Arms Control Wonk

A fun time was had by all yesterday morning at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, DC,  where I presented my research on AQ Khan and his fourth customer. (Well, perhaps there might have been a few stony faces out there.) George Perkovich moderated. I’m grateful for all of his compliments, starting with the invitation itself.

There was an overflow crowd. It was a rare treat to see a classroom’s worth of middies in attendance — plus, if my eyes did not deceive me, one or two cadets.

For those who couldn’t make it, the video is now online. The whole thing runs just under an hour and a half, including the Q&A. See if you can’t spot the cameo appearance by Pollack the Elder!

Update | Jan. 25. Global Security Newswire’s Rachel Oswald has covered the event. Some highlights on the policy front:

Any serious suspicions by other governments that New Delhi conducted nuclear weapons technology deals with the Khan ring could negatively impact India’s chances of concluding new atomic trade agreements with nations such as Japan and Australia or winning membership to the exclusive Nuclear Suppliers Group, [Pollack] asserted….

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The journal Asia Policy has published a “book review roundtable” with essays about Jonathan Pollack’s excellent book No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and International Security, followed by a response essay from Pollack The Elder.  I contributed one of the essays, as did  Toby Dalton, Sue Terry, and Sung-Yoon Lee.

Both Toby and I raised a similar question about the possibility of politics in North Korea, which I thought might temper ever so slightly Pollack’s stark but ultimately compelling conclusion.  You can read the reviews, as well as Pollack’s response.

For the purposes of a blog post, I wanted to pick up on a question posed by Pollack to illustrate why politics might matter.

Then I want to share a picture of Kim Jong Un wedged into tank.

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Pakistani and Indian politics baffle me, even after two decades of watching. You can’t keep track of the players, even with a scorecard, because they change positions so often. In Pakistan, jockeying for power used to be a triangular affair among the Army Chief, Prime Minister and President. Now the Supreme Court, feeling its oats after hastening Pervez Musharraf’s exit, has become a fourth aspiring king-maker and -toppler. At present, the Army Chief is colluding with the Supreme Court to dispose of the President. In Pakistan’s game of musical chairs, the music never stops.

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Sad news today, as Bruno Tertrais has emailed me to say that Thérèse Delpech, doyenne of the French strategic studies community, has passed away.

The last time I saw Thérèse, my wife and I were standing at the TGV station in Avignon, trying to figure out how to purchase a ticket with a North American credit card.  (We ended up stealing the short ride to Aix.)

We found ourselves in Avignon after touring  the decommissioned French fissile material production facilities at Pierrelatte and Marcoule.  I had met Thérèse at several meetings over the years, but that trip to Provence was the first time I really understood how special she was.  I was seated at a lunch with a few French experts, including Thérèse and Bruno Tertrais.  Thérèse could be combative in meetings, so it was with a little trepidation that I sat down.  The previous time I had seen Thérèse was in Paris where she was not very impressed by some of things my traveling companions were saying about nuclear weapons. “Well, it is your deterrent,” I remember her saying, with “your deterrent” sounding exactly like “your funeral.”

Lunch turned out to be pure magic.  Thérèse enjoyed talking about wine and philosophy as much as nuclear weapons.  That lunch is one of my favorite memories, as Thérèse turned her formidable intellect to all the things I really find interesting in life.   (The wine was also excellent!)  By the end of that trip, I was completely charmed. The next thing I knew, we were all in Avignon, with Thérèse troubleshooting the TGV before bidding us farewell.

There is something strange about finding out how much you enjoy someone’s company only to never see that person again.  I noticed that, recently, Thérèse had been traveling less and was cool about committing to a conference I’ve been planning.  It never occurred to me, although it should have, that there might be a reason she was staying close to home.  Thérèse was such a presence that I simply couldn’t imagine one day she would be gone.  It would be like waking up in Paris only to see someone had taken down the Tour Eiffel.

Thérèse was a very special person.  She will be missed.

In a postscript of sorts to a recent debate in Australia over the supply of uranium to India, blogger and political scientist NAJ Taylor approvingly cites my recent article on the A.Q. Khan network and its fourth customer, and draws a rather strong conclusion:

In a large part, Pollack has assembled evidence that makes public what may already be known to investigators – although Pollack’s article was a public act which may prompt AQ Khan to be further, and more significantly, punished outside of the presidential amnesty which he was conditionally granted.

It also takes India’s involvement in the network to a level where – if it is to be believed – she must no longer be trusted.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement that the Obama administration will lend its support to international efforts to craft a Code of Conduct for responsible space-faring nations is welcome news. The fourth year of a presidential term is not the best time to announce an important diplomatic initiative, but the administration has had its hands full with nuclear negotiations and deadline-driven events, not to mention other crucibles at home and abroad. As written in this space (Second Wind, 9/21/11), the Code of Conduct initiative has always had to wait patiently in line. Chicago Cubs fans can relate to this phenomenon. In the meantime, the Code received a thorough Pentagon scrubbing and methodical interagency reviews to confirm the wisdom of this diplomatic initiative. President Obama and his team deserve kudos for fulfilling this campaign promise.

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Happy New Year!

There have been five particularly horrific years of living dangerously in the nuclear age. The first was, most jarringly, 1945, when the Bomb made its spectacular appearance. No advance in the history of warfare was more jarring than a city-killing weapon that could be delivered by surprise for which there was no defense.

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The contest to pick the best lyric about the Bomb and best adapted lyric about the Bomb generated so many superb entries that our distinguished panel of judges had great difficulty selecting winners. Truth be told, in both categories we have split decisions.

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In the old days before the first Gulf War, most nuclear export controls were pretty cut-and-dried: Exporters checked for items on a short ”trigger list” that could be used for making nuclear bomb fuel. But after they learned what Iraq had secretly been up to for about a decade before 1991, the Nuclear Suppliers Group came up with a second list, Infcirc/254/Part 2, and it got into the tricky business of policing a panoply of dual-use goods sought by proliferators.

The stream of dual-use goods is virtually endless, and so has been the internal debate at the NSG about whether items should be listed or not. That’s even more so right now, because as I explained in this report published by Carnegie last month, the NSG has launched a comprehensive review of both its lists, and the decisions it makes about what to control and how to do it will profoundly impact how we attack procurement threats in years to come.

One of the items which is not on the NSG dual-use list is a chemical substance which Iran has been keenly and furtively trying to import since the mid-1990s. This is anhydrous hydrogen fluoride, or AHF. (The term “anhydrous” is just a fancy way of saying that hydrogen fluoride [HF], otherwise known as hydrofluoric acid, is more or less pure, having less than 400 ppm of water.)

Iran needs AHF to process UO2 into UF4 for two programs that the UN Security Council says should be suspended: uranium enrichment and the Arak heavy water reactor.

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Consider this long post a crude proselytizing effort in this holiday season for those who doubt the existence of God, angels, guardians, guides, benevolent spirits, or deities of any kind or persuasion. One way to get religion is to have two near-death experiences and three surgeries in a year. I do not recommend this. Another is to read about US nuclear weapon-related aircraft accidents that could have turned very ugly. Thomas D. Reed and Danny B. Stillman list no less than fifteen serious accidents during the peak periods of 1950 and 1956-1958 in appendices at the back of The Nuclear Express (2010).

These lists may not be exhaustive. For example, Sam Black, who updated these tables for me when he was working at the Stimson Center, found a reference to an accident on January 9, 1956 involving a B-36 bomber in a February 1991 report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. If readers can confirm or know more about this event, please send word. Here are Sam’s other additions:

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