Post-Explosion Nuclear Attribution and Deterrence
by Michael Miller
A thesis submitted to the Center for International Security and Cooperation Undergraduate Honors Program Stanford University May 24, 2006
Advisor: Michael May, Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
Second Reader: Siegfried Hecker, Visiting Professor
Post-Explosion Nuclear Attribution and Deterrence by Michael Miller
Abstract Nuclear attribution or post-explosion forensics is the process of determining the origin of nuclear material after a nuclear incident. While nuclear terrorism has been well-explored in academic literature, there are no technical assessments of attribution capability. This thesis attempts to fill that gap by combining an assessment of the current technology with the contribution that attribution can make toward deterrence. I find that the technology behind attribution is well-developed but not foolproof, and I conclude that if the current capabilities were publicized more thoroughly and the post-explosion process of assessing the evidence were internationalized, states and individual actors might be deterred more than they already are. I explore other possible policy options, including a nuclear database and nuclear tagging, and these are found to be useful but to add less to deterrence.
May 24, 2006
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Acknowledgements
This thesis, my endeavor for the year, would not have been possible without guidance and help from numerous sources along the way. First, and most importantly, I’d like to thank my advisor, Michael May, who has helped me tremendously from the day I came by his office when he knew nothing about me and thought my first topic was a bit crazy. By generously signing on to be my advisor and then helping guide my research throughout, always with an eye toward the larger goal of what I was trying to accomplish, he has set the model that I will try to emulate throughout my career. Sig Hecker has also been incredibly helpful with his insights into how these nuclear processes actually work and into what all the subjects of my thesis, from the North Koreans to the Russians, really think. I could not have asked for two better or more thorough advisors, and I want to truly thank them. A number of people at CISAC have guided me through the honors program, and they deserve acknowledgement for their advice and frequent helpful comments. Scott Sagan, Tino Cuellar, Paul Kapur, and Dara Cohen helped me shape the direction of my thesis, from its rough outline to a more ambitious and even more impossible idea. They oddly decided to object when I proposed studying shadowy terrorist networks but not when I proposed studying an even more secret government program with no record trail or scholarly history. And they only blinked a few times when, in my first presentation, I noted that the most interesting aspects of nuclear attribution were “unknown and unknowable.” With much encouragement from them and even more from my classmates, I discovered quite a lot exploring a field where I felt that I could genuinely contribute to public knowledge. The rest of the CISAC community has also been instrumental in welcoming me and the rest of the undergraduates for the year. Jonathan Farley, Dave Hafemeister, and Lynn Eden all went out of there way to include me. Most importantly, I’d like to thank Stephen Stedman for teaching the best class I took at Stanford, my first quarter freshman year (where I also did the most work), and for introducing me to the honors program. Outside of CISAC, I received instrumental help from John Harvey, who first suggested the topic of nuclear attribution and later met with and helped my finalize the approach of relating deterrence to attribution. Jay Davis was also generous, meeting me
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in his home to discuss attribution and giving me a sense of what the true expert thought. Finally, this thesis never would have gotten started or finished without the total support of my girlfriend, Andrea Burbank, who gave up much of her time to keep me on track and even found time between assignments to proof the whole final copy. I couldn’t wish for a better muse. And my parents and brother been supportive throughout the year, and they deserve great thanks for giving me such a wonderful opportunity.
Michael Miller May 23, 2006 [email protected]
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Literature Review ...... 6 Methodology ...... 9 CHAPTER 2: THE TECHNOLOGY OF ATTRIBUTION ...... 11 History...... 12 First steps: nuclear spying ...... 13 Tracing nuclear forensics ...... 17 Current technical capabilities...... 20 Questions and methods for a post-explosion nuclear attribution...... 26 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE ...... 31 Defining deterrence in context ...... 32 Rational deterrence theory—does it apply to asymmetric situations?...... 34 Can terrorists be deterred? ...... 36 Where nuclear attribution fits...... 38 Former Soviet Union: ...... 43 North Korea ...... 46 Pakistan ...... 48 Research Reactors ...... 50 Putting the deterrence together ...... 51 CHAPTER 4: ATTRIBUTION AS DETERRENCE ...... 53 Stopping a clandestine deal ...... 53 Credibility of retribution ...... 57 Improving weapons security—a negligence doctrine? ...... 62 Deterring terrorists from using nuclear weapons with attribution...... 64 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND POLICY RECOMMENDATION ...... 69 A database...... 71 Nuclear tagging...... 75 Revealing more information ...... 77 International collaboration ...... 79 A guaranteed retaliation...... 80 Maintaining the status quo ...... 82 Conclusion...... 83
MICHAEL MILLER
Chapter 1: Introduction
Sometimes fiction can be an excellent window into reality. In Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears, Islamic terrorists detonate a nuclear device in Denver.1 They obtain the weapons material on the black market (it was originally taken from a downed Israeli aircraft) and use bribed Russian nuclear scientists to construct a bomb. They smuggle it to the United States and place it in a vending machine at the Super Bowl. All these steps, while individually difficult, are extremely feasible. If terrorists can acquire nuclear material—by far the most difficult step in the supply chain—they can probably find the technical skills to build and detonate a nuclear weapon. Graham Allison argues for this feasibility in his summary book, Nuclear Terrorism, and the picture he paints of weapons of mass destruction exploding in cities around the globe is haunting. Despite its dark premise, Clancy’s novel ends on a positive note. Nuclear forensics teams arrive on the site quickly and take debris samples that they compare against a database of nuclear reactors. Within minutes they trace the radioactivity to a U.S. reactor that had supplied fuel to Israel in the 1960s. The protagonist is able to link this source clue to human intelligence on terrorists and pinpoint the whole black market chain, catching the terrorist perpetrators and forcefully coercing the identity of the state sponsor of the attacks. This post-explosion series of events is only loosely based on reality because no such nuclear explosion has ever occurred. No one truly knows whether the United States can pinpoint a guilty nation or terrorist group after a nuclear blast. A number of scientists at U.S. national laboratories are studying the question, building on well- developed science for nuclear forensics, but so-called nuclear attribution will remain an untested science until after a nuclear explosion. Clancy’s scenario was undoubtedly optimistic. Current nuclear forensic techniques are designed to take place over months, not minutes as he implied. And no comprehensive public or private database of nuclear fingerprints exists to match residues after an explosion. When conclusions are established about the source of the nuclear material—if they ever are—they will likely contain the possibility of error. And
1 Tom Clancy, The Sum of All Fears. New York: Berkley Books, 1991. A similar scenario plays out in the 2002 movie adaptation of the novel. The main differences are that the terrorist attack is perpetrated by terrorists tied to Iran in the novel and by neo-Nazi terrorists in the movie, and in the movie the attack takes place in Baltimore.
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION MICHAEL MILLER these conclusions could lead directly to a culprit or they could yield little useful intelligence.2 There are many more unknowns than knowns in the field of nuclear attribution, much as in the other aspects of nuclear terrorism. The topic is not a new one—in fact some of the scientific techniques date back to World War II—but nuclear attribution, the idea of determining the source of a weapon after a nuclear blast, has not been very well explored in unclassified scientific or policy literature. Thorough treatments have examined the market for smuggled nuclear material, the chances of interdiction at borders, the difficulty of building a weapon or finding someone who can, and the motivations of states and non-state actors to employ nuclear terror. The conclusions most scholars draw are not optimistic. 3 Nuclear material in the countries of the former Soviet Union is not physically well secured, and the safeguards against insider theft are weak. Nuclear weapons are proliferating to smaller states, and the nonproliferation treaty is losing its power to keep states from going nuclear. Al Qaeda and Chechen rebels have professed a desire for nuclear material, and there have been more than a dozen confirmed thefts of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium in
2 They might pinpoint Russian or American nuclear material, for example, identifying little more than the broad country of origin. 3 The field of nuclear terrorism is well-parsed, but there is a dearth of incidents for academics to study, leading to the possibility of divergent conclusions. Most scholars, like Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism. New York: Times Books, 2004 are cautiously pessimistic about the prospect of a nuclear terrorist incident. See Matthew Bunn and Anthony Weir. Securing the Bomb 2005: The New Global Imperatives. Nuclear Threat Initiative, May 2005, Charles D. Ferguson and William C. Potter. The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism. Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, 2004, Gavin Cameron. Nuclear Terrorism: A Threat Assessment for the 21st Century. New York: Palgrave, 1999, and Richard A. Falkenrath, Robert D. Newman, and Bradley A. Thayer. America’s Achilles’ Heel. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998, for the most thorough studies. These scholars are pessimistic and expect an attack within the next decade. The pessimism of these scholars has reached public and political discourse such that nuclear terrorism is viewed as a serious threat and has been explored by mainstream media sources. The studies have sparked two other currents in academic literature. One focuses on how the policy prescriptions outlined by Bunn and Weir and the Nuclear Threat Initiative are even more difficult than they anticipate. See, for example, Siegfried S. Hecker. “Toward a Comprehensive Safeguards System: Keeping Fissile Materials Out of Terrorists’ Hands.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, 2006, and Robert L. Gallucci. “Averting Nuclear Catastrophe: Contemplating Extreme Responses to US Vulnerability.” Harvard International Review, Vol. 26, No. 4, Winter 2005. The other notes that beyond some potential plans terrorist groups have not succeeded in obtaining nuclear materials or nuclear expertise. Scholars who argue this, proliferation optimists, are a minority but are important because of their simple logic. Robin Frost. “Nuclear Terrorism Post-9/11: Assessing the Risks.” Global Society, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 397–422, October 2004 and Annette Schaper. “Nuclear Terrorism: Risk Analysis After 11 September 2001.” Disarmament Forum, No. 2, pp. 7–16, 2003, use similar technical analyses to Falkenrath et al. America’s Achilles Heel in noting that assembling a nuclear weapon would be quite difficult for a terrorist organization and would take more expertise than any terrorist organization has yet demonstrated. They also note the dearth of large-scale smuggling and the apparent lack of buyers for black-market nuclear material to conclude that a nuclear terrorist incident is unlikely in the next decade.
