issue no. 1335 5 october 2018

Issue No. 1335 5 October 2018

// USAF CSDS News and Analysis Issue 1335 //

twitter.com/USAF_CSDS | au.af.mil/au/csds // 2

Feature Report

“Nuclear Weapons in the New Cyber Age”. Published by Nuclear Threat Initiative; Sept. 26, 2018

https://www.nti.org/analysis/reports/nuclear-weapons-cyber-age/

NTI’s new report, Nuclear Weapons in the New Cyber Age, addresses the study group’s chilling conclusion that a successful cyberattack on nuclear weapons or related systems—including nuclear planning systems, early warning systems, communication systems, and delivery systems, in addition to the nuclear weapons themselves—could have catastrophic consequences. The report assesses credible, real-world scenarios in which a cyberattack could lead to a nuclear launch as a result of false warnings or miscalculation, increase the risk of unauthorized use of a nuclear weapon, and undermine confidence in the nuclear deterrent, affecting strategic stability. The report also offers a series of high-level recommendations for mitigating these threats, but ultimately poses the question “In an age of cyberwarfare, has the nuclear deterrence strategy that helped guide the West and the Soviet Union through the Cold War become dangerously obsolete?”

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https://www.nti.org/analysis/reports/nuclear-weapons-cyber-age/



TABLE OF CONTENTS NUCLEAR WEAPONS Report Examines Nuclear Weapons, Cyberattack Vulnerability (Homeland Preparedness News)

“The world’s most lethal weapons are vulnerable to stealthy attacks from stealthy enemies—attacks that could

have catastrophic consequences,” Ernest J. Moniz, Sam Nunn, and Des Browne, study group co-chairs wrote in

the report’s foreword.

Weapons Expert: U.S. Is Maintaining Nuclear Arsenal without Nuclear Testing (The Independent)

Especially important are experiments using research facilities like LLNL’s National Ignition Facility, which can

generate temperatures like those found in nuclear explosions, the expert said.

America’s Newest Nuclear Gravity Bomb Completes Design Review (Defense News)

The weapon is certified for both the B-52 and B-2 bombers, America’s F-15, F-16 and F/A-18 fighter aircraft, and

British and German Tornado aircraft under a NATO agreement.

US COUNTER-WMD DHS Aims to Replace Slow, Outdated Bioterror-Detection System (Defense One)

Biological weapons detection “is and has been a problem,” DHS Assistant Secretary James F. McDonnell, who

leads the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office …

GAO Report Gives Clear Assessment of DOD Laboratory Oversight Post-Anthrax Scare (Homeland Preparedness

News)

In a summary by the GAO, the Secretary of the Army has gone so far as to implement a BSAT (Biological Select

Agents and Toxins) Biosafety and Biosecurity Program, but the organization has not created the strategy and

execution for managing the initiative.

US ARMS CONTROL N. Korea Rejects Idea of Peace Treaty in Exchange for Denuclearization (VOA)

The three-year war that split the communist North and U.S.-backed South Korea ended in 1953 with a truce

instead of a peace treaty, leaving the two sides in a technical state of war.

Netanyahu: Iran Nuclear Deal Has ‘Brought War Closer’ (VOA)

The United States pulled out of the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, in May.

US Threatens to ‘Take Out’ Russian Missiles If Moscow Keeps Violating Nuclear Treaty (CNN)

Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded forcefully, saying [Amb. Kay Bailey]

Hutchison behaved "aggressively and destructively" by making the comments.

COMMENTARY Is Nothing Better Than Something? Trashing These Treaties Makes No Sense (Defense One)

The Open Skies, Intermediate Nuclear Forces, and New START agreements are important strands of the nuclear safety

net.

The Case for a U.S. No-First-Use Policy (Arms Control Today)

Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove” delivers an eerily accurate depiction of the absurd logic and

catastrophic risks of U.S. and Russian Cold War nuclear deterrence strategy …

China Can Prod North Korea into Nuclear Disarmament (The National Interest)

If China were to move beyond enforcing sanctions and urging restraint to a more proactive stance, this could break the

current log-jam.

Achieving the Trump Administration’s National Biodefense Strategy (Real Clear Defense)

In addressing this bipartisan issue, the administration largely builds on the biodefense strategies of the George W.

Bush and Barack Obama administrations.





NUCLEAR WEAPONS Homeland Preparedness News (Washington, D.C.)

Report Examines Nuclear Weapons, Cyberattack Vulnerability

By Douglas Clark

Sept. 28, 2018

A recently released Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) report suggests nuclear weapons and related systems are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks and implores nuclear-armed states to take measures to prevent attacks.

“Nuclear Weapons in the New CyberAge: A Report of the Cyber-Nuclear Weapons Study Group” determined cyberthreats to nuclear weapons and related systems — such as nuclear planning systems, early warning systems, communication systems and delivery systems — increase the risk of unauthorized use of a nuclear weapon, increase the risk of nuclear use as a result of false warnings, and could undermine confidence in the nuclear deterrent.

“The world’s most lethal weapons are vulnerable to stealthy attacks from stealthy enemies—attacks that could have catastrophic consequences,” Ernest J. Moniz, Sam Nunn, and Des Browne, study group co-chairs wrote in the report’s foreword. “Today, that fact remains the chilling reality. Cyber threats are expanding and evolving at a breathtaking rate and governments are not keeping pace. It is essential that the U.S. government and all nuclear-armed states catch up with this threat.”

The report’s recommendations include developing options to increase decision time to account for threats to early warning systems; establishing norms to restrict cyber weapons use against nuclear weapons systems; enhancing survivability and resilience of nuclear systems and command, control, and communications systems; and securing and diversifying critical systems.

https://homelandprepnews.com/stories/30648-report-examines-nuclear-weapons-cyberattack-vulnerability/

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The Independent (Livermore, Calif.)

Weapons Expert: U.S. Is Maintaining Nuclear Arsenal without Nuclear Testing

By Jeff Garberson

Sept. 27, 2018

The U.S. is successfully maintaining its nuclear arsenal with the use of powerful computer models and by carrying out sophisticated laboratory scale tests, according to a weapons expert who spent years helping to guide the effort.

Especially important are experiments using research facilities like LLNL’s National Ignition Facility, which can generate temperatures like those found in nuclear explosions, the expert said.

“We know how to indefinitely sustain the modern (nuclear weapons) stockpile without having to do nuclear testing,” said Bruce Goodwin, formerly the principal associate director in charge of LLNL’s nuclear weapons program.







Goodwin today is a senior fellow at LLNL’s Center for Global Security Research, a think tank aimed at providing back-and-forth communications between the technical community and political and military policymakers in Washington, D.C.

He spoke two weeks ago at a meeting of the Valley Study Group, reviewing the history of nuclear weapons development, with particular emphasis on miniaturization, in the years since World War II.

In doing so, he gave credit to Tom Ramos, LLNL physicist-turned-historian, who has spent the better part of the past decade compiling first a classified and then an unclassified history of LLNL’s nuclear weapons program.

