Issue No. 1309 6 April 2018 // USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 //

Feature Report

“U.S. Strategy, the JCPOA Iranian Nuclear Arms Agreement, and the Gulf: Playing the Long Game”. Written by Anthony H. Cordesman, published by the Center for Strategic & International Studies; March 28, 2018 https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-strategy-jcpoa-iranian-nuclear-arms-agreement-and-gulf- playing-long-game Few recent American foreign policy decisions have been as divisive as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear arms control agreement with Iran. Advocates of the agreement have focused far too exclusively on its potential benefits. Opponents equally exclusively on its potential faults. Both sides tend to forget that any feasible arms control agreement between what are hostile sides tends to be a set of compromises that are an extension of arms races and potential conflicts by other means. As a result, imperfect agreements with uncertain results are the rule, not the exception. President Trump has made it clear that he opposes the agreement and would like to terminate it. His dismissal of Rex Tillerson as Security of State, and his replacement by Mike Pompeo – along with his dismissal of General H.R. McMaster and replacement with John Bolton – indicate that President Trump may well seek to terminate the agreement in the near future – action which might or might not have significant bipartisan support. He faces a May 5th to decide whether to again waive economic sanction against Iran, a decision which comes up for renewal every 120 days. The Need for a “Long Game” Instead of Provoking Another Regional Crises There are short terms reasons for not seeking any early termination of the agreement. The U.S. has not been able to persuade our European allies to join us, much less Russia and China. The U.S.’ focus on issues like the time limits in the agreement and minor problems in verification and compliance appears more ideological than practical. It has put the U.S. on defensive – while waiting for some tangible serious Iranian violation might get far broader support. The key problems for U.S. strategy, however, are not whether to end the agreement regardless of the consequences and the degree of broad international support for such an action. It is rather how to find some way to make the agreement better, or find some way to end it that provides a better option for regional security or at least does not make things worse. Iran's nuclear, missile, and other threats are far too real for the U.S. to simply terminate its support for the JCPOA without focusing on cost-benefits of such an action. Moreover, the U.S. must consider its other real-world priorities in dealing with the Iranian threat. It must deal with more than the nuclear dimension, and do everything possible to create an effective mix of containment, deterrent, and warfighting forces to deal with three other aspects of Iran’s military capabilities:  Iran’s growing conventional armed ballistic, cruise, and long-range anti-ship missile capabilities.  Iran’s growing mix of asymmetric naval-missile-air forces tailored to threaten shipping, petroleum, and naval traffic through the Gulf and nearby waters in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea.  Iran’s growing regional influence in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and threat to Bahrain.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS US NUCLEAR WEAPONS  Future of $17B MOX Facility in Jeopardy if Secretary of Energy Finds Cheaper Alternative  NNSA Gets DOE Nod for Construction of Main Buildings of $6.5bn UPF Project  US Navy Launches Trident II D5 Missile from USS Nebraska US COUNTER-WMD  DHS, EPA Recap Four-year Project to Improve Response to Bioterrorism Subway Attacks  Chem-Bio Defense Program Eases Path for Industry  Trump Pentagon Pick Literally Wrote the Book on Missile Defense US ARMS CONTROL  'I'll win': Trump Reportedly Told Putin He Would Beat Him in a Nuclear Arms Race  Clouds Form over Iran Deal as Trump Deadline Nears  UN Disarmament Commission Debates Ways to Prevent Arms Race in Outer Space  Downscaled US-South Korea Military Drills Could Be Part of Nuclear Deal ASIA/PACIFIC  Japan Increasingly Isolated As N. Korea Diplomacy Progresses  A Season of North Korea Summits: The View from Beijing and Seoul  Analysis Disputes Japanese Foreign Minister’s Claim that North Korea is Preparing Fresh Nuclear Test  South Korea's Navy Leans Toward France's Barracuda-class Nuclear Attack Submarine EUROPE/RUSSIA  European Powers Face Resistance to Iran Sanctions to Save Nuclear Deal  Missile Developer Sees Increased Growth  Russia Releases 'Satan 2' Missile Test Footage MIDDLE EAST  Mossad Chief '100 Percent Certain' Iran Seeks Nuclear Bomb  JCPOA Future is Very Limited: American Expert  Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Slams Obama's Iran Nuclear Deal, Backs Israel's Right to Exist INDIA/PAKISTAN  India and Pakistan are Quietly Making Nuclear War More Likely  Pakistan Tests Sub-Launched Nuclear-Capable Cruise Missile COMMENTARY  The Word That Could Help the World Avoid Nuclear War  A Kettle of Hawks: The Deal That Curtails Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions Seems Doomed  Hypersonics in Enemy Hands are Immeasurable Threat to America  Trump’s Iran Threat May Wreck Talks with North Korea  What Does 'Denuclearization' Mean to Kim Jong Un?  A US-Russia Nuclear Arms Race? Where?

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US NUCLEAR WEAPONS

WJBF.com (Aiken, S.C.) Future of $17B MOX Facility in Jeopardy if Secretary of Energy Finds Cheaper Alternative By Stefany Bornman April 4, 2018 AIKEN, S.C. (WJBF) - Thousands of jobs and billions of dollars on the line at Savannah River Site. The future of the $17 billion dollar Mixed Oxide Facility, known as MOX, is now in the hands of Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. The MOX facility has been under construction since 2007. The Department of Energy set a completion date of 2048 for the project. The facility's purpose is to convert surplus plutonium, used for nuclear weapons, into a safe fuel to power homes. MOX was part of the Russian and United States agreement to decommission surplus plutonium. Now, 11 years into construction, it's estimated $5.4 billion dollars has been invested into the project. Savannah River Site Watch Director Tom Clements fears South Carolina's bad luck with failed nuclear projects is not over. Clements says new legislation gives Secretary of Energy Rick Perry full control over the Mixed-Oxide Facility. "The Omnibus Appropriations, on March 22, have given the power to Secretary Perry to terminate the project if it can be shown that another alternative is half the cost of MOX, which I think they will be able to do." Clements told WJBF NewsChannel 6. "It's in Secretary Perry's hands now and not Senator Lindsey Graham." $335 million dollars was set aside in this years federal budget for the on-going construction of the facility. Still, Clements says that's barely enough money to keep the $17 billion dollar project afloat and at this point no one has a clear stance on the progress of construction. "I was actually a little bit shocked when both Rick Perry and the new head of the National Nuclear Security Administration said that the project was actually significantly under 50 percent complete," he said. The S.R.S. Watch Director says poor management has led to this disaster on top of it being too costly, which leads him to believe all signs point to the end of MOX and yet another mass layoff of nuclear power workers in South Carolina. He knows there's a viable and cheaper alternative and has not doubt Secretary Perry will be able to prove that. "He has 30 days after he receives those documents, and passes them to Congress, and he can terminate the MOX project," Clements said. "This has never been the case before." Secretary Perry has to make a choice, but there's not telling when that will happen. Clements believes it could be by early summer. WJBF NewsChannel 6 did reach out to Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Tim Scott. At this time Scott has not responded to our request for comment. A spokesperson for Senator Graham's office sent us this statement: Sen. Graham questioned Secretary Perry last week at an Armed Services Committee Hearing and went over this in detail. Here’s a link to the questioning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyCGcBmDpsE&t=7s A spokesperson for Senator Tim Scott sent us this statement:

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"At the end of the day, Senator Scott wants to see the MOX project be fully funded, and is optimistic that the amount appropriated in the current draft of the spending bill allows the MOX mission to continue. The Senator remains committed to upholding the requirements of the nuclear nonproliferation agreement, and the MOX project is the only solution that meets the objective." According to the project website 4,000 people work for MOX. http://www.wjbf.com/news/csra-news/future-of-17b-mox-facility-in-jeopardy-if-secretary-of- energy-finds-cheaper-alternative/1084157853 Return to top

Energy Business Review (London, United Kingdom) NNSA Gets DOE Nod for Construction of Main Buildings of $6.5bn UPF Project Author Not Attributed April 3, 2018 The US Department of Energy (DOE) has given the green light for the construction of three main buildings of the $6.5bn Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The authorization allows the department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to begin construction on the Main Process Building (MPB), Salvage & Accountability Building (SAB), and Process Support Facilities (PSF) subprojects. As per NNSA, the three-story 240,000ft2 MPB will be used for housing enriched uranium operations. On the other hand, the SAB and PSF buildings are expected to support operations in the MPB. Overall, the NNSA is aiming to complete UPF by the end of 2025, subject to stable funding during the duration of the project. The US expects to modernize its nuclear security infrastructure through the UPF project. In January 2013, Consolidated Nuclear Security, a company consisting of Bechtel, Lockheed Martin Services, ATK Launch Systems, and SOC, was selected for designing and overseeing construction of the project. According to NNSA, UPF will replace an aging plant built during the early phase of the Cold War. The UPF is anticipated to be a modern, more efficient, and safer facility compared to the existing plant for carrying out highly-enriched uranium operations at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. NNSA will be constructing the UPF project through a series of seven subprojects. While two of the subprojects were executed on time and under budget, two more were in progress prior to the authorization of the three main buildings. Included in the subprojects that have been completed so far is a $27.5m UPF Construction Support Building. The building’s construction was completed in last November. DOE Nuclear Security Under Secretary and NNSA Administrator Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty said: “This milestone is another important step toward delivering UPF and strengthening our Nation’s nuclear security. “I’m proud of the UPF team for keeping an acquisition project of this size and scope on budget and on schedule.”

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NNSA revealed that the project had reached 90% design completion in last September ahead of seeking construction authorization for the three facilities from DOE. http://nuclearfuels.energy-business-review.com/news/nnsa-gets-doe-nod-for-construction-of- main-buildings-of-65bn-upf-project-030418-6102177 Return to top

Naval Technology (New York, N.Y.) US Navy Launches Trident II D5 Missile from USS Nebraska Author Not Attributed March 29, 2018 The US Navy has successfully launched two Trident II D5 Life Extension (LE) missiles from its submarine USS Nebraska in order to demonstrate the readiness of both the strategic weapon system and the vessel’s crew members. The Lockheed Martin-developed Trident II missile test, known as Demonstration and Shakedown Operation (DASO) 28, was carried out by the navy in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California, US. Lockheed Martin has recently upgraded and modernised the electronics and avionics subsystems of the Trident II D5 LE configuration, which is expected to help the missiles to continue their service with the US Navy and the British Royal Navy into the 2040s. "In addition to certifying the submarine and crew for patrol, the test launch collected valuable data about the performance of the D5 Life Extension missile configuration." The LE programme modified the submarine-launched ballistic weapon, while maintaining the performance of the D5 missile for a significantly lower cost than would be required to design an entirely new missile system. Lockheed Martin Navy Strategic Programmes vice-president Eric Scherff said: “In addition to certifying the submarine and crew for patrol, the test launch collected valuable data about the performance of the D5 Life Extension missile configuration. “Instead of warheads, the missiles carried test kits and instrumentation to give us troves of information about flight and subsystem performance. “The joint government and industry team will use this data to assess performance and to inform maintenance and sustainment plans for the upgraded Trident missile fleet for decades to come.” The latest DASO-28 test increased the number of successful test launches carried out on the Trident II D5 system to a total of 167. The Trident II D5 missile is the latest and advanced submarine-launched fleet ballistic missile to be used by the US Navy. It was originally deployed in 1990 and is currently installed on-board the US Navy’s Ohio-class and the Royal Navy’s Vanguard-class submarines. https://www.naval-technology.com/news/us-navy-launches-trident-ii-d5-missile-uss-nebraska/ Return to top

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US COUNTER-WMD

Homeland Preparedness News (Washington, D.C.) DHS, EPA Recap Four-year Project to Improve Response to Bioterrorism Subway Attacks By Aaron Martin March 29, 2018 The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently highlighted a four-year Underground Transport Restoration project conducted with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prepare for and respond to bioterrorism attacks on subway systems. Conducted by the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and the EPA’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Consequence Management Advisory Division (CMAD), the project aimed to determine how microbes that cause diseases spread through subway systems, and how to best eradicate them. “The purpose of the project is to help develop the tools and techniques necessary for the rapid return of service to the subway system after it has been contaminated with a biological organism such as Bacillus anthracis (B. anthracis), while reducing the impact on humans and the environment,” Shannon Serre, a chemical engineer and manager of the project at EPA, said. Lab experiments for the project began in 2013, and three field study events were held in 2015 and 2016. Held and Sandia National Laboratories, the first event involved a subway car wrapped in plastic. Researchers placed samples of non-diseases causing anthrax spores that are used for vaccinations in the car. If researchers can kill these B. anthracis spores, Serre said, they can kill Ebola virus and other pathogens. “Anthrax bacteria spores are dormant bacteria with a tough coating, which can keep them alive for several decades while enduring unfavorable environmental conditions,” Mike Nalipinski, the associate director at EPA’s CBRN CMAD, said. “In contrast, viruses cannot survive long outside living organisms. “We have successfully applied the anthrax technology that we have developed to Ebola and other pathogens.” It took more than 36 hours to kill the anthrax spores in the first test. The second field test, led by MIT Lincoln Laboratory, explored how aerosolized bacteria spores could contaminate a subway system. Sugar molecules similar in size to anthrax molecules were released with a nontoxic gas in a functioning New York City Subway. EPA researchers collected more than 8,000 samples, with the results validating and improving previously developed dispersion models used to predict airflow in biological attacks. The third field test was held in a simulated subway system at Fort A.P. Hill military base in Virginia. Researchers evaluated how various spraying and fogging techniques could be used to apply various disinfectants to treat porous and non-porous materials, identifying specific tactics that would be useful. “Airport-like security would inhibit the movement in a subway,” Donald Bansleben, a program manager for response and recovery projects at S&T, said. “The subway is like the artery of the city — people going to work, kids going to school, tourists going sightseeing; it is so important to the local, regional and national economies. And yet, it is so easy for someone to walk in and do damage. We must be ready to take action to ensure the safety and resiliency of the nation.” https://homelandprepnews.com/stories/27566-dhs-epa-recap-four-year-project-improve- response-bioterrorism-subway-attacks/

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National Defense (Arlington, Va.) Chem-Bio Defense Program Eases Path for Industry By Tim Belski, Lt. Col. Matthew Clark and Hannah Feldman March 30, 2018 In a 2016 congressional hearing, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated that chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and emerging infectious diseases constitute a major threat to the security of the United States. The Department of Defense is facing the challenges of this evolving threat environment head-on. The joint program executive office for chemical and biological defense and the joint project manager for medical countermeasure systems are transforming ways of doing business with industry partners in order to rapidly develop and field medical countermeasures to support U.S. service-members around the world. Medical countermeasures, such as vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics, are a critical component of a multi-layered defense strategy to protect troops from CBRN threats and emerging infectious diseases. The medical solutions developed add an initial layer of protection and enhance the diagnostic capabilities and post-exposure treatments that save lives and enable U.S. servicemembers to complete their mission. Medical countermeasure systems is a joint project management office located at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, and facilitates the advanced development and fielding of these medical countermeasures. In order to streamline the acquisition process that provides critical medical countermeasure products to the warfighter, the two offices are employing a new “agile medical paradigm,” or AMP. Its mission is to decrease risk, address a broader threat environment, and enable a rapid response capability to future threats. “We are undergoing a transformation in how we do our business and the technologies we are pursuing,” said Jason Roos, deputy program executive officer for chemical and biological defense. “From a medical countermeasure perspective, we need innovative solutions to stay ahead of the enemy, and a robust pipeline of capability to draw upon in a crisis.” Part of this transformation includes incentivizing industry members to work with the two offices. Currently there are few economic incentives for industry to participate, coupled with the lengthy requirements of Federal Acquisition Regulation contracting, and reliance on the U.S. government as the only customer for medical countermeasures against many CBRN threats. The medical countermeasures system office is overcoming these hurdles by utilizing “other transaction agreements” — also known as OTA — as set forth in U.S. law in 10 USC 2371b. Other transactions are legally binding instruments that are used to engage industry and academia on a broad range of research and prototype projects. The mechanism provides an opportunity for nontraditional defense contractors to partner and address important capability requirements across the federal government. Employing OTAs allows for speed, adaptability and accessibility in providing prototypes and medical countermeasures, without having to meet the many statutory requirements governed by the FAR. In short, this authority is designed to stimulate innovation.

