Taming the Hydra: WMD: Threat and Strategies
Roxborough, Ian
IF A SMALL (ten-kiloton) nuclear bomb exploded in Times Square, it would "destroy instantaneously the theater district, the New York Times building, Grand Central Terminal, and every other...
...Europeans and Americans differ on how to deal with WMD proliferation...
...I don't know what the answer is: what I suggest is that we need to reframe the debate in the United States away from winning a war on terror and toward a policy of managing our differences...
...We need to begin our own discussion by considering who might want to use WMD, and for what purposes...
...but in the search for a workable solution, the United States is itself one of the biggest obstacles...
...Dealing with WMD proliferation means seeing security issues in dynamic terms...
...it probably serves to stimulate rather than deter efforts to offset the U.S...
...It takes time for new nuclear powers to institutionalize the logic of deterrence, and some of them are run in a much less rational manner, and have less rational perceptions of international conflict, than was the case with the United States and the Soviet Union...
...Homeland Security The threat from terrorists, the third aspect of the proliferation problem, is the most salient and emotion-laden...
...But this strategy is unlikely to succeed...
...Moreover, measures to reduce the danger from proliferation are seldom dramatic...
...They, too, can be mistaken...
...They cannot control the terrorists (unless they are part of the regime's own security apparatus), and even rogues will not wish to be held responsible for actions they cannot control...
...The official answer is, rogue states...
...This approach has not found favor with the American national security establishment...
...As the CIA commission to find evidence of Iraq's WMD programs concluded, these programs had largely been put on ice...
...It is illusory to seek some "balance" of power or "balance" of terror (as in cold war theories of Mutually Assured Destruction...
...Developments and actions in one sphere will generate responses elsewhere...
...This will enable it to defer massive arms purchases until such time as the threats become imminent...
...How do we know, for example, that North Korea isn't bluffing in much the same way as Saddam Hussein...
...Most important is the growing sense that war is now only legitimate if authorized by the United Nations...
...Its efforts to deal with the weapons of mass destruction that it believed were held by Iraq have blown up in our collective face...
...The emerging doctrine that the United States should actively promote democracy abroad, by military means if necessary, alarms despots who see themselves as potential targets...
...So long as states fear their neighbors, as is the case in the Middle East and among the major powers in East Asia, concerns for security will gener62 DISSENT / Fall 2005 WMD: THREAT AND STRATEGIES ate arms races, as each state improves its defenses against the threats it perceives from its neighbors, and they, in turn, do the same...
...DISSENT / Fall 2005 63 WMD: THREAT AND STRATEGIES So far, the specter of terrorists armed with WMD supplied by a rogue state is nothing more than a nightmare...
...Since the Aum Shinrikyo religious sect attacked the Tokyo subway system with sarin in 1995, American policymakers have been haunted by the fear that terrorist groups might attempt to kill large numbers of civilians...
...This makes it difficult to mobilize a constituency to push such measures through the political system...
...The controls over nuclear weapons are less sophisticated, and the imbalance of conventional military force between the two countries predisposes Pakistan to a firstuse posture...
...Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism (Henry Holt, 2004...
...This is something that is well within their technical capabilities...
...They include a range of regional arrangements such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations...
...The key is transparency...
...IAN ROXBOROUGH is a professor of history and sociology at the State University of New York— Stony Brook...
...Ronald Reagan's "star wars" program was a visionary— some would say fantastic—attempt to defend the United States from a Soviet missile attack...
...Until recently, the Bush administration has been unwilling to "reward" proliferators with inducements like Bill Clinton's offer of aid to North Korea...
...But right now the only alternative to the European position is "regime change" in North Korea and Iran—costly and risky projects...
...They are willing to negotiate indefinitely, seeing in ongoing relations the best path toward stability...
...intelligence failures, China has already cast doubt on the administration's assertion that North Korea has nuclear weapons...
...There are three basic scenarios...