Ramos’s unclassified history is now being reviewed by Cornell University Press for publication in book form within a year or two. Goodwin said he made extensive use of a prepublication text in developing his talk.

Started at Los Alamos

The U.S. nuclear weapons program famously was based on scientific and technical work done and orchestrated from a top-secret World War II site in northern New Mexico, in the tiny town of Los Alamos.

The fission bombs designed there, based on energy released when very heavy atomic nuclei are split, brought the war with Japan to an abrupt end in 1945.

Edward Teller, who would later help found LLNL, spent the war years contemplating ways to generate thermonuclear explosions, which would exploit energy released when very light atomic nuclei are fused.

Soon after the War, he suggested a way to increase the explosive power of a fission bomb by introducing a small amount of fusion fuel.

The method, called boosting, could either make a bomb more powerful or reduce the size needed to achieve a required explosive yield, Goodwin said.

In 1951, Teller and Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam published a classified seminal paper detailing the design of a far more powerful thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb, which would use the output of a fission bomb to ignite fusion fuel.

Teller is a highly controversial figure in weapons program history. Some historians have given Ulam the lion’s share of credit for the success of the design, which was tested the following year. Goodwin, however, credits Teller with the central idea, called radiation coupling, and assigns Ulam a supporting role.

Part of the controversy surrounding Teller was his advocacy of a second weapons laboratory, which was eventually established at Livermore. A number of powerful figures in Washington opposed a second lab, as did many at Los Alamos.

The call for a second laboratory was motivated in large part by the Soviet Union’s espionage-aided success in detonating its first atomic bomb much earlier than U.S. intelligence had forecast.

After then-President Harry Truman decided in favor of a second laboratory, Los Alamos accelerated its effort to design a hydrogen bomb. It carried out a proof-of-principle detonation in the Pacific in the Ivy Mike test in November 1952.

It was hardly a deliverable weapon, weighing more than 80 tons and required a separate refrigeration system, Goodwin said. “I don’t call it a weapon unless you think you can deliver a weapon via ocean liner,” he joked.





Although the new laboratory at Livermore had been open for two months when the Ivy Mike test took place, some news media gave Livermore credit for Los Alamos’s success.

At that time, Atomic Energy Commission classification rules forbade any discussion of thermonuclear weapons research, so Livermore was denied permission to correct the public record to give Los Alamos due credit.

The slight, however unintended, added to the resentment felt in New Mexico toward the second laboratory.

‘Technical Genius’ Follows Failures

In an environment of intense technical competition and resentment, then, the young Livermore laboratory was in danger of being shut down, particularly after its initial nuclear tests failed, Goodwin said.

The failed tests were based on designs generated by Edward Teller, trying out ideas he had formulated during his Los Alamos days.

With today’s knowledge and computer modeling capabilities, it is clear that some of the designs were a “really bad idea” and never could have worked, Goodwin said.

At the time, the failures raised doubts about Livermore’s capabilities and bolstered a campaign in Washington to close the new laboratory.

Fortunately for the laboratory’s future, three brilliant young scientists were then given responsibility “and their technical genius basically saved this laboratory,” Goodwin said.

They were Johnny Foster, Harold Brown and Herb York. York was already in charge of the Livermore laboratory under Lawrence’s overall direction. The two others were future directors.

The starting point for a turnaround was a revolutionary design by Foster, who “came up with an entirely new way of doing an atomic bomb.”

Foster’s design was of the first (fission) stage of a thermonuclear weapon, the stage whose energy ignites the second (fusion) stage. Foster’s design was light enough that it could literally be hand-carried to the top of a tower in Nevada, where it was tested successfully, Goodwin said.

Teller’s Surprise Promise

In 1956, the Navy organized a now-famous conference to learn whether and how thermonuclear warheads could be carried by submarines, which would be all but invulnerable to surprise attack.

The explosive yield was defined by the Navy based on the accuracy it expected from thousand-mile missiles. The missiles envisioned at the time were huge, heavy and liquid fueled, an exceptionally dangerous configuration to take to sea.

Comparing its technology to that available in 1955, Los Alamos offered a warhead that would be sixfold lighter and available by 1965. Teller, representing Livermore, then surprised everyone by promising a warhead would be thirtyfold lighter and available by 1963.

Not surprisingly, the Navy chose the Livermore design. Second (fusion) stage innovations by Harold Brown and Herb York, coupled with Foster’s lightweight first stage design, led to warheads that could be carried by compact, solid fueled Polaris missiles. These could be carried safely by submarines, invulnerable to attack beneath the vast oceans.

The first of the Polaris submarines, the George Washington, was deployed in 1960, well ahead of the schedule anticipated by Teller.





It was a breakthrough system, both in its technology and in its effect on national security. Having an invulnerable deterrent gave President John F. Kennedy the confidence to stand up to the Soviets during the 1961 Berlin crisis, according to his national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy.

Further miniaturization of nuclear weapons was driven particularly by innovations at LLNL, Goodwin said.

In fact, in order to keep the two-laboratory concept alive and promote competitive innovation in the nuclear weapons program, the Atomic Energy Commission soon assigned the W76 warhead to Los Alamos to force them to learn Livermore’s miniaturization technologies.

The importance of having two competing laboratories is generally accepted within the weapons program, but specific examples are often hard to cite because the details of weapons development are protected.

Goodwin was able to describe one case that came about following a series of nuclear weapons accidents including B-52 bomber crashes in Greenland and Spain in the 1960s and an Arkansas Titan missile silo explosion in 1980.

Although none of these produced a nuclear explosion, all were dangerous and in some cases radioactive material was spread over a wide area.

To reduce the risk of future accidents, the Air Force then asked Livermore and Los Alamos to create safer forms of the high explosive that initiates the nuclear process.

Los Alamos developed a better “insensitive high explosive,” as the product was called – an explosive that would not detonate in a hot fire, a high-speed crash or when shot repeatedly with high velocity bullets.

On the other hand, Goodwin said, this high explosive proved ineffective when tested in Los Alamos’s nuclear weapons designs. It would only work with designs that were based on the Foster technology invented at Livermore in the 1950s.

The outcome was the successful mating of technologies from the two laboratories and the ability to deploy intrinsically safe nuclear weapons.

“Without two labs, that would not have happened,” Goodwin said.

A Reliable Nuclear Arsenal

As principal associate director, Goodwin was in charge of the Laboratory’s weapons program as it made the transition from the era when nuclear weapon designs could be tested in full-scale field experiments to the present “stockpile stewardship” era.

Today, all U.S. nuclear weapons are much older than was anticipated when they were designed, but Goodwin is confident that they are being maintained reliably by weapons program scientists and engineers who have access to experimental facilities that have advanced greatly since the end of nuclear testing and the advent of the Stockpile Stewardship program.

By analogy with careful bridge designers, Goodwin said, those responsible for maintaining nuclear weapons do not need to carry out full-scale tests to know that the weapons are reliable.

