too many nuclear weapons are on high alert, and that U.S. or Russian leaders might misinterpret an accidental launch as a planned strike and respond by launching more missiles and killing millions of people.

Now the threat of terrorism has compounded the danger. “The greatest threat to our security is that al Qaeda will acquire a nuclear weapon from Pakistan’s or Russia’s arsenal, or the material to build one from any of a dozen countries that don’t guard their material adequately,” says Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which supports efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. “Another risk is that nuclear weapons could be used in a regional war – for example, between India and Pakistan.”

The United States and Soviet Union (succeeded by Russia) have always possessed nearly all the nuclear weapons in the world. Together they have about 24,500 nuclear weapons today, down from a peak of roughly 64,000 in 1986. More than half of these weapons are held as spares, in reserve, or are awaiting dismantlement. But advocates say the U.S. and Russia should make further cuts, both to reduce the risk of a nuclear exchange and to build support for strong, global nonproliferation policies.

“The NPT requires the nuclear powers to move toward disarmament,” says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the nonprofit Arms Control Association. “If we don’t, other countries will be less willing to support tough controls on nuclear bomb material and sanctions on countries that try to develop nuclear weapons. Treading water is not a feasible option. And nuclear weapons aren’t practical tools to deal with terrorist threats or conventional conflicts. Their only defensible purpose is to deter use of nuclear weapons by another country, and only Russia has an arsenal as big as ours.”

Most advocates agree the U.S. should maintain a strong deterrent force as long as other countries have nuclear weapons. Earlier this year, a congressionally appointed bipartisan commission concluded the United States could make more nuclear reductions jointly with Russia, but it recommended retaining bombers, land-based missiles and submarines to deliver them. The report also left open an option for developing new warheads, and commission members disagreed over ending U.S. nuclear testing.

Defense hawks argue that treaties constrain the U.S. but do nothing to reduce threats from countries determined to acquire nuclear weapons. One of their prime examples, Iran, made headlines less than 24 hours after the Security Council’s disarmament resolution, when it was revealed that Iran was building a secret underground plant to enrich uranium.

Obama and his British and French counterparts accused Iran – a member of the NPT – of flouting its non-nuclear pledges. Obama warned that if Iran did not disclose all of its nuclear activities immediately, it would face “sanctions that bite.” But critics said negotiations would not curb Iran’s alleged bomb program.

“In the bitter decades of the Cold War, we learned the hard way that the only countries that abide by disarmament treaties are those that want to be disarmed,” The Wall Street Journal argued in an editorial.

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Nuclear Disarmament

Will President Obama’s efforts make the U.S. safer?
By Jennifer Weeks, October 2, 2009

Peace activists have sought to eliminate nuclear weapons for decades, but now they have a new ally. President Barack Obama has pledged to negotiate new U.S.-Russian arms reductions, end U.S. nuclear testing and reduce the role of nuclear weapons in national defense policy. Obama argues that these steps, plus new measures to combat nuclear smuggling and theft, will make the United States safer. But critics say further nuclear cuts will embolden rogue countries like North Korea and Iran, which are widely thought to be seeking nuclear capabilities. Although the U.S. and Russia have drastically shrunk their Cold War arsenals, the United States still spends at least $52 billion annually on nuclear-related programs. Liberals and conservatives sharply disagree about addressing post-Cold War security threats with nuclear arms. But some experts warn that new, regional nuclear arms races could break out if the U.S. fails to rebuild global support for nuclear reductions.

The Issues:
* Can all nuclear weapons be eliminated?
* Should the United States end nuclear testing?
* Does the United States need new nuclear weapons?


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New Report: Rise in Counterinsurgency

By Peter Katel, September 5, 2008

Will new tactics weaken the military?

U.S. troops are using new tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of trying to defeat the enemy by brute force, they are focusing on counterinsurgency – protecting civilians and relying on them to provide information on enemy activity. But some military experts argue that too much emphasis on “winning hearts and minds” is weakening the skills needed in conventional combat – from rapid infantry advances to accurate artillery marksmanship to tank tactics. Counterinsurgency advocates concede that some of these capabilities may decline, partly because U.S. foes on today’s Third World battlefields don’t have air power or armor. Still, they say no sane enemy would challenge the powerful U.S. military in a traditional, World War II-style conflict. But even battle-hardened veterans of today’s conflicts acknowledge that military forecasting is an inexact science and that the biggest danger can be planning ahead – for last year’s war.

• Is counterinsurgency the next wave of warfare?
• Should the Army form an advisers corps?
• Is the emphasis on counterinsurgency weakening the military?

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Overview of the New Report on the Rise in Counterinsurgency

Early this summer, after savage fighting, elements of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit forced Taliban fighters out of Afghanistan’s Helmand Valley, an area they had dominated for two years. Now it was time to talk.