...That is probably why the administration keeps insisting that WMD and terrorism are one and the same issue...
...The Bush administration has no coherent response to this set of dangers...
...This will require considerable self-restraint on the part of the United States, and whether or not the American political system can support such a policy remains to be seen...
...There is a straightforward solution to the nuclear threat: strict control over all fissionable materials...
...There are technical problems: skilled personnel take time to develop, and expanding production of new weapons is not simple...
...Missile defense would enable the United States to act with relative impunity against such powers...
...The automatic spread of "globalization" will not, in and of itself, create a more peaceful world, and it will not stop the proliferation of WMD...
...But it does not follow as a point of logic that the urgent need to defend ourselves against terrorists means that the proliferation of WMD is a nonexistent problem...
...Now that many states and non-state actors have the potential to inflict sudden catastrophic damage in distant parts of the world, deterrence has become unstable and unreliable...
...advantage...
...Moreover, in the wake of the Iraq fiasco, preemptive strikes against North Korea and Iran look even more problematic and risky...
...The Islamic bomb could come about in another way: if one nightmare scenario is terrorists armed with WMD, the flip side of this is a nuclear state (or one with a well-developed chemical and biological weapons program) run by Islamic extremists...
...The key to this shift in strategic rationale will be some sort of assurance to China that her interests will be respected...
...Nuclear war between India and Pakistan, for example, is a far more probable scenario than was war between the United States and the Soviet Union...
...The major obstacle is not technical know-how but access to fissile material...
...Democracies have historically been slow off the mark in preparing for emerging threats...
...The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)—nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons—is a real and hydra-headed danger...
...This will not be easy: militant Islam poses a serious problem for the United States, and it is unclear (at least to me) what will have to happen for Islam to be "at peace" with the United States...
...but what...
...Even a "dirty bomb"—a nuclear weapon that did not generate a huge explosion but that spread radioactive particles over a wide area— would result in many deaths, widespread panic, and major disruption...
...There is a need for bilateral and regional agreements...
...The massive high-tech arsenal currently held by the United States should be scaled down and replaced by a "virtual" military machine, comprising small, largely experimental forces with a huge logistics capability so that they can be rapidly ramped up if conflict appears likely...
...Once again, the United States is likely to be recalcitrant...
...The threat is real, even if it is difficult to assess with any precision...
...Prudent countermeasures are clearly called for...
...Clearly some alternative solution must be devised...
...So long as the United States maintains this militant posture it will promote defensive arming by its intended victims...
...Although still very ad hoc and primitive, monitoring worked well in Iraq...
...It is not clear that the American political system can rise to the challenge...
...The dangers associated with WMD in midsize states include deterrence failure, accidental initiation of hostilities, and misperceptions of the calculus of deterrence...
...Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, OTA-ISC-599 (Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...It is an inadequate basis for a counter-proliferation policy...
...It will make it harder to build alliances to contain proliferators...
...Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction—Assessing the Risks," U.S...
...There is no one-size-fits-all solution...
...Military training increasingly takes the form of computer-simulated or computerassisted exercises...
...One of these methods is the threat to use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, either against American military forces or against the United States itself...
...2) Defending against the "Great Satan...
...Instead of the current case-by-case approach, UN monitoring should be greatly expanded...
...Although it is all to the good that the highest standards of proof be required, the Iraq imbroglio may have the unfortunate effect of distracting attention from the very real danger of WMD proliferation...
...The ensuing firestorm would engulf Rockefeller Center, Carnegie Hall, the Empire State Building, and Madison Square Garden...
...The discussion in this country has started from the proposition that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is a problem caused by others...
...But continual preemptive war cannot be the alternative...
...The central question is a strategic one: how to address the problem of terrorism itself, the question of "root causes...
...It is already being addressed by increased intelligence and heightened homeland security measures...
...The inspectors then did stellar work in uncovering the details of the program...
...threats...
...A first measure would be to slow down the rate of military innovation by the United States...