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As a part of this effort, the office has partnered with Advanced Technology International to create the Medical CBRN Defense Consortium. Now with over 130 members — including prominent industry, academic and nonprofit partners — the consortium facilitates a flexible arrangement with the Defense Department to accelerate medical countermeasure development. The office identifies requirements through Army Contracting Command-New Jersey and solicits proposals for prototype projects from consortium members. By working with industry and academic leaders, the office streamlines the process for providing new medical products to the warfighter. Members receive benefits such as networking opportunities with other consortium members and government stakeholders; providing visibility into government needs and priorities; and expanding their market by creating a channel for small companies and nontraditional technology providers to engage in the federal acquisition process. The consortium is another tool in the medical countermeasures systems toolbox that improves acquisition and incentive strategies. Recently, the chemical defense pharmaceuticals product management office under medical countermeasures utilized the existing other transaction authority and the consortium to facilitate the development of autoinjectors containing drugs that combat the effects of nerve agent exposure. Through a competitive source-selection process, the office awarded Emergent BioSolutions a five- year agreement through the consortium to develop the novel multi-drug autoinjector for nerve agent antidote delivery. The office is leveraging partnerships with other consortium members such as SHL Pharma Inc., Battelle and Ology Bioservices Inc. in order to develop autoinjectors to deliver nerve agent treatments. By examining past experience and lessons learned from medical countermeasure development, the joint program office is looking toward the future by utilizing the other transaction authority to improve and enhance the ability to treat and protect servicemembers from the effects of CBRN agents and emerging infectious diseases. Included in the initiative is the Advanced Development and Manufacturing facility in Alachua, Florida, which provides the Defense Department with a dedicated manufacturing capability, particularly for niche military pharmaceutical products. The facility was developed through a partnership with Ology Bioservices, which is also a member of the OTA consortium. The facility is designed as a contractor-owned, contractor-operated enterprise that provides the government with the capacity to support routine product manufacturing, as well as surge privileges in times of increased national security and defense needs. A world-class facility, it utilizes state-of-the-art single use technology, and contains two current “good manufacturing practices” compliant manufacturing suites. The facility is biological safety level 3 capable, which allows staff to work with microbes that can cause serious and potentially lethal disease via inhalation. It facilitates development and manufacturing of medical countermeasures that will protect and treat servicemembers who may be exposed to biological or chemical weapons, toxins or infectious diseases, as well as radiological or nuclear events. With guidance from the White House, the medical countermeasures system office “determined that a successful facility would leverage the development expertise of large biopharmaceutical corporations while retaining the innovative spark possessed by many smaller biotech companies,” said Tim Belski, joint product director for advanced development and manufacturing capabilities at the Pentagon.

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“This meant that any business arrangement had to be attractive to private industry partners seeking a return on their investments, be able to support DoD surges in the event of an emergency, and support DoD’s manufacturing of medical countermeasures at smaller volumes than typical commercial levels,” Belski added. The facility enables small innovator companies the opportunity to utilize their capabilities to support medical countermeasure development from research to licensure. Ultimately, the facility lowers the hurdles for industry to work with the department while also stabilizing production for military relevant products. Establishment of platform technologies also supports the agile medical paradigm framework by streamlining medical countermeasure development. Chartered in October, the platforms for rapid integrated solutions for medical countermeasures (PRISM) joint product lead aims to accelerate medical countermeasure delivery to the warfighter through the development and implementation of platform systems. PRISM is a part of a translational team with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s joint science and technology office. PRISM will establish a toolbox of platform systems that can be used to counter a variety of threat agents using standardized discovery, design, manufacturing and testing processes to streamline generation of a portfolio of medical countermeasure candidates. PRISM will also adapt some of these platform systems to support a rapid response capability needed to respond to emerging and novel threats. “The platform approach leverages standardized processes and efficiencies that enable us to deliver capabilities to the warfighter sooner,” said Nicole Kilgore, joint product lead for PRISM. “The goal is to rapidly identify new and emerging threats and quickly deliver a medical countermeasure product that protects U.S. troops.” “Advanced development and manufacturing of antibody technologies” is the first platform being implemented under PRISM. It is a monoclonal antibody platform that provides a capability to respond to recognized, emerging and engineered threats; provides interim fielding candidates early in development; and cost effectively brings antibody countermeasures from discovery to licensure and fielding. The platform is currently being used to develop a botulinum toxin therapeutic and prophylactic medical countermeasure at the Advanced Development and Manufacturing facility. AMP also emphasizes the importance of cooperation with other federal agencies and intra-agency partners. Partnerships are crucial to developing medical countermeasures. This integration not only ensures synchronization between government agencies through the product development, acquisition and procurement cycles, but also enables industry members to participate in this process across agencies. In particular, the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services — to include the Centers for Disease Control and Protection, the Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority, and the Food and Drug Administration — synergize at many levels across the CBRN spectrum. This partnership facilitates medical countermeasure development across a wider range of threats than either agency could do alone. Collaboration and information sharing is facilitated through HHS’ public health emergency medical countermeasures enterprise, which coordinates federal efforts to enhance civilian medical countermeasure preparedness. It also leverages relationships with defense agencies to address the needs of military populations, especially where product development efforts are parallel.

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Army Col. David P. Hammer, joint project manager for medical countermeasure systems said, “At MCS, we are leveraging a whole-of-government approach to combating CBRN threats that not only affect the warfighter, but also civilian populations. Our cooperation with other government agencies is paramount in developing effective medical countermeasures that protect our nation and save lives.” In all, Hammer said, “We are redefining what it means to do business with the Department of Defense. The innovative tools at our disposal make it easier for industry members to partner with us and get medical countermeasures into the warfighter’s hand faster.” ND http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2018/3/30/chem-bio-defense-program-eases- path-for-industry Return to top

Defense News (Washington, D.C.) Trump Pentagon Pick Literally Wrote the Book on Missile Defense By Joe Gould March 28, 2018 WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump has tapped a new assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities — Marine Corps University’s James Anderson — the White House announced late Wednesday. Anderson, the school’s vice president of academic affairs, has been outspoken in favor of America’s missile defense. He authored the 1999 book “America at Risk: The Citizen’s Guide to Missile Defense,” which details the risk of an attack from Russia, China or a “third-world” power. In 2012, Anderson voiced skepticism in the pages of Defense News about President Barack Obama’s willingness to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program and Obama’s “unwillingness to credibly threaten military action.” In the late 1990s, Anderson penned a number of columns raising the alarm about North Korea’s missile program and advocating for swifter development of missile defenses. He was then a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Nominees to the Pentagon job must be confirmed by the Senate. The job’s portfolio includes advising the defense secretary on nuclear deterrence and missile defense policy, as well as security cooperation plans and policies. Anderson previously served as the director of Middle East policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and as director of the Program of Advanced Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. Anderson also served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. He earned a doctorate in international relations and has a master’s degree from Tufts University, as well as a bachelor’s degree from Amherst College. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/03/28/trump-pentagon-pick-literally-wrote-the- book-on-missile-defense/ Return to top

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US ARMS CONTROL

Business Insider (New York, N.Y.) 'I'll win': Trump Reportedly Told Putin He Would Beat Him in a Nuclear Arms Race By David Choi March 29, 2018 President Donald Trump has apparently taken notice of Russian President Vladimir Putin's chest- beating over his country's nuclear arsenal. Putin's actions had "really got under the president's skin," according to a White House official cited by NBC News on Thursday. During his national state of the union speech in March, Putin touted Russia's new generation of "invincible" nuclear weapons that could not be intercepted. Trump reportedly responded to Putin's claims during a phone call with the Russian president last week, according to two officials who spoke to NBC News: "If you want to have an arms race we can do that, but I'll win," Trump allegedly said. After the conversation, Trump said that he and Putin had "a very good call," and that they planned to talk about preventing an arms race, NBC News said. Though Putin mentioned several weapons, including nuclear-propelled cruise missiles that have unlimited range, US officials reportedly said that some of the weapons had failed during the testing process and were not yet operational. "I want to tell all those who have fueled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, introduced unlawful sanctions aimed to contain our country's development: All what you wanted to impede with your policies have already happened," Putin said during his speech. "You have failed to contain Russia," Putin added. Despite Trump's reported threats to Putin, his public comments on Russia have been decidedly muted, according to officials, in part because he insists that he wants to maintain a reasonably cordial relationship with the Kremlin. One White House official told NBC News that Trump doesn't want too much public criticism of the Kremlin from the White House. "He doesn't want us to bring it up," a White House official said to NBC. "It is not something he wants to talk about." Trump reportedly told his aides not to publicize his decision to arm Ukraine, Russia's adversary, with US-made weapons, such as Javelin anti-tank missiles. According to the officials, Trump believed that Putin would be agitated by the moves, NBC reported. Trump frequently receives criticism for not taking Russia to task as strongly as he has with other countries. Earlier in March, Trump ignored warnings from his national security advisors and congratulated Putin on his reelection. The White House was also slow to condemn Putin for the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy living in the UK, which is widely believed to have been orchestrated by the Kremlin.

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-and-putin-arms-race-nuclear-war-2018-3 Return to top

The Hill (Washington, D.C.) Clouds Form over Iran Deal as Trump Deadline Nears By Rebecca Kheel April 3, 2018 Dark clouds are forming over the Iran nuclear deal as the calendar marches toward a May 12 deadline set by President Trump to improve the accord or see the United States effectively withdraw from it. When Trump extended Iran’s sanctions relief in January, he pledged it would be the last time unless European allies agree to a supplemental deal to fix what the president sees as the fundamental problems with the nuclear pact negotiated by the Obama administration. And while negotiations with the Europeans are ongoing, hopes for a solution are increasingly fading. “Every single day I have a new percentage about whether we’re going to get a new deal. Today is 51/49 no deal,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who favors changing the deal instead of scrapping it. Trump came into office vowing to tear up the “worst deal ever negotiated.” The pact signed between Iran and the United States, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and Germany provided Tehran with billions in sanctions relief in exchange for curbs to its nuclear program. Trump sees three main issues: several provisions sunset, inspectors can’t demand to see some military sites, and it does not address Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for terrorists. During Trump’s first year in office, his national security team argued it was in the U.S. interest to remain in the deal — a stance that influenced Trump’s decision to decertify Iran's compliance with the deal but not to reimpose sanctions. Decertification had little bearing on the deal’s fundamentals, but reimposing sanctions could doom it. Now, two of the administration officials who supported staying in the deal have been ousted and are being replaced with staunch Iran hawks. While a member of Congress in 2016, Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo argued that the Iran deal “virtually guaranteed that Iran will have the freedom to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons.” Following Trump’s election, Pompeo, currently the director of the CIA, said he looked “forward to rolling back this disastrous deal.” When announcing former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s firing and Pompeo’s nomination, Trump focused on the Iran deal. “We disagreed on things,” Trump said of Tillerson. “You look at the Iran deal. I think it's terrible, I guess he felt it was OK. I wanted to break it; he felt differently.” But supporters of the Iran deal see Trump’s choice of John Bolton as his incoming national security advisor as the biggest death knell for the deal.

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Bolton penned an op-ed while the deal was being negotiated that was bluntly titled, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” He also encouraged Trump to “abrogate the Iran nuclear deal in his first days in office” last year. Tillerson may have been hoping for a framework agreement with the Europeans that would allow Trump to save face without killing the deal, experts said, but Pompeo and Bolton are unlikely to accept something that’s mostly symbolic. “The views of Bolton and Pompeo matter quite a bit” to the success or failure of the European negotiations, Taleblu said. “I don’t think both of them will settle for anything that’s just crossing t's and dotting i's.” Since Trump’s January announcement, State Department officials led by director of policy planning Brian Hook have had several rounds of negotiations with France, the U.K. and Germany, the so- called E3. Hook has said the department is preparing for either a deal with the Europeans or a withdrawal from the nuclear accord. “We always have to prepare for any eventuality, and so we are engaged in contingency planning because it would not be responsible not to engage in it,” Hook told reporters last month after returning from Iran deal meetings in Berlin and Vienna. “We’re kind of dual-tracking this.” Trump’s January ultimatum also included a call to Congress to pass legislation to fix the nuclear deal. But Congress’s efforts have stalled as it waits for the results of negotiations with the Europeans. “It’s 100 percent with the administration, meaning they have to convince the E3 that there be a follow-on agreement,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told reporters last month. “If they do that, then we’ll consider legislation domestically after that occurs.” Even if the E3 agree to sanctions for Iran’s long-range missile development, as has been discussed, the European Union Council would have to unanimously sign off on them. Barbara Slavin, director of the Atlantic Council’s Future Iran Initiative, said there are two April dates that could determine the success of these negotiations. The first is a mid-April EU Council meeting that could signal the EU’s response to a follow-on deal. The second is French President Emmanuel Macron’s April 24 state visit to Washington. “That would be the last chance to push a view of the deal in a way that Trump might be willing to listen to because he likes Macron,” Slavin said. Slavin also said Trump may be persuaded to renew sanctions waivers once more because Pompeo may not be confirmed by May 12 and the national security team is busy preparing for a summit with North Korea’s leader. “This could be the argument for hanging in there,” she said. “But this is all very rational, and as we know, we have a president who gets his policy views from ‘Fox & Friends.’” But even if Trump does not renew sanctions waivers, the deal may survive, experts said. Europe could move to protect its companies from U.S. sanctions for doing business with Iran or the Trump administration could choose not to enforce sanctions immediately, meaning Iran would still get benefits from the deal even if the United States is not a party to it. Slavin also predicted Iran would not want to walk away from the deal immediately after the United States withdraws.