The commander of Alpha Company, from the 6th Marine Regiment’s First Battalion, Capt. Sean Dynan, a soft-spoken Annapolis graduate and fourth-generation fighter, addressed wary members of the village council in Amir Agha.

“I know that all of you want to just live your lives and that you don’t want us to interfere with what you’re doing on a daily basis,” Dynan told two dozen men gathered in the marketplace. “It is our intention to help and to protect you.”

But making friends was proving difficult in a country at war since the failed Soviet occupation of the 1980s. “America came here telling us they’re going to help us, but these are all tricks, the same tricks that Russia played – then they started killing us,” Sayid Gul, an opium-poppy grower and merchant, told Bill Gentile, a PBS journalist embedded with the Marines. “We don’t trust them any more, the foreigners.” Gul was trying to get the Marines to pay him for damaging his house during a battle with the Taliban.

Despite the villagers’ wariness, Dynan’s efforts at on-the-ground diplomacy reflect the Pentagon view that similar counterinsurgency tactics have led to a notable lessening of violence in Iraq this year.

Support for counterinsurgency is a key tenet of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’ new National Defense Strategy, which lays out a hearts-and-minds approach for the last phase of what the Bush administration once labeled the “global war on terror” and now dubs “the long war.”

“Military efforts to capture or kill terrorists are likely to be subordinate to measures to promote local participation in government and economic programs to spur development,” the document says, “as well as efforts to understand and address the grievances that often lie at the heart of insurgencies.”

That strategy may sound more Peace Corps than Army and Marines. But counterinsurgency advocates argue they’re guided by practicality, not bleeding-heart humanitarianism. Even after major fighting ends in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States and its allies will be facing so-called asymmetric conflicts against foes who know every nook and cranny of their home terrains, says John A. Nagl, a newly retired Army lieutenant colonel and leading counterinsurgency expert, now a senior fellow of the nonpartisan Center for a New American Security. He has proposed the formation of a 20,000-strong corps of Army advisers to work with U.S.-friendly governments facing insurgencies or potential insurgencies.

“Our conventional superiority is going to drive our enemies to fight us asymmetrically,” says Nagl, who served as operations officer of an armored battalion early in the Iraq War and later helped write the U.S. Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. But that doesn’t mean U.S. troops will be sitting ducks for traditional military operations, he says. “Even understanding that we’ve been focusing on counterinsurgency, you’re still not going to want to mass tanks against the United States,” he says, because American pilots would make short work of enemy armor.

Beware of such certainties, some military experts warn. One of the most vocal skeptics, Iraq combat veteran Lt. Col. Gian P. Gentile, argues that counterinsurgency advocates have drawn a false distinction between full-on, World War II-style combat and asymmetrical warfare. Recent events, he says, show that these varieties of combat can be used simultaneously.

As an example, Gentile points to Israel’s painful experience in Lebanon during the 34-day war in the summer of 2006. Israeli troops who had been using counterinsurgency tactics in the Palestinian territories unexpectedly found themselves facing Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon employing conventional military tactics instead of guerrilla warfare to defend their territory. Hezbollah killed 119 Israeli soldiers, a shockingly high death toll for Israel.

“I use that as a way to think about conflicts the United States might face in the future,” says Gentile, who commanded an armored reconnaissance squadron in Baghdad in 2006, often confronting unseen enemies. Now a history professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, he notes that the United States must continue to be ready in the future to deal with potential foes, such as Iran and North Korea, with big conventional armed forces.

After Gentile spoke, the Aug. 8 Russian invasion of the Republic of Georgia, a strong U.S. ally, prompted a wave of speculation about a rebirth of the Cold War – a period during which U.S. and Soviet forces trained incessantly for full-scale conflict in Europe. But, for now, at least, Secretary Gates said, “I don’t see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation.”

In fact, the counterinsurgency-versus-conventional-warfare debate first began during the Cold War years, long before Gentile and Nagl – who both hold doctoral degrees – won their combat decorations in Iraq.

President John F. Kennedy came into office in 1961 determined to challenge Soviet-sponsored guerrilla insurgencies in societies scarred by colonialism or social injustice. Kennedy expanded the limited U.S. advisory effort in Vietnam, pushing for greater use of the military’s “unconventional warfare” unit, Army Special Forces. But after Kennedy’s assassination, the conflict turned into a full-scale war that emphasized the conventional-war strategy known as “attrition” – trying to force surrender by killing large numbers of enemy troops.

