On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed overwhelming, 359 to 68, a bill that sets out procedures for nuclear trade with India (the link includes the House floor debate and the text of the bill, about a third of way down). It is an entirely different bill than that proposed by the White House. The White House’s suggested bill was an insult to Congress, essentially asking Congress to cede any review rights and to approve details of the nuclear deal that haven’t even been decided yet. Whatever members of Congress thought about the India-US nuclear deal, they were not going to just leave the rubber stamp on the White House steps. The House bill, H.R. 5682, clearly rebukes the President on his request for pre-approval. The ultimate details of any agreement will have to go back to Congress for approval by joint resolution.
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The French magazine Défense Nationale asked me to submit an article about the new U.S. National Military Strategy published by the Bush administration in March 2006 and how it relates to the so-called preemption doctrine announced by the administration in 2002. The article is included in the July 2006 issue which focuses on the nuclear deterrence debate following the announcement by French president Jacques Chiraq in January that France has adjusted its nuclear posture to target regional adversaries armed with weapons of mass destruction. The magazine is published by the Committee for National Defence Studies, an independent research institution which includes several retired generals and admirals from the French military.
The Pentagon is considering acquiring up to four types of Reliable Replacement Warheads (RRW), twice as many as reported so far, according to an overview discovered by the Federation of the American Scientists on a Pentagon web site.
The Department of Energy told Congress in April that Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were working on “an RRW design” for completion later in 2006. The Washington Post added last month that a Senate subcommittee had added $10 million to next year’s budget to fund a design of a second RRW.
According to the new DOD overview, which looks beyond 2030, the future nuclear weapons stockpile would be made up of 4-6 different types of warheads (down from nine types today). A decision would be made mid-next decade about whether to have a mix of RRWs and existing warhead types or transition to an all RRW-stockpile.
In an apparent response to the Bush administration’s decision to reduce reliance of reserve warheads and instead transition to a “responsive infrastructure” that will produce warheads when needed, the DOD plan envisions “steady-state production of warheads for deployment” in the long term.
The plan also forecasts decisions on developments of warheads for the next generation of nuclear weapon delivery systems (missiles and aircraft).
The U.S. nuclear stockpile currently contains approximately 10,000 nuclear warheads of nine principle designs: B61, W62, W76, W78, W80, B83, W84, W87 and W88. The Bush administration has decided to reduce the total stockpile “almost in half” which is estimated to leave a stockpile of some 6,000 warheads in 2012.
At Thursday’s hearing on the sale of 36 F-16 aircraft to Pakistan, Assistant Secretary of State John Hillen endured tongue-lashings from several members of the House International Relations Committee (HIRC), who objected to the manner in which his bureau has managed the $5.1 billion arms package. Of particular concern was the administration’s unilateral decision to waive the customary 20-day pre-notification for major arms sales, which many members viewed as a deliberate attempt to circumvent the committee’s authority. The decision – and the confrontation it provoked – could have far-reaching consequences, not only for Congressional oversight of arms sales but also several key State Department initiatives.
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On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release announcing that it had updated its citizen preparedness web site, Ready.gov, with “special preparedness information for pet owners, senior citizens, and individuals with disabilities and special needs,” and “increased state and local information.” Through a meticulous comparison of the new Ready.gov to a version archived by FAS in early June, we found that the changes are largely cosmetic.
The Good News
The revised site includes valuable information for seniors and pet owners, a constructive change from the nominal details previously available. The state and local information is more comprehensive, which is good news since familiarity with community response plans is essential to preparedness. Summaries of FEMA’s information on preparedness and response for 12 natural disasters have also been added to Ready.gov. Changes to layout make the site significantly easier to navigate; however, there are still many problems.
The Bad News
Even though DHS claims that its disabilities information is revised, a simple comparison to a 2003 version of Ready.gov demonstrates that not a single word has changed in the past three years. This remains a serious issue because the advice is too broad and does not answer important questions about special considerations to make when developing an evacuation plan or how to create a support network to help you, as the National Organization on Disability suggests. DHS has also failed to rectify inaccurate information on other pages of its site, such as a recommendation to get out of the area if possible during an outdoor chemical attack. Experts at RAND have declared that evacuation should never be considered as a response to this kind of attack. Instead you should go to the upper floor of the closest building and seal yourself into a room (see the RAND study).