A bridge designer does not test a bridge to failure, he said. Instead, the designer builds parts with safety factors that make the bridge significantly stronger than needed against the simultaneous occurrence of all known risks, from windstorms to earthquakes to corrosion to traffic overloading.





Comparable precautions make today’s nuclear stockpile reliable and safe, he said. Key issues for thermonuclear weapons are the efficiency of the first (fission) stage and the fraction of first stage that reaches the second (fusion) stage.

Goodwin believes LLNL has confirmed the second factor once and for all and is coming close to confirming the first.

He looks forward to continued progress using the National Ignition Facility, including the long-anticipated demonstration of ignition – as a step toward this confirmation.

http://www.independentnews.com/science_and_technology/weapons-expert-u-s-is-maintaining-nuclear-arsenal-without-nuclear/article_e9bb791e-c1c6-11e8-abea-ff46b414ed10.html

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Defense News (Washington, D.C.)

America’s Newest Nuclear Gravity Bomb Completes Design Review

By Aaron Mehta

Oct. 1, 2018

WASHINGTON — The B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb has completed its final design review, setting up production for March of 2020, the National Nuclear Security Administration has announced.

The B61-12 life-extension program consolidates and replaces the older B61-3, -4, -7 and -10 variants, in a move that proponents say will both update aging parts of the weapons and drive down upkeep costs. The review, which involved a team of 12 independent experts studying three years of data, certified that the B61-12 design meets Defense Department standards.

The weapon is certified for both the B-52 and B-2 bombers, America’s F-15, F-16 and F/A-18 fighter aircraft, and British and German Tornado aircraft under a NATO agreement. The F-35 is also planned to go through certification on the weapon at some point in the next decade.

Production qualification activities at the agency’s Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas, will begin in October 2018, with the program on track for its first production unit in March 2020, according to an agency timeline. The weapon passed another milestone in June, when two non-nuclear designs for the weapon were flown and released successfully over Tonopah Test Range in Nevada.

The NNSA is a semiautonomous department within the Department of Energy. While the Defense Department manages the delivery systems of the nuclear force — ships, planes and missiles — NNSA has oversight over the development, maintenance and disposal of nuclear warheads.

“This result is a testament to the extraordinary dedication and skill of team members across the Nuclear Security Enterprise working together to accomplish the mission,” U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Ronald Allen Jr., NNSA principal assistant deputy administrator for military application, said in a statement. “It exemplifies our joint team’s steadfast commitment to fulfilling the Nation’s enduring requirements for a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent.”

According to a 2016 report from the NNSA, the life-extension program will cost roughly $9.5 billion — a baseline cost of $7.605 billion, plus an additional $648 million in NNSA funding that has common applications across multiple weapon systems, as well as the estimated $1.3 billion that the Defense Department plans to spend on developing and procuring tail kits for the weapons.

However, a report by the Government Accountability Office earlier this year warned that the B61-12, among other NNSA projects, is underfunded.







https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/10/01/americas-newest-nuclear-gravity-bomb-completes-design-review/

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US COUNTER-WMD Defense One (Washington, D.C.)

DHS Aims to Replace Slow, Outdated Bioterror-Detection System

By Patrick Tucker

Sept. 26, 2018

A new plan to draw on big data and distributed sensors will replace a 2003 system that can take up to 39 hours to detect a threat.

In order to fight next-generation biological threats, the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, is revamping the way the government collects, uses, monitors and distributes information. The hope is to get something that works far faster than the system in use today to catch a pandemic before it starts.

Biological weapons detection “is and has been a problem,” DHS Assistant Secretary James F. McDonnell, who leads the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, said at a September event sponsored by Noblis.

It’s harder, for example, than finding stolen or illicit nuclear weapons. The latter is a binary problem; radioactive material is present in sufficient quantity to trigger the alarm, or it isn’t. But detecting biological threats is more difficult. Variabilities in particulate matter, weather, and other natural conditions can all affect readings to great degree.

“What the air looks like in Washington during the Cherry Blossom Festival is a lot different than what the air looks like on a cold, rainy afternoon. The air in Denver is different from the air in California,” said McDonnell. “There are so many different variables when you are trying to understand particulates in the air.”

While emergency workers and authorities can quickly ascertain what sort of damage has been done by a bomb, biological contamination can spread a long way before it is detected.

Today, DHS sniffs for bioterrorism in 30 U.S. cities under the BioWatch program, which gathers air samples over 24 hours, sends them to a lab, and uses polymerase chain reaction analysis to look for DNA from toxins or pathogens.

McDonnell says the 15-year-old BioWatch program has become inadequate — in particular, it’s too slow.

“It’s 11 to 13 hours after [the sample] is taken to the laboratory before a decision is made” as to whether a biological agent has been deployed, he said. “That gives you up to 39 hours in between samples and the decision. If you take Penn Station in New York, with 600,000 people a day going through it and a 9-million-person subway system… and our current [concept of operation] is which would let you know, ‘Yesterday, someone released smallpox,’ you have a global pandemic before we’re done doing the analysis.”







McDonnell says that while the department will continue to use BioWatch, they will also move toward replacing it with a new monitoring system. The new system that will add sensors — including ones on government cellphones — and make better use of the ones scattered across a list of government agencies that includes Customs and Border Patrol and the Transportation Securities Administration. They’ll also work to better integrate all that data in a way that lets everyone see what everyone else is doing.

Most importantly, DHS wants the new system to constantly scan the environment for subtle irregularities that could point to the presence of a biological agent, rather than just sniffing for the agents themselves. To prevent false positives, the system will use big-data analytics to determine whether an anomaly warrants human inspection.

“What we are doing is deploying real-time triggers that will do bio-sensing and identify anomalies. To determine that anomaly is going to be difficult. It’s going to take some time and some advanced analytics to figure out the bell curve for what’s normal in what time of day. There is quite a bit of data. That’s going to be a big project for us. But the [concept of operations] looks similar to the nuclear [detection] concept of operations at the end of the day,” McDonnell said.

When such an anomaly is detected, ”smeone with a handheld kit will go down and do an assessment to see if it’s positive for anthrax or not. Now you’ve gone from ‘we had smallpox released yesterday’ to, in 20 or 30 minutes, doing incident management.”

McDonnell’s job was created in December, in what a DHS press release called “one of the most significant reorganizations of the Department in a decade.” The House recently voted to make the office permanent. McDonnell was appointed to head the office in May.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/09/dhs-aims-replace-slow-outdated-bioterror-detection-system/151588/

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Homeland Preparedness News (Washington, D.C.)

GAO Report Gives Clear Assessment of DOD Laboratory Oversight Post-Anthrax Scare

By Claudia Adrien

Sept. 28, 2018

In 2015 it was discovered that a U.S. laboratory spent more than a decade inadvertently sending the bacteria that causes anthrax to 194 laboratories worldwide.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has recently released its findings regarding how effective the U.S. Department of Defense has been with addressing the lapses made at the laboratory at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, and whether systemic oversight changes regarding biosecurity have since been implemented across DOD facilities. The findings are mixed.