...Only pressure from the United States and continued inspections led to the discovery of Iraq's massive nuclear program...
...In part this is because a central goal of European policymakers is to incorporate mid-ranking states into normal politics and trade...
...The real risk is that, when a dangerous competitor appears, the political will to re-arm will be lacking...
...It is unclear how much we can rely on a similar assumption in the post—cold war world...
...Biological agents can be delivered in a variety of ways, one of which is through an aerosoltype spray...
...Iran, Iraq, and Egypt have at times attempted to acquire WMD in order to improve their power position vis-a-vis their neighbors...
...Once weapons inspectors entered that country in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, they discovered—with the active assistance of U.S...
...The terrorists have no state to defend, they are seen to be "irrational," and they are prepared to die in order to inflict heavy casualties...
...The long-term goal is to enfold national governments in a net of international and global laws and treaties that make unilateral resort to war increasingly illegitimate...
...But if terrorists have the motivation to use WMD, where would they get these weapons...
...This is a distraction...
...Hundreds of thousands of others would die from collapsing buildings, fire, and fallout in the ensuing hours," says Graham Allison in his book Nuclear Terrorism...
...in the event of war...
...Beyond the Cold War The situation today is quite different from the relatively stable, bipolar Mutually Assured Destruction deterrent posture of the cold war...
...Work is in progress to increase security at ports and border crossings, to improve intelligence collection and coordination, to stockpile vaccines, and so on...
...Our best hope lies in accelerating the conDISSENT / Fall 2005 65 WMD: THREAT AND STRATEGIES flict-mitigating effects of globalization while slowing the diffusion of dangerous military technology...
...Where most conservatives see the invasion of Iraq as one campaign in that war, most liberals argue that the invasion of Iraq, especially given the nonexistent WMD, distracts from, or even exacerbates, the hard work of protecting ourselves against terrorism...
...These, together with efforts to develop global norms about just war among the electorates of as many countries as possible, will begin to constrain governments to seek UN approval for military operations...
...Classical deterrence theory rested on the assumption that states would behave more or less rationally...
...Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, during the cold war this was a reasonable working assumption...
...It negates deterrence by such midrange powers as China, which could otherwise threaten nuclear attacks on the U.S...
...This is aimed at deterring would-be "peer competitors" from even trying to challenge the United States by building modern forces...
...Because the development of biological weapons is hard to detect, it is even harder to develop countermeasures against such an attack...
...Biological attacks are hard to detect until large numbers of people have developed symptoms...
...The technology is now sixty years old and is no longer the monopoly of societies with sophisticated scientific establishments...
...If the second of these alternatives is to win out, the American public would need to be convinced that "goodenough" security in the short run is likely to result in better long-run security than the current policy of arms-racing against oneself...
...Faced with totally obdurate regimes, a policy of intrusive monitoring will be stymied...
...Bilateral security arrangements, such as the U.S.-Japan treaty, need to be folded into broader regional arrangements to preserve peace...
...Even more frightening is the prospect of an attack with chemical or biological weapons...
...To make matters worse, the remedies proposed by the Bush administration are often irrelevant, ineffective, or counterproductive...
...hostile mid-size states are a different problem, requiring a different response...
...Third parties, such as the United States, the UN, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), can play a constructive role in preventing direct conflict between two antagonists...
...In recent years, the United States has adopted a highly interventionist posture...
...They are as reluctant to use the stick as the Bush administration is to dangle the carrot...
...Emerging global security institutions also include international treaties and a growing body of international law...
...For conservatives, missile defense makes sense militarily as a way to enhance American offensive options...
...After all, cognitive scientists tell us that the human brain can cope with between three and seven things at once...
...Graham Allison has argued that effective control is a real possibility...
...For inspections to be effective, particularly in the case of uncooperative states such as Iran and North Korea, the inspectors need the full weight of the UN behind them, with adequate resources and an insistence on repeated inspections, "anytime, anywhere...
