Posts by MichaelKrepon:
Prospects For Reducing Nuclear Dangers
July 12th, 2013By Michael Krepon.
There have been only two Democratic presidents since Franklin Delano Roosevelt who have been elected to serve two full terms. On nuclear issues, Barack Obama seems to be following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton, whose disarmament successes in his first term unfortunately failed to translate into success in his second.
President Clinton accomplished much to reduce nuclear dangers in his first four years in office. He midwifed the denuclearization of three nations that were formerly part of the Soviet Union – Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. As a result, he strengthened the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and jump-started the implementation of two Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START) negotiated by his predecessor, George H.W. Bush.
Clinton also expanded the scope of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reductions Program, which was designed to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction and their infrastructure in the former Soviet Union. In addition, he completed negotiations on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Not bad for four years of hard work.
In contrast, Clinton’s record on nuclear matters was very spotty during his second term. He successfully defused a nuclear-tinged crisis between India and Pakistan, and he succeeded in securing the Senate’s consent to ratifying a treaty banning chemical weapons negotiated by President Bush. Clinton focused briefly on ratifying the Test Ban Treaty, as well, but Senate Republicans stymied him.
President Obama also attended to nuclear issues during his first term, but significant efforts in this domain now yield smaller returns. His first term’s nuclear agenda was dominated by calendar-driven events – the expiration of verifiable strategic arms reduction arrangements with Moscow and the need for a successful Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference – along with the initiation of summitry on nuclear security.
New START was modest because the Kremlin balked at deeper cuts. The United States has now essentially joined Russia in meeting New START’s mandated reductions five years ahead of the treaty’s timetable. These reductions were accompanied by pricey commitments to refurbish what is now known as the nuclear enterprise.
New START’s most important accomplishment has been to put back in place a process of verifiable U.S.-Russian arms reductions. Its monitoring provisions are good for 10 years and can be extended for another five. Another treaty is not required during this timeframe, if the parties can agree to employ New START’s monitoring provisions for deeper cuts in nuclear weapons, and if the Congress affirms force reductions in appropriation bills.
Obama recently proposed up to one-third reductions to approximately 1,000 warheads on deployed strategic forces. While the number 1,000 is neither hard nor fast, since warheads can be uploaded on launchers if the necessity arises, it is still meaningful: the last time the U.S. nuclear arsenal had fewer than 1,000 warheads was 1953.
Obama faces great difficulties in reducing nuclear arsenals and nuclear dangers during his second term. He does not have a forward-looking partner in Vladimir Putin and no Republican leader on Capitol Hill has championed further cuts in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals.
Much smaller nuclear arsenals are growing in China, India and Pakistan. The Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs are stubbornly resistant to sanctions. The next Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference could become very fractious because of Israeli and Iranian nuclear capabilities. And promises made to Congress in conjunction with New START ratification can’t be kept with ballooning costs, questionable rationales and budget constraints.
Under these circumstances, the White House has proposed parallel steps to maintain momentum for strategic arms reductions. In doing so, the Obama administration risks getting stiffed by the Kremlin, making the option of unilateral reductions subject to even sharper criticism on Capitol Hill.
Domestic American critics of nuclear arms reductions have the power to block treaties and brake momentum, but not to reverse course. Deeper cuts may well be mandated by budget cuts and the Pentagon’s preferences, if not by treaty provisions.
The George W. Bush administration was notably disinterested in treaties, preferring instead to size the U.S. nuclear arsenal as needed. Democrats may well be headed in the same direction.
Other issues have risen to the top of President Obama’s agenda – items that offer either a greater return on diplomatic investment, or hellish problems that are growing and refuse to be set aside. One example: His speech in Berlin devoted more time and a greater sense of urgency to climate change than to nuclear arms reductions.