“Not only do you fix those problems there, but in the entire biological defense enterprise in the Department of Defense,” said Joseph Kirschbaum, director in the Defense Capabilities and Management Team of the GAO in a podcast. “Essentially you end up with a better, more effective organization doing risk management and preventing these kinds of things.”

The GAO found that only 18 changes had been made of the 35 the U.S. Army initially sought and, according to the report, the DOD: “…had not fully identified the infrastructure capabilities required to address threats, had not planned to identify potential duplication without considering







information from existing federal studies, and had not updated its guidance and planning process to include specific responsibilities and time frames for risk assessments.”

In a summary by the GAO, the Secretary of the Army has gone so far as to implement a BSAT (Biological Select Agents and Toxins) Biosafety and Biosecurity Program, but the organization has not created the strategy and execution for managing the initiative.

“What’s at stake here is that these labs deal with very dangerous biological materials, in this case Bacillus anthracis that could potentially cause anthrax, which as you recall from the post-9/11 attacks in Washington and other places, could potentially be disastrous,” Kirschbaum said.

“What’s at stake when they ship potentially active or still active bacteria is not understanding the extent to which what is required to deactivate it and that was literally what happened,” he added. “So when it’s sent potentially live – not that it’s going to cause anthrax right away – but there is a potential if it got loose that it might cause that and obviously that was a concern to everyone.”

As for Dugway Proving Ground, it’s unclear from the GAO’s assessment why the 575 shipments of Bacillus anthracis were sent in the first place, such as whether they may have been confused for other materials. The document does cite that senior management at the laboratory had contributed to “a culture of complacency, resulting in laboratory personnel not always following rules, regulations, and procedures.”

The BioTesting Division at Dugway Proving Ground is working to regain its certification as a covered facility under the Federal Select Agent Program to possess BSAT in the United States.

https://homelandprepnews.com/countermeasures/30657-gao-report-gives-clear-assessment-of-dod-laboratory-oversight-post-anthrax-scare/

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US ARMS CONTROL VOA (Washington, D.C.)

N. Korea Rejects Idea of Peace Treaty in Exchange for Denuclearization

Author Not Attributed

Oct. 2, 2018

North Korea says it will not abandon its nuclear weapons program in exchange for an official declaration of the end of the Korean War.

The three-year war that split the communist North and U.S.-backed South Korea ended in 1953 with a truce instead of a peace treaty, leaving the two sides in a technical state of war. The idea of a formal peace treaty has been floated during the recent flurry of diplomatic overtures between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington aimed at denuclearizing the Korean peninsula. But the U.S. has rejected the North's demand for a formal declaration ending the war before the regime completely abandons its nuclear weapons program.

In a commentary issued Tuesday by its official news agency, the North rejected the suggestion of a quid pro quo deal, saying a formal peace treaty "is not just a gift from a man to another," and added that "it can never be a bargaining chip for getting the DPRK to denuclearize," using the acronym to the regime's official name.







During his speech to the United Nations last week, North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho told the world body there was "no way" his country would unilaterally disarm as long as the U.S. continues to impose harsh sanctions on the regime.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump signed an agreement during their historic summit in Singapore in June for the North to dismantle its nuclear program. But the two sides are currently at an impasse over North Korea's intentions in ending the program.

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-koreas-diplomacy/4595850.html

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VOA (Washington, D.C.)

Netanyahu: Iran Nuclear Deal Has ‘Brought War Closer’

Author Not Attributed

Sept. 28, 2018

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the nuclear deal with Iran has “brought war closer” to happening in the Middle East.

Speaking Friday in New York with VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren, Netanyahu said Iran received billions of dollars from the lifting of sanctions as part of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, but did not use that money to better the lives of the Iranian people.

“They took $15 billion and put it in an aggressive empire in which they are trying to conquer the Middle East, kill anyone who disagrees with them and seek their campaign to destroy Israel,” Netanyahu said.

Report to IAEA

Netanyahu’s comments came a day after he addressed the U.N. General Assembly, accusing Iran of maintaining a secret nuclear weapons storage facility in Tehran. Iranian state television called the charge “ridiculous.”

The Israeli prime minister told VOA that Israel notified the International Atomic Energy Agency about the facility six weeks ago but said, so far, there had been no response.

“I hope they’ll act now,” he said. “I’m sure the Iranian regime will do everything in its power to lead them astray, not to take them right into the place,” Netanyahu added.

Future of Iran deal

Also at the United Nations this week, the diplomatic tussle intensified between the United States and other signatories over the future of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as the U.S. prepares to hit Tehran with fresh sanctions.

The United States pulled out of the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, in May. The five remaining signatories — Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia — want to create an alternative payment system to bypass U.S. sanctions.

The United States has reacted with anger to that plan, and on Wednesday Trump accused Iran of spreading chaos, death and destruction.

Netanyahu told VOA that the “Europeans still cling to a version of what they’d like Iran to be rather than what Iran is.”



https://www.voanews.com/a/us-koreas-diplomacy/4595850.html



“They have to wake up and recognize this. This is the most aggressive, terrorist power on earth. The last thing they should have is a relief on sanctions and the ability to advance their empire of aggression and their nuclear weapons program,” he said.

Rouhani responds

At the U.N. Wednesday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani praised efforts to keep the nuclear deal alive.

“Until such time when we keep reaping the benefits promised within that agreement for our nation and our people, we will remain in the agreement. Should the situation change, we have other paths and other solutions,” Rouhani told reporters in New York.

https://www.voanews.com/a/netanyahu-nuclear-deal-with-iran-has-brought-war-closer/4592428.html

Return to top CNN (Atlanta, Ga.)

US Threatens to ‘Take Out’ Russian Missiles If Moscow Keeps Violating Nuclear Treaty

By Ryan Browne and Frederik Pleitgen

Oct. 2, 2018

(CNN)The United States Permanent Representative to NATO, Amb. Kay Bailey Hutchison, warned Tuesday that the US could "take out" Russian missiles that are perceived to be in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty should Moscow continue to violate the agreement.

"We have been trying to send a message to Russia for several years that we know they are violating the treaty. We have shown Russia the evidence that we have, that they are violating the treaty," Hutchison said according to a US NATO mission transcript of a press conference on the sidelines of the NATO Defense Ministerial meeting in Brussels.

"They are building a medium-range ballistic missile in violation of the INF. That is a fact which we have proven," she added.

Asked what type of countermeasures the US and NATO would pursue in the face of the Russian violation, Hutchison said "the countermeasures would be to take out the missiles that are in development by Russia in violation of the treaty."

"Getting them to withdraw would be our choice, of course. But I think the question was what would you do if this continues to a point where we know that they are capable of delivering. And at that point we would then be looking at a capability to take out a missile that could hit any of our countries in Europe and hit America in Alaska," she added.

Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded forcefully, saying Hutchison behaved "aggressively and destructively" by making the comments.