...THE UNITED STATES can best guard itself against possible future dangers by investing heavily in military research and development...
...Pakistan taken over by extremists is another...
...There are no easy solutions, but some amelioration is possible...
...Having been shown to be wrong once, the American government will have a harder time establishing that a credible threat exists in the future...
...This will require patient diplomatic efforts to integrate China more and more into a consensual world order...
...Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons held by mid-range states are at risk of seizure by terrorists, disaffected elements of the military, local political strongmen, and so on...
...The administration's hard line has made its nonproliferation policy ineffective...
...The liberals are surely right to say that the invasion of Iraq was a serious strategic blunder...
...The militant unilateralism of American foreign policy, the disparagement of the UN and of international treaties more generally, and the reflexive resort to arms rather than inspections and diplomacy all stand in the way of sensible measures to protect ourselves from a very real danger...
...With nuclear stockpiles poorly guarded, a range of mid-size states and terrorist organizations could acquire nuclear weapons...
...1) Mid-ranking states with WMD...
...The problem is not simply one of regime type: we should worry about any proliferation, even if the countries involved (such as India, for example) are relatively stable democracies...
...Iran is often seen as a prime example of this danger...
...Indian acquisition of nuclear weapons was stimulated by a desire to match its nuclear-armed rival, China...
...Similarly, in Northeast Asia, a precarious balance between the nuclear-armed states of North Korea, the United States, Russia, and China could easily be upset if South Korea or Japan acquired nuclear weapons...
...Most important is the enhancement of the current international monitoring regime...
...The Europeans are right to insist on a "good cop, bad cop" approach that combines incentives, sanctions, and threats...
...intelligence agencies and after overcoming considerable obstruction—that the Iraqi government had been much closer to acquiring WMD than had been thought...
...intelligence is, as is widely recognized, in need of considerable reinvigoration...
...However, terrorists could acquire WMD in other ways...
...and on the other hand, an ever-denser and more comprehensive web of treaties, laws, and alliances aimed at reducing the risk of war...
...This assessment, as we now know, was wrong...
...The conflict with militant Islam should be normalized and managed as a matter of routine politics...
...Recent commentary has focused on the mistaken belief that Iraq possessed WMD in 2003, but another instance of U.S...
...Without the raw materials for a nuclear weapon, there is no threat...
...A withdrawal of, or at least a major reduction in, U.S...
...To continue the current policy of unilateral strikes against emerging nuclear powers is a risky gamble, one likely to have a negative impact on the creation of a global institutional framework for reducing the risk of war...
...But this will surely lead them to seek a response...
...3) Terrorists with WMD...
...By offering to provide a shield to countries that believe themselves to be at risk of missile attack, the United States could reduce tensions in much of the world...
...Unless the threat from these regimes is imminent, which it isn't, the European approach (with sticks as well as carrots) is preferable...
...On a normal workday, more than half a million people crowd the area within a half-mile radius of Times Square...
...military forces currently stationed in Islamic countries is also likely (but by no means certain) to reduce tensions...
...It is reduced to blustering, bullying, and threatening to take military action against proliferators...
...In the United States the strategic debate has been posed as one of active and often military pursuit of democracy abroad, in the belief that this will erode support for terrorism, versus an effort to enhance global citizenship by creating a dense web of global institutions, treaties, and laws...
...These constraints are the institutions of global security...
...Terrorism and WMD proliferation are distinct, if interrelated, strategic problems...
...These issues are further complicated by the push to create a national missile defense...
...intelligence failure was the serious underestimation of the extent and advanced nature of Iraq's WMD programs prior to 1990...
...Because missile defense is likely to go ahead, we should seek to alter its strategic rationale by extending its protection...
...Building International Institutions The first problem, the desire of mid-ranking states to develop WMD to deter or threaten neighbors, should be addressed with a variety of confidence-building measures...
...And as missile and submarine technology diffuses around the world, the threat of sudden, catastrophic attack across great distances increases...