Unlike his proposed nuclear arms reductions, Obama intends to address reductions in carbon emissions by unilateral measures and without further delay. Nuclear danger was the quintessential threat of the 20thcentury. Is climate change the quintessential threat of the 21st? At present, killer storms figure more in the public’s consciousness than mushroom clouds from a thermonuclear war that could kill most living things on our planet.
http://www.stimson.org/spotlight/prospects-for-reducing-nuclear-dangers/
Shyam Saran on India’s Nuclear Deterrent
May 25th, 2013
By Michael Krepon.
On April 24th, the Chairman of India’s National Security Advisory Board, Shyam Saran, delivered an important address in New Delhi affirming the credibility of India’s nuclear deterrent. Mr. Saran has over two decades of close engagement on strategic matters, including time spent as Foreign Secretary and Special Envoy dealing with the US-India civil-nuclear agreement. What he said, speaking in his personal capacity, bears close scrutiny.
The tone of these remarks is defensive at the outset, reflecting domestic criticisms of the pace of Indian strategic modernization programs. Mr. Saran also takes aim at US, Pakistani, and Chinese analysts who maintain that India sought the Bomb for reasons of status rather than national security. He seeks to set the record straight, making significant observations and recommendations in the process. Here are a few passages:
Chinese assistance to Pakistan’s strategic programme continues apace. [Note: unless Mr. Saran is referring to China’s help with Pakistan’s nuclear power sector, this is especially noteworthy.]
Pakistan is the only country where nuclear assets are under the command and control of the military and it is the military’s perceptions and ambitions which govern the development, deployment and use of these weapons. This is a dangerous situation precisely because the military’s perceptions are not fully anchored in a larger national political and economic narrative. The pursuit of a more powerful, more effective, and more sophisticated nuclear arsenal, dictated by the Pakistani military, may run in parallel with a steadily deteriorating political, social and economic environment. Would it be possible to island an efficiently managed and sophisticated nuclear arsenal amidst an increasingly dysfunctional polity? There is an air of unreality about the often adulatory remarks about the Pakistani military’s stewardship of the country’s military assets.
What Pakistan is signaling to India and to the world is that India should not contemplate retaliation even if there is another Mumbai because Pakistan has lowered the threshold of nuclear use to the theatre level. This is nothing short of nuclear blackmail, no different from the irresponsible behavior one witnesses in North Korea. It deserves equal condemnation by the international community because it is not just a threat to India but to international peace and security. Should the international community countenance a license to aid and abet terrorism by a state holding out a threat of nuclear war?
Mr. Saran argues that strategic misperceptions regarding the state of India’s nuclear deterrent and the reasons for it can be dangerous. His public remarks, which include helpful clarifications on steps taken to assure India’s second strike capabilities, may signal more to come. He concludes that, “The secrecy which surrounds our nuclear programme… is now counter-productive,” adding,
I would hope that the Government makes public its nuclear doctrine and releases data regularly on what steps have been taken and are being taken to put the requirements of doctrine in place. It is not necessary to share operational details but an overall survey such as an annual Strategic Posture Review, should be shared with the citizens of this country who, after all, pay for the security which the deterrent is supposed to provide for them.
Pakistani authorities have also been close-lipped about their strategic programs and requirements. The people of Pakistan, like those in India, have been in the dark regarding the size and costs of their nuclear deterrent. Would more openness be helpful, or would it add even more impetus to the nuclear competition in southern Asia? This could go either way. It is clear, however, that the absence of disclosure hasn’t slowed down the competition.
Spotlight: The Battle with Pakistan
March 29th, 2013By Michael Krepon.
The February 16 bombing in Quetta targeting the Hazara community was the latest in a long, sad, and intensifying series of incidents of sectarian violence. Death tolls within Pakistan were greater in 2012 than the year before and are rising steeply.
According to publicly available figures based on press reporting, civilian casualties in Pakistan rose to 3,007 in the past year, an increase of roughly 300 fatalities from 2011. The first two months of 2013 have been especially bad. If internal or domestic violence continues along this trajectory, non-combatant deaths will more than double in the coming year.