"It seems as if people who make such statements do not realize the level of their responsibility and the danger of such aggressive rhetoric," Zakharova told CNN.

"Who authorized this lady to make such statements? The American people? Do the ordinary people in the USA know what the so-called diplomats, who are getting paid with the money from [ordinary people's] pockets, behave themselves so aggressively and destructively?" Zakharova added.







"It is very easy to break and crush everything. It is hard to repair and restore. US diplomacy will have to do a lot in order to fix the aftermath of their mistakes. As for the essence of the matter, our military experts will give an expanded response," she added.

Earlier on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN the Kremlin "prefers not to pay extra attention to statements by ambassadors while we have too many uncertainties with the messages on the higher level."

The 1987 treaty limits the types of missiles that the US and Russia can deploy.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Tuesday that NATO remained "concerned about Russia's lack of respect for its international commitments, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty."

"After years of denials, Russia recently acknowledged the existence of a new missile system, called 9M729. Russia has not provided any credible answers on this new missile. All Allies agree that the most plausible assessment would be that Russia is in violation of the Treaty," he added.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/02/politics/us-threatens-russia-missiles-nuclear-treaty/index.html

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COMMENTARY Defense One (Washington, D.C.)

Is Nothing Better Than Something? Trashing These Treaties Makes No Sense

By Michael Krepon

Oct. 2, 2018

The Open Skies, Intermediate Nuclear Forces, and New START agreements are important strands of the nuclear safety net.

There are times when nothing is better than something. For example, we would all like to live without pain, illness, and loss. In most cases, however, something is better than nothing — certainly when it comes to putting food on the table. Or budgeting for other necessities like clothing, shelter and education. Nothing isn’t better than something when it comes to protecting our environment or providing for community policing or national defense. And nothing certainly isn’t better than something when it comes to diplomacy to reduce nuclear dangers and reaffirm ties with friends and allies.

All common sense, right? But not according to some on Capitol Hill, who argue that nothing is better than something. In this strange view advanced by Sen. Tom Cotton and others, treaties need to be ditched, even when they do not constrain U.S. military firepower and even when they are deemed important by friends and allies. The latter is especially important when it comes to reducing nuclear dangers. Friends are less likely to want nuclear weapons when alliances are strong and when Washington takes reassuring steps to demonstrate solidarity.

What, exactly, is injurious about the nuclear safety net woven with great care over the past 45 years by successive administrations, a safety net that has helped prevent mushroom clouds? What, exactly, is injurious about the few treaties left that provide tangible ways to foster cooperation







among friends and allies spooked by the Trump administration’s policies and by Russian bearishness?

The nothing-is-better-than-something crowd has trained its fire at the Open Skies Treaty, which governs cooperative over-flights from Vancouver to Vladivostok; the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which bans ground-based, nuclear-tipped missiles of certain ranges based within and on the periphery of Europe; and the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which limits longer-range strategic offensive arms. In each case, ditching treaties would further shred alliance ties and the nuclear safety net.

The ostensible reasoning for walking away, which applies to the Open Skies and INF treaties, but not New START, is that Vladimir Putin has violated some of their provisions. “The bottom line,” as Deputy Defense Undersecretary for Policy David Trachtenberg has testified, is that “arms control with Russia is troubled because the Russian Federation apparently believes it need only abide by the agreements that suit it.” Selective Russian compliance is most definitely problematic. The challenge before legislators and the Trump administration is how to respond sensibly and effectively to Russian misbehavior.

The most egregious examples of Russian misbehavior relate to Russia’s disregard for the sovereignty of its neighbors. The most glaring examples of this are the Kremlin’s annexing of Crimea and the hybrid warfare it is waging in eastern Ukraine. The United States can no more accept the Crimean annexation than the swallowing-up of the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Russian efforts to compromise Ukrainian sovereignty along their border deserve serious and sustained push-back, increasing the costs of Russian occupation.

But what about treaties? Is nullification a good strategy to express opposition to Russian misbehavior? Let’s begin with the Open Skies Treaty, first proposed by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1955 and rejected by the Politburo as a clever, nefarious ploy to reveal their closed society’s military secrets. President George H.W. Bush resurfaced Ike’s proposal in 1989 to test Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s campaign of glasnost, or openness. Gorbachev agreed, knowing that his country couldn’t hide from satellite observation. This Treaty was finalized in 1992 and entered into force a decade later. So far, over 1,000 cooperative aerial over-flights have been carried out under the Open Skies Treaty.

This Treaty isn’t really about gathering intelligence for Washington and Moscow, which have other, better means of doing so. Indeed, the resolution limits on the sensors carried by Open Skies aircraft were deliberately set to commercially available, fuzzier standards than those obtainable by “national technical means.” The point of the Treaty has always been about symbolism rather than technical data collection: The United States could offer ride-sharing with friends and allies, thereby helping those without advanced monitoring capabilities while giving them cooperative means of situational awareness and reassurance of Washington’s continued support for their national security.

These fundamental reasons for negotiating the Open Skies Treaty have become far more important with Vladimir Putin’s revanchist and Donald Trump’s “America First” tendencies. Senator Cotton and others complain that Russia has placed constraints on overflying Kaliningrad, an outpost on the Baltic Sea sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, while imposing logistical constraints on U.S. aircrews. The Kremlin is also sensitive for obvious reasons about over-flights along the Ukrainian border. Yet nothing of military significance that happens in Kaliningrad or in western Russia escapes U.S. notice, with or without the overflights. Meanwhile, Senator Cotton’s proposed remedy would end ride-sharing with Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine, along with other countries in Eastern Europe, including new members of NATO.





Senator Cotton and other opponents of the Open Skies Treaty have another complaint, which is entirely of their own making. Russia has replaced its old Open Skies aircraft and equipped them with more modern sensors, as is permitted by the state parties. The Air Force and Open Skies critics on Capitol Hill have dragged their feet about replacing our own rickety Open Skies aircraft and sensors. They now complain about being placed at a disadvantage in terms of openness. Every other treaty-party has OK’d over-flights by the new Russian aircraft-and-sensor suite — instruments that still abide by strictures on resolution negotiated a quarter-century ago — except the Trump administration. It’s a sad day when Moscow can turn the tables on Washington by being open to inspections, something every U.S. president since Harry Truman has previously championed.

New START

Speaking of openness, New START provides U.S. on-site inspectors access to sensitive facilities where Russian strategic forces are located. While satellites can and do monitor these sites, well-trained inspectors can sense information that technical instruments cannot. These inspections are also highly symbolic: they convey a hard-won degree of cooperative monitoring to reduce the world’s most deadly weapons. Without inspections, President Ronald Reagan would not have been able to negotiate the INF Treaty with the “evil empire.” Inspections have been part and parcel of steep reductions in strategic force structure ever since.

Provisions of New START, including on-site inspections, expire in 2021. The terms of the Treaty permit its extension as well as further reductions. Are limits on strategic offensive forces backed up by on-site inspections better than no limits and no inspections? The common sense answer to this question is clearly “yes.” Those who would dispense with limits and inspections would slash our frayed nuclear safety net.