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“Iran will at least initially wait to see what everyone else does,” she said. Others were less hopeful. “I’m quite pessimistic,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, which supports the deal. Parsi argued Trump’s threats to kill the deal have already scared businesses away from Iran, turning Iranian opinion against the agreement. “I think even if he doesn’t in a literal sense pull the trigger, he’s already pulled the trigger. It’s just a slow death,” said Parsi, author of “Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy.” “If the Europeans had done more investment earlier on, then perhaps it would survive, but unless they really ramp up investment, it’s very difficult to see the deal survive.” http://thehill.com/policy/defense/381324-clouds-form-over-iran-deal-as-trump-deadline-nears Return to top

UN News (Manhattan, N.Y.) UN Disarmament Commission Debates Ways to Prevent Arms Race in Outer Space Author Not Attributed April 2, 2018 Despite the deteriorating security situation, there are some signs of progress in the field of disarmament, such as the intention of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States to hold summit talks, a senior United Nations official said Monday. “At a time when global anxieties about nuclear weapons are higher than at any time since the Cold War, measures for disarmament and arms control are more vital than ever,” Thomas Markram, Deputy High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, told the opening of the 2018 session of the UN Disarmament Commission, held in New York. “Since September, there have been no fundamental changes in the interrelated trends that are eroding efficacy in arms control and negatively affecting international peace and security,” added Mr. Markram, as he delivered a speech on behalf of High Representative Izumi Nakamitsu. He stressed, however, that there have been some recent signs of progress that point to where the Commission can make a unique and constructive contribution. At a time when global anxieties about nuclear weapons are higher than at any time since the Cold War, measures for disarmament and arms control are more vital than ever. As for the reported commitment by the DPRK to denuclearization following the recent talks held in China, Mr. Markram said that “we hope these positive developments will be the start of a longer process of sincere dialogue leading to sustainable peace and denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.” Positive developments also include the successful reduction of strategic nuclear forces by Russia and the US to the levels required by their New START Treaty. Looking to build on this momentum, the Commission has also included prevention of an arms race in outer space in its agenda for this session.

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“One specific collateral measure for disarmament on which this body should certainly be able to make a contribution is the goal of preserving outer space as a realm free of conflict,” Mr. Markram said, noting that several recent trends are impacting the security and sustainability of outer space activities. These include: the massive growth in the number and diversity of actors operating in outer space, including governments and the private sector; the proliferation of hazardous space debris; and increasing dependence on outer space in the civilian, government and military sectors. “As long as some continue to see outer space as a potential realm for war-fighting, we will face increasing risk of weaponization and conflict,” he said. However, there continues to be common ground among the major space-faring nations and other space actors on ways to make progress in a number of areas, including the implementation of transparency and confidence-building measures to mitigate misunderstandings and reduce risk, he noted. The Commission was created in 1978 as a subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly, composed of all Member States, to consider various issues in the field of disarmament and make recommendations. https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/04/1006401 Return to top

VOA (Washington, D.C.) Downscaled US-South Korea Military Drills Could Be Part of Nuclear Deal By Brian Padden April 2, 2018 SEOUL — Permanently ending the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises that began this week could become a key factor in the nuclear talks with North Korea to come. The annual combined military drills had been delayed to keep the peace during the Olympics in the South and reduced in scope to facilitate talks to end the North’s nuclear program. This year’s Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises will be similar to those in the past, with over 23,000 U.S. troops and 300,000 South Korean forces involved in both battlefield maneuvers, and responding to computer-simulated attacks from North Korea. However this year, the defensive nature of the exercises are being emphasized, rather than offensive operations to target the leadership in Pyongyang that were practiced in the past. U.S. nuclear capable bombers and aircraft carriers are also not expected to participate this time around. And the training period has been shortened. "The period has actually been reduced into half. Although it was announced that it is at the same level as in normal years, we see that it is reduced in size compared to other years," said Kim Tae- woo, a military analyst with Konyang University, and formerly with the South’s Korea Institute of Defense Analyses. K-pop diplomacy On Monday, the Seoul government barely acknowledged commencement of the military exercises. The Unification Ministry focused instead on the continued improvement of inter-Korean relations

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // that was highlighted by South Korean K-pop singers preforming in Pyongyang on Sunday. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s attendance at the concert was seen as a reciprocal gesture of goodwill after South Korean President Moon Jae-in attended a North Korean orchestra in Seoul that was part of the North’s PyeongChang Olympics delegation. "The fact that the leaders of both Koreas watched the North and South Korea’s art troupe performance is leading to a good atmosphere like a spring breeze for the successful hosting of the inter-Korean summit," said Baik Tae-hyun, the spokesman for the Ministry of Unification . The two Koreas last week agreed to hold the Kim/Moon summit on April 27. Bargaining chip The downscaling of the exercises seems to be a temporary concession to maintain diplomatic momentum with North Korea that recently shifted away from conducting threatening missile and nuclear tests, to instead engage in upcoming denuclearization talks with South Korea and the U.S. However there are concerns that further restricting and phasing out the joint drills could become a key focus of the nuclear negotiations. "In order to make progress in the denuclearization front, South Korea will somehow have to downscale or even cancel the joint military exercise going down the road," said Go Myong-Hyun, a North Korea analyst with the Asan Institute For Policy Studies in Seoul. The North Korean leader dropped his objection to the joint exercises that Pyongyang in the past called rehearsals for invasion, when he met recently with South Korean diplomatic envoy Chung Eui-yong. However Kim also said ending the military threat against the North, a demand that in the past meant ending the U.S. military presence in Korea, would be a key condition for its nuclear disarmament. "North Korea made a clear point of view for denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and said that there was no need to keep its nuclear program as long as there was no military threat against it, and the safety of its regime was secured," said Chung, who is President Moon’s National Security Adviser. Maximum pressure The South Korean president has so far tried to balance outreach to the North with maintaining his country’s military alliance with the U.S. However, his perceived willingness to downgrade national security measures to advance his diplomatic agenda runs the risk of undermining the U.S. "maximum pressure" campaign. "Seen from the perspective of the U.S., our ally, it can be a measure to lower the trust of the alliance," said Professor Kim. For now, U.S. President Donald Trump, who has promised to maintain sanctions against the North and remain ready to use military force if needed, has shown flexibility both in agreeing to meet with Kim, and in going along with Moon’s request to downscale the joint exercises, to give diplomacy a chance. Lee Yoon-jee in Seoul contributed to this report. https://www.voanews.com/a/us-south-korea-joint-drills-ending/4327386.html Return to top

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ASIA/PACIFIC

VOA (Washington, D.C.) Japan Increasingly Isolated As N. Korea Diplomacy Progresses By Brian Padden April 4, 2018 SEOUL — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may be looking for reassurance when he meets later this month with U.S. President Donald Trump, given that the Japanese leader has been left out of the rapidly progressing diplomatic talks to resolve the North Korean nuclear threat. “Japan looks quite isolated and without really much of a role to play except perhaps to pay up once Trump finds a deal,” said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor with Sophia University in Tokyo. Shared threat Abe will visit with Trump at the president’s Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida on April 17 and 18. This will be the third major summit between these two leaders. The White House, in a statement, said the summit would focus on North Korea sanctions, Trump’s upcoming meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and on “fair and reciprocal” trade issues. Abe has been perhaps the strongest supporter in Asia for Trump’s “Maximum Pressure” campaign to impose tough sanctions on North Korea, backed up with the threat of military action, to force the Kim government to halt its nuclear program. Japan and South Korea are already within range of North Korean short and medium range missiles, and last year the North tested inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM) that flew over Japanese airspace as part of its accelerated efforts to develop a nuclear-armed ICBM capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. But Abe was recently surprised by Trump’s decision to meet with the North Korea leader. Nor did he get any advance notice of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent meeting with Kim. The hardline Japanese leader has also seemed skeptical of South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s Olympic outreach to the North that has produced a pause in provocative missiles tests, an inter-Korean summit at the end of April and Kim’s commitment to engage in denuclearization talks with the United States. The prime minister is expected to caution Trump not to get caught up in the diplomatic momentum that is fast moving toward a deal to ease sanctions in exchange for either a freeze or partial reduction in the North’s nuclear capabilities. “I think that he will continue to urge the decision of the United States in the direction that the sanctions on North Korea should not be eased,” said Professor Hosaka Yuji, a Japan analyst at Sejong University in Seoul. Abe may also bring up with Trump the issue of the hundreds of Japanese abductees that were kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. U.S. over-dependence A partial denuclearization deal would continue to leave Japan exposed to a North Korean nuclear attack. The North’s improving ties with China and South Korea could also increase regional tensions for Tokyo over territorial disputes and disagreements over Japan’s World War II atrocities that had been kept in check by a unifying North Korean threat.

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“The fact that Japan is neglected and that a peaceful framework of inter-Korean relations is being created without Japan does not help the current Japanese government at all,” said Hosaka. Abe has used the North Korean nuclear threat and the rising military power of China to build his political support, and justify his efforts to strengthen the Japanese military by altering the country’s pacifist constitution. Japan’s relations with South Korea also continues to be strained over the “comfort women” controversy, regarding the thousands of Asian women who were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese army during the war. A 2015 agreement between Tokyo and Seoul has failed to settle the matter. Abe’s total dependence on the U.S. alliance for security, and neglect in developing closer ties in the region, could leave Japan on the sidelines of regional diplomacy. “By focusing so much on following the U.S. lead without developing Japan’s own diplomatic assets and relationships, Japan is now being found as not having much of a role to play,” said Nakano. On trade, while Trump pulled out the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement with Japan and other Pacific nations, he initially voiced support for improving bilateral trade. But recently the Trump administration included Japan in the list of countries that will have to pay 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent charge on aluminum exports to the United States. As a key U.S. security ally, Abe will likely seek a similar tariff exemption granted to South Korea. Abe’s approval rating at home is also slipping due to corruption scandal involving allegations that he used his office to help friends and family. Lee Yoon-jee in Seoul contributed to this report. https://www.voanews.com/a/us-japan-summit/4331731.html Return to top

The Diplomat (Washington, D.C.) A Season of North Korea Summits: The View from Beijing and Seoul By Clint Work March 31, 2018 With a flurry of summits on the schedule, how do China and South Korea view North Korean diplomacy and the U.S. position? After several days of speculation, it was revealed that Kim Jong-un was indeed in Beijing for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Kim’s two-day visit was his first known trip abroad since coming to power in 2011. The Kim-Xi meeting adds to a flurry of diplomatic activity in the region, with plans for several summit meetings already underway. Most notable among them are next month’s inter-Korean summit, which yesterday both Koreas confirmed would be held on April 27 at the truce village of Panmunjom, and the as-yet-unconfirmed May summit between Kim and President Trump. There are also plans for a summit meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Trump in April, a potential Japan-China-South Korea trilateral summit in May, and possibly even a bilateral meeting between Abe and Kim Jong-un in June.

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For the Chinese side of things, I spoke with Dr. David Bachman of the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Bachman, an expert in China’s domestic politics and foreign policy, began with the necessary qualification that it is too soon to make any sweeping assessments. Nevertheless, he provided some valuable insight into what the Kim-Xi summit may reveal about current relations between China and North Korea. First, I asked about the impetus behind the meeting. In other words, who initiated it, Xi or Kim? Bachman observed that Beijing made it appear as though it had asked for the summit. Nevertheless, he added, regardless of who initiated it, the meeting was in the best interest of both parties in order for them to align or, at minimum, make clear to one another their respective positions. He also highlighted that, if Xinhua News Agency’s report is accurate, Chinese statements made at the meeting imply that the debate in foreign policy circles within China about whether or not to cut ties with Pyongyang in favor of a full tilt toward Seoul has ended (at least for now). Furthermore, citing the Global Times, Bachman remarked that China also refuted the idea that it had any intention to intervene in North Korea’s domestic political system or overthrow the Kim regime, a notion floated by some recent analysis. Next, I asked him what parallels he saw with earlier events. Bachman noted one obvious similarity was that Kim Jong-un, just like his father Kim Jong-il had done in 2000, visited Beijing six years after coming to power. However, there were also notable differences, namely, China-North Korea relations then were relatively more favorable than they are today. In addition, the overall international environment in 2000 was more conducive to cooperation. The 1994 Agreed Framework was still in place, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) continued to operate, then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would soon visit Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang in October of 2000, and the latter had maintained a self-imposed moratorium on its missile-testing program. Lastly, I asked what implications the Kim-Xi meeting has for the upcoming inter-Korean and Kim- Trump summit meetings. Bachman’s sense was that Kim would continue to soft-pedal the conditions or quid pro quo he had in mind for denuclearization, yet that he likely ran it by Xi in more detail. The conditions could well include a demand for the full removal of U.S. forces from South Korea and abrogation of the U.S.-ROK alliance. Beijing’s maximum hope, he observed, would be for U.S.-ROK relations to fully rupture, allowing it to step in to guarantee security in its own manner. Again, he stressed, such possibilities are still speculative presently, but would match longer-term Chinese goals. For its part, Seoul welcomed the Xi-Kim summit as a positive development, consistent with President Moon Jae-in’s ongoing and assertive diplomatic effort to foster peace on the Korean Peninsula. As Choi He-suk of the Korea Herald reported, one high-level Blue House official stated: “Kim’s comments from the summit (with Xi), such as that denuclearization is the will of his ancestors, signal positive effects for the inter-Korean and U.S.-North Korea summits.” He continued that the Moon administration was approaching North Korea-related issues with “all possibilities in mind.” This follows Moon’s remarks last week, when he spelled out just what he had in mind. The upcoming summits, including a possible trilateral U.S.-South Korea-North Korea meeting following that between Kim-Trump, should aim for a “complete end” to the nuclear and peace issues on the Korean Peninsula, Moon said. In exchange for North Korea’s denuclearization, the “clear goal and vision” should include the replacement of the 1953 Armistice with a formal peace treaty, normalization of relations between North Korea and the United States, fostering further inter- Korean ties, and economic cooperation involving Pyongyang and Washington. By implication, this