Based on data derived from media reports, violence inside Pakistan ranks worse than Afghanistan and India. Leaving aside states experiencing the carnage of civil wars, like Syria, only one country – Iraq – is afflicted with more sectarian violence and suffers more fatalities than Pakistan.
Pakistan’s unenviable ranking confirms the judgment of the chief of army staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who told cadets at the Pakistan Military Academy in August 2012 that “Today, extremism and terrorism present a grave challenge… We as a nation must stand united against this threat … the challenge that threatens us the most is preservation of national integrity and unity”.
Pakistan’s high casualty counts have multiple drivers, making them very difficult to reverse. In 2012, Sindh, especially Karachi, accounted for the largest number of fatalities – 44 per cent, or 1,318 deaths. Balochistan represented 23 per cent of the total, with 690 fatalities.
The Federally Administered Tribal Territories, often viewed externally as the crux of violence within Pakistan, experienced 549 civilian fatalities – 18 per cent of Pakistan’s total civilian deaths from internal violence last year. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa suffered 363 civilian deaths, or 12 per cent of the total.
Another source of civilian fatalities within Pakistan is US drone strikes. The database compiled by the Institute for Conflict Management records 344 deaths due to drone strikes in 2012. This database does not distinguish between non-combatant and militant deaths – a problem common to all outside observers.
US government officials assert that the number of non-combatant deaths from drone strikes is extremely low. Even if, for the purposes of debate, we considered every single fatality from drone strikes to be non-combatants – a far-fetched assumption – and added them to Pakistan’s total, only one out of every 11 domestic fatalities could be attributed to drones.
This broad distribution of violent deaths, stemming from very different causes within Pakistan, reflects how hard it will be for political leaders, military and internal security forces to turn back this deadly tide. While US drone strikes are deeply problematic, they are far from the root cause of Pakistan’s internal violence: two out of every three non-combatant Pakistani deaths in 2012 occurred in Sindh and Balochistan.
The veils covering the guidelines for US drone strikes are only now beginning to be peeled away. This issue will continue to be debated in the United States and between Washington and Islamabad. In the meantime, even if this highly contentious issue were swept away, and even if US drone attacks were to cease tomorrow, Pakistan would still place second behind Iraq in global rankings of states victimised by internal violence that are not in the throes of a civil war.
Domestic fatalities continue unabated in 2013. In fact, death tolls have markedly increased. Since New Year’s Day, over 620 Pakistani civilians have died – an average of almost 13 per day. More civilians lost their lives to domestic violence in January 2013 than in January 2011 and 2012 combined. If current death rates continue, 7,036 Pakistanis will die from violent domestic causes this year – over twice that of last year.
A February 2 editorial in Dawn surmised that, “It seems that the state does not have the intention or motivation to lift the lid off Karachi’s boiling cauldron of violence and identify the problems.” Available data suggest that this conclusion applies far more broadly, covering very wide swaths of Pakistani territory.
Gen Kayani has spoken more forthrightly of this national security challenge than Pakistan’s political leaders who have, for the most part, expressed ritualistic concerns about domestic violence without taking concerted action. The call for a domestic consensus in dealing with this carnage is understandable, especially during an election season. But if politics were consensual in Pakistan, there would be no need for corrective action.
The Supreme Court accuses the federal government of failing to address the worsening law and order situation in Karachi, while the deputy attorney general, a federal official, argues that responsibility for improving Karachi’s security situation rests not with federal authorities, but with the provincial government.
With politics stuck in pre-election pirouettes, death tolls rise. Absent a consensus among national leaders, or hard political choices, internal violence is killing Pakistan from within.
A version of this piece, by Michael Krepon and Julia Thompson, appeared as an op-ed in Dawn on February 21, 2013.
http://www.stimson.org/spotlight/the-battle-within-pakistan/