Which brings us to the 1987 INF Treaty, which has greatly reassured America’s NATO allies and jump-started deep cuts in ocean-spanning nuclear forces. The Obama and Trump administrations have charged Russia with violating this treaty by flight-testing prohibited ground-launched missiles at less than full range and then deploying them. Putin has long chafed against not being able to have missiles with ranges comparable to those possessed by China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. He has taken another page from the old Soviet playbook by deploying them, presumably to increase leverage on NATO.

When the Kremlin did this in the mid- to late 1970s, it prompted the Carter and then the Reagan administrations to pursue a “dual track” strategy of pursuing negotiations while building new “Euro missiles” as a counter. These U.S. ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles greatly stoked the Kremlin’s fears of a surprise attack. When deployments began in Europe, they prompted a Soviet walkout at nuclear negotiations and greatly roiled NATO, but they eventually led to the INF Treaty which eliminated them.

Now this history could be repeating itself. Washington has counters to Russia’s Euro-missiles that don’t violate the INF Treaty, and Congress has begun to fund additional counters that do. This time around, it may well be harder to find takers for them within NATO, but pressures will still grow for Moscow to accommodate U.S. concerns. The way out of this mess is through negotiations, not ditching the INF Treaty, which would compound allied jitters over Washington’s unilateralism.

When it comes to the nuclear safety net and alliances, something is definitely better than nothing — until something better can be built. This ought to be a hallmark principle of conservatism and bipartisanship. Those who argue otherwise are not making sense.

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/10/nothing-better-something-trashing-these-treaties-makes-no-sense/151735/?oref=d-river







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Arms Control Today (Washington, D.C.)

The Case for a U.S. No-First-Use Policy

By Daryl G. Kimball

Oct. 1, 2018

Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove” delivers an eerily accurate depiction of the absurd logic and catastrophic risks of U.S. and Russian Cold War nuclear deterrence strategy, but for one key detail: President Merkin Muffley was wrong when he said, “It is the avowed policy of our country never to strike first with nuclear weapons.” But it should be.

Fortunately, the nuclear “doomsday machine” has not yet been unleashed. Arms control agreements have led to significant, verifiable reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, the two countries have ceased nuclear testing, and they have tightened checks on nuclear command and control.

But the potential for a catastrophic nuclear war remains. The core elements of Cold War-era U.S. nuclear strategy are largely the same, including the option to use nuclear weapons first and the maintenance of prompt-launch policies that still give the president unchecked authority to order the use of nuclear weapons.

Today, the United States and Russia deploy massive strategic nuclear arsenals consisting of up to 1,550 warheads on each side, as allowed under the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. These numbers greatly exceed what it would take to decimate the other side and are far larger than required to deter a nuclear attack.

Worse still, each side maintains the capability to fire a significant portion of its land- and sea-based missiles promptly and retains plans to launch these forces, particularly land-based missiles, under attack to guard against a “disarming” first strike. U.S. and Russian leaders also still reserve the option to use nuclear weapons first.

As a result, President Donald Trump, whom Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reportedly described as having the intellect of a “fifth- or sixth-grader,” has the authority to order the launch of some 800 nuclear warheads within about 15 minutes, with hundreds more weapons remaining in reserve. No other military or civilian official must approve the order. Congress currently has no say in the matter.

Continuing to vest such destructive power in the hands of one person is undemocratic, irresponsible, unnecessary and increasingly untenable. Cavalier and reckless statements from Trump about nuclear weapons use only underscore the folly of vesting such unchecked authority in one person.

Making matters worse, the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review expands the range of contingencies and options for potential nuclear use and proposes the development of “more-usable” low-yield nuclear weapons in order to give the president the flexibility to respond quickly in a crisis, including by using nuclear weapons first in response to a non-nuclear attack.

The reality is that a launch-under-attack policy is unnecessary because U.S. nuclear forces and command-and-control systems could withstand even a massive attack. Given the size, accuracy, and diversity of U.S. forces, the remaining nuclear force would be more than sufficient to deliver a devastating blow to any nuclear aggressor.





In addition, keeping strategic forces on launch-under-attack mode increases the risk of miscalculation and misjudgment. Throughout the history of the nuclear age, there have been several incidents in which false signals of an attack have prompted U.S. and Russian officials to consider, in the dead of the night and under the pressure of time, launching nuclear weapons in retaliation. No U.S. leader should be put in a situation that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons based on false information.

Retaining the option to use nuclear weapons first is fraught with unnecessary peril. Given the overwhelming conventional military edge of the United States and its allies, there is no plausible circumstance that could justify legally, morally, or militarily the use of nuclear weapons to deal with a non-nuclear threat. Even in the event of a conventional military conflict with Russia, China, or North Korea, the first use of nuclear weapons would be counterproductive because it likely would trigger an uncontrollable, potentially suicidal all-out nuclear exchange.

Some in Washington and Brussels believe Moscow might use or threaten to use nuclear weapons first to try to deter NATO from pressing its conventional military advantage in a conflict. Clearly, a nuclear war cannot be won and should not be initiated by either side. The threat of first use, however, cannot overcome perceived or real conventional force imbalances and are not an effective substitute for prudently maintaining U.S. and NATO conventional forces in Europe.

As the major nuclear powers race to develop new nuclear capabilities and advanced conventional-strike weapons and consider using cybercapabilities to pre-empt nuclear attacks by adversaries, the risk that one leader may be tempted to use nuclear weapons first during a crisis likely will grow. A shift to a no-first-use posture, on the other hand, would increase strategic stability.

Although the Trump administration is not going to rethink nuclear old-think, leaders in Congress and the next administration must re-examine and revise outdated nuclear launch policies in ways that reduce the nuclear danger.

Shifting to a formal policy stating that the United States will not be the first to use nuclear weapons and that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack would be a significant and smart step in the right direction.

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2018-10/focus/case-us-first-use-policy

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The National Interest (Washington, D.C.)

China Can Prod North Korea into Nuclear Disarmament

By Lyle J. Goldstein

Oct. 2, 2018

Peaceful denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula requires an "umbrella strategy."

The coastal metropolis of Dalian in China’s Liaoning Province is an interesting vantage point to appraise the major strategic changes under way in Northeast Asia. The bustling shops and sparkling malls belie the reputation of a sleepy northeastern region choking on unreformed state owned enterprises. From various sites downtown, one can behold the striking sight of two Chinese aircraft carriers side by side. A couple of piers over, several large destroyers are being fitted out, including the vaunted Type 055 , which some describe as the Dreadnought of our contemporary world. The rather new city subway system is impressive and an efficient light rail line snakes south of the city

past numerous, large scale high-tech campuses to the historic port of Lushun [旅顺港口]—once



https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2018-10/focus/case-us-first-use-policy



known as Port Arthur. The blood-soaked hills around that famous anchorage at the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, formed the epicenter of a clash of civilizations in 1904–05 when Japan and Russia struggled for mastery of the region, including on the Korean Peninsula. A stark reminder of changing times is that the small harbor at Lushun is now full to bursting with mostly new Chinese frigates and submarines.