...Arms Racing The second security problem lies in the way "rogue states" like North Korea and Iran, as well as larger regional powers like China, respond to threats posed by the United States...
...The hysteria of parts of the national security establishment about catastrophic terrorism should not be dismissed as a cynical ploy...
...As long as there are "loose nukes" floating around and fissile materials are not wellcontrolled, terrorists will be tempted by the prospect of, say, an "Islamic Bomb...
...Although there is plenty of scope for discussion of the details, and we can debate whether the government is making all the effort it might, it is hard to imagine any alternative policy...
...Current policy relies heavily on intelligence to determine the nature of the threat...
...As the Bush administration now seems to realize, vague, emotional rhetoric about "evildoers" and a "global war on terrorism" simply obfuscates the issue...
...In the area of war, globalization implies a double dialectic: on the one hand, an acceleration of technology transfer...
...IF A SMALL (ten-kiloton) nuclear bomb exploded in Times Square, it would "destroy instantaneously the theater district, the New York Times building, Grand Central Terminal, and every other structure within a third of a mile...
...Surely we can manage to deal with two threats to our national security...
...A noon detonation in midtown Manhattan would kill them all...
...Partly as a result, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the opposite error was made by American intelligence: although UN inspections had forced the Iraqi regime to suspend most of its WMD activities, senior officials in the Bush administration labored to convince the American public that Iraqi efforts were well advanced...
...Terrorism is one of the problems we face...
...The strategy should be to promote a mix of arms control agreements, intrusive inspections, and incentives to seek peaceful resolution of inter-state conflicts...
...But the effects of a major biological attack are poorly understood, and such countermeasures as have been devised may well be inadequate...
...Even with a regime of coercive inspections, the dual-use aspect of much technology that can be used for chemical and biological weapons makes inspection (and intelligence-gathering) a very difficult exercise...
...steady, persistent efforts to lower risks rather than dramatic confrontations are required...
...The greatest public concern is that non-state actors might acquire weapons of mass destruction...
...whether or not it happens will depend on the sagacity of decision makers...
...The small-scale anthrax attacks that followed in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks illustrate the level of fear that biological weapons can induce...
...Here the means of delivery are not missiles that can be traced back to specific locations but various forms of "hand-delivered" weapons...
...They were able to do so in part, despite constant efforts at concealment on the part of the Iraqi authorities, because they were given greater authority to inspect at will...
...The real question is one of strategy: Will national missile defense stabilize or destabilize the international order...
...the UN should check on chemical and biological weapons programs as well as nuclear capabilities, and it should do this as a matter of routine for all countries...
...Such coercive inspections will need to be backed up with credible threats—sanctions or military intervention— as well as rewards for compliance...
...The biggest holdout among the developed democracies is likely to be the United States, though even here the Bush administration felt constrained to take its case against Iraq to the UN...
...Intelligence is an inherently uncertain business...
...Perhaps it is time for Americans to reconsider the democracy crusade and decouple it from the use of military force...
...Public justifications focused heavily on a potential threat from states such as North Korea and Iran, but the fundamental strategic rationale was to negate China's small deterrent force...
...This does not mean that the weapons inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are infallible...
...Clearly such intrusive measures require an abrogation of national sovereignty and will meet with resistance by sev64 DISSENT / Fall 2005 WMD: THREAT AND STRATEGIES eral countries, including the United States...
...This inclined American officials to be much more pessimistic in their assumptions about how close "rogue states" were to possessing WMD...
...This will enable training and experimentation to fuse with each other...
...Military innovation will continue, and military technology will spread...
...Pentagon officials generally prefer to "solve" problems rather than to manage them...
...Although it never came to fruition, conservative ideologues and powerful parts of the military-industrial complex kept the program alive, and, in the waning days of the 66 DISSENT / Fall 2005 WMD: THREAT AND STRATEGIES Clinton administration, conservatives in Congress pushed for a scaled-down version...
...We may not be our own worst enemy...