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // would mean undoing the severe international sanctions regime placed on Pyongyang for its nuclear and missile programs. Yet, two very problematic and unavoidable questions remain. What does Pyongyang mean by denuclearization? And, relatedly, can the Moon and Trump administrations maintain a unified position? As Bonnie Glaser notes, aside from Kim’s alleged statement, reported by Xinhua, KCNA has said nothing about denuclearization. Kim allegedly said: “The issue of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula can be resolved, if South Korea and the United States respond to our efforts with goodwill, create an atmosphere of peace and stability while taking progressive and synchronous measures for the realization of peace.” Exactly what he meant by “progressive and synchronous measures” remains unclear. However, it is likely similar to the same series of steps mentioned above by Moon. This leads to the second question, that of U.S. and ROK unity or lack thereof. Official South Korean and U.S. government spokespersons’ statements aside, there are obvious reasons to doubt Seoul and Washington are in sync. Trump’s position is clear: “maximum sanctions and pressure must be maintained at all cost!”; Pyongyang must accept complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) and by implication the incredibly invasive inspections regime that comes with it; and, if Kim Jong Un does not accept this, military action is an increasingly viable option. Trump’s recent appointments of Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State and John Bolton as national security advisor clearly signal his administration is not becoming more flexible. Rather, its position is hardening. Bolton’s views on North Korea are incredibly aggressive. He holds that Pyongyang is only negotiating to buy time to further develop its capabilities and try to loosen sanctions. For him, the point of the Kim-Trump summit is simple: Meet, state immediately that Pyongyang must agree then and there to give up everything, and if not, then back to his preferred option, military force. While Trump’s rapid acceptance of Kim Jong-un’s summit offer appeared to signal certain flexibility by stepping back from the previous U.S. requirement that Pyongyang accept CVID as a pre- condition to even hold talks, the president’s behavior is impetuous and aimed at garnering applause and headlines in the moment. To expect a sound and steady strategy from him would be to ignore daily evidence to the contrary. In other words, he could very easily rapidly shift back to the rhetoric of fire and fury. Seoul knows this, and they do not share his position. The two allies differ on what is meant by North Korean denuclearization and, more importantly, how we are supposed to get there. Reportedly, Trump is displeased with Moon’s assertive efforts to lead the process, looks askance at the follow- up trilateral meeting Moon has proposed, and just yesterday said he would not affirm the renegotiated U.S.-South Korea trade pact in order to pressure Seoul into following Washington’s lead on North Korea. Although it will not say so publicly, the Moon administration likely shares the sentiment recently voiced by opposition lawmaker Yoo Seong-min, co-leader of the centrist Bareunmirae Party. Following his trip to Washington D.C., where he found discussion of military strikes on North Korea to still be very much alive, Yoo stated flatly: “I have come to the conclusion that the Seoul government has to seek to reduce risks from the U.S. given that the U.S. government’s decision- making (process) is uncertain and difficult to predict.” Despite the hopeful sentiments swirling around the various summit meetings, this deeply troubling reality remains. https://thediplomat.com/2018/03/a-season-of-north-korea-summits-the-view-from-beijing-and- seoul/ Return to top

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The Japan Times (Tokyo, Japan) Analysis Disputes Japanese Foreign Minister’s Claim that North Korea is Preparing Fresh Nuclear Test By Jesse Johnson April 3, 2018 A leading North Korea-watching website has disputed Foreign Minister Taro Kono’s reported remarks that Pyongyang is preparing to conduct a fresh nuclear test even as tensions on the Korean Peninsula ease ahead of a rare summit between the two Koreas. Kono claimed Saturday during a lecture in the city of Kochi that North Korea is “working hard to get ready for the next nuclear test,” citing satellite imagery. But an analysis published Monday by the 38 North blog at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies disputed his claim that soil had been removed from a tunnel at a site where tests had been conducted in the past. “While it is unclear whether the foreign minister was referring to activity observed over the last few days or from earlier work conducted after North Korea’s September 2017 nuclear test, commercial satellite imagery from March 23 shows quite a different picture: namely, that activity at the test site has been significantly reduced compared to previous months,” the report said of activity at the North’s main Punggye-ri nuclear test site. Asked Tuesday about the 38 North analysis, Kono pointed to an increase in roadwork at the Punggye-ri site that was noted in the report, but did not address the issue of soil removal. Monday’s analysis noted that, despite the slowdown, it remains highly likely that the North Koreans continue to maintain the readiness of Punggye-ri to allow for nuclear testing in the future should Pyongyang decide to do so. Considering a variety of information released, “I believe that activities at the nuclear facilities — including the test site — are continuing,” Kono said Tuesday. Media reports quoting his Kochi lecture had suggested his remarks may have been based on satellite imagery provided by the United States. Tunneling at the west portal — a site not associated with any of North Korea’s previous nuclear tests — was active earlier this year but has dwindled, as has other personnel and vehicular movement around the site. In the previous analysis of imagery at the site taken earlier last month and published March 23, the website said activity at Punggye-ri had seen a “significant slowdown” as high-level talks between North and South Korea moved forward, and U.S. President Donald Trump accepted an apparent invitation from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to meet sometime before the end of May. North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear blast — its most powerful to date — last September, in what it claimed was a test of a thermonuclear weapon. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/04/03/national/analysis-disputes-japanese-foreign- ministers-claim-north-korea-preparing-fresh-nuclear-test/ Return to top

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The Diplomat (Washington, D.C.) South Korea's Navy Leans Toward France's Barracuda-class Nuclear Attack Submarine By Ankit Panda March 30, 2018 A report commissioned by the South Korean Navy finds the French SSN attractive. A think tank commissioned by the South Korean Navy to study possible options for a nuclear- powered attack submarine procurement has pointed to France’s 5,300 ton Barracuda-class submarine as a model candidate. Manufactured by French industrial group DCNS (Direction des Constructions Navales), the Barracuda-class is a modern class of nuclear attack submarine, notable for its extremely low noise signature, enhancing the submarine’s survivability. According to Defense News, a South Korean Navy spokesperson noted that they are reviewing the report, which was produced by the Korea Defense Network over five months. “After thorough review, we’ll report it to the defense minister and the presidential office subsequently for final decision.” The capability would give South Korea a powerful deterrent against North Korea, allowing for extended submarine deployments limited only by the endurance of the crew. North Korea’s Korean People’s Navy presents a formidable undersea threat; it has the largest active submarine fleet in the world, even though many of its vessels are virtually obsolete and easily detectable. North Korea currently has one Gorae-class ballistic missile submarine (SSB) and is building a second submarine to serve in that capacity as well. The vessel is designed to launch the Pukguksong-1 nuclear-capable submarine-launched ballistic missile. Given the ongoing process of inter-Korean rapprochement, with the third inter-Korean summit approaching on April 27, South Korea is not keen to discuss its plans to procure new submarines. Interestingly, one of the factors driving South Korea specifically toward the Barracuda-class as an option is the submarine’s use of low-enriched uranium as the fissile fuel for its on-board reactor. Other nuclear submarine options could require the use of uranium enriched to higher levels— specifically, over 20 percent—would violate the U.S.-South Korea civil nuclear cooperation agreement. South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly discussed the prospect of a nuclear attack submarine by the South Korean Navy during Trump’s November 2017 trip to Seoul. A diesel-electric variant of DCNS’ Barracuda won Australia’s SEA-1000 contract in 2016; Canberra will spend $50 billion procuring 12 Shortfin Barracuda submarines to replace its outgoing Collins- class submarines. In that procurement decision, DCNS’ offering beat out Japan’s Soryu-class offering and Germany’s Type 216. The potential convertibility of some of the later boats of the Shortfin Barracuda to nuclear propulsion submarines may have enticed Australia’s decision. (Neither the Japanese or German options offer a nuclear propulsion variant.)

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South Korea’s interest in a nuclear attack submarine has dates back to the early 2000s, when the country undertook secret design work for an indigenous option. That project was set aside after its existence became public and it was identified by the International Atomic Energy Agency. https://thediplomat.com/2018/03/south-koreas-navy-leans-toward-frances-barracuda-class- nuclear-attack-submarine/ Return to top

EUROPE/RUSSIA

Reuters (New York, N.Y.) European Powers Face Resistance to Iran Sanctions to Save Nuclear Deal By Robin Emmott and John Irish March 29, 2018 BRUSSELS/PARIS (Reuters) - France, Britain and Germany are struggling to persuade their EU partners to back new sanctions on Iran to preserve its nuclear deal, diplomats said, with Italy doubting whether the measures can stop the United States pulling out in May. At a closed-door meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels on Wednesday, London, Paris and Berlin sought EU support for formal approval of the new sanctions in April, after proposing them in mid- March, according to a document seen by Reuters. But Italy, with support from Spain and Austria, resisted plans to impose travel bans and asset freezes on around 15 Iranians, companies and groups, linked to Iran’s ballistic missile program and role in Syria’s war. Rome said they would not be enough to persuade U.S. President Donald Trump not to withdraw from the nuclear deal and would endanger burgeoning business ties with Iran. Spain was also wary of the knock-on effects. Under EU rules, economic sanctions need unanimous support. “Italy said dialogue was the preferred option and that sanctions could weaken our position while not convincing the United States,” the diplomat said. “Spain asked the three to consider the implications of such a move.” Trump has given the European signatories a May 12 deadline to “fix the terrible flaws” of the 2015 nuclear accord, agreed under his predecessor Barack Obama, or he will refuse to extend a suspension of U.S. sanctions on Iran. Trump’s choices in recent weeks of two officials publicly opposed to the Iran accord, John Bolton as national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo as secretary of state, has dramatically raised the probability of a U.S. pullout, the diplomats said. Rome and Tehran in January signed a framework credit agreement to fund investments worth up to 5 billion euros ($6 billion) in Iran. “COMMANDO APPROACH” In Brussels, other countries including Sweden were upset that the three European powers were trying to push things through the EU’s diplomatic approval process so quickly. “There was a commando approach, but it failed,” a second EU diplomat said.

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“The difference here is that everyone thinks Trump will pull out (of the Iran deal) and so some consider this pointless.” The three countries are in talks with the U.S. administration to see what could encourage Trump to issue new waivers on U.S. sanctions. The 2015 pact between Iran and six major powers - Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States - lifted sanctions that had crippled Iran’s oil-based economy, in return for restrictions on its nuclear activities. The new measures proposed by London, Paris and Berlin could target members of Iran’s most powerful security force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), as well as commanders of the Iran-backed Shi’ite group Hezbollah. Discussions are expected to continue in early April but at a lower level than ambassadors, to try for a compromise at EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg on April 16, the last formal gathering on the EU agenda before Trump’s May deadline. Iran insists its nuclear work has been non-military and missile program purely defensive. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-iran-eu/european-powers-face-resistance-to-iran- sanctions-to-save-nuclear-deal-idUSKBN1H51ET Return to top

Defence Connect (North Sydney, Australia) Missile Developer Sees Increased Growth By Amelia McMahon April 3, 2018 As missile developer MBDA looks to secure lucrative contracts in the Australian defence market, including the LAND 400 Phase 2 missile project, the company has just marked five consecutive years of growth. For the fifth consecutive year MBDA recorded a high in orders in 2017, worth €4.2 billion ($6.75 billion), while revenue amounted to €3.1 billion. By 31 December the company’s order book reached a record peak of €16.8 billion. In 2017, export orders (€2.6 billion) once again exceeded orders from the company's domestic countries (€1.6 billion across France, Italy and Britain). Export orders in 2017 notably include contracts with Qatar for MCDS coastal batteries and the arming of Fincantieri corvettes, but do not take into account the Typhoon armament for Qatar, a contract that is expected to enter into force in 2018. Other major contracts won in 2017 include VL MICA systems for GoWind corvettes in Egypt, Sea Ceptor for Type 23 frigates in Chile and Marte for fast patrollers in the UAE. 2017 also saw the creation of a joint venture between MBDA and its Indian partner Larsen & Toubro to meet the Indian Armed Forces' future requirements under the New Delhi government's ‘Make in India’ policy. Domestically, the year was marked in France by the first deliveries of naval cruise missiles (MdCN) and medium-range missiles (MMP) for land combat; in the UK, by the order for additional Meteor missiles to continue with integration on F-35 Lightning II; in Germany, by the formal kick-off of

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // negotiations with the authorities on the TLVS air defence and anti-missile program; and in Italy, by the choice of the CAMM ER missile within the framework of the replacement of the Aspide air defence missile system. France and the UK also launched the concept phase of the FC/ASW (future cruise/anti-ship missile) program, which aims to replace SCALP/Storm Shadow, Exocet and Harpoon in both states. The Franco-German summit of 13 July 2017 opened the prospect of co-operation in the segment of ground combat missiles fired from helicopters, and the development of a future European air combat system whose performance will require further leaps forward in the field of missiles. In addition, 25 EU countries joined the Permanent Structured Co-operation initiative, which MBDA said should facilitate the launch of European co-operation programs. MBDA will also participate in the very first defence research program, the Ocean 2020 project, funded by the new European Defence Fund, which aims to explore future maritime monitoring and interdiction technologies. MBDA CEO Antoine Bouvier said the company will now look to hire over 1,000 people this year across its organisation as a result of the sustained growth. "The group continues to move forward on each of its three strategic pillars: to give its domestic countries guaranteed access to missile technological sovereignty, to pursue European consolidation, to develop international activities; these three actions jointly contribute to the critical mass of MBDA, that is its ability to achieve long-term development faced with its global competitors," he said. "We continue to view the future with optimism, targeting, as we expected, €4 billion in revenue by 2020. To support this growth, the group plans to hire nearly 1,200 people this year, after recruiting 1,000 in 2016 and as many in 2017." On the Australian front, MBDA is not only offering MMP, the fifth-generation anti-tank guided weapon, it is also pitching its various technologies included Meteor for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and Brimstone for armed UAVs and attack helicopters. MBDA has partnered with South Australia's Airspeed, Queensland's Ferra Engineering and Victoria's Cablex as part of its Australian industry content offering for the LAND 400 Phase 2 missile contract. https://www.defenceconnect.com.au/strike-air-combat/2099-missile-developer-sees-increased- growth Return to top

CNN (Atlanta, Ga.) Russia Releases 'Satan 2' Missile Test Footage By Radina Gigova and Laura Smith-Spark March 30, 2018 Russia's Ministry of Defense released video footage Friday of a test launch of its new intercontinental ballistic missile, the Sarmat. The short video said the missile -- nicknamed "Satan 2" -- was launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia.