2 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION MICHAEL MILLER the last decade and a half. Still, each one of these aspects can be seen as a positive fact. Not much nuclear material entered the black market even in the most dire days after the fall of the Soviet Union; even small states have an incentive to be careful with something as valuable as a nuclear weapon; al Qaeda never made it past the conceptual stage for any nuclear design.4 But for all the professed facts about nuclear terrorism, the evidence is not what worries academics or policymakers, it’s the uncertainty. When intelligence reports suggested that a nuclear weapon had been smuggled into the United States in the months after Sept. 11, policymakers who had not previously worried about the issue suddenly realized that they could be helpless in the face of a threat with consequences many times the magnitude of those of Sept. 11.5 Nuclear terrorism isn’t a new topic; it’s been addressed since the mid-1970s. The threat has transformed with changing nuclear states and redefined terrorist actors, but idea is by no means a new one after the Sept. 11 attacks or even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Scholarship on nuclear terrorism has developed over that time, but it’s more of an art than a science. Almost everyone writing about nuclear terrorism has similar sets of data to work with—the one or two dozen smuggling incidents involving material used in nuclear weapons (and more than 600 involving radioactive material),6 the few statements made by Russian ministers claiming threats to nuclear facilities or a lack of control, assessments by United States inspectors noting the fraying of the Russian nuclear infrastructure—but their conclusions mainly vary based on two assessments: how competent they believe terrorists are in assembling complex weapons, and how much they trust the people who make up the worldwide nuclear community. Neither of these assessments has to come out very optimistically for writers to still find nuclear terrorism unlikely, or at least less likely than a variety of other threats, from biological weapons to nuclear sabotage. But the threat of a nuclear attack, one that would instantly kill 300,000 people in a major U.S. city, is so frightening that many scholars worry about where their assessments could fall short. If terrorists exploit the weak spots in an admittedly weak nuclear armor and can figure out how to acquire
4 See, for example, “Al Qaeda Nuclear and Conventional Explosive Documents: CNN - ISIS Collaboration.” Institute for Science and International Security, http://www.isis-online.org/publications/terrorism/cnnstory.html where David Albright notes “there is no indication that al Qaeda's nuclear work has gone beyond theory.” 5 Allison. Nuclear Terrorism. p. 2. 6 These are catalogued by both the IAEA and a number of private databases including those run by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies.
3 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION MICHAEL MILLER material and put together weapons, it might be possible. They could, after all, read the worst-case predictions from these very scholars and exploit some of the holes. When I discuss nuclear terrorism in this thesis, I will be talking about the most specific type: exploding a fission weapon with highly enriched uranium or plutonium. I don’t limit my assessment to non-state actors, the typical terrorists, but merely to non- military delivery means, the kind that lacks a return address. In the nuclear realm there are surely other worries. An attack on a nuclear reactor could kill and endanger thousands, causing immediate panic. A dirty bomb, assembled with radioactive material used in medicine or stolen from a nuclear reactor, would be dangerous and would probably cause panic, though it would be unlikely to kill thousands. And my discussion of nuclear terrorism is not meant to belittle other serious threats, such as biological terrorism. In fact the difficulty in dealing with terrorism is not deciding what to do, but deciding on priorities—nuclear, biological, chemical, and which type, when, where, and how—in the face of so much uncertainty. Of the many facts that are discussed and debated about nuclear terrorism, nuclear attribution is notably missing. A few authors have mentioned it in passing,7 and there have been a couple of articles examining the technologies behind such a capability,8 but most have had very little technical information. Authors probably skip nuclear attribution because it’s a relatively unknown subject, one that was not contemplated in dealing with nuclear weapons and states.9 While there have been technical papers and one book published that examine the field of nuclear forensics, there have been no unclassified studies specifically about nuclear attribution.10 Some of the technology that would be used for attribution was developed in secrecy to analyze
7 See, for example, Allison, Nuclear Terrorism, Michael A. Levi. “Deterring Nuclear Terrorism.” Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 2004. Available at http://www.brookings.edu/views/articles/levi/20040401.htm, and Jasen J. Castillo. “Nuclear Terrorism: Why Deterrence Still Matters.” Current History, December 2003. pp. 426-430. which all discuss attribution. 8 See Gabriele Rennie. “Tracing the Steps in Nuclear Material Trafficking. Science & Technology Review, March 2005. http://www.llnl.gov/str/March05/Hutcheon.html, William J. Broad. “Addressing the Unthinkable, US Revives Study of Fallout,” New York Times, March 19, 2004, and William J. Broad. “New Team Plans to Identify Nuclear Attackers.” New York Times, February 2, 2006. 9 In all the scientific reports contemplating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, just a few sentences are devoted to nuclear attribution. Normally, it is just assumed that the location of the test will link it to a country, even after all the questions relating to the 1979 Vela incident. See, for example, “Technical Issues Relating to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.” Arms Control Today. September 2002. http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_09/nassept02.asp. 10 The textbook treatment of nuclear forensics, Kenton J. Moody, Ian D. Hutcheon, and Patrick M. Grant. Nuclear Forensic Analysis. CRC-Press, 2005, offers a mere three pages on nuclear attribution for, though the authors have headed the research effort, they cannot disclose much about the classified program.
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United States nuclear tests and to spy on those of the Soviet Union, and most projects in national laboratories specifically on attribution are recent and small in scope. And finally, nuclear attribution is a grim subject that at first glance offers little hope of preventing nuclear terrorism. Figuring out who set off the bomb might be useful afterwards, but this capability may not be something most scholars think they need to take into account when assessing the risk of nuclear terrorism. This thesis strives to simplify and explain the technical capabilities relevant to nuclear attribution, or at least those capabilities that are in the public domain. Then I aim to put this technology in context, and not only the context of responding to nuclear terrorism, but specifically the context of deterring nuclear terrorism. I hope to determine what kind of policy has the greatest potential to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack, taking into account actual capabilities, projected capabilities, and deterrence theory. First, and most importantly, I explore the technical capabilities that can be applied to determine the source of a nuclear blast. I examine the historical efforts to understand nuclear fallout and nuclear residue, many of which were applied to understand the Soviet, Chinese, and other nuclear programs. From there, tracing the development of American nuclear attribution past the middle of the Cold War becomes difficult. So I explore technical feasibility instead of technical capabilities. I sort out how the different clues that a nuclear explosion would leave could be put together given the right tools. Finally, I apply my assessment of capabilities to determine which aspects of nuclear attribution are the most feasible and which are the most difficult or at least the most experimental. After surveying the technical aspects of the attribution question, I examine the deterrence implications of the current state of the art. I explore what attribution capabilities are necessary to prevent North Korea or another state from using a nuclear weapon against the United States. I find that under most theories of deterrence, attribution contributes little, and existing capabilities are probably enough to dissuade a state. And since attribution technology cannot be probed without an attack or at least an interception, the perception other countries have of U.S. abilities is likely to be optimistic. Terrorists operating independently are much more difficult to deter, and I argue that attribution has negligible effect on the nuclear black market. After an attack has occurred, any possible criminal or military response would be limited by the conclusions that could be drawn from human and nuclear intelligence.
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United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540, which commits all states to preventing nuclear terrorism, and the International Convention on the Prevention of Nuclear Terrorism are only as good as the evidence that can be marshaled afterwards. Thus, the timeframe and certainty of nuclear forensic results would be extremely important. Without access to the actual current capabilities of the United States, it is difficult to place estimates on every one of these factors. Still, we can determine that it would take weeks to gather material samples from relevant stockpiles, even if all countries are willing to contribute sample materials after an explosion, and then it is still possible that there will be uncertainty about the origin of the bomb. Both the deterrence and forensic questions bring up an important policy point that my thesis addresses: should the international community (through the International Atomic Energy Agency) create a database of nuclear weapons material to check against possible post-explosion evidence? I conclude that such a database would be unlikely to solve a nuclear whodunit on its own as well as politically difficult. A better solution would be to internationalize the post-explosion nuclear forensics process and establish a clear process for attributing the source of the material and the path it followed. By making the technology public and establishing an international process, both communication and credibility issues could be addressed. Such a simple step would not radically change the deterrence picture, and no deterrence of nuclear terrorism can ever be assumed to work perfectly. But such a step would have few downsides and might even improve overall scientific capabilities.
Literature Review Few academics have studied nuclear attribution directly, and there is very little interest in the topic in the popular press. Whereas nonproliferation and even terrorism researchers have a wealth of journalism and government documents to rely on, there have been exactly two U.S. newspaper articles written about nuclear attribution in the last five years.11 Government sources add some qualitative information to the picture, but there are only a limited number of technical details in a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory newsletter and an article in the journal of the Homeland Security
11 Broad “Addressing the Unthinkable” and Broad “New Team.”
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Institute.12 More information can be found by digging a bit deeper and exploring the closely related field of nuclear forensics. Nuclear forensics is the general name for any investigative process that tries to find the origin and path of nuclear material, whether before or after a nuclear explosion. A number of technical papers are available from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and from a variety of European universities that talk about specific techniques and general logistical issues relating to attribution. Most importantly, at the beginning of 2005, a book by three Livermore experts on nuclear forensics and attribution laid out the state of the art.13 This textbook, however, limits its treatment of post-explosion attribution to a mere three pages, noting that much of the work is classified. In light of the lack of specific background information about attribution, this thesis attempts to lay a groundwork for how to think about nuclear attribution, establishing the technical capabilities, the deterrence issues, and the policy options that need to be considered in an organized approach to the topic. My thesis does not offer a diverging perspective on nuclear attribution; there is no current academic or theoretical perspective.14 But there are three good summaries of current capabilities and unanswered policy questions. The first one stands out. Jay Davis, the founding director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, wrote an article in the Journal of Homeland Security that briefly proposes many of the ideas I will explore in this thesis, from roughly defining U.S. capabilities to examining the implications of exclusion (as much as attribution) and nuclear fingerprint databases.15 Writing from an insider perspective, Davis speaks with an authority that I cannot gain from academia. The main limitation on his piece is its brevity. Written as an article meant to elicit action, it is necessarily broad and short. It does not explore all of the technical aspects of attribution, and he states plainly that no one in government has a full sense of the U.S. attribution capabilities. This is Davis’s main purpose. He called, in 2003, for a yearlong
12 Rennie “Tracing the Steps” and Jay Davis. “The Attribution of WMD Events,” Journal of the Homeland Security Institute. April, 2003. http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/Articles/Davis.html 13 Moody et al. Nuclear Forensic Analysis. 14 The academic articles mentioned earlier rely on a 2002 mention in a National Academies report that “The technology for this capability exists but needs to be assembled, an effort that is expected to take several years.” (Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism, National Research Council. Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism. National Academies Press, 2002. p. 60. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10415.htm) This report has become dated and is not a thorough analysis of all the data that exists. Thus, while there are perspectives ranging from “any attribution is sufficient” to “a bulletproof attribution capability is necessary for deterrence,” these are more theoretical than based in fact. I will deal with the variety of perspectives in the third and fourth chapters. 15 Jay Davis. “The Attribution of WMD Events.”