...Perhaps more worrying than the prospect of an Islamic bomb is the ability of terrorists to manufacture and use biological weapons...
...But if the Bush administration is too eager to play the bad cop, the Europeans sometimes appear too "good"—as if they will never consider implementing sanctions and following through on U.S...
...That may be so...
...WHETHER THE Bush administration officials truly believed their own public statements about the imminent threat posed by Iraqi WMD or whether this was a cynical ploy to deflect attention from other, less publicly acceptable, reasons for the invasion of Iraq is beside the point...
...68 DISSENT / Fall 2005...
...It seems to be a political law that governments and their electorates can only focus on one thing at a time...
...Political debate needs to be informed by a more fine-grained understanding of the specific historical factors underlying the current conflict between militant Islam and the DISSENT / Fall 2005 67 WMD: THREAT AND STRATEGIES United States...
...The terms of their authority were constantly contested by the Iraqi authorities and at no time were the inspectors able to operate on "anywhere, anytime" rules...
...The public strategic debate of the last few years has focused on the place of the Iraq War (and the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran and North Korea) in the "global war on terror...
...As mid-range powers plan to defend themselves or to deter American intervention, they consider a range of asymmetric measures, from deploying low-tech sea mines to disrupting American communications to attempting to cause mass casualties...
...However, the alternative of buying large quantities of hightech weapons for which there is no foreseeable use is a very expensive and unnecessary insurance policy...
...In turn, Pakistan developed nuclear weapons to deter a possible attack from India...
...This was, in large part, the rationale offered by the Bush administration for the invasion of Iraq in 2003...
...The IAEA did not detect Iraq's nuclear program in the 1980s, and, even after the initial UN inspections on the ground in 1991, the monitoring agency was on the verge of reporting that Iraq was in full compliance with the nonproliferation regime...
...It is, nevertheless, a reasonable and feasible goal and should be made a high priority...
...Critics of national missile defense have tended to focus on technical feasibility and cost issues...
...These three scenarios pose different kinds of threats to the United States and call for different kinds of solutions...
...A 1993 report by the Office of Technology Assessment estimated that if a small airplane sprayed about two hundred pounds of anthrax spores upwind of Washington, D.C., the number of fatalities in the worst-case scenario would be between one and three million...
...Citing U.S...
...The United States has watched impotently as one of the world's greatest proliferators, Abdul Qadeer Khan, received little more than a slap on the wrist by our "ally" in the global war on terror, Pervez Musharraf 's Pakistan...
...A similar, and potentially more dangerous, situation prevails in East Asia, where the risk of Japan's developing nuclear weapons as a response to an assertive China or a belligerent North Korea threatens to destroy an already unstable equilibrium...
...Moreover, a vast network for smuggling both materials and expertise facilitates proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons...
...It is possible, though by no means certain, that the establishment of democracy in societies where Islam is the majority religion will absorb some of the militancy that is currently directed at the United States...
...The aim was no longer to defend against a massive missile attack—a technological mirage—but to detect and shoot down a small number of incoming missiles...
...Government Printing Office, August 1993...
...Because biological weapons have not been used, there is little public understanding of the threat, and consequently there is no constituency to push for policies to deal with it...
...The monster can be tamed only by entangling it in a mesh of constraints...
...Current government policy is to maintain American military predominance through continuous innovation...
...A "struggle" is preferable to being "at war...
...The problems of WMD proliferation are not amenable to any simple solution...
...major attacks against civilian populations would stretch public health systems beyond the breaking point...
...but we are certainly not acting in our own best interest...
...The belief that terrorists are not easily deterred has led to a heightened perception of risk...
...The key lesson for proliferation is that intelligence, while absolutely vital, is always an unreliable instrument...
...There is little reason to believe that rogue states would arm terrorists in this way...
...but the temptation to conflate all possible dangers under the all-encompassing rubric of a protean "global war on terror" should be resisted...
Vol. 52 • September 2005 • No. 4