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According to Russian state-run news agency Sputnik, the launch marked the second time the missile had been successfully fired. The first test was in December. Sputnik also reported that the Sarmat missile is "capable of striking targets both via the North and South Poles." The RS-28 Sarmat is designed to replace the Soviet-era Voevoda ICBM, known by the NATO designation SS-18 Satan. A more capable missile, the RS-28 could loft its payload over a longer distance -- enabling it to cross the South Pole as well as the North Pole, the shortest route between Russia and the United States. Russian state-run news agency TASS reported in 2016 that the missile would have a range exceeding 11,000 kilometers (6,835 miles) and that the warhead would weigh 100 tons. The Sarmat was one of the weapons Russian President Vladimir Putin mentioned in a speech this month boasting of new weaponry he said would render NATO defenses "completely useless." US officials played down the threat. President Donald Trump said after a call with Putin last week that the two had discussed efforts to limit an arms race. "The call had to do also with the fact that we will probably get together in the not-too-distant future so that we can discuss arms, we can discuss the arms race," Trump said. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/30/europe/russia-missile-test-sarmat-intl/index.html Return to top

MIDDLE EAST

Miami Herald (Miami, Fla.) Mossad Chief '100 Percent Certain' Iran Seeks Nuclear Bomb By Josef Federman, Associated Press April 4, 2018 JERUSALEM — The head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency is "100 percent certain" that Iran remains committed to developing a nuclear bomb and believes the international community must change or scrap its nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. Yossi Cohen, who leads the shadowy spy agency, has been holding discussions about the Iranian nuclear program and delivered his assessment in a recent closed meeting with senior officials, according to a person who attended the meeting. Cohen called the nuclear deal a "terrible mistake," saying it allows Iran to keep key elements of its nuclear program intact and will remove other restraints in a few years. "Then Iran will be able to enrich enough uranium for an arsenal of nuclear bombs," Cohen said, according to the meeting participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a classified security matter. Cohen also criticized the decision to lift sanctions on Iran, saying it has resulted in "significantly increased" aggression by Iran, and noted Iran's continued development of long-range ballistic missiles.

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"As head of the Mossad, I am 100 percent certain that Iran has never abandoned its military nuclear vision for a single instant. This deal enables Iran to achieve that vision," Cohen said. "That is why I believe the deal must be completely changed or scrapped. The failure to do so would be a grave threat to Israel's security." Cohen's comments come amid an intense international discussion about the future of the 2015 nuclear deal, in which Iran agreed to curbs and inspections on its nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions. His analysis aligns closely with that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a time the Israeli leader is hopeful that President Donald Trump can negotiate changes to the deal. The issue has sparked some debate inside Israel's security community, with some voices pointing to positive aspects of the deal in that it has delayed Iran's nuclear development. Trump has set a mid-May deadline for changes while also threatening to withdraw from the deal. However, it remains unclear whether a compromise can be reached, and how Iran would react. Trump's disdain for the deal has been a welcome development for Netanyahu. The Israeli leader was a leading opponent of the deal, saying it did not contain sufficient safeguards to prevent Iran from reaching the capability to develop nuclear weapons as the agreement's restrictions expire. Israel and Iran are arch enemies, and Israel has identified Iran as its top threat, citing the nuclear program, its hostile rhetoric, support for anti-Israel militant groups and its development of long- range missiles. Yet the deal has also set off debate within Israel's security ranks. As head of a powerful agency and a close aide to Netanyahu, Cohen is an influential voice. Yet other officials, both active and former, have taken a more nuanced approach by focusing on the positive aspects of the deal. In a recent interview, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot told the Haaretz newspaper that he knows of no violations of the nuclear deal by Iran, though he said Israel is closely watching and assuming Iran can operate secretly. "If its intentions change, we will know. Right now the agreement, with all its faults, is working and is putting off realization of the Iranian nuclear vision by 10 to 15 years," he was quoted as saying. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/article207938454.html Return to top

Mehr News Agency (Tehran, Iran) JCPOA Future is Very Limited: American Expert By Javad Heirannia April 4, 2018 TEHRAN, Apr. 04 (MNA) – Richard Nephew, who served as the lead sanctions expert for the US team negotiating with Iran, is of the opinion that “Bolton and Pompeo are both much more hawkish.” Richard Nephew adds “they presumably will back aggressive use of US power -- including possibly military force -- to deal with what the US government believes to be threats to the United States. They will also back the decisions of US allies to do the same thing.”

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The fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, says “I doubt actually that Bolton would have accepted any agreement with Iran that did not involve its complete capitulation.” He says that JCPOA future is very limited. The following is the questions and and Nephew's answers: Donald Trump recently made changes to the cabinet and changed his security and foreign policy team somewhat. Mike Pompeo replaced Rex Tillerson and "Gina Haspel" became head of the CIA and "John Bolton" replaced McMaster. What was the reason for these changes? On at least one level, these changes are not terribly surprising. Trump has had a bad relationship with Tillerson and McMaster and these are important posts. In any normal Administration, no one would be surprised or even very alarmed by these changes. For this Administration and with respect to these officials, however, these changes are bad signs of what is to come. Trump has already said that he replaced Tillerson over the nuclear agreement with Iran and it is plausible that McMaster was fired for the same reason. This suggests that Trump intends to take a different course of action than letting diplomacy continue with any amount of good faith. How will these changes affect the foreign policy of the Tramp government? Which US foreign policy domains will be more affected by these changes? Without question. Tillerson and McMaster were more establishment figures, believing in diplomacy, engagement and other similar tools equally with military force, sanctions and those types of tools. Bolton and Pompeo are both much more hawkish. They presumably will back aggressive use of US power -- including possibly military force -- to deal with what the US government believes to be threats to the United States. They will also back the decisions of U.S. allies to do the same thing. This could affect a range of policies, from North Korea to Syria to the Iran nuclear agreement. With the Pompeo and John Bolton's approach, how do you assess the future of this agreement? I think its future is very limited. Pompeo and Bolton have never thought the agreement was worth doing and believed that, at a minimum, more concessions from Iran could have been obtained. But, I doubt actually that Bolton would have accepted any agreement with Iran that did not involve its complete capitulation. John Bolton has recently announced that Iran's nuclear deal is not amendmable and will not be reformed through US-European talks. Some believe, that Bolton's choice is for more scoring about nuclear deal. What is your assessment? Well, my assessment is that Bolton will attempt to close down the diplomatic process by declaring it has failed. Bolton has persuaded Trump to take a hard line on this issue since at least September and I do not expect that will change any time soon. https://en.mehrnews.com/news/133138/JCPOA-future-is-very-limited-American-expert Return to top

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FOX News (New York, N.Y.) Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Slams Obama's Iran Nuclear Deal, Backs Israel's Right to Exist By Gregg Re April 3, 2018 Saudi Arabia's crown prince affirmed Israel's right to exist and criticized former President Obama's Iran policy in an interview published Monday, pointedly bucking other leaders in the Arab world and signaling support for President Trump's Middle East agenda. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 32, told The Atlantic that both Israelis and Palestinians "have the right to have their own land" -- a surprising assertion given that many Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, do not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel. “I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation," he said. "I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land.” Prince Mohammed then took aim at Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “Hitler didn’t do what the supreme leader [of Iran] is trying to do," the crown prince told The Atlantic. "Hitler tried to conquer Europe. This is bad. But the supreme leader is trying to conquer the world. "He believes he owns the world. They are both evil guys. He is the Hitler of the Middle East. In the 1920s and 1930s, no one saw Hitler as a danger. Only a few people. Until it happened." Asked about the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran -- which President Trump has long lambasted -- the crown prince sided with the current White House. “President Obama believed that if he gave Iran opportunities to open up, it would change,” he said. “But with a regime based on this ideology, it will not open up soon. Sixty percent of the Iranian economy is controlled by the Revolutionary Guard. The economic benefits of the Iran nuclear deal are not going to the people. “They took $150 billion after the deal — can you please name one housing project they built with this money? One park? One industrial zone? Can you name for me the highway that they built? I advise them — please show us something that you’re building a highway with $150 billion. For Saudi Arabia, there is a 0.1 percent chance that this deal would work to change the country. For President Obama it was 50 percent. But even if there’s a 50 percent chance that it would work, we can’t risk it. The other 50 percent is war. We have to go to a scenario where there is no war.” Prince Mohammed pushed aside his cousin last year to become first in line to the Saudi throne, and he now controls a vast fortune, a well-heeled military and the future of a nation in the throes of sweeping economic and social change. He is on a mission during his three-week U.S. visit to improve the perception of his nation in the eyes of Americans, who have viewed Saudi Arabia warily because of its conservative social mores, unequal treatment of women and, more recently, deadly military campaign in Yemen. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/04/03/saudi-arabias-crown-prince-slams-obamas-iran- nuclear-deal-backs-israels-right-to-exist.html Return to top

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INDIA/PAKISTAN

Vox (New York, N.Y.) India and Pakistan are Quietly Making Nuclear War More Likely By Tom Hundley April 2, 2018 Both countries are arming their submarines with nukes. KARACHI, Pakistan — The Karachi Naval Dockyard, home port and strategic nerve center for Pakistan’s fleet, sits on a sliver of land bracketed between Port Grand, a “family fun” pier that features kiddie rides and a panoramic view of warships at anchor, and Machar Colony, a sprawling slum where cattle graze on garbage and a million human inhabitants live in nearly unimaginable squalor. It was here, during the quiet predawn of May 6, 2014, that four rogue naval officers walked up the gangway of the PNS Zulfiqar, a 4,000-ton frigate that was preparing to put to sea. A guard inspected their ID badges and saluted. Once on board, their plan was to join up with another group of six militants disguised in marine uniforms who were approaching the Zulfiqar in an inflatable dinghy. Together they hoped to hijack the ship and use it to attack a US Navy patrol in the Indian Ocean. But an alert sailor on board the frigate noticed something was wrong. The men in the dinghy were armed with AK-47s — not the standard weapons used by Pakistani marines. When he challenged the group in the dinghy, a gunfight quickly erupted. While the attackers fired automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, the sailor shredded the dingy with an anti-aircraft gun, killing all six. Hearing the commotion, navy commandos from another vessel rushed to the scene, but it still took several hours to regain control of the ship from the four rogue officers already on board. Eventually all of them were killed, the last one blowing himself up after he was cornered. The audacity of a bloody attack inside one of the most heavily secured naval facilities in Pakistan was jarring enough. Even more jarring was the source of the attack: al-Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for the strike and praised the dead men as “martyrs.” Five more naval officers implicated in the plot were later arrested, charged with mutiny, and sentenced to death. The Zulfiqar incident is the most serious in a long string of deadly security breaches at Pakistani military installations, from multiple attacks on nuclear facilities near Dera Ghazi Khan (2003 and 2006) and on the air force bases at Sargodha and Kamra (2007 and 2012) to the the gruesome 2014 attack on a school for the children of military officers in Peshawar that left more than 140 people dead, including 132 children. But even if Pakistani bases have been hit before, the Zulfiqar strike is particularly alarming. That’s because Pakistan is preparing to arm its submarines and possibly some of its surface ships with nuclear weapons — which means terrorists who successfully fight their way into a Pakistani naval base in the future could potentially get their hands on some of the most dangerous weapons on earth. The Pakistan navy is likely to soon place nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on up to three of its five French-built diesel-electric submarines. It has also reached a deal with China to buy eight more diesel-electric attack submarines that can be equipped with nuclear weapons. These are scheduled for delivery in 2028. Even more disturbing, Pakistani military authorities say they are considering the possibility of putting nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on surface vessels like the Zulfiqar.

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Pakistan says its decision to add nuclear weapons to its navy is a direct response to India’s August 2016 deployment of its first nuclear submarine, the Arihant. A second, even more advanced Indian nuclear submarine, the Arighat, began sea trials last November, and four more boats are scheduled to join the fleet by 2025. That will give India a complete “nuclear triad,” which means the country will have the ability to deliver a nuclear strike by land-based missiles, by warplanes, and by submarines. The submarine is the key component. It’s considered the most “survivable” in the event of a devastating first strike by an enemy, and thus able to deliver a retaliatory second strike. In the theology of nuclear deterrence, the point of this unholy trinity is to make nuclear war unwinnable and, therefore, pointless. When it comes to India and Pakistan, by contrast, the new generation of nuclear submarines could increase the risk of a devastating war between the two longstanding enemies, not make it less likely. India and Pakistan have gone to war four times since 1947, when Britain partitioned what had been a single colony into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. They have been in a state of constant hostility ever since, and for the past two decades, they have been locked in a frightening nuclear arms race on land. Pushing the contest into the Indian Ocean makes the situation even more dangerous by loosening the chain of command and control over the weapons, increasing the number of weapons, and placing them in an environment where things tend to go wrong. “The nuclearization of the Indian Ocean has begun,” Zafar Jaspal, a nuclear security expert at Islamabad’s Quaid-i-Azam University, told me. “Both states have now crossed the threshold.” This should be setting off alarms throughout the international community. Growing numbers of nuclear weapons will soon be deployed to submarines patrolling some of the most bitterly contested waters on earth — and controlled by jittery and potentially paranoid officers on perpetual high alert about a surprise attack from the other side. The result is a game of nuclear chicken every bit as dangerous as the “my button is bigger than yours” competition between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un on the Korean Peninsula. The difference here is that this one is going almost completely unnoticed. Putting nukes on submarines makes a nuclear war much more likely The modern nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarine is arguably the most fearsome weapon ever conceived. The US Navy’s 18 Ohio-class boats can each carry 154 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. They can travel beneath the sea for months, virtually undetectable, and their range is limited only by the crew’s endurance and food supply. When we talk about nuclear submarines, we talk about two different, but related, things: what powers the subs, and what kinds of weapons they carry. The US, Russia, the UK, France, and China have nuclear-powered submarines that are also armed with nuclear weapons. Israel is thought to have submarines that are armed with nuclear warheads, but they’re powered by diesel-electric generators. That matters because those types of submarines, unlike the nuclear-powered ones made by America and other major world powers, are noisy — and thus easier to track — and can generally stay underwater for only a week or two at most. India has spent billions of dollars to join that exclusive club — and came close to disaster. The $2.9 billion Arihant nearly sank a few months after its commissioning when a hatch was left open and seawater flooded the propulsion compartment. The embarrassing mishap, blamed on “human error,” was hushed up by the ministry of defense. Even India’s senior political leadership was kept

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // in the dark. The boat has been undergoing extensive repairs since last February, according to a January 8 report in the newspaper the Hindu, which was the first to report the entire saga. Meanwhile, India’s “other” nuclear submarine, the INS Chaka — an Akula-class submarine on loan from Russia primarily for training purposes — is also in dry dock after an unspecified accident damaged its sensitive sonar equipment. In February, Russia sent India a $20 million bill for repairs. Pakistan, for its part, announced last year that it had successfully test-fired a submarine-launched cruise missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. That was a clear indication that the country wanted to start arming its submarines with nukes. It had already signaled that it was willing to put nukes on some of its surface ships. The problem is that putting nukes at sea significantly weakens the chain of command and control over the weapons, which means the risk of an accidental exchange of fire — or full-on nuclear war — between India and Pakistan will increase exponentially. Up until now, both Pakistan and India have implemented rigorous checks to keep their weapons safe and eliminate the possibility of inadvertent or rogue launches. In India, ultimate authority in the chain of command and control rests with the country’s civilian political leadership. In theory, Pakistan’s nuclear trigger is also in civilian hands. A body called the National Command Authority, headed by the prime minister, must authorize any decision to use nuclear weapons. But in reality, it is the military, widely regarded as the most stable and disciplined institution in the country, that controls all aspects of the country’s nuclear program. Equally important, both India and Pakistan have kept their warheads and delivery systems “de- mated” — that is, the nuclear warhead is stored far away from the missile that would deliver it. Or in the case of India’s bombs, the trigger or detonator is kept far from the fissile core. But at sea — and especially when you go beneath the sea — this is pretty much impossible. The warheads and missiles have already been assembled and stored in the same place, and individual submarine captains have significant freedom to decide whether to launch their nukes. “The new danger for both countries is that the problem of command and control over the submarines becomes very tenuous,” said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani nuclear physicist and frequent visiting scholar at Princeton University, where we spoke last summer. “With land-based weapons, the warhead is separated from the delivery system. You can’t do that with warheads on a submarine. When it leaves the port, it is already armed.” Hoodbhoy said that leaves military planners with two options: “Either you do not give the arming code to the captain … or you give it to him before he leaves the port and he can, of his own accord, launch a nuclear missile.” In submarine warfare, the glaring weak link in the chain of command has always been communication between the sub beneath the sea and the central command. Normal radio waves cannot penetrate the ocean’s depths. To communicate with a submerged submarine, very low frequency (VLF) and extremely low frequency (ELF) radio transmissions are necessary. These frequencies cannot carry voice communications, only coded messages or — at a snail’s pace — text messages. It’s also difficult for the subs to receive communications of any kind if they’re submerged too deeply. These communications are also strictly one-way; subs can hear what ground commanders are telling them but can’t reply or ask questions. “Essentially the submarine is on its own,” said Hoodbhoy, adding that “it can’t communicate back” unless it sticks an antenna above the surface and potentially reveals its location.