Military experts and historians still argue over whether attrition would have succeeded if the U.S. public hadn’t forced an end to the war, or whether an early and total commitment to counterinsurgency warfare would have turned the tide. In any case, from the end of the Vietnam War until 2001, U.S. counterinsurgency operations were mounted as advisory missions – not major troop commitments – as in El Salvador during the 1980s. Indeed, the biggest post-Vietnam military operation, the Persian Gulf War of 1991, followed conventional lines – massive forces of aviation, artillery and armored infantry deployed against another nation-state’s military.

Conventional warfare also dominated the early phase of the Iraq War, though Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld modified it by demanding use of a relatively small, highly mobile ground force, reinforced by massive airpower.

The planning focused solely on toppling Saddam Hussein and defeating his forces, not on what would follow the invasion. “We are not in Iraq to engage in nation-building,” Rumsfeld wrote in The Washington Post six months after the U.S. invasion in March 2003. “The sooner Iraqis can take responsibility for their own affairs, the sooner U.S. forces can come home.”

But nation-building found favor in the Bush administration after U.S. forces came under attack both from Sunnis and Shiites in the years following the invasion.

Nation-building and counterinsurgency are closely related. “Counterinsurgency is nation-building in the face of armed opposition,” in Nagl’s definition. The Bush administration signaled its new strategy with the 2007 appointment of a new top commander for Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who co-directed preparation of the 2006 U.S. Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, the first publication of its kind for more than 20 years.

Petraeus made his first priority the protection of Iraqi civilians, a shift in emphasis from pouring all resources into hunting and killing enemies.

For American military personnel, deaths have fallen to 221 in the first seven months of 2008 – from 740 during the same period last year. Meanwhile, deaths among Iraqi security forces and civilians have fallen from more than 14,000 during the first seven months of 2007 to about 4,300 during the same period in 2008.

One of Petraeus’ key tactics was forging ties with Sunni tribes who were rebelling against the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and eroding the power of militias on whom Shiite civilians had depended for protection. As a result, says military-affairs specialist Stephen Biddle, who served on Petraeus’ staff in 2007, “By late 2007 you had a situation in which all major internal combatants, for perfectly rational, perfectly self-interested reasons, had declared cease-fires – observing ceasefires of necessity.” Biddle is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

Skeptics argue, however, that counterinsurgency strategy had little to do with the increasing stability – because the United States never faced a true insurgency in Iraq or in Afghanistan. “We’re not defending legitimate governments against foreign-inspired insurgencies,” says Douglas A. Macgregor, a former Army colonel who served in the Persian Gulf War. “We’ve established puppet regimes designed to implement our will, and provoked rebellions against those regimes.” Macgregor now consults for the defense industry and writes on military affairs.

Still, says Carter Malkasian, a military expert who has advised Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, precisely labeling U.S. strategy and the nature of the war in Iraq matters less than the ultimate result. “What wins wars?” he asks. “There’s very powerful argument to be made that tactics are much less important than economics and politics.” In Iraq, Sunni tribes’ turning against Al Qaeda in Iraq proved more decisive than U.S. strategy, he says.

Moreover, argues Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr., treating counterinsurgency largely as a low-tech exercise of winning the trust of poor villagers downplays what modern air power can accomplish.

“In the early part of the Afghanistan war, the Taliban assumed we would fight like the Russians, and they could simply hold out,” Dunlap says. “What the Taliban didn’t know about was the advent of laser-guided and precision munitions. Suddenly they’re in positions they’ve held for years, and their foxholes are being vaporized by B-52s they didn’t see or hear. What unhinges an adversary is knowing that he’s helpless against his opponent’s weapons.”

Nevertheless, air power without solid intelligence on the ground can be catastrophic. In late August, U.N. investigators and an Afghan government commission said a U.S. air strike in western Afghanistan had killed 90 civilians, including 60 children. The U.S. military said 30-35 insurgents, including a Taliban commander, had been killed, along with five to seven civilians. But two members of the Afghan parliament said tribal enemies of the targeted community had fed false information to the U.S. military about a Taliban presence.

Gen. David D. McKiernan, U.S. commander of the NATO force in Iraq, countered later that the civilian casualty number had been deliberately inflated. “We regret the loss of civilian life, but the numbers that we find on this target area are nowhere near the number reported in the media. We believe there was a very deliberate information operation orchestrated by the insurgency, by the Taliban,” he told The New York Times.

Taliban adaptability to U.S. tactical and strategic shifts helps explain the insurgents’ comeback of the past several years.

That’s one reason why Alpha Company’s Marines made sure that farmer-merchant Gul finally got reimbursed for his damaged house.

Even so, Gul and his fellow villagers could be forgiven for still keeping the Americans at arms’ length. Soon after the Marines entered the village of Amir Agha, they were led to the body of a man lying on a path, his throat slit. The message, villagers said, was clear: Don’t cooperate with the Americans.

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