Gazing to the east into the unexpectedly blue Yellow Sea, one could imagine—beyond the in-shore islands with their forbidding cliffs—the mysterious coast of North Korea less than two hundred

miles in the distance. It is only a short hop (via Shenyang) on Chinese high-speed rail [高铁] down

to the North Korean border at the Chinese city of Dandong, where I visited the remnants of a bridge destroyed by U.S. bombers in December 1950. Even as Chinese TV news offered minute-by-minute coverage of the summit of Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, the border area appeared to be remarkably calm. The police presence seemed minimal, as crowds of Chinese tourists thronged the Yalu River promenade. North Koreans (visible from the large pins on their lapels) were hardly to be seen on the Chinese side. Over on the North Korean side, by contrast, almost nothing was moving aside from a few fishermen working the river with paddles and nets. In the three hours I was wandering in the vicinity of the Yalu River, I saw only a single truck pass over the one functional span in that area. If China is easing sanctions significantly on North Korea, that was not at all apparent in Dandong.

These observations may be supplemented by some assessments of Chinese scholars, who are intensely following the evolution of the delicate North Korea situation. Overall, they claimed that China’s enforcement measures continue to be very strict and they conveyed a willingness to be patient, even as the Koreas take the lead in pacifying the peninsula. Yet, there was also a clear frustration with Washington and a sense that the United States has not adequately reciprocated the compromise steps taken by Pyongyang. That frustration was similar to the point made by the scholar Lu Chao of the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences a couple of months back: “The US must take some concrete and substantive actions and should not just stop at

words”[美国也应该作出具体的实际行动而不应该只停留在口头上]. He asserted that halting the

joint U.S.-South Korean exercise did not go nearly far enough and expressed doubt that the United

States has the “necessary sincerity” [必要诚意] to successfully conduct negotiations with North

Korea. In the same report, this Chinese newspaper noted with evident satisfaction that Kim Jong-un spent Armistice Day (July 27) visiting a Chinese military graveyard in North Korea. Kim notably laid flowers at the grave of Mao’s son, who was killed by an American bomb while he was serving in the Korean War.

Another window into Chinese thinking on the evolving North Korea situation comes from a special

issue (no. 5) focusing on the DPRK issue in Contemporary International Relations [现代国际关系].

While the issue came out seemingly just before the Singapore Summit, it nevertheless featured

several of China’s leading thinkers on North Korea, including Li Jun [李军], chief of the Korean

Peninsula studies office at the China Institute for Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) in

Beijing. Li advocates strongly for “graduated, joint step measures,” [阶段性同步措施] and gives

credit to South Korean president Moon Jae-in for altering its policy of “pressure” on North Korea and disavowing the goal of “overthrowing the regime” in Pyongyang. In a revelation of sorts, Li asserts that “secret first” meetings between North and South Korean officials took place in Kunming (in China’s southwest) during November 2017 that preceded the Olympic truce that would follow in February 2018. Li explains that economic sanctions have played a major role in getting Kim to the table, noting that “international sanctions are already impacting common citizens” and a quarter of North Korean children are malnourished. Like many other Chinese specialists, Li is convinced that





Pyongyang’s new prioritization of economic imperatives is sincere. As for military scenarios, Li

observes that even Steve Bannon [班农] said there are no feasible military options and so people

“should forget about it” [忘了它吧]. Instead, he argues both sides should focus on developing

“carrots [胡萝卜].” In the end, he concludes that the same rigor that Americans want to apply in the

form of CVID (complete, verifiable, irreversible, denuclearization) should also be applied to security guarantees that are offered to Pyongyang, such that it amounts to CVIG with the “G” standing for

“guarantee [保证].”

A second paper in the same volume is by Zheng Jiyong [郑继永], director of the Korean Studies

Center at Fudan University in Shanghai. Zheng emphasizes how far the peninsula has come in such a short period of time—a fact that seems to be completely lost on the many hawks populating the Washington “blob.” He notes that in 2017, most observers were gravely pessimistic and that recent steps have “significantly lowered the risk and possibility of war.” In this process, he gives

substantial credit to China for serving as “stabilizer [稳定器].” Zheng is more explicit than Li in

highlighting Chinese economic pressure as a major factor. He observes that China-North Korea trade fell by 60 percent in 2017, and that this has hurt North Korean industry and agriculture, as well as the economically central region around Pyongyang. He further suggests, “economic collapse

will overall undermine Kim Jong-un’s position [经济的崩溃会全盘打乱金正恩的部署].” Moreover,

Zheng explains that Pyongyang’s flexibility has resulted from the DPRK realization for the first time that the “rear flank” [大后方], namely China, could be lost. Assessing U.S. motives, Zheng offers the interesting observation that President Donald Trump has a strong motivation to deliver success on

the North Korean issue, as that would transfer attention away from “Russia gate [通俄门].” Zheng

decries the so-called “Libya model” [利比亚模式] and notes that partial denuclearization maybe the

only realistic possibility, for example if Pyongyang agreed to completely abandon its ICBMs. He

gives China ample credit for developing the concept of “double freeze” [双暂停] and calls for that

achievement to be consolidated. He urges cooperation among the great powers, and notes that only Russia, China and the United States really have the technical competence to cooperate on enforcing nuclear nonproliferation. He concludes that “China must, as early as possible, actively and completely become involved, to ensure that denuclearization does not lose momentum

[中国应尽早, 积极全面介入, 确保无核化不失去动力].”

There are no shortage of skeptics among American specialists and strategists regarding the possibilities for further developing an agreement with North Korea on nuclear disarmament. And some skepticism is certainly warranted, but it should not obscure the progress that has been made to date, including the freeze on testing, the dismantling of certain facilities, as well as a crucial lowering of tensions between the two Koreas. Taking the cues of certain Chinese specialists cited above, it may be an opportune time to ask Beijing to step up. If China were to move beyond enforcing sanctions and urging restraint to a more proactive stance, this could break the current log-jam. Such steps could include (1) Chinese-led verification and (2) China’s strengthening of security commitments to North Korea, which (3) include movement of symbolic “trip-wire” forces into North Korea for deterrence purposes. Beijing could even (4) develop a “dual key” arrangement for movement and storage of North Korean nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and it could (5) reward Pyongyang by assisting in improving its otherwise weak conventional forces. In a word, this

could be called the “umbrella strategy” [雨伞战略] and such a strategy has actually been discussed

by Chinese specialists, so it turns out. It would be consistent with Li Jun’s call for putting emphasis





on a “guarantee” of North Korean security, and would be a way to realize Zheng Jiyong’s notion that China should become “completely and actively involved.” The proposal also has the virtue that it would not rely primarily on skillful U.S. diplomacy or concessions—though both could certainly be helpful in this complex process. To state the obvious, fighting an ever intensifying trade war with China, while trying to simultaneously get a solid agreement with North Korea, presents a stark contradiction that is significantly hindering U.S. diplomacy.