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Hiding beneath the ocean, almost impossible to detect, nuclear submarines have the great advantage of being able to survive a nuclear strike by an enemy nation and launch a devastating second-strike response. The same can’t be said for the land-based VLF transmitters that give the subs their orders. These are impossible-to-hide sitting ducks, vulnerable to enemy attack in a first strike. Knock out these installations and the submarines are operating blind. If you watch Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman fight it out in the underwater thriller Crimson Tide, you get a pretty accurate picture of how things can go south quickly in the extreme isolation of a nuclear submarine cut off from its centralized command. Pakistan and India went to the nuclear brink during a 1999 war in the disputed territory Kashmir, coming closer to pulling the trigger than even the US and Soviet Union during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The Kashmir issue continues to roil both countries, so it’s not hard to imagine a Crimson Tide scenario in which an Indian submarine commander, aware that his country is under attack, receives an incomplete or unclear order to launch. What does he do? Here’s another scenario: India knocks out Pakistan’s only VLF transmitter in Karachi. The beleaguered commander of one of Pakistan’s diesel-electric submarines — lost in the fog of war, unable to communicate with the National Command Authority, and under attack by one of India’s highly capable anti-submarine hunters — launches a cruise missile. Is it armed with a conventional warhead or a nuclear warhead? Do Indian authorities wait until it hits a major population center to find out? Or do they order an immediate retaliatory attack? Experts who have modeled an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange say that once the first nuke is launched, it would be nearly impossible for either side to deescalate. That means each side would likely attempt to unleash its entire arsenal of 100 or more nuclear weapons on the other side’s population centers. The ensuing firestorm would release a cloud of radioactive ash that would darken skies, cool temperatures, and disrupt agriculture around the globe for a decade or more. Millions would die, and millions more would be faced with displacement and starvation as we enter what scientists have termed nuclear winter. In many ways, the power to start — or prevent — such devastation rests in the hands of individual submarine commanders. During the Cold War, US submarines had a “two-man rule” that required a commander (Hackman’s character in Crimson Tide) and executive officer (the part played by Washington) to agree that a launch order was valid. As Cold War tensions eased, the two-man rule was replaced by a more rigorous system of checks that require the sub commander to utilize an externally provided code in order to launch. India has not said how it will maintain control of its submarines. “There’s a lot of confusion and not much clarity on this,” said Yogesh Joshi, an analyst at Stanford University who is writing a book on India’s nuclear submarine program. “They are acting as if this is something still in the future, something they can think about later.” The situation will become even more fraught if Pakistan follows through on its threat to arm its surface vessels with nuclear weapons. In that scenario, some ships will carry nuclear weapons and some won’t. This ambiguity creates all kinds of new pathways for mistakes, misunderstandings, miscalculations, and mischief. If a missile is launched from one of these ships, how will India know whether it is a nuke or not? “That will lead us to Armageddon,” warned Abhijit Singh, a former Indian naval officer and current senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. The other big worry, especially with regard to Pakistan, is that nuclear weapons will somehow fall into the hands of terrorists. With Pakistan’s existing land-based arsenal, the warheads and missiles

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // are stored separately in a series of heavily guarded secret locations. That can’t be done with ships and submarines. The weapons will have to be handled and stored at the Naval Dockyard in Karachi or at the newer Ormara facility in Balochistan. Either way, terrorists will know exactly where they have to go to get what they want. And al-Qaeda has already shown a willingness and capability to hit those facilities. Naval Station Mehran, a sprawling base in Karachi that is headquarters for the navy’s air fleet, is adjacent to the Pakistan air force’s giant Faisal base, a likely repository of nuclear components. In 2011, a team of 15 to 20 heavily armed militants breached the security perimeter at Mehran, made their way to the heart of the base, and destroyed two P-3C Orion anti-submarine aircraft. Pakistani commandos and security personnel spent nearly 18 hours fighting to retake the base, and at least 13 of them died in the effort. The Pakistani Taliban initially claimed responsibility, but later there were credible suggestions that al-Qaeda may have carried out the attack. Either way, the ease with which the attackers entered the base — and their focus on destroying the most valuable military assets — suggested they had inside help. When the Mehran base came under attack, both Pakistan and India immediately put their nuclear assets on high alert because of its proximity to one of Pakistan’s key nuclear stockpiles. The incident left both sides uneasy about the security of their most destructive weapons. “The Pakistan navy was always known to be a highly professional force. Now all of that seems to have changed,” Singh, the former Indian naval officer, told me. “The systemic infiltration of the navy by these radicalized elements is shocking to us,” Although these incidents are cause for alarm, most experts agree that Pakistan has done a good job safeguarding its nuclear weapons. Protecting the nukes — from India, from homegrown terrorists, and from the US military, which has spent millions of dollars helping Pakistan secure its nuclear arsenal but still remains a suspect ally — is Pakistan’s highest priority. The supervision of the nation’s nuclear arsenal is managed by an elite agency within the military called the Strategic Plans Division. Rising above the morass of Pakistan’s domestic politics, the SPD projects an image of calm professionalism. In Islamabad, I met with Brig. Gen. Zahir Kazmi, director of the SPD’s arms control and disarmament branch, who made the case that Pakistan “is very much alive” to the dangers of managing nuclear weapons at sea. “We are confident but not complacent,” he said. Kazmi recognized the responsibility of safeguarding the weapons in the face of a challenging domestic security environment but bristled at any suggestion from an American that Pakistan’s military might not be up to the task of protecting its most important assets. “Managing nuclear safety and security is not a white man’s burden only,” he said. “Pakistan is managing its responsibilities quite well. There is a deliberate tendency to forget that Pakistan’s record is as good, if not better, than that of the US.” America’s role in the growing numbers of nukes in the Indian Ocean has been one of muddled ambiguity. In 2008, the US signed a commercial agreement that allows India to share in most of the benefits of the Nuclear Suppliers Group even though India has never signed the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty. This bending of the rules allows India to import uranium for civilian energy projects, freeing up domestic capacity for production of the highly enriched uranium (HEU) needed to fuel the reactors on its new submarines.

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Last summer, the US signaled a sharper tilt toward India by conducting joint naval exercises in the Indian Ocean with India and Japan. This was meant as a warning to China, with its growing ambitions in the Indian Ocean, but it did little to calm anxieties in Pakistan. Meanwhile, in his very first tweet of 2018, President Trump abruptly and unexpectedly cut off military aid to Islamabad. “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit,” Trump tweeted on New Year’s Day. “They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No More!” Aside from the oddity of conducting foreign policy via Twitter, the public scolding was taken in Islamabad as a humiliating insult, further complicating ties with an admittedly difficult but necessary US ally in Washington’s never-ending “war on terror.” The cold war between India and Pakistan seems to be heating up As the Indian Ocean arms race accelerates, both India and Pakistan are rethinking when and how they might take the nightmare step of launching the doomsday weapons at each other. Their nuclear rivalry goes back to May 1998, when both countries shocked the world with a series of nuclear tests. Five years later, India declared its “no first use” doctrine. India’s political leadership has made clear that it views nukes as political weapons — a way to project global power and perhaps win a seat on the United Nations Security Council — not as war-fighting weapons. India’s military, however, has been frustrated by Pakistan’s tactic of allowing terror groups to fight a low-grade proxy war against India. Pakistan calculates that it can use this tactic to hurt India without fear of retaliation because India would be afraid of provoking a nuclear response. The 2001 attack on India’s parliament building and the 2008 Mumbai attack are the most notorious examples of this. Both were carried out by Pakistan-based militants with well-established links to Pakistan’s Inter- Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the military’s powerful spy agency. Terrorism is the classic underdog’s tactic. Pakistan is clearly the underdog in any nonnuclear matchup with India, but it is certainly the world’s first nuclear-armed underdog to successfully apply the tactic against a nuclear rival. Infuriated by what it sees as a kind of blackmail, India’s military is looking to develop strategies in which it could apply its superior conventional force to punish Pakistan without provoking a nuclear response. Pakistan, meanwhile, has tweaked its nuclear doctrine from “credible minimum deterrence” to something it calls “full spectrum deterrence,” which apparently countenances the use of low-yield tactical battlefield nuclear weapons on its own territory in the event of an Indian incursion — another unsettling first in the annals of nuclear deterrence. During the Cold War, the dynamic that drove the US-Soviet arms race was MAD — mutually assured destruction — which saw both sides accumulate vast arsenals with tens of thousands of warheads. The logic was that each side possessed such overwhelming destructive power that neither would ever dare use it. Both sides understood that a nuclear war would be unwinnable and, therefore, unthinkable. A reverse — and equally perverse — dynamic propels the India-Pakistan rivalry. As India searches for ways to use its overwhelming conventional military advantage, a nervous Pakistan is forced to keep lowering the threshold for nuclear retaliation. As a result, there have been recent signals that India is rethinking or reinterpreting its no-first-use doctrine. A 2016 book by Shivshankar Menon, a respected national security adviser in the previous

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // government, caused a stir by declaring “a potential grey area as to when India would use nuclear weapons first.” Menon suggested India would be prepared to order a preemptive strike if it appeared Pakistan was about to use its nuclear weapons. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party floated a similar idea in 2014, urging a more flexible nuclear doctrine to deal with Pakistan. And while Modi himself says he remains committed to no first use, his previous defense minister, Manohar Parrikar, argued that India needed a less restrictive nuclear doctrine. If nothing else, Indian generals are speaking much more aggressively since they completed the full nuclear triad, which gives them an assured way of hitting Pakistan even if India has been hit by a nuclear attack. In January, Gen. Bipin Rawat, the army’s new chief of staff, declared that India was prepared to test Pakistan’s threat to use nuclear weapons if a new war broke out. “We will call their bluff,” Rawat said. “If given the task, we will not say we cannot cross the border because they have nuclear weapons.” And that’s why this all matters so much for the two countries and their hundreds of millions of citizens — and the world as a whole. India and Pakistan are mortal enemies that have dozens of nuclear warheads aimed at each other. That was scary when those nukes were only on land. It’s a much scarier situation now that those nukes have been put onto submarines that move deep underwater, holding the deadliest payloads imaginable. https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17096566/pakistan-india-nuclear-war-submarine-enemies Return to top

VOA (Washington, D.C.) Pakistan Tests Sub-Launched Nuclear-Capable Cruise Missile By Ayaz Gul March 29, 2018 ISLAMABAD — Pakistan announced Thursday that it had successfully conducted another test-firing of a nuclear-capable, submarine-launched cruise missile (SLCM), which has a range of 450 kilometers. The indigenously developed Babur missile was fired from an underwater platform and "engaged its target with precise accuracy," a military statement said. The rocket is capable of delivering "various types of payloads" and provides Pakistan a "credible" second-strike capability. Military spokesman Major-General Asif Ghafoor, while referring to the country's archrival India, said the development of Babur was a response to "provocative nuclear strategies and posture being pursued in the neighborhood." He also released some footage of the testing. Pakistan said its nuclear and missile development programs are India-specific and have effectively deterred the bigger neighbor, with its larger military power, from imposing another war on the country. "When it comes to responding to India for their threat, anything and everything that we have is for them and for nobody else," Ghafoor told reporters a day earlier.

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Military tensions are running high over the divided Kashmir region, which has caused two of the three wars between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. Both South Asian nations are locked in almost daily skirmishes along the Line of Control, which separates Pakistan's portion from the Indian-ruled two-thirds of the Himalayan region. Meanwhile, earlier this week the United States imposed sanctions on seven Pakistani companies for alleged links to the nuclear trade. The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIC) places those companies on its Entity List, which the U.S. uses to identify foreign parties that are "acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States," the BIC website explains. https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistan-tests-sub-launched-nuclear-capable-cruise- missile/4322928.html Return to top

COMMENTARY

The New York Times (New York, N.Y.) The Word That Could Help the World Avoid Nuclear War By Jeffrey Lewis April 4, 2018 There has been a lot of talk lately about Kim Jong-un’s willingness to discuss the “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. It’s a cumbersome word and one that has given rise to more than a few misunderstandings. Many people, including President Trump, seem to hear “denuclearization” and imagine a promise by Mr. Kim to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, recently acquired at great cost. But the term means more than the North’s disarmament. It imposes obligations on the United States, too — even if Americans don’t want to hear that part. The word “denuclearization” is more or less native to the Korean Peninsula. This wasn’t the term experts used to talk about the elimination of nuclear weapons programs in South Africa, Iraq or Libya. In those contexts, the word was almost always “disarmament.” So why have diplomats this time chosen the far more complicated word “denuclearization”? Because the situation is, well, far more complicated. The term itself is a relic from the 1990s, the moment in which the ongoing crisis over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions began. At the end of the Cold War, the only nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula were American. The problem, from an American perspective, was that North Korea wanted to acquire nuclear weapons capabilities of its own. Ultimately, President George H.W. Bush’s administration chose to withdraw American nuclear weapons from South Korea as part of an effort to seek a diplomatic solution to the North’s nuclear ambitions. For a moment, it seemed like it would work: After the 1991 withdrawal of American nuclear weapons, South Korea and North Korea signed in 1992 a joint declaration on “the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” “Denuclearization” was conveniently abstract. That allowed it to capture different aspects of what James Baker, Mr. Bush’s secretary of state, called “the nuclear problem on the Korean Peninsula.” It covered at the same time the nuclear weapons that the United States withdrew from South Korea,