Almost all of the material on the “new” site was copied verbatim from the previous version, which means that unnecessarily lengthy descriptions and obvious advice have not been edited out. For example, “Quickly assess the situation,” the first instruction for responding to a nuclear attack, is an innate response that does not need to be dictated to concerned citizens. DHS has made some beneficial first steps with its updates. However, if Ready.gov really aims to prepare the American public for natural disasters and terrorist attacks, more than updating a few pages and changing the color scheme needs to be done. According to DHS the site had 23 million unique visitors from February 2003 to March 2006. People who visit the site deserve accurate and useful information. The revised site is better, but not adequate.
On July 13th, the Nicaraguan National Assembly voted to destroy an additional 651 of its large stockpile of shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles, bringing it one step closer to fulfilling President Enrique Bolanos’s earlier commitment to destroy Nicaragua’s entire stock of Man-portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS). The Assembly approved the plan despite opposition from the Sandinista National Liberation Front (SNLF), which led a partially successful campaign to derail the US-funded destruction initiative in early 2005.
The missiles – 2000 SA series MANPADS – are the remnants of a massive infusion of Soviet military assistance to the left-leaning Sandinista government, which was the target of a US-supported insurgency in the 1980s. The proxy wars in Central America ended shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the huge stockpiles of Soviet weapons remained – an attractive target for arms traffickers. Diversions of Nicaragua’s missiles date back at least to 1990, when Sandinistan military officers sold 8 missile launchers and 28 missiles to rebels in El Salvador. Three years later, 19 more black market missiles were discovered in the charred remains of a Managuan auto repair shop that doubled as a storage site for a large cache of illicit rockets, mines, explosives and MANPADS. The repair shop caught fire after part of the cache exploded.
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In preparation for the 60th anniversary of the Federation of American Scientists last autumn, I read several books on our early days. One of the best was Jessica Wang’s American Science in the Age of Anxiety. I got in contact with Professor Wang at UCLA (she is about to move to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver) and we discussed her sources. Seems that the FBI has quite a stack of folders from the early days of FAS that Professor Wang and others have collected through Freedom of Information Act requests. Rather than pack up her FAS files and haul them to Vancouver, Professor Wang sent them to the Federation.
The files are not at all what I expected. We have to remember that much of the early life of FAS overlapped with the Red scare and the McCarthy hearings. This was a time when the Consumers’ Union was labeled a communist organization, presumably because questioning the advertising claims of big corporations was considered subversive.
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There have been some legislative developments on the India-US nuclear deal. The results are not what I would like to have seen but I suppose it could have been worse. On 27 June, the House International Relations Committee approved their version of the bill 37 to 5. On 29 June the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 16 to 2 in favor of their bill. Both bills give the administration and the Indians essentially everything they asked for except preapproval.
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This is my last posting to the FAS blog, as I am moving on to pursue commercial interests, among other things. Working at an NGO has been a unique and unusual experience for me, and one I’m glad for, but it’s time to try something new (and yes, your blogger is, after all, a true believer in free market capitalism). I am staying put in the DC area, though, and will still be reachable via my new commercial website. In fact, do check it out at http://www.sovietcomputing.com. This is my edited e-book on the history of Soviet computing, fully downloadable and accessible 24/7. And there will be more to come out of this site as it evolves, since there are still many critical issues in international science and technology policy to tackle, especially as the former Soviet Union becomes a greater part of the global economy. I appreciate all your comments, emails, and support over the last several months. You, Dear Reader, make blogging all worth while. See you around, and stay in touch.
On Monday, the Bush administration announced a massive $5.1 billion arms package for Pakistan, the largest arms sale to the Indian subcontinent since US sanctions were suspended in 2001. The package includes 36 F-16 fighter jets, armaments, and upgrades for its existing fleet of F-16s. The announcement came five days after the administration officially notified Congress of the sales.
The deal is significant for many reasons. It will help to modernize Pakistan’s aging airforce, and help pave the way for an even larger fighter jet sale to India. The sale also has tremendous symbolic significance. In 1991, the first Bush Administration imposed various sanctions on Pakistan for its nuclear weapons program, the most high profile of which was the impounding of 28 F-16s purchased by Pakistan in the 1980’s. Pakistan lobbied hard for their release but the Bush and Clinton administrations held firm, and the planes came to symbolize the post-Cold War deterioration of US-Pakistani relations. Following the September 11th attacks, the US hastily sought to mend diplomatic fences with Pakistan, which has provided critical support in the War on Terror. The Bush administration immediately lifted the ban on military aid to India and Pakistan and gradually increased the quantity and sophistication of weapons exports to both countries. The F-16 sale, which still tops the list of weapons sought by the Pakistani government, signifies a completion of the rapprochement between the US and its erstwhile ally.
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