To conclude, here is one more vignette from the recent China trip. Visitors to the military museum in Beijing are now rewarded with a fully renovated set of artifacts. On prominent display is a jet fighter (Mig-15) in North Korean markings that is said to have belonged to one of China’s “volunteer” aces from the Korean War. The message of heartfelt pride in China’s Korean War intervention (the “War to Resist America”) is unmistakable. In the basement of the same refurbished facility (crowded with Chinese visitors), one will find a surprisingly large collection of captured American tanks, armored vehicles and artillery pieces from that same war. These are presented as trophies today, of course, but are still haunting for the American visitor to behold. Indeed, anyone with the slightest understanding of the tragedy that befell both Koreas, China, and the United States, in those years of appalling carnage during 1950–53—along with the knowledge that any “Second Korean War” would likely be many times worse—will understand that the search for peace and stability in Northeast Asia requires the utmost creativity, determination, and flexibility on all sides.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-can-prod-north-korea-nuclear-disarmament-32467?page=0%2C1

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Real Clear Defense (Chicago, Illinois)

Achieving the Trump Administration’s National Biodefense Strategy

By Daniel M. Gerstein

Oct. 2, 2018

The Trump administration recently published its National Biodefense Strategy. The strategy proclaims that managing the risk of biological threats is in the “vital interest” of the United States, whether such threats are naturally occurring diseases, accidents involving dangerous pathogens, or deliberate attacks using biological agents. The document provides a solid foundation, but more may be required to fully realize its goals and objectives.

In addressing this bipartisan issue, the administration largely builds on the biodefense strategies of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Common areas across the three strategies include recognition of the global nature of biological threats; the need to collaborate with a range of key stakeholders including foreign partners, state and local authorities and industry; and the need for risk-based decisionmaking in preparedness and response activities. Like those of his predecessors, the Trump strategy was accompanied by an implementation document which provided additional details on how the goals and objectives would be achieved.

This consistency reflects the strength of the Trump strategy. However, it also provides a cause for some concern as neither the George W. Bush nor the Obama strategies were fully realized. Several challenges that prevented the full implementation of the earlier strategies could also limit prospects for fully realizing the Trump strategy.







First, ensuring adequate resourcing is essential. Each of the biodefense strategies contained goals and objectives that specified the outcomes to be achieved. The accompanying implementation plans provided direction on how these goals were to be met, but none of them, including the new Trump strategy, explicitly stated where the necessary resources would come from. To turn plans into action, full resourcing is required. The recent National Defense Authorization Act begins to identify resources but reflects only a start that would need to be further developed. A critical first step could be to determine current biodefense spending levels across the federal agencies and departments involved.

Second, governance could again be an issue in implementing the new biodefense strategy. In the George W. Bush biodefense strategy, implementation of the strategy largely fell to the individual cabinet-level departments and agencies. The resources allocated to the individual portions of the strategy were distributed to the organizations for implementation. Coordination occurred but was not institutionalized across the government or managed through a permanent centralized structure.

Learning the lessons from the implementation of the earlier strategy, the Obama administration created a National Security Council (NSC) led process that required the individual departments and agencies to develop plans that were synchronized. The Office of Management and Budget allocated resources according to the priorities of the biodefense strategy through the NSC synchronized department and agency plans. This proved cumbersome and difficult to manage.

The Trump biodefense strategy contains provisions for a governance structure placing responsibility for execution with the secretary of Health and Human Services and providing a dedicated implementation body to assist in monitoring implementation of the strategy. While this centralizes responsibility and authority within a single department, whether a single secretary will have the clout to influence his counterparts across the government remains to be seen.

Interestingly, the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense co-chaired by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge and former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman identified this governance shortfall, recommending in its 2015 report that the vice president has the role of synchronizing national biodefense efforts. This recommendation, which was never acted on, was based on the cross-cutting nature of biodefense and inherent difficulties of interdepartmental coordination on complex issues.

Finally, building momentum and maintaining follow-through should be an essential element of any biodefense strategy. Implementing complex interagency plans requires leadership focus, measurable metrics to assess progress, and adequate resources. A full court press could be required to develop the institutions and resolve to place this overarching strategy above individual department and agency priorities.

The Trump strategy contains the foundations for a successful biodefense strategy to address the biological threats of today and tomorrow, but so too did its predecessors. The Trump biodefense strategy and implementation documents could best be considered first steps in a lengthy process to address this vitally important threat.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/10/02/achieving_the_trump_administrations_national_biodefense_strategy_113854.html

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OUR STORY The USAF Counterproliferation Center (CPC) was established in 1998 at the direction of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Located at Maxwell AFB, this Center capitalizes on the resident expertise of Air University — while extending its reach far beyond — and influences a wide audience of leaders and policy makers. A memorandum of agreement between the Air Staff’s Director for Nuclear and Counterproliferation (then AF/XON) and Air War College commandant established the initial personnel and responsibilities of the Center. This included integrating counterproliferation awareness into the curriculum and ongoing research at the Air University; establishing an information repository to promote research on counterproliferation and nonproliferation issues; and directing research on the various topics associated with counterproliferation and nonproliferation.

In 2008, the Secretary of Defense's Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Management recommended "Air Force personnel connected to the nuclear mission be required to take a professional military education (PME) course on national, defense, and Air Force concepts for deterrence and defense." This led to the addition of three teaching positions to the CPC in 2011 to enhance nuclear PME efforts. At the same time, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, in coordination with the AF/A10 and Air Force Global Strike Command, established a series of courses at Kirtland AFB to provide professional continuing education (PCE) through the careers of those Air Force personnel working in or supporting the nuclear enterprise. This mission was transferred to the CPC in 2012, broadening its mandate to providing education and research on not just countering WMD but also nuclear operations issues. In April 2016, the nuclear PCE courses were transferred from the Air War College to the U.S. Air Force Institute for Technology.

In February 2014, the Center’s name was changed to the Center for Unconventional Weapons Studies (CUWS) to reflect its broad coverage of unconventional weapons issues, both offensive and defensive, across the six joint operating concepts (deterrence operations, cooperative security, major combat operations, irregular warfare, stability operations, and homeland security). The term “unconventional weapons,” currently defined as nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, also includes the improvised use of chemical, biological, and radiological hazards. In May 2018, the name changed again to the Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies (CSDS) in recognition of senior Air Force interest in focusing on this vital national security topic.

The Center’s military insignia displays the symbols of nuclear, biological, and chemical hazards. The arrows above the hazards represent the four aspects of counterproliferation — counterforce, active defense, passive defense, and consequence management. The Latin inscription "Armis Bella Venenis Geri" stands for "weapons of war involving poisons."

DISCLAIMER: Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Air University, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government agency.



issue no. 1335 5 october 2018

Documents