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // the so-called “nuclear umbrella” of extended deterrence provided by the United States, and North Korea’s own nuclear weapons ambitions. It was a shapeless, ill-fitting word. But the alternatives — “disarmament” or “nonproliferation” — were just too narrow. Diplomats couldn’t squeeze everything that mattered into them. Today, of course, things are very different than they were in 1992. There are no American nuclear weapons in South Korea (although the North Koreans don’t believe that, and some South Korean politicians have called for their return). More important, North Korea has moved in fits and starts to build a nuclear weapons capability that may be as large as 60 nuclear weapons, including a small number that can strike the United States. But diplomats rarely throw phrases away, even once they are outdated. During the 2000s, “denuclearization” stuck around because the Joint Declaration was North Korea’s only written commitment to abandoning its nuclear weapons after Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003. And so even as the situation has changed, many American policymakers have repurposed “denuclearization” as a synonym for North Korea’s disarmament. But that’s not what it means — and that’s not how Mr. Kim sees it. In his meeting last week with President Xi Jinping of China, Mr. Kim reportedly committed to denuclearization. But when he does so, he is not offering to abandon the bomb, at least not without very big changes like the withdrawal of American troops from the Korean Peninsula and the signing of a peace treaty. He is terrified of ending up like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qaddafi, two dictators who abandoned their weapons programs only to be forced from office. When Mr. Kim says that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was his father’s dying wish, he’s repeating a line that his father used, too. It’s a nice thing to say, but it can’t happen outside of a comprehensive settlement that ensures the Kim family’s rule in perpetuity. Rather than agreeing to disarm, Mr. Kim is saying he is willing to engage in a process, headed toward an ambiguous goal. How will Mr. Trump react when he figures this out? Already there are reports that members of the White House staff are uncomfortable with the idea that he might travel to Pyongyang, because they understand that any discussion of denuclearization between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim might well lead the president to accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, if only tacitly. The idea of learning to stop worrying and love Kim Jong-un’s bomb is not something that Washington will eagerly embrace. But we are where we are. North Korea’s disarmament is unlikely, except in the broader context of inter-Korean reconciliation and a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. (Even then, it seems like a long shot.) And if Washington can’t persuade Mr. Kim to abandon his weapons, the United States and North Korea, as well as Japan and South Korea, still share an interest in reducing tensions and working to make sure we all don’t stumble into a nuclear war. Mr. Kim is not wrong about these things. Disarmament is the simpler term, but it elides the complexity of the current situation. If the term “denuclearization” merely reduces the problem of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions to a small challenge in the big context of a settlement of Korea’s division, then it is the right one. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/opinion/avoid-nuclear-war-denuclearization.html Return to top

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The Economist (London, United Kingdom) A Kettle of Hawks: The Deal That Curtails Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions Seems Doomed Author Not Attributed March 28, 2018 John Bolton’s appointment as national-security adviser sounds its death knell EVER since Donald Trump’s election, he has had in his sights the “worst deal ever”—the one reached in 2015 that sought to circumscribe Iran’s nuclear ambitions. For a while the threat to the survival of the agreement looked more rhetorical than real. No longer. On January 12th the president signed the waiver that prevents the reimposition of nuclear-related sanctions on Iran for a further 120 days. But, against the advice of his national-security team at the time, he warned that this would be the last such waiver unless the European parties to the deal—Britain, France and Germany—worked with America to fix what he regards as the fatal flaws in the agreement. The prospects for the deal became even bleaker on March 13th, when Mr Trump announced the sacking of Rex Tillerson. His replacement as secretary of state is Mike Pompeo, a fierce critic of the agreement, known more formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The replacement of H.R. McMaster as national security adviser nine days later by John Bolton almost certainly sounded its death knell. Mr Bolton was an abrasive American ambassador to the UN under George W. Bush. Despite a stint as under-secretary for arms control and international security in the same administration, Mr Bolton appears never to have seen an arms-control agreement he liked. Unlike other self-declared haters of the Iran deal, Mr Bolton does at least have an answer to the question “what next?” if it is jettisoned. A few months before the deal was signed in July 2015, Mr Bolton boomed: “The inconvenient truth is that only military action…can accomplish what is required.” Air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, he argued, could set the programme back by “three to five years”. In an article this year Mr Bolton struck a less bellicose note, claiming that the reactivation of nuclear-related sanctions, plus some new ones, could bring the “seemingly impregnable authoritarian” Iranian regime to its knees. America’s declared policy, he argued, should be to end Iran’s Islamic revolution before its 40th birthday in 2019. But it is unlikely that sanctions, combined with unspecified “material” support for Iranian opposition groups, could bring about regime change, and unclear whether Mr Bolton really believes that they could. About North Korea, he is equally blunt. In August Mr Bolton called talking to the hereditary Marxist dictatorship “worse than a mere waste of time”. If China would not agree to work with America to dismantle Kim Jong Un’s regime (an implausible scenario), the only alternative was “to strike those [nuclear] capabilities pre-emptively”. In this view, if the proposed summit between Mr Trump and Mr Kim takes place, it may be no more than the prelude to an ultimatum and perhaps even to war. After his appointment, Mr Bolton said that opinions previously stated “in private” (an odd way to describe newspaper articles) were now “behind” him. Playing down his image as a warmonger, sources claim that in his new role he sees himself as an honest broker between agencies. They cite Brent Scowcroft, a respected national security adviser under the senior George Bush, as a model. That seems far-fetched. Mr Bolton is both an ideologue and a ferociously effective bureaucratic infighter, with a history of reshaping intelligence reports to suit his own purposes.

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Mr Bolton’s appointment alarms the “E3” (Britain, France and Germany), which signed the Iran deal along with Russia, China and Iran itself. It casts an even darker cloud over their efforts to find a way of appeasing Mr Trump’s demands before hitting the 120-day buffer on May 12th. Spirit measures The JCPOA is a highly technical 159-page document. But Mr Trump’s two main objections are straightforward. The first is that, even if Iran is sticking to the letter of the deal, its actions often violate its spirit. So it does not matter that over the past two years inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have filed 11 reports judging that Iran is keeping its promises to curb its nuclear programme. The Iran deal was designed as a pragmatic arms-control agreement that cuts off Iran’s route to a nuclear weapon for a period of time. But its opponents have always wanted it to do far more. Some wish it would also check Iran’s prolific meddling across the Middle East. Iran backs Shia militias in Syria and Iraq, stokes the war in Yemen and supports Hizbullah—a Lebanese Shia militia that threatens Israel with thousands of missiles and occasionally fires them. For the accord’s critics, Iran is a “bad actor” to be isolated, not engaged. They also want a deal that curbs Iran’s ballistic-missile programme, which has continued apace since 2015. Under UN resolution 2231 that enshrines the nuclear deal, Iran is “called upon” to refrain from work for up to eight years on ballistic missiles for nuclear weapons. But it does not impose sanctions if Iran carries on regardless. Congress has imposed new missile-related sanctions on Iran in the past year. The E3 have not, though they are reported to have sounded out EU support for them. Mr Trump’s second gripe is that even on its own terms, as an arms-control pact, the Iran deal falls short. It allows for unprecedented levels of inspection, but critics say that it still allows the Iranians to keep anything they classify as a military site off-limits to inspectors. This is not strictly true—an admittedly slow and cumbersome procedure allows access to such sites if evidence emerges of their being used nefariously. What most concerns the deal’s detractors are the “sunset” provisions. These allow key constraints on Iran’s nuclear programme to lapse over time. For example, after eight years (ie, in 2023), limits on the use of faster-spinning uranium-enrichment centrifuges are relaxed; in 2028 Iran can ramp up the number of centrifuges it employs; after 2030 constraints on Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium disappear. However, the IAEA’s uniquely intrusive monitoring continues until 2040. The Europeans do not disagree with these criticisms of the Iran deal. Nor are they more relaxed than the Trump administration about Iran’s regional troublemaking. Where they differ is in their belief that blowing up the deal would make everything its critics complain about even worse. That includes perhaps putting Iran back on a path to developing nuclear weapons and thus starting not just the war that Mr Bolton has long thirsted for, but also a helter-skelter of proliferation in a volatile region close to Europe. Working with a joint team from the State Department and the National Security Council, the E3 have been desperately trying to find a way for Mr Trump to claim enough of a win on May 12th to sign the sanctions waiver again. European diplomats had thought that they were making some progress on two crucial issues—ballistic missiles and inspections. Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi of RUSI, a London-based think-tank, believes that, like the Americans, the E3 could impose sanctions related to Iranian ballistic-missile tests without violating the Iran deal. Sir Simon Gass, a former British ambassador to Tehran who led the British team negotiating the deal, says that it might be possible to get an agreement from Iran not to develop an intercontinental- range ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting America. An ICBM, he points out, only makes sense

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // if it carries a nuclear warhead, so testing one should prompt broad economic sanctions. Patricia Lewis of Chatham House, another London think-tank, believes that the Europeans may already be talking to the Iranians about a future regional missile-deal that would ban long- and intermediate- range nuclear missiles. On inspections, Sir Simon believes that the existing regime is more than adequate. But the E3 could reach clearer understandings with the Americans: about the instructions given to national intelligence agencies monitoring Iran’s nuclear programme; and about how they would jointly deal with Iranian obfuscation if a breach were suspected. As for “sunsetting”, the E3 have made it clear that the issue cannot be dealt with quickly. Sir Simon reckons that there is, however, broad agreement it must be tackled. The trick will be to get the Iranians to start thinking about what comes after the expiry of the constraints imposed by the nuclear deal. It must be made clear to them that continuing to reap the benefits of it will depend on maintaining a nuclear programme with entirely peaceful purposes. Installing thousands of new centrifuges and building a huge uranium stockpile will not pass muster. Mr Trump could claim on May 12th that his toughness had pushed the Europeans into tackling the flaws in the Iran deal and that he would hold his fire. That has been the E3’s hope. But with Mr Trump’s instincts fortified by Mr Pompeo and Mr Bolton, it looks remote. After May 12th, the E3’s priorities will be to convince Iran to keep complying with the deal; to limit the harm to the transatlantic relationship that will follow if America abandons it; and to try to buy some time for the European firms and banks trading with Iran that will be exposed to American secondary sanctions. Some are optimistic that Iran will stick to the deal. But Iranian hardliners have always opposed it and will argue, with some justice, that their warnings of American perfidy have been borne out. Ellie Geranmayeh of the European Council of Foreign Relations says that Iran will see advantages in “winning the blame game” and will want to “delegitimise US sanctions” in the eyes of China, Russia and most of Asia by sticking to its obligations. The Iranians may also calculate that if they swiftly crank up their nuclear programme, they would give the White House and Israel cause to threaten military action and Saudi Arabia the excuse to start enriching uranium. (Ironically, both the Saudis and the Israeli security establishment, despite their public opposition to the Iran deal, would these days probably prefer it to survive.) Stuck in the middle with EU Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies hopes that Mr Trump, having quit the deal, might cut the Europeans some slack and not enforce secondary sanctions. Ms Geranmayeh agrees that is possible but thinks it more likely that America’s Treasury would allow only a grace period for existing deals, such as those struck by Total and Shell, two energy giants, and some “carve-outs” for other firms. She does not think the European Union would achieve much by reinstating “blocking regulations” to penalise European firms that comply with American sanctions. The firms may well fear being shut out of American markets more than fines imposed by Brussels. One option, says Sir Simon, is that EU member governments could extend non-dollar lines of credit and credit guarantees to European companies that would face stiff penalties for sticking to plans to do business in Iran. Europe will find itself in a horribly uncomfortable place. It will be further distanced from its most important ally on a matter of principle. It will at the same time find itself sharing a bed with traditional adversaries (Russia, China and also Iran). And it will face a new threat to its own security—Syria has shown that when bad things happen in the Middle East, Europe is vulnerable as a target for terrorism and as a destination for displaced people.

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But America will suffer, too, if Mr Trump refuses to sign the waiver. Its reputation as a country that keeps its word will have been further trashed. It will find that the international coalition on sanctions patiently put together by the Obama administration to bring Iran to the negotiating table cannot be rebuilt. It will have done yet more damage to relations with its allies. And it will have increased the chances of both a big new war and a nuclear-arms race in the Middle East. https://www.economist.com/news/international/21739646-john-boltons-appointment-national- security-adviser-sounds-its-death-knell-deal Return to top

The Hill (Washington, D.C.) Hypersonics in Enemy Hands are Immeasurable Threat to America By Tom Nichols April 2, 2018 In the movie “The Graduate,” the older and wiser Mr. McGuire puts his arm around young Ben Braddock's shoulders and offers one word of advice about the future: “Plastics.” If the same scene took place today, he would solemnly intone: “Hypersonics. They’re the future.” Or are they? Hypersonic weapons are an emerging threat, but what kind of threat remains unclear. In recent testimony to Congress, Stratcom commander Gen. John Hyten described a hypersonic weapon as “like a ballistic missile, but then it depresses the trajectory and then flies more like a cruise missile or an airplane. So it goes up into the low reaches of space, and then turns immediately back down and then levels out and flies at a very high level of speed.” The missiles can carry both nuclear and conventional payloads. Such weapons can have many uses, and lumping them all together under one catch-all phrase isn’t very helpful in figuring out what kind of threat they pose to U.S. national security. They can be used for reconnaissance, for destroying a range of enemy assets far from home (and far from a battlefield), and they could even be used to deliver a nuclear sucker-punch. This is why Russian President Vladimir Putin looked so pleased when he recently unveiled an amateurish video of a “nuclear cruise missile” (a weapon he probably doesn’t have) — because a fast, long-range, undetectable weapon could destroy an enemy capital or multiple enemy targets with literally no warning at all. If the concern is that America’s near-peers have developed a hypersonic capability to deliver nuclear weapons, then this isn’t all that new of a problem. ICBMs and their sea-launched alternatives, SLBMs, already travel at hypersonic speeds. (A “hypersonic” vehicle would be tough to catch at Mach 5, but an ICBM warhead comes in at Mach 23.) In terms of the strategic balance of power, this doesn’t mean very much: A nuclear bomb landing on a U.S. target is still a nuclear bomb landing on a U.S. target. Missile-defense advocates could claim that these weapons take an existing problem that is already a major challenge — that is, defending the United States against a strategic nuclear attack — and make it practically an insoluble problem. This aspect of the hypersonic problem, however, is overblown. Even during the Cold War, U.S. strategists worried about the vulnerability of coastal targets to submarine-launched missiles on a depressed trajectory. Washington, Honolulu, New York, Los Angeles or Seattle would have less than a few moments of warning, if any, before they were destroyed.