7 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION MICHAEL MILLER review of capabilities. He championed making many of the capabilities and failures public so that a public debate on the issue could begin and U.S. allies could be enlisted. His efforts in sparking a public debate have failed so far, though the attribution program he started has been gaining capability. With this thesis I will make a more ambitious attempt to catalogue the publicly available information and determine why an attribution capability does or does not matter. Davis also gives the best broad overview of the attribution issue. He explains that the clues available for attribution do not necessarily align with the questions we want answered. Most of the obvious forensic clues in a nuclear explosion would be vaporized in the blast. However, some pieces of information would remain. Most of the plutonium or uranium from an explosion would still be left, though it would be in the form of scattered debris. The explosion would also activate other materials in the bomb, making them highly radioactive and giving some clue about the design of the explosive device—clues that might be predictable through simulation. He notes that standard techniques such as mass spectroscopy can probably tell us about the efficiency of the bomb and the isotopes that made up the nuclear fuel, but these techniques have never been tested in a real world scenario. A Lawrence Livermore paper describes a number of these techniques in more detail, but it still fails to present a big picture of nuclear attribution. Focused on conventional nuclear forensics—intercepting stolen nuclear material—it identifies all the methods that are available, including timeframes and a few technical specifications, but it does not address what would happen after an explosion.16,17 The aforementioned New York Times article builds on the Davis piece, exploring a couple of the gaps. It mentions that there are few radiochemists working on attribution, notes how difficult the problem is, and states that the Pentagon’s aspect of the program only began in 1999 (it was instituted by Davis).
16 G.B. Dudder, S. Niemeyer, D.K. Smith, and M.J. Kristo. “Model Action Plan for Nuclear Forensics and Nuclear Attribution.” Technical Report. UCRL-TR-202675. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. March 1, 2004. 17 Rennie “Tracing the Steps” also builds on this paper, adding a couple of important technical details about the origins of the attribution program that will be covered in the next chapter.
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Methodology This thesis takes a case-study approach with the caveat that no cases of nuclear terrorism have ever occurred. Much as in other literature on nuclear terrorism, I attempt to walk the line between demonstrated capabilities and possible nuclear terrorism scenarios, staying in the realm of plausible but remembering that prediction is inherently hard when dealing with terrorism. The thesis focuses on the various technologies that form the backbone of nuclear attribution in order to get a sense of which capabilities are the most and least developed. I examine the technologies both from their historical pedigree (to the extent I can piece it together) and from their ability to answer the pressing questions that would be asked after a nuclear explosion. I then conduct a separate analysis of deterrence, with the goal of placing nuclear attribution in context. By examining four possible nuclear terrorist threats, I can avoid overgeneralization, and by examining the general literature on deterrence, I ground the study in a theoretical base. Finally, I put these two seemingly unrelated assessments together to determine how current and future attribution technologies could contribute to deterrence, examining the four different cases where such attribution might matter. The lack of public information on nuclear attribution tools, techniques, and capabilities leads to a relevant criticism of such a topic. What can a thesis provide that has not already been duplicated behind the wall of classification in the national laboratories? First, this thesis should provide a solid set of questions for informed policymakers to ask of those scientists developing the technology for nuclear attribution. Second, the thesis should inform the public debate about nuclear terrorism. While most aspects—from the difficulty of building a bomb to the desire of states to keep control of material—have been thoroughly dissected in public, nuclear attribution lacks a thorough study. Additionally, this thesis should inform debates about the relevance and usefulness of deterrence today. Without a solid attribution capability, it may be difficult to deter actors from sending weapons by an unconventional means. Finally, and most importantly, one way to improve attribution is to push for nuclear fingerprinting or nuclear tagging, both of which would require extensive international cooperation—work that could only occur if the issues of nuclear attribution are dealt with publicly. This assessment will be an early step in that process. A brief roadmap: After establishing the technical aspect of my thesis in Chapter 2, I will explore relevant deterrence scenarios in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 will combine
9 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION MICHAEL MILLER these two chapters to note specifically where attribution does and does not fit in a deterrent posture. In Chapter 5, I will address the different policy options that stem from these implications of deterrence. These may include declassifying some capabilities, spending more money on attribution, or internationalizing attribution efforts.
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Chapter 2: The Technology of Attribution
A nuclear weapon presents a unique set of challenges for a post-explosion forensic investigation. As opposed to regular explosion forensics, which is difficult but well-developed,18 nuclear forensics is complicated by four main issues that would appear after a nuclear blast. First, the explosion would be extremely powerful, vaporizing much of the immediate area around the explosive and leaving every part of the weapon in tiny particles.19 Second, all the debris in the immediate location would be highly radioactive and possibly on fire, so first responders and later investigators would be obstructed from visiting the site by concerns for their own safety. In addition, the needs of first responders in a highly populated area with fires and thousands of casualties would take first priority. Finally, any investigation would be under significant time pressure to establish who was responsible and whether another attack would be likely in the near future.20 Still, a nuclear explosion leaves a major piece of evidence that conventional explosions lack: radioactivity.21 After a nuclear explosion, almost all of the nuclear explosive material would remain. A very tiny amount of mass would be converted into energy, resulting in the explosion, a certain percentage will have fissioned into other elements, and the rest of the plutonium or uranium would be scattered in the vicinity of the blast. Some would be carried off by the wind, but much would stay. All the material that was initially near the bomb, including its core, would be highly radioactive, making it easier to find.22 Even more importantly, the debris at a distance can be detected and sampled for the forensic investigation as well.
18 For example, see Forensic Investigation of Explosions. Ed. Alexander Beveridge. London: Taylor & Francis, 1998. 19 For a 25kT blast, the size of the Nagasaki bomb, a few square miles around the blast are likely to be hit by blast damage and then further destroyed in fire. See, for example, Lynn Eden. “City on fire.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Vol. 60, No. 1, January/February 2004. For a good simulation of blast effects, visit the Federation of American Scientists website at http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=367. 20 Michael May. “Who Made the Nuke.” Unpublished Op-Ed, November 10, 2005. 21 Actually, many of the markers that can be used for identifying source attribution for a nuclear weapon can be found with conventional explosives as well (such as 18O/16O ratios). However, these are not usually used as clues in conventional forensic situations. 22 The plutonium and especially the uranium would not be markedly more radioactive than other materials near the center of the blast. But they could probably be separated from the debris with specially designed gamma- and alpha-spectrometry instruments. Such instruments are still in the development stage.
CHAPTER 2: TECHNOLOGY MICHAEL MILLER
In this chapter I intend to outline the processes that would be used to make an attribution. Investigators would seek to answer a set of questions as fast as possible with as much accuracy as possible. They would have to reconcile a number of different sources, but they would have all of the assets of the U.S. government at hand, as well as a fairly robust international framework designed to analyze nuclear smuggling incidents. There is currently no public international plan for dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear explosion—though there are well-planned domestic procedures. The challenge would be to extract actionable data from the explosion, and the ultimate goal would be to figure out the culprit with certainty. To complicate matters, any nuclear incident is likely to have multiple perpetrators, starting with a state or state element providing a weapon or nuclear material and ending with an actor, probably a terrorist, detonating the weapon. A number of different techniques have been developed for nuclear forensics, which is broadly defined as any technology that uses properties of nuclear material to determine its origin. To get a handle on the current capabilities of the United States, we should first examine their origins. Most of the technology was originally developed in secret to spy on adversaries and understand U.S. nuclear explosions, but other aspects have developed more recently in verifying treaties and prosecuting nuclear smuggling.
History In trying to establish the current nuclear attribution capabilities of the United States, it will be useful to first examine the history of the attribution program. The history gives some insight into how good current capabilities are, what the gap between unclassified and classified programs might be, and what other countries are likely to anticipate about U.S. capabilities for attribution. The development of the attribution program also gives some insight into how effective the technology is, for fifty years later many of the obvious failures have been noted—and often corrected. Such a record is useful in examining a program that has not ever been tested but will suffer a very intense first trial. A systematic history of the nuclear attribution program has never been written— mostly because the official program has only existed since 1999 and has not even had a publicly disclosed budget until this year. But the technology behind nuclear attribution and nuclear forensics has been developing since the beginning of World War II. The history of nuclear forensics and its related field of nuclear spying has been patchy,
12 CHAPTER 2: TECHNOLOGY MICHAEL MILLER though it became less so this year with the publication of Jeffrey Richelson’s Spying on the Bomb.23 Before this thorough history, most scholars had been stifled by the classification that kept nuclear detection technology secret long after many other nuclear secrets had been declassified.24
First steps: nuclear spying The first step in any nuclear attribution process would be figuring out whether the explosion under investigation was a nuclear one. This might seem trivial, but a small bomb or a failed nuclear explosion (a fizzle yield) could appear much like a conventional weapon. The technologies that would be used to determine whether a nuclear explosion occurred are the same ones that were originally used to discover a German nuclear program—simple sampling and Geiger counter measurements. The first attempts to develop such nuclear spying began in 1943 with secret bomber flights over Germany searching for signs of radiation. Defecting scientists had indicated that Germany might be pursuing a nuclear program, and the United States hoped to detect radioactive evidence of nuclear development. There wasn’t that much sophistication to this program—bombers were sent at low altitudes to take air samples, and the samples were tested for radioactivity after they got back—but the program was successful in finding the right thing: nothing. After the planes came back empty and other intelligence pointed toward an abandoned German nuclear research program, concerns lessened. Still, General Leslie Groves wasn’t quite so sure, so he set up the first post- explosion forensics team by keeping planes equipped with radiation detectors to fly “anyplace where the Germans or Japanese might have dropped an atomic bomb.”25 After the war, the United States did not anticipate keeping a monopoly on nuclear technology. But newly established intelligence operations faced a challenge after World War II—how could they monitor an enemy half a world away that was probably building a dangerous and threatening weapon? Even before the Manhattan Project finished in 1945, research on radioactivity had yielded the first important spying breakthrough: certain elements were more likely to escape a nuclear reactor than others, and these could probably be detected at quite a distance. The most important ones, it
23 Jeffrey Richelson. Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 24 William Burr, “Documents on the U.S. Atomic Energy Detection System.” National Security Archive. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB7/nsaebb7.htm. 25 Luis Alvarez. Adventures of a Physicist. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1987. pp. 234-238.
13 CHAPTER 2: TECHNOLOGY MICHAEL MILLER turned out, were xenon and krypton, noble gases that do not combine with any other element. Their properties make them likely to escape any building where they are generated, and nuclear activities, with high amounts of radioactivity, were likely to give off radioactive isotopes of these gases. Scientists hoped that by monitoring the amount of these gases in the atmosphere and subtracting known U.S. production, they could determine the size of the Soviet nuclear program. They feared, however, that if the Soviet Union knew about this monitoring program it could sequester these gases and skew U.S. measurements, leading to the beginning of intense secrecy about nuclear detection technology.26 At first, the spying technology proceeded in fits and starts; detecting nuclear reactors and nuclear explosions was not as simple as it seems today. In 1945, flights to observe radioactive xenon emerging from the reactors in Hanford, Washington, were unsuccessful, and scientists decided that they could only detect nuclear explosions, not plutonium production.27 Efforts to detect the first atomic explosion, Trinity, with seismometers three hundred miles away also failed, dealing an initial blow to what would eventually become the staple of nuclear detection—seismic readings. And efforts to measure the exact fallout from the Trinity explosion at a far distance were complicated by radioactivity from Hiroshima.28 Initial tests may have failed, but radiation detection relating to krypton-85 produced the first major success, just months after the first plane-based detection system had come into regular operation. The successful detection of the first Soviet nuclear test, dubbed Joe-1, demonstrates that radioactive isotopes were originally much more useful than acoustic and electromagnetic detection. The test also demonstrates that before 1950 scientists could tease out the composition of a weapon with tiny amounts of debris, the second step in any forensics program. On Sept. 3, 1949, a flight from Alaska to the North Pole and back returned with filter paper that indicated a radioactive incident. It was already the 112th detection of radioactive activity, but scientists at the Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff Operations Atomic Energy Office (AFOAT-1) quickly realized that they might have a real nuclear test on their hands.
26 We now know that the Soviet Union did know about U.S. monitoring efforts and had its own monitoring capabilities. 27 Charles Ziegler and David Jacobson. Spying without Spies: The Secret History of America’s Nuclear Detection System. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 1995. p. 37. 28 Ibid., p. 40.
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More samples were taken over the next few days, finding radioactivity all over the northern Pacific, and the president was notified by Sept. 10. The evidence pointed toward a test, but at first all that could be noted was the high radioactivity counts in many different air samples. Other parts of the testing network that was being established, acoustic and seismic detection, came up empty. Clearly, in 1949 U.S. capabilities still needed improvement. Within days, though, rainfall collections and air sampling had confirmed a large increase in background radiation over Japan and Alaska as the debris cloud drifted. All that was needed was a thorough lab analysis to separate out the different elements and determine what produced them. The first goal was to separate a test explosion from a reactor accident, and after that scientists hoped to determine whether the bomb was plutonium or uranium and what other materials were inside it. Within a day of receiving the information, Tracerlab at Berkeley, where the best nuclear minds were then employed, was able to determine that the bomb was plutonium. Three days later, they were able to give the specifics, that it was a plutonium bomb with a uranium tamper used to reflect the neutrons. Scientists were also able to date the nuclear explosion to within three days using the nuclear material. Original analyses used the particle samples taken from air filters, and rainwater data with larger particles later confirmed the findings.29 The first nuclear detection incident also gives a bit of perspective into the process. Three different labs were sent materials (the Naval Research Lab and Los Alamos also made analyses) and the final determination took another ten days to be confirmed. But by Sept. 23, President Truman could announce with almost perfect confidence that the Soviets had tested a weapon. Public reaction was muted, and public technical analysis was sparse, but the Washington Post did note that the uncertainty in date that Truman announced probably meant that the test was detected by radiological means. The only other fact that came out in public was the composition of the weapon, plutonium, which was inadvertently announced by a senator.30 The United States would continue to monitor Soviet tests using the same technology over the next two decades. Less is known about other test detection because individual incidents have been studied less, and AFTAC, the successor to the Atomic
29 Richelson, Spying on the Bomb, pp. 88-91 30 ibid. p. 92
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Energy Detection System has refused to make most of their documents public.31 We do know that acoustic, electromagnetic, and then seismic monitoring improved to the point where these technologies could detect almost any explosion in the Soviet Union. By the late 1950s, the United States could reasonably expect to detect all Soviet tests around the world the instant they occurred, enough so that monitoring a moratorium on testing became feasible.32 Seismic and acoustic monitoring gave effective clues as to how big the weapons were—another question that would need to be answered after any nuclear explosion. By 1957, a panel had concluded that anything larger than 3–5 kilotons could be easily detected, and by 1963 the United States felt comfortable enough with these technologies to sign the Limited Test Ban Treaty banning atmospheric tests.33 These technologies were fairly effective—the United States was able to take a better measurement of the yield of the first Chinese test than the Chinese were—but there were still some notable failures. Most importantly, U.S. yield estimates had a tendency to overestimate, sometimes by an order of magnitude, as in the case of a few Chinese tests.34 The analysis of the first Soviet test demonstrates that in 1949 the technology existed to answer some of the most basic questions that come with any nuclear test: how big it was, when it took place, and what kind of weapon it was. U.S. efforts around the Chinese test in 1964 give insight into another question: could the United States pinpoint the origin of nuclear material? On October 14, the Chinese set off their first nuclear weapon at Lop Nur, and it was detected immediately by 11 of 13 electromagnetic stations and seven acoustic stations monitored by the United States. The test was not anticipated, for the CIA had underestimated the progress the Chinese were making enriching uranium, as it had with the Russian program. It took until October 17 for aerial sampling to be completed (since the air mass had to move off the coast of China), and from then it took three more days to determine the composition of the bomb. Intelligence analysts had expected a plutonium bomb because U2 flights had not discovered a sufficiently large uranium enrichment facility. However, within three days of getting their hands on the nuclear
31 Burr, “Documents on AEDS” 32 Much of this technology is plotted in Richelson, Spying on the Bomb, and a number of resources related to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. 33 Richelson, Spying on the Bomb. p. 131. Worries about a number of technical capabilities, especially yield measurements, made the U.S. reluctant to sign an earlier treaty. Burr, “Documents.” 34 Richelson, Spying on the Bomb. p. 133
16 CHAPTER 2: TECHNOLOGY MICHAEL MILLER debris, scientists were able to determine that the bomb was a uranium implosion device, though they were unable to determine the size or shape of the weapon. It took two more months to come to the conclusion that the uranium had been enriched in China and had not come from the Soviet Union, Europe, or the United States.35 Such a long delay was probably driven by the preliminary assumption that the uranium could not be indigenous (because there was no known program for enrichment) and by limitations in technology—issues similar to those dealt with today involving North Korea and uranium enrichment.36 After the initial Chinese tests, air-sampling gradually lost its priority in the detection hierarchy, so it becomes more difficult to trace the evolution of the technology that would be used for nuclear attribution. Satellites and seismic monitors could more efficiently and accurately detect tests and the data from these discoveries. Radioisotope samples became less important as tests moved underground and such sampling efforts became unnecessary.37 Air sampling may have still been used to monitor nascent nuclear programs (again, many of the actual programs are classified), but by 1998 the air-detection infrastructure had decayed and only one plane remained flying. As Richelson explains “by May 1998 [when India and Pakistan tested] there had not been a nuclear test for almost two years, and the plane used for debris collection was scheduled for six months of maintenance with its 1,200-pound collection system headed for storage. The Indian tests resulted in a crash effort to reconstitute the aircraft in time to fly the sampling missions, manned by the last remaining personnel trained to use the equipment for detecting and gathering debris.”38
Tracing nuclear forensics The history of nuclear spying and remote detection explains many of the technologies that would be used today for post-explosion attribution. But more recent history, that of nuclear forensics—the technology used to identify the origins of
35 ibid. p. 170 36 See Chapter 4 for an account of skepticism relating the North Korean nuclear program to uranium hexafluoride in Libya. 37 Richelson notes that there is no evidence of aerial sampling of the numerous atmospheric French tests that lasted until 1974. Ship-based monitoring may have proved to be enough, or these efforts were highly classified. p. 215 n. 1 38 Richelson, Spying on the Bomb, p. 438
17 CHAPTER 2: TECHNOLOGY MICHAEL MILLER materials usually for prosecutorial and diplomatic reasons—provides an even better guide for a number of modern tools. Detecting and identifying nuclear material was a key part of the nuclear infrastructure of many nations (it’s obviously necessary to build a bomb), but pinpointing the origin of unknown material is often quite a challenge. Unfortunately, the history of nuclear forensics is vague. Most authors note that the field of nuclear forensics did not really begin until the first smuggled radioactive materials appeared out of the former Soviet Union. About the same time, new discoveries about the North Korean nuclear weapons program (more plutonium was reprocessed than they admitted) and the Iraqi program (an almost undetected program that was 1–3 years from a bomb) led to more calls for an actual international ability to monitor and test safeguards declarations. International nuclear forensics was not an important priority during the Cold War. Distributing nuclear technologies took center stage, while monitoring the use of those technologies lagged decades behind. Political maneuverings slowed research on safeguards and nuclear material detection so much that the International Atomic Energy Agency, originally charged with “nuclear verification and security, safety and technology transfer,”39 didn’t really search for nuclear weapons material until after the fall of the Soviet Union. Although the agency was assigned to monitor the use of nuclear materials worldwide, it lacked the budget or technology to do so comprehensively, even after the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty expanded its role globally.40 The IAEA is a good example, however, of the invigorated focus that nuclear forensics has received in the last fifteen years. Two of its missions—monitoring states for clandestine programs and tracking the smuggling of nuclear materials—were broadened after the 1991 Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and both of these missions required much more technology than the IAEA had previously used. While the agency had taken nuclear measurements for use in advancing the power programs of member states and had published databases of nuclear power plants under its safeguards, it now had to deal with situations where it didn’t know all the variables.
39 “History of the IAEA.” http://www.iaea.org/About/history.html. 40 For a thorough, if bureaucratic, history of the IAEA, see David Fischer. History of the International Atomic Energy Agency, The First Forty Years. IAEA. Available at http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1032_web.pdf. The IAEA still has fewer inspectors than plants under safeguards.
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Its failure to predict the full extent of Iraq’s weapons program (a failure shared by the United States) would usher in a new mission would require a number of new tools. These new tools were actually well-developed scientific techniques for dating isotopes, using isotopes as tracers for a component analysis, and measuring radiation spectra. But these techniques had not previously been combined specifically for nuclear forensics, at least on an international scale. Many countries with nuclear programs have had these capabilities for some time, and much of this analysis was used to analyze nuclear fuel and nuclear weapons. But the IAEA lacked a dedicated cleanroom for forensics until 1996 (though similar analysis was done for nuclear safeguards thirty years prior) and is only now achieving the expertise that many national organizations held much earlier.41 Even more major progress was made through the International Technical Working Group on nuclear smuggling among 15 nations with nuclear expertise. The ITWG was established in November 1995 at a meeting at Lawrence Livermore, and quickly got underway by holding two meetings in 1996 in Germany and Russia.42 Two major agenda points for this group were establishing common protocols for nuclear forensics investigations and sharing technology among the various states that might have to deal with smuggled nuclear material. Over the next decade, the group came together a number of times to update one another on national progress.43 The most notable events that occurred were the initial discussions of protocols—which indicate what technology had not yet gained an international footing—and two round-robin tests where different laboratories examined the same material, plutonium for one and uranium oxide for the other, and attempted to figure out its origin. These tests, which I will later refer to, give a good sense of where the overall technology for nuclear forensics stands today, but the tests often focus on relatively large particle samples and other forensic clues like fingerprints which would not be available after a nuclear explosion. Long-range detection, treaty verification, safeguards monitoring, and nuclear smuggling investigation have all helped develop nuclear attribution technologies, but an unknown, yet important part of nuclear attribution remains the national capabilities
41 Ibid., p. 65 42 S. Niemeyer, L. Koch, and N.V. Nikiforov. “Synopsis of the International Workshop on Illicit Trafficking of Nuclear Material.” Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. UCRL-JC-126561. Russian International Conference on Nuclear Material Protection, Accounting, and Control. March 1997. 43 The proceedings of only a few of these meetings have been published, so I do not have a full account.
19 CHAPTER 2: TECHNOLOGY MICHAEL MILLER enhanced through weapons development and testing. These have not been discussed in any open literature. A 2005 article in Lawrence Livermore’s Science and Technology Review suggests that the nuclear forensics focus emerged from studies of U.S. nuclear tests, the third and probably most important aspect of post-explosion nuclear forensics.44 Accounts of what was learned from U.S. tests are classified, though many open questions about what materials are likely to remain after an explosion and which are likely to be obliterated have probably been at least partially answered, often thanks to studies of fallout for health effects. Although all nuclear forensics involves some secrecy, most of these technologies are well developed in other fields. Chemical methods of separation, isotope analysis, and isotope dating have been used in chemistry since the beginning of the nuclear age. Techniques used to date archeological remains are quite similar to those used to date nuclear material, so little of this science is proprietary or classified.
Current technical capabilities The history of nuclear forensics as a distinct science will not be nearly as important as current capabilities when a new, pressing nuclear forensics problem appears. The most pressing problem that could emerge would be a nuclear detonation without an obvious culprit. How would the United States extract an attribution from an unknown weapon? It would begin with a set of questions. These questions and all their related ambiguity are discussed in the table that follows this chapter.45 I won’t repeat all the details here, but I will explain the general conclusions that can be reached by simply laying out capabilities and examining the scientific literature on the different technologies. The aspect we are focusing on, post-explosion attribution, has not been dealt with much in the public domain. The recently published Nuclear Forensic Analysis devotes just three pages to the topic because, though the authors have explored the question extensively, their work relating to nuclear weapons is classified. But by reviewing existing nuclear forensics technologies, one can see which aspects of the attribution question would be easier to answer and which would be more difficult. And
44 Rennie, “Tracing the Steps.” 45 This table is an expansion on those in Michael May, Jay Davis and Raymond Jeanloz, “An International Databank of Nuclear Explosive Materials” to be published in IEEE Spectrum and Klaus Mayer, Maria Wallenius and Ian Ray, “Nuclear forensics—a methodology providing clues on trafficked nuclear materials.” The Analyst. Dec. 2004. http://www.rsc.org/ej/AN/2005/b412922a.pdf.
20 CHAPTER 2: TECHNOLOGY MICHAEL MILLER with this set of capabilities, I will examine how well deterrence can and does work in the next chapter. After a nuclear weapon explodes, seismic equipment, infrasound detectors, and satellites throughout the world will notice it and relay information to leaders around the globe.46 Eyewitness accounts will testify to the size of the explosion, and its effects will be noticed instantly. It will be quickly characterized as a nuclear incident if the explosion is large. If the explosion is small, it could conceivably be muffled by a building. Such an explosion could occur if the bomb failed to initiate properly, and then it might look like a radioactive dirty bomb. Initial yield estimates should demonstrate whether the bomb was fusion or fission, and a large yield (more than about 50 kilotons) would demonstrate that the weapon probably came from a state stockpile and was not improvised.47 Beyond that first conclusion, specialists and special equipment will be needed to determine the characteristics of a weapon that could give clues to its origin. A nuclear emergency search team, which would probably include some scientists, would immediately be sent to the site. The first thing they will be able to determine, likely at the scene, would be whether the weapon was constructed with highly enriched uranium or plutonium. These materials can be recognized from their radioactive signatures, though current technology is limited in its capacity to distinguish certain materials. An expert would be required to operate sampling devices or a robot, and this expert would need experience to know which readings to focus on and how to take them. Many companies and government labs are currently pursuing a hand-held or mobile lab that could distinguish different radioactive materials, but according to Moody et al., most of these systems need work.48 Distinguishing between plutonium and uranium should be possible on site, and the first particles could probably be shipped to laboratories within hours of accessing the blast site. Access may be difficult immediately following an explosion because intense radiation and fire will probably make the area inaccessible. Within a day or two, and possibly much faster, this should burn itself out in the center and radioactivity would decrease exponentially over time. Shielded robots or humans can then probably
46 Much of this technology is set up and functioning to monitor the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. 47 There is even the unlikely possibility that these yield estimates might be wrong. See Clancy, Sum of All Fears, for a somewhat-informed example where a parking lot magnifies the infrared signal. His account ignores the fact that most detection equipment is seismic and this signal is unlikely to be too distorted. 48 Moody et al. Nuclear Forensic Analysis. pp. 327-333
21 CHAPTER 2: TECHNOLOGY MICHAEL MILLER collect samples. In addition, it should be noted that a variety of analyses can be carried out merely by sampling the fallout of the blast, far from the center of the blast site. This debris would be the first to make it to the lab, and this material would resemble the particles that scientists analyzed while spying on the Soviets or attempting to verify the North Korean nuclear program—evaluations that have succeeded in the past. Most conclusions would probably not require the large samples that would be available at ground zero. The initial assessment of a plutonium or uranium weapon does not significantly narrow the field of possible perpetrators. More than 100 countries possess some amount of highly enriched uranium or plutonium, usually at research reactors, and there are thousands of tons of both worldwide in weapons stocks. A plutonium design would hint at more expertise or state assistance for terrorists, as would a higher yield. Once in a laboratory, scientists could apply standard nuclear forensic techniques aimed at analyzing small numbers of particles. First, they would determine the efficiency of the weapon and the main components of the nuclear material. Mass spectrometry would give the ratios of nuclear material to fission products, indicating how well designed the weapon was and whether it was improvised or assembled by experts. The composition of the material (whether it was reactor fuel, uranium oxide, or an alloy designed for a weapon, for example) would corroborate this diagnosis and would help policymakers quickly determine whether the weapon came from an established nuclear arsenal. Assuming the samples were large enough, which is probable (samples as small as thousands of atoms can be analyzed), the age of the material since last enrichment or reprocessing could probably be determined to within a month. Such age dating relies on ratios of the amount of different decaying isotopes, and the technology is fairly well developed, though uranium dating is more difficult. This age calculation significantly narrows the possible sources of the material because any recent material is unlikely to have come from one of the larger nuclear weapons states that have stopped creating new weapons material. In addition, an age can be combined with reactor and enrichment histories to narrow the focus to those facilities that were producing material at that time. Beyond age and general composition, the technology becomes more difficult, but there are more clues that could be determined. Scientists might be able to determine the enrichment (uranium) or reprocessing (plutonium) techniques that the material went through to become weapons material, although this analysis relies on trace amounts of
22 CHAPTER 2: TECHNOLOGY MICHAEL MILLER particles that might not be as easy to find as they would be for an unexploded weapon. Such analyses are limited in their usefulness, however, because there are only two enrichment techniques worldwide and a limited number of reprocessing techniques. If plutonium could be matched to a sample from an existing nuclear inventory or from samples already taken, certain imperfections in the reprocessing techniques might match up. Each reprocessing plant has different imperfections. Along the same lines, the uranium might be traceable if it had originally spent time in a reactor. Trace elements from that reactor’s processing might be noticed, but these would be difficult to trace without a corresponding sample from the reactor or a very detailed reactor and enrichment history.49 No matter what auxiliary clues are available, inspections or samples would probably be required to make a final determination with any accuracy. Some other aspects of the investigation would undoubtedly be more difficult. For example, a nuclear explosion using a standard Russian or U.S. warhead would match one of the many profiles that have been simulated on computers in advance by the national laboratories, but an improvised nuclear weapon constructed from a research reactor’s uranium would match a different, probably unknown profile. Possible profiles could be simulated, and some have undoubtedly already been addressed, but combined with an urban setting, it might be challenging or at least time- consuming to reverse engineer the design of the bomb. Put together, the above aspects would give a reasonable nuclear fingerprint for a weapon. It wouldn’t narrow to a single perpetrator unless a matching sample of material could be found (which is possible if the weapon came from a nuclear stockpile or a reactor), but it would probably eliminate some countries and a number of sources of material. How easily could any of these signatures be fooled? It would be relatively simple for an expert nuclear weapons designer to create a weapon that looked improvised or that was made of reactor fuel instead of an alloy designed for weapons. He would have to settle for a larger chance of failure and a smaller yield, but such a tradeoff might be made. The key aspect that could not be spoofed would be the age since last processing. Although plutonium could be partially reprocessed, the nature of radioactive decay is such that each element has multiple daughter and granddaughter elements. If any ratios were tampered with, the tampering would be evident.
49 Some have proposed trying to localize the uranium in a weapon to its original mine. This would probably be impossible. See Table 1 and the Chapter 4 account of forensics on Libyan UF6.
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Plutonium could be reprocessed again, restarting the decay clock, but material could not be made to look older than it is. Thus, fooling an attribution detection would be difficult for anyone due to the other clues that could be exploited along with age, since even an improvised weapon would need material from a reactor. Deceiving attribution would be nearly impossible for inexperienced nuclear weapons handlers. Finally, a few aspects are beyond my knowledge. Would investigators be able to determine what material made up the bomb casing or the vehicle that held the bomb? This material would be more radioactive than material a distance away, but once the material has turned into particles it may be hard to distinguish more radioactive debris that was five feet away from the bomb from that which had twenty feet separation. All nuclear tests took place away from urban areas, so anticipating the sample contamination inherent in an urban explosion would probably be difficult. Other aspects of the investigation might assist with this question, which would be essential to determine the immediate perpetrators. Intelligence information might exist from human or communications sources, and cargo manifests might be available overseas. These aspects of the puzzle are impossible to determine in advance and thus difficult to rely on. All these technical answers will give small pieces of the puzzle that might or might not fit together. The type and age of the weapons material can probably be determined accurately, but this may not narrow the scope sufficiently to identify the source of the nuclear material.50 Aspects of the bomb design will be determined within either a short timeframe (for a known weapon) or a week or two (for an unknown weapon needing new simulations), but this might not narrow beyond a certain set of countries that shared weapons designs. Or it might only narrow to Russia and not give any idea as to the localized source of the weapon. A number of the forensic techniques that have been used to effectively identify the source of trafficked nuclear material— fingerprints and plant material, for example—would not be available. But with other
50 In one nuclear forensics round-robin test, each of a half-dozen participants had a different account for the origin of a highly enriched uranium sample, though all were able to pinpoint the same age. G. B. Dudder, R.C. Hanlen, and G.M.J. Herbillon. “International Technical Working Group Round Robin Tests” in Advances in Destructive and Non-Desctructive Analysis for Environmental Monitoring and Nuclear Forensics. Proceedings. Karlsruhe, Germany, Oct. 2002. IAEA. pp. 41-51. The earlier plutonium test was more successful in narrowing the original reprocessing techniques.
24 CHAPTER 2: TECHNOLOGY MICHAEL MILLER types of intelligence and a narrowed scope, searching the small realm of possible perpetrators, the pieces that are available may be enough.51 Whether they would deter anyone is a question I will explore in upcoming chapters.
51 Jay Davis argues that removing possible perpetrators is as important as pinpointing the culprit. The concept behind this is sound, but in the aftermath of an explosion, one should worry about hasty judgment based on exclusion. The material could have come from unknown facilities or it could have passed through another nuclear state before reaching its target.
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Questions and methods for a post-explosion nuclear attribution Original Question to Method(s) of Timeframe Unique challenges How much information question answer determination does it reveal? Was it Was it a nuclear Satellite imagery, Minutes to hours Could be muffled by a building Location, yield of weapon, nuclear? explosion? seismic monitoringa, if the explosion is small.b Yield and probably whether it is eyewitness accounts, estimate will probably change nuclear. explosion results in subsequent analysisc If nuclear, the material must have come from a country with a nuclear reactor or a uranium enrichment program.d Of course, the program may have been clandestine.e Where did What material On-site radiation Within hours; the Approaching the material, HEU or Pu could have come the was the bomb counters (gamma main limitation is which would be highly from a number of civilian material made of? spectroscopy),f simple how fast material is radioactive.i reactors or nuclear come from? laboratory analysis brought to a stockpiles. If the material is (radiation counting, specialized lab found to be U-233, this mass spectrometry)g,h significantly narrows the sources.j Where was the Uranium: isotope ratio A few days to get These ratios, while useful if Unlikely to deduce one material analysis by mass the isotope ratios; found in nuclear fuel or suspect, but might exclude originally spectrometry much longer if unenriched uranium, are some. mined? these do not match obscured by later enrichment Pu: N/A a pre-existing and the explosion.k In addition, signature many countries combined uranium sources, and some mines have significant variations on isotope ratios just within the mine. How enriched is Isotope ratios are Within a day of If it comes from a nuclear the material? compared using mass laboratory analysis arsenal, different countries spectrometry have different standard enrichment levels. If it comes from a reactor it may give a hint as to how long the material had been in the reactor.
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Original Question to Method(s) of Timeframe Unique challenges How much information question answer determination does it reveal? When was the Uranium: Decay series A few days to test This is very important for material last can be used to show all the different narrowing where and when refined or time since last combinations of the material could have reprocessed? purification.l isotopes. originated. It is expected to be quite accurate. Hard to Pu: A number of isotope spoof.m ratios can be compared. What processes Uranium: search for A few days. Much Trace impurities, a key aspect U: Slight narrowing of did the material unique chemical longer if it matches of traditional nuclear forensic possible provenance. go through in impurities likely to no existing nuclear fingerprints, will be hard to this refining remain after enrichment; fingerprint. determine after an explosion. Pu: Refining process is fairly process? if it contains certain unique in each country isotopes it may have because it is difficult to How pure is the been reprocessed from a design a process that will Pu or U? reactor.n leave only plutonium Compare U-234, U-235, without trace particles of and U-236 to give clues other elements.p about how the HEU was produced.o
Pu: trace element analysis
Did Where was the Examining other aspects A few days, Lead and oxygen isotope ratios, Alloy would probably vary terrorists bomb of the fuel, from gallium possibly longer to which vary geographically, by country and the process construct constructed? and aluminum alloys to search for and find would probably disappear in the weapon went through in or steal the lead and oxygen isotope the most important the explosion (and be construction.r High bomb? ratios in the bomb trace components. contaminated by the rest of the uncertainties would remain material. environment). about the data because there are no international An improvised weapon (U) databases of weapons would lack the aluminum material. alloy.q
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Original Question to Method(s) of Timeframe Unique challenges How much information question answer determination does it reveal? What was the Isotope ratios will give A few days. Much of the simulation Bomb design may narrow design of the clues to efficiency. The technology is designed to test only slightly. A gun-type bomb? blast will be simulated U.S. bomb designs. Still, it was bomb would be simple based on size, efficiency, also developed to be used (comparatively) and easy to and profile, as observed against other nations, so this is develop. The Chinese bomb by satellites.s unlikely to be an obstacle. design for an implosion weapon has circulated widely.t
How did How was the Auxiliary information Days to weeks. Only as good as the other terrorists bomb from customs, border intelligence assets available. get the transported? records, location, and weapon other national and into the international U.S.? intelligence. Where was the Within minutes to Gives clues as to transport. actual location hours. Might be linked with other of the intelligence on terrorist explosion? plots. What container Radiation detectors to Perhaps a week for Unknown. It may be easy to Bomb casing would be a was the weapon find the most radioactive final determination. separate material that was very good clue as to who in? particles. close to the bomb, or it may be assembled it, though the Mass spectrometry to very difficult.u origin of the material might determine what and or might not localize the where the particles are suspects. from.
a “There is a considerable degree of consensus among experts on the capability of various networks to monitor the first type of nuclear testing [testing that occurs conventionally within a country]. This capability is significantly better than has commonly been believed.” National Academy of Sciences, Technical Issues Related to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. 2002. p. 38. b Jay Davis. “The Attribution of WMD Events.” Journal of Homeland Security. April 2003. http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/Articles/Davis.html c Michael May, Jay Davis, and Raymond Jeanloz. “An International Databank of Nuclear Explosive Materials” IEEE Spectrum. To be published, 2006. d As of 2004, there were about 40 countries with research reactors using HEU. Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier, Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action Washington, DC: Nuclear Threat Initiative, May 2004, pp. 58-59, and references cited therein.
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e According to some assessments, U.S. intelligence sources are likely to suspect any serious clandestine enrichment or reprocessing program. See National Academy of Sciences. Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Explosive Materials: An Assessment of Methods and Capabilities. 2005. p. 212. Available at http://fermat.nap.edu/books/0309095972/html/212.html. f Current solutions are focused on measuring radiation for the safety of first responders. Some gamma spectroscopy equipment is available for field deployment, but these suffer from the vast uncertainties of any field situation, especially after a nuclear blast. That said, a properly shielded robot with alpha, beta, gamma and neutron detectors could probably distinguish between standard U and HEU due to alpha decay and Pu from U due to the high neutron flux of the Pu. More importantly, it could likely distinguish between medical isotopes like Cesium 137 and nuclear weapons isotopes, an important determination to distinguish between a “fizzle” yield nuclear weapon and a “dirty bomb.” For a description of the methods that could be used, see Moody et al. p. 331. Such robots are discussed in William J. Broad, “New Team Plans to Identify Nuclear Attackers.” New York Times, Feb. 2, 2006. g Described simply, most laboratory analysis of different isotopes is done by inserting a radioactive tracer chemical in a known amount and measuring the amount of this chemical left—by counting the radiation it emits—after a certain reaction takes place. This process is much simpler for large samples where most of the predicted parts of the decay chain are likely to remain. For an extensive explanation of the laboratory analysis for Pu and U, see Moody pp. 175-192. h Most mass spectrometry is likely to be done as secondary ion mass spectrometry since the particles will be scattered and there will be no large homogeneous sample to analyze. For a description of different possible methods see M.J. Kristo, D.K. Smith, S. Neimeyer, and G.B. Dudder. “Model Action Plan for Nuclear Forensics and Nuclear Attribution” Technical Report. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. UCRL-TR-202675. p. 47 or Klaus Mayer, Maria Wallenius and Ian Ray, “Nuclear forensics—a methodology providing clues on trafficked nuclear materials.” The Analyst. Dec. 2004. http://www.rsc.org/ej/AN/2005/b412922a.pdf i It is unlikely to be too radioactive for robots to operate, and radioactivity will decrease over time. j There have been basic studies of U-233 for 30 years, but all in single reactors and only in Germany, India, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the USA. India is has the largest initiative, since it has large thorium reserves (the precursor to U-233). Uranium Information Centre Ltd. Thorium. UIC Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper #67. Nov. 2004. available at http://www.uic.au/nip67.htm. k When UO2 is recovered from a nuclear reactor or as a component of nuclear fuel, it’s mine of origin can often be determined or at least narrowed. However, in order to enrich the uranium to a point where it can be used it a weapon or a HEU reactor, it must be turned into UF6 and enriched, losing its mine signatures. For information on how mine signatures are used in nuclear forensics, see Leena Pajo. “UO2 Fuel Pellet Impurities, Pellet Surface Roughness and n(18O)/n(16O) Ratios, Applied to Nuclear Forensic Science.” Academic Dissertation. University of Helsinki. Sept. 2001. http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/julkaisut/mat/kemia/vk/pajo/ l Uranium isotope ratio analysis is not as well developed as that of plutonium. (Maria Wallenius, “Age Determination of Highly Enriched Uranium,” IAEA Symposium on International Safeguards: Verification and Nuclear Material Security, 2001, Vienna, Austria, http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/SS-2001/Start.pdf) For one example of how to determine age, see S.P. LaMott and G. Hall. “Uranium age determination by measuring the 230Th/234U ratio,” WSRC-MS-2003-00920. More than one isotope ratio would be necessary, especially after an explosion. m Moody, p. 236 n “At several points in the early history of the U.S. plants, a shortage of U made it necessary to use material that had been recovered from reactor applications as feedstock. The result was cascades contaminated with the nonnatural isotopes 236U, 233U, and 232U—a signature that persists to the present day because of long cascade residence times for a given atom… Plants in Great Britain and the former Soviet Union had similar episodes of reactor-uranium usage.” (Moody, 107) o “A sample of enriched U in which the relative enrichments of 234U and 235U are about the same, but in which 236U is absent , is quite likely the product of a gas-centrifuge plant.” (Moody, 113) See Gabriele Tamborini, “SIMS Analysis of Uranium and Actinides in Microparticles of Different Origins,” Microchim. Acta. No. 145, 2004, pp. 237-242. for a detailed analysis of how samples from certain enrichment processes differ and how these differences can be detected.
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p Moody et al., Nuclear Forensic Analysis. pp. 155-159. q Plutonium is more difficult than uranium to handle—precautions would need to be taken and everything would need to be done inside gloveboxes. r In the U.S., for example, a plutonium weapon was cast by adding 1.9 percent gallium with the idea that 1.0 would remain after the alloying process removed 47 percent of the gallium. Later tests confirmed, however, that the gallium was 2.3 +- .4 percent of the sample. This indicates that while the measures would be useful as a reference, gallium ratios would help little in determining the weapon state. T. S. Rudisill and M. L. Crowder, “Characterization of delta Phase of Plutonium Metal.” Technical Report. Westinghouse Savannah River Company. WSRC-TR-99-00448. http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/tr9900448/tr9900448.html s There are efforts underway to run likely explosion profiles in advance so that scientists can compare their samples to a number of possibilities without waiting for new simulations. This initiative was planned to be finished by 2006. Defense Science Board 2003 Summer Study on DoD Roles and Missions in Homeland Security. Volume II. May 2004. p. 49 http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dsb/homelandv2.pdf t One of the products sold by Pakistan through the A.Q. Khan network is this bomb design. See William Langewiesche. “The Point of No Return.” The Atlantic Monthly, January/February 2006, pp. 96-118 or Joby Warrick and Peter Slevin. “Libyan Arms Designs Traced Back to China.” Washington Post. Feb. 15, 2004. u May et al. “An International Databank.” claims it would be possible to determine what type of vehicle or container held the bomb.
30 MICHAEL MILLER
Chapter 3: Deterrence
If a nuclear explosion rocked Manhattan tomorrow, we might know who did it in a week, but definitely not in an hour. But what good, exactly, would this attribution capability do? There are three possible ways that nuclear attribution could play a role in increasing security before or after a nuclear explosion. First, those who would perpetrate a nuclear attack might be deterred, knowing that they are likely to be caught or at least identified with the weapon afterwards. Second, after a nuclear explosion, the first question policymakers will ask after “Who did it?” will be “Will there be another one?” This question might be especially relevant if a nation or terrorist group is threatening to set off more weapons if certain demands are not met.52 Nuclear attribution might help determine, for example, whether there was enough nuclear material from a certain reactor to make multiple bombs. Or it might tip off investigators as to who helped construct the bomb and thus how much expertise the group has. Finally, post-explosion attribution serves the simple goal of knowing who committed the crime—something everyone would demand to know in the aftermath of an explosion. Even if retaliation proves impossible and there is no need to bring the perpetrators to justice (if they died in the explosion, for example), any government would want to commit at least modest resources to knowing the true origin of the weapon if such a determination is possible. And if a terrorist group or nation claimed responsibility for the attack, the United States would still want to verify that identity before retaliating.53 I will further explore the latter two possibilities in the final chapter when I examine policy implications of the current nuclear attribution program. But first, I will examine the issue of deterring nuclear terrorism, a strategy that is either difficult or impossible, depending whom you ask. Nuclear terrorism has the dubious distinction of connecting large-scale, highly motivated terrorists with rogue states or rogue elements within states. Each piece of the puzzle of nuclear terrorism—terrorists, disloyal scientists, and rogue states, for example—has been characterized by some as
52 For one exploration of this sort of blackmail see Stan Erickson. “Nuclear Weapon Prepositioning as a Threat Strategy.” Journal of Homeland Security, July 2001. http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Erickson.html. 53 Bruce Hoffman. “Why Terrorists Don’t Claim Credit.” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 1–6, Spring 1997 notes that for a number of major terrorist attacks, there was no claim for credit. Since he has written, the African embassy bombings, the U.S.S. Cole attack, and the anthrax attacks have gone unclaimed in their immediate aftermath.
CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER undeterrable. Many of these arguments are persuasive and thorough, but most focus specifically on one aspect instead of the combination of factors that must be available to facilitate nuclear terror. As I mentioned in the first chapter, nuclear terrorism can only occur with the assistance of many different actors. A nuclear state might be able to smuggle a weapon and set it off, or it could provide material to terrorists, or terrorists could steal nuclear material from a nuclear state, but a terrorist group cannot construct a nuclear weapon on its own. So in each case, we must deal with a nuclear state in some capacity, and states are much easier to deter than terrorists. At the same time, we can hope that with thorough evaluation and the right mix of threats and incentives, intermediaries and even terrorists might be deterred. This notion is debatable, but there has been good consideration of the topic, and the fact that no nuclear weapon has yet gone off is taken by many as a sign that some forms of deterrence can work.
Defining deterrence in context Deterrence has fallen from grace.54 Though it never held an unimpeachable position, deterrence spent decades as the main security strategy for the most potentially deadly conflict man had ever known: the Cold War. With the end of the Soviet Union, deterrence was kept around as the guarantor of U.S.-Russia peace, but it lost its prominence. Intervention, preemption, and prevention became buzzwords in strategic and political circles and deterrence was demoted from the only option to one of many. Deterrence is still the key to security between the United States and Russia and it plays a large role in South Asia, but deterrence is no longer the only option. In fact, the Bush administration has downgraded deterrence from a prominent facet of U.S. strategy to simply a point that must be addressed in any discussion of security. During the Cold War, deterrence was rarely seen by academics or military thinkers as a perfect option. In fact the different schools of thought, from minimal deterrence to war-fighting deterrence, agreed only on the premise that deterrence was important to security. They disagreed on whether a strong military or merely the threat of a strong response was necessary, and they debated how much of the Soviet Union had to be demolished to constitute unacceptable damage. A number of other scholars saw deterrence as borderline crazy and exceedingly dangerous, while a few saw nuclear
54 Richard K. Betts. “Deterrence (review).” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2004. http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040901fabook83534/lawrence-freedman/deterrence.html
32 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER weapons as the key to end all wars.55 The one thing most everyone thinking about deterrence could agree on was that deterrence was a simple and fairly effective method of preventing global nuclear war. Or, at least, that it had worked despite its flaws.56 The logic of both the United States and the Soviet Union could be worked out because nuclear capabilities that were considered during the Cold War were similar in their overwhelming scope, and both sides had competent, non-suicidal government structures. Now, with the end of the Cold War, we are much more likely to be faced with asymmetry and impenetrable opposition logic. To many, the resulting deterrence without its simplicity and implied effectiveness is useless and deserves to be retired, at least within the dual realms of rogue states and terrorists. President George W. Bush is the most prominent of these doubters in relation to these two aspects of foreign policy. Although some administration rhetoric has softened, the 2002 National Security Strategy laid out the major attitude toward deterrence: Deterrence was an effective defense. But deterrence based only upon the threat of retaliation is less likely to work against leaders of rogue states more willing to take risks, gambling with the lives of their people, and the wealth of their nations.57 and Traditional concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy whose avowed tactics are wanton destruction and the targeting of innocents; whose so-called soldiers seek martyrdom in death and whose most potent protection is statelessness. The overlap between states that sponsor terror and those that pursue WMD compels us to action.58
In this chapter I will lay out the few missing aspects of the Bush administration’s logic. Prevention and preemption have important roles in any counterterrorism strategy. They serve a number of specific and general purposes in foreign policy
55 Patrick Morgan. Deterrence Now. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, gives a good overview of the different perspectives during the Cold War on pp. 11-17. 56 Such a perspective is fairly common today. And even deterrence theorists who tout its effectiveness note that deterrence did not end the Cold War but may have helped prolong it. 57 George W. Bush. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002. 58 The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (U.S. Department of Defense. Quadrennial Defense Review Report. U.S. Department of Defense, February 2006) takes a perspective less hostile to deterrence. Pentagon planners use deterrence as a justification for a broader range of capabilities and equipment such that deterrence can work on every level of military strategy, but deterrence is still seen as just a minor component, even when dealing with WMDs.
33 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER dealing with intransigent leaders, deluded actors, and criminals. But banishing deterrence, especially in the case of nuclear terrorism, may be premature. So I will now lay out the two complementary aspects of deterrence that come into play deterring nuclear terrorism, examining the arguments for and against such deterrence. In the process I will establish that the basic logic of deterrence—making the cost of harmful action or an attack worse than doing nothing—still holds. I will then look more specifically at four cases where nuclear terrorism is possible and combine these with the logic I have laid out relating to deterrence. Much like the previous chapter, the goal will be to go beyond theoretical arguments and examine the actual situation.
Rational deterrence theory—does it apply to asymmetric situations? The first questionable assumption the National Security Strategy makes is simply assuming that leaders of so-called rogue states are not rational and thus that deterrence just does not apply.59,60 For example, North Korea has taken seemingly irrational actions in the past, including sending commandos over the demilitarized zone and bombing a South Korean airplane. But the country has also refrained from a total attack on South Korea despite the lack of a peace treaty, the avowed goal of unifying the peninsula, and declining military and economic power. In 1979, Robert Jervis made the point that “much less than full rationality is needed for the main lines of [deterrence] theory to be valid.”61 Against any state, especially a small one, the United States can threaten total destruction. And if the nuclear taboo were broken through an act of nuclear terrorism, a nuclear response might be reasonably expected. Thus, Jervis would argue, even a semi- rational leader could be dissuaded by the powerful threat of the United States’ nuclear arsenal.62 The benefit of confronting smaller enemies instead of equals, as the United States noticed with Iraq and Afghanistan, is that the countries have little ability to threaten retaliation. This increases the credibility of a U.S. strike. Whereas during the Cold War
59 Bush told Bob Woodward “I loathe Kim Jong Il…I’ve got a visceral reaction to this guy.” Bob Woodward, Bush at War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002, p. 340, and this is emblematic of his assumption that the North Korean leader cannot be dealt with using reason. 60 This will be my last use of rogue states, an imprecise term that one is required to use if addressing administration arguments. 61 Quoted in Robert F. Trager and Dessislava P. Zagorcheva. “Deterring Terrorism.” International Security, Vol. 30, No. 2, Winter 2005/2006, p. 114. 62 The 2006 QDR makes this point as well, claiming that repositioning forces in Asia kept deterrence working even during the beginning of the Iraq war.
34 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER the best strategy that was developed was Schelling’s famous “threat that left something to chance” (because a direct attack would be suicidal), Iraq had only a tiny hope of evading an attack by threatening retaliation. Thus, the logic of deterrence should have worked. But in Iraq the United States faced a leader who had faulty information and little grip on reality, a leader who thought his best hope was the nonexistent threat of retaliation.63 Therein lies the difficulty. Understanding leaders throughout the world— and all the actors with whom those leaders interact—is not nearly as simple as using mirror-image logic to get a rough sense of what the Kremlin is thinking. And that’s the point that Keith Payne makes in his thorough, if depressing The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction.64 He admits that deterrence is no longer simple and the only course is to look at each case specifically.65 He notes that one cannot take for granted any aspect of deterrence, and that with each possible enemy, all the variables— communication, clear red lines, credibility of retaliation, and the actor’s frame of mind (rationality) and perceptions—must be accounted for. Asymmetry might have made deterrence simpler, and in some cases it has.66 Few small nations threaten direct and obvious U.S. interests with or without nuclear weapons. Credibility against non-nuclear states is guaranteed, and with clear statements it may be projected against small nuclear actors.67 But asymmetry can go two ways, as Ho Chi Minh learned during the Vietnam War when he demonstrated that
63 Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray, “Saddam’s Delusions: The View From the Inside.” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006. The account also demonstrates that the Untied States had trouble understanding Hussein’s mindset. 64 Keith Payne, The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2001. 65 Morgan, Deterrence Now, argues that the concept of deterrence was always simple and it was the implementation that was complicated then (consider extended deterrence) and remains complicated now. 66 For example, a large amount of deterrence literature attempted to use smaller cases where deterrence had succeeded and failed in order to model the Cold War. But in none of these historical cases did both sides possess the kind of overwhelming destructive power that nuclear weapons introduced. See Richard N. Lebow and Janice G. Stein. “Rational Deterrence Theory: I Think, Therefore I Deter.” World Politics, Vol. 41, No.2, 1989, pp. 208–224, for a summary. Today, many of those case studies are more relevant to asymmetries and uncertain power projections in the current geopolitical arena, but the cases also convey the discouraging reality that deterrence works less often than most would like. 67 Clearly North Korea’s threat against Seoul deters an unprovoked U.S. attack. Whether a U.S. retaliatory attack would be deterred is an open question. Morgan, Deterrence Now, argues that U.S. capabilities are strong enough to attack even in the face of nuclear weapons (p. 278), while Lawrence Freedman. Deterrence. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004, argues that nuclear weapons would cause hesitation by the United States (p. 120). Anders Corr. “Deterrence of Nuclear Terror.” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 2005. suggests that a clear advance threat would eliminate the credibility problem (p. 138) and Morgan proposes that collective action or a response under a global aegis would neutralize the threat of retaliation or at least distribute it (p. 199). I will further address this issue in Chapter 4.
35 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER even without nuclear weapons, a small state with sufficient motivation could take on a superpower. While the United States holds asymmetrical power, other states hold asymmetrical interests. One of the three key causes for deterrence failure that Barry Wolf points out is a smaller state being much more invested in an idea or regional conflict.68 And leaders in the real world also have to take into account that “subjective utility will vary enormously depending on actors’ risk propensity and relative emphasis on loss or gain.”69 The challenges to applying classical deterrence theory to asymmetric state threats are daunting. No single strategy can work against all countries, and deterrence cannot be seen as the only option. But deterrence can play a role. North Korea has clearly been deterred in the past, and it and other countries will be in the future—though attention is needed for each of the requirements of deterrence.
Can terrorists be deterred? When discussing nuclear terrorism, two tacks are typically taken. The first dismisses terrorists as undeterrable, a point made by both Sam Nunn and the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Bush administration.70 For these policymakers and scholars the sole usefulness of deterrence involves countries that could aid terrorists. The other argues that terrorists can be deterred but that this deterrence may take unconventional forms. For example, Robert Trager and Dessislava Zagorcheva note that many terrorist groups hold concrete political aims that can be held hostage.71 A system can be established such that if the groups engage in terrorism or cooperate with transnational terrorists such as al Qaeda, their goal of more representation or more economic aid for their region will be irreparably set back. The Trager and Zagorcheva model uses the same steps as classical deterrence. They argue that most terrorist groups are rational and some have goals that can be accommodated within the existing political system. This excludes al Qaeda, since the goal of an extremist Middle East is unacceptable, but
68 Barry Wolf. When the Weak Attack the Strong: Failures of Deterrence. Number N-3261-A in RAND Notes. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1990. The other two deterrence failures he cites are a misperception of abilities—such as that which occurred in the Iraqi regime—and true military vulnerabilities in the stronger state. Schelling also noted asymmetrical motivation in Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960. 69 Lebow and Stein “Rational Deterrence Theory” p. 209 70 Nuclear Threat Initiative. “Last Best Chance.” DVD, 2005. A whole host of other scholars take this view as well. 71 Trager and Zagorcheva, “Deterring Terrorism”
36 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER includes smaller groups in the Philippines that desire more autonomy, for example. They then point out that with U.S. assistance, the Philippine government can make a credible threat, and by targeting cooperation with international terror groups, they can draw a clear red line. Since these smaller rebel groups have tight control over the area where they operate, they can regulate their membership and exclude those who might jeopardize their aims. Finally, by allowing some political gains for the terrorist groups, political leaders allow the status quo to be better than further terrorism. While not perfect, deterrence in these instances can decrease terrorism and make it more local and less deadly. Trager and Zagorcheva also address the other method for dealing with terrorism: denial. Deterrence by denial focuses on the fact that terrorists can be deterred not merely by the cost of defeat but by the high probability of defeat. If suicidal operatives can’t be dissuaded from attacking with the fear of death, the hope is that one can still “sow the seed of doubt in an opponent’s mind by undermining confidence in his capability to achieve the desired outcome.”72 As Jenkins and Davis note, "the empirical record shows that even hardened terrorists dislike operational risks and may be deterred by uncertainty and risk."73 Denial is probably the most effective way to stop rational but suicidal terrorists, but the difficulties are that denial is difficult to measure, it may only delay attacks, and it may only shift attackers to other targets or methods.74 Deterrence by denial has taken up most of the limited thinking on deterring terrorists; it works especially well as a complement to better passive security and interdiction efforts. The scholars focusing on denial, however, often miss the necessity of intermediate actors. This can be understood when the issue is a 9/11-like attack where terrorists don’t need many accomplices. But nuclear terrorism requires intermediaries. It either requires thorough state sponsorship or access to a number of expert scientists who could help construct a bomb. These intermediaries may be deterrable. Some scholars do note that terrorist entities are not monolithic and may
72 Wyn Q. Bowen. “Deterrence and Asymmetry: Non-state Actors and Mass Casualty Terrorism.” Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 54–70, April 2004. p. 58. 73 Paul K. Davis and Brian M. Jenkins. Deterrence and Influence in Counterterrorism: A Component in the War on al Qaeda. RAND Corporation, 2002, xii. Jenkins explained that successful missions are both a sign of divine confidence in their mission and a recruiting boon while failure forces operatives to reckon with the idea that their mission may not be divinely inspired (seminar presentation, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, April 4, 2006). 74 Other targets may be exactly what is desired, and smaller-scale attacks are a preferable alternative to a nuclear attack, so these should not be discounted.
37 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER have deterrable elements, but these scholars focus on societal pressure and moderate elements within terrorist organizations.75 In the realm of nuclear weapons, however, there are even more direct intermediaries who would have a traceable impact on the weapon; these are the actors that need to be deterred.
Where nuclear attribution fits In order to deter an intermediary or a state, the actor must be convinced that the victim will know who attacked. This is where nuclear attribution comes in. Attribution has not been traditionally discussed in relation with deterrence, because the attribution of the correct perpetrator has always seemed obvious; it was the launching country or the invading army. And in more recent scholarship on terrorism, attribution has been brushed over by focusing on deterrence by denial, the idea that terrorists are less likely to attack a certain target if they know they are unlikely to succeed. Other scholars note that there may be a chance that an attack, especially a biological one, could go unattributed and leave the perpetrator safe. Or that a likely candidate could be found but proof might not be sufficient for the international community to sanction retaliation or other diplomatic responses.76 The proof may only be enough, for example, to persuade other countries to issue mild condemnations or sanctions. Most argue, however, that the threat of retaliation is so great that states could be deterred just by the chance of guilty association.77 Another suggests that the United States could overcome the attribution issue merely by making it clear that standards of guilt would be lowered in the event of an attack.78 There are two main gaps in the existing literature. First, no scholar focuses on the variables of chance within attribution. Deterrence is seen as an all-or-nothing strategy, so the scholars miss the idea that a very low probability of attribution might encourage a state to sell nuclear weapons. Second, existing accounts treat states and terrorist groups as unitary actors. This fails to capture the dynamics within a nuclear weapons complex that may allow proliferation to occur even without
75 Doron Almog. “Cumulative Deterrence and the War on Terrorism.” Parameters, 2004, pp. 4–19, notes such influence in the Palestinian territories. 76 Michael Quinlan. “Deterrence and Deterrability,” Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 25, No. 1, April 2004. p. 17 77 Quinlan, “Deterrence,” and Castillo, “Nuclear Terrorism,” p. 429. Castillo also argues that rogue regimes cannot be sure that the weapon will not be used against themselves. Bowen, “Deterrence and Asymmetry,” argues that the invasion of Iraq ensures that there is little worry about credibility. 78 Davis and Jenkins, “Deterrence and Influence in Counterterrorism,” p. xv.
38 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER total state consent. It also ignores the chance for plausible deniability that a leader could offer if a weapon or weapons material was stolen. In this chapter, I begin to address both these gaps by examining four concrete cases that are considered the most pressing nuclear proliferation issues and in which the result might be an unattributed nuclear explosion. I fit these into a simple framework for deterrence taken from