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As a nuclear delivery system, hypersonic weapons would not change much in the strategic equation, especially among strategists (like me) who do not think national missile defenses will ever be capable of stopping any sizable attack against the United States. It is true that the United States has no ability to defend against hypersonic weapons. But, then, it has no ability to defeat any other kind of intercontinental missile attack, either. In other uses, however, hypersonics could pose a qualitatively new threat to U.S. and allied security. Hypersonic reconnaissance vehicles could provide major advantages to the side that masters them and cause major headaches for the side that can’t spot them or shoot them down. At the theater level, hypersonic weapons could mean qualitatively new complications in security planning. National missile defenses might not be within reach, but theater-level defenses — those that guard against launches from short-range or intermediate-range missiles — have at least some chance of effectiveness. The creation of unstoppable and undetectable theater weapons that can evade both detection and countermeasures is a serious problem. Again, however, there is an irony here that if these vehicles are armed with nuclear weapons, the deterrence calculus is actually somewhat less complicated. A nuclear attack is a nuclear attack. How the bomb gets to where it’s going is less important than the decision to cross the line into nuclear use and, thus, risk escalation and global destruction. If these hypersonic weapons, however, are armed with conventional munitions, things get very complicated indeed. The ability to destroy large military assets — without detection and at high speed — could induce immense confusion and critical lags in the ability to respond. These effects could be so destructive that they would mimic the effects of nuclear use, without the actual risk of employing nuclear weapons. This is probably the chief reason Russia and China are so interested in hypersonic weapons. While they would do little to change the overall deterrent relationship between the United States and its nuclear-armed peers, they could provide an edge in a regional conflict in ways that previous U.S. strategists have never confronted. What can the United States do? One important step, in addition to existing programs of testing, is to avoid any further conceptual confusion about “hypersonics.” They are not a single class of system, and they are unlikely to change the balance of power or upset the existing strategic nuclear deterrent situation. But they can, if unchecked, lead to operational and theater-level problems that could, in turn, open the door to conflicts that could progress to immeasurably dangerous consequences. The threat isn’t here yet, but it’s on the immediate horizon. http://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/381176-hypersonics-in-enemy-hands-are- immeasurable-threat-to-america Return to top

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The New York Times (New York, N.Y.) Trump’s Iran Threat May Wreck Talks with North Korea By The Editorial Board April 1, 2018 As he prepares for possible talks with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un about controlling the North’s nuclear weapons program, President Trump is facing his most complicated national security challenge so far. He has made the task far harder by threatening to blow up the only other recent deal to control a nuclear program, with Iran. After decades of effort, Iran was close to producing enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb when it reached the deal with the major powers in 2015. Iran gave away about 97 percent of its low-enriched uranium, destroyed 13,000 of its 19,000 centrifuges and pledged to incapacitate a heavy-water facility intended to produce weapons-grade plutonium. If Iran tries to cheat, the most rigorous technological verification system in the world can detect the violations and alert the world in time to intervene. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors the agreement, has repeatedly found Iran in compliance; scores of experts, including American diplomats and military officers, have affirmed the deal’s efficacy. Israel’s army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, told Haaretz on Friday that the deal has delayed the “Iranian nuclear vision by 10 to 15 years.” Although Iran never had a nuclear weapon, the agreement required months of talks and two years of technical and political negotiations. Now consider North Korea, with 20 to 60 nuclear weapons, and facilities for producing plutonium and enriching uranium, many of which are hidden. Mr. Trump has insisted on the North’s complete and verifiable denuclearization. And, by all indications, he wants it done immediately. Yet by threatening to abrogate the Iran deal and reimpose sanctions Mr. Trump has added to the challenge of making that happen. He has claimed, without a shred of evidence, that Iran is out of compliance, and has complained that Iran is still building ballistic missiles, arming Hezbollah and supporting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. None of these concerns were supposed to be prevented by the deal. He has demanded that Britain, France and Germany fix what he calls “flaws” in the pact by May 12, presumably so he will have someone else to blame when it falls apart. The president, and his new hard-line team of national security advisers, may think that walking away from the Iran deal will persuade Mr. Kim of his toughness and his determination to secure terms that go far beyond those reached with Iran. More likely, Mr. Kim will see it as proof that the United States cannot be trusted to stick to its commitments and will be reluctant to reach any agreement. Persuading a country to give up weapons is never easy. The North Koreans have said they need nuclear weapons to deter American aggression. And Mr. Kim has set the pace for most of the recent diplomacy — including his surprise invitation to Mr. Trump and his visit with President Xi Jinping in China. That said, he reportedly told China and South Korea he will discuss “denuclearization” with the Americans. Denuclearization has had some successes. After Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus inherited thousands of nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States persuaded them

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // to transfer the devices to Russia. South Africa had about a half-dozen warheads but gave them up after the end of apartheid. Libya shed its rudimentary nuclear program under pressure from Britain and the United States after the Iraq war. And in 1994, most likely before North Korea had any nuclear weapons, a limited agreement with the United States froze the North’s plutonium program for about eight years until it fell apart under President George W. Bush. A serious negotiation with North Korea would include Mr. Trump pressing Mr. Kim to freeze nuclear and missile testing, halt the production of nuclear weapons fuel and the deployment of nuclear weapons and put an Iran-like verification system in place. But why would Mr. Kim agree to any of that if the Americans walk away from the Iran deal? Why would Mr. Kim, or any future adversary for that matter, assume Mr. Trump is negotiating in good faith? The Iran deal has achieved what it was intended to do — limit Iran’s nuclear program. There is still hope that something similar can be achieved in North Korea. Indeed, Mr. Trump could contribute in an unprecedented way to international peace and security by engaging with Mr. Kim. That possibility will be squandered, though, if the American president escalates a manufactured nuclear crisis with Iran at the very time he is trying to defuse one with North Korea. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/opinion/trump-iran-north-korea-talks.html Return to top

The Atlantic (Washington, D.C.) What Does 'Denuclearization' Mean to Kim Jong Un? By Uri Friedman March 28, 2018 A close reading of what the Korean leader reportedly told Xi Jinping in Beijing One of the oddest things about the current flurry of diplomacy with North Korea is that it has played out like a game of telephone: South Korean officials dined with Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang and then flew to Washington, D.C., bearing a message that Kim was willing to discuss “denuclearization,” which inspired Donald Trump to agree to an unprecedented summit this spring with the North Korean leader, which motivated the North Korean leader to hop on a train to Beijing this week, which prompted Chinese President Xi Jinping to update Trump on how the visit went, which led the American president to tweet this morning that he’d heard the meeting “went very well and that KIM looks forward to his meeting with me.” Through it all, North Korea itself has remained conspicuously silent, at least in public. Hopes for a resolution to the North Korean nuclear crisis have thus largely been pinned on a stream of whispers. As of this writing, the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency features news of Kim’s trip to China and dialogue with South Korea, of the issuing of tea-themed postage stamps, and the invention of a fancy new “automatic meteorological observation device,” but no mention of any North Korean commitments to denuclearization. Kim’s promises this week were conveyed second-hand through a report from China’s state-run news agency Xinhua, which includes two direct quotes from Kim Jong Un. In the first, he stated that his position on his nation’s nuclear-weapons program is in line with that of his father and grandfather: “It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula, in accordance with the will of late President Kim Il Sung and late General Secretary Kim Jong Il.” In the

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // second, he declared that the “issue of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula can be resolved, if South Korea and the United States respond to our efforts with goodwill, create an atmosphere of peace and stability while taking progressive and synchronous measures for the realization of peace.” For a guided reading of Kim’s rare public remarks, I turned to Sue Mi Terry, a former Korea analyst at the CIA who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She said it’s significant that Kim spoke not of removing nuclear weapons from North Korea, but rather of the “denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” as a whole. That formulation by the Kim government is “not new,” Terry told me, and has been accompanied in the past with demands for measures to preserve the regime’s security such as the signing of a peace treaty to finally end the Korean War, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea, and the end of the U.S.-South Korean military alliance, which in turn would terminate the protection the United States extends to South Korea through its nuclear weapons. Hence, talk of a nuclear-free peninsula despite the fact that South Korea doesn’t have nuclear weapons. (In this respect, Kim was right to assert that he was simply echoing the policies of his father, who was also quoted by Chinese media as committing to the denuclearization of the peninsula even as he persisted in developing the nation’s nuclear-weapons arsenal.) While it’s notable that Kim didn’t specifically reference security guarantees during his trip to Beijing, Terry said she’d need to see more statements from North Korea, and not just a one-off quote filtered through the censored Chinese press, to conclude that the North is now willing to trade away its nuclear program for anything less than the United States abandoning South Korea. Terry interpreted Kim’s call for South Korea and the United States to exhibit “goodwill,” establish an “atmosphere of peace,” and take “synchronous measures” as a suggestion that he would only move towards denuclearization in response to concessions from both South Korea and the United States—specifically, relief from the severe international sanctions that the Trump administration has imposed on North Korea. “There’s a lot there” and none of it is particularly “revelatory,” Terry said. It’s not “North Korea is willing to give up its nuclear-weapons program.” Instead, it’s hedged language that the North can always retreat from. North Korea has shifted tactics in pausing its nuclear and missile testing and agreeing to direct nuclear talks with the United States, perhaps because U.S. economic pressure and threats of military force “spooked” Kim and made him scramble to “buy time,” Terry explained. But there aren’t strong signs yet of a strategic shift. Trump also hasn’t clarified what he has in mind when he speaks, as he did on Wednesday, of “peace and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.” So far, he has focused on denying North Korea the capability of placing nuclear warheads on long-range missiles that can reach the United States. But his advisers, including Mike Pompeo, the man slated to become his next secretary of state, have staked out an even harder line, insisting that North Korea do what only one other country in history has done before: give up nuclear weapons it developed in a manner that is “complete, verifiable, and irreversible.” Just days before being named Trump’s new national-security adviser, John Bolton said that if Kim Jong Un isn’t willing to relinquish his entire nuclear program and ship it off to the United States, the way Libya did with its far less advanced program in 2004, Trump should immediately end the negotiations and seriously consider using military force to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons before they can threaten the world. He argued that the United States should not provide economic assistance, which North Korea has pocketed for decades without ceasing its nuclear activities, and certainly not sign a peace treaty with Kim. (Trump has at times seemed more willing to withdraw U.S. military support to South Korea.) The North Koreans are “lucky to have a meeting

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // with the president of the United States,” he said. “Are we content with a resolution of this crisis that leaves North Korea with the technology to have nuclear weapons?” Bolton asked Larry Kudlow, Trump’s incoming director of the National Economic Council, during a radio interview in August. “I wouldn’t trust the North Koreans with a spare electron.” There would, of course, be nothing to negotiate if negotiations began with the parties in perfect agreement about what they wanted out of the talks. But what Kim Jong Un’s comments in China this week indicated is just how far apart North Korea and the United States are on the definition of one hugely consequential word: “denuclearization.” https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/kim-jong-un-china-xi-jinping-train- nuclear-trump-summit/556679/ Return to top

Defense News (Washington, D.C.) A US-Russia Nuclear Arms Race? Where? By Matthew Costlow March 29, 2018 Albert Einstein once quipped that “politics is more difficult than physics,” and after a most distinguished career commenting on both topics, he would know. As a prominent but ultimately unsuccessful activist against the United States building nuclear weapons after World War II, Einstein found it much easier to sway scientists than the American public. This is in part because scientists like to work within the confines of well-defined laws of nature where something can be proven or disproven. Yet, the scientist’s Enlightenment era-inspired desire to produce cause-and-effect models is inherently limited to inanimate objects; good scientists say as much. Planets are simply easier to predict than people. But some of the more zealous scientists and their activist supporters claim with academic-like certainty that human behavior, and specifically decision-making, can be properly modeled with confidence even in extremely complicated environments like international relations. For example, many nuclear disarmament proponents take language from Isaac Newton’s third law of thermodynamics — for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction — and apply it to U.S. nuclear weapons. During the Cold War, nearly every U.S. proposal to build a new nuclear warhead or delivery system was met with claims that it would only provoke a similar action by the Soviet Union, providing further fuel to the arms race. Much to the disarmers’ chagrin, however, studies in and out of government showed that the U.S. and Soviet leadership rarely, if ever, developed and deployed a nuclear weapon system only because the other side had it. Instead, leaders weighed a number of factors such as domestic political support, budget commitments, arms control priorities, allied support, development time, deterrent effect and more. The dynamic was perfectly summarized by U.S. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown’s famous quip about the Soviets: When we build, they build. When we cut, they build. This reality has only come into starker contrast within the last month as the newly published U.S. Nuclear Posture Review revealed “Russia is modernizing an active stockpile of up to 2,000 non- strategic nuclear weapons” including short-range ballistic missiles, depth charges, anti-ship missiles and anti-submarine torpedoes. The United States got rid of all such systems before or at

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 // the end of the Cold War, including the anti-submarine torpedoes, which U.S. submariners joked had a kill probability of two — the target and them. While the Russians are apparently modernizing these battlefield nuclear weapons, nobody in the U.S. is scrambling to put an atomic warhead on everything, striking another blow to the action- reaction model. Faced with a nonexistent quantitative arms race, disarmament activists and even former Secretary of Defense William Perry, who incidentally helped develop the technological superiority that the United States enjoys today, now warn of a qualitative arms race. If the U.S. makes better nuclear weapons or more effective missile defenses, so the thinking goes, the Russians will just make better penetrating missiles in response. This could be more plausible except that Russian President Vladimir Putin recently unveiled five exotic nuclear weapon systems, weapons he likely ordered to be developed during the Obama administration. Even when President Barack Obama was pursuing a “reset” with Russia; reducing the role and number of U.S. nuclear weapons; cutting missile defense research and development; and promising “more flexibility” on negotiating existing and planned missile defense, the Russians probably increased their efforts. Moscow chose to ignore the reassuring signals coming out of Washington back then, which makes the disarmament community’s current call for unilateral U.S. nuclear reduction — in order to spark Russian interest in negotiating another arms control agreement — even more absurd. Arms control can provide some stability and help ease fears of an arms race, but as Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis stated: “Ensuring our nuclear deterrent remains strong will provide the best opportunity for convincing other nuclear powers to engage in meaningful arms control initiatives.” As the United States moves to finally replace its aging nuclear deterrent, everyone should rest easy knowing that U.S. modernization will not spark a new arms race with Russia. When a theory no longer explains reality in science, it is discarded; so, too, the theory of mechanistic arms racing. https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/03/28/what-arms-race/ Return to top

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// USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1309 //

ABOUT THE USAF CUWS The USAF Counterproliferation Center 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 Director for Nuclear and Counterproliferation (then AF/XON), now AF/A5XP) and Air War College Commandant established the initial manpower 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. The Secretary of Defense's Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Management released a report in 2008 that 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." As a result, 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 continuing education through the careers of those Air Force personnel working in or supporting the nuclear enterprise. This mission was transferred to the Counterproliferation Center in 2012, broadening its mandate to providing education and research to not just countering WMD but also nuclear deterrence. In February 2014, the Center’s name was changed to the Center for Unconventional Weapons Studies 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. The CUWS'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.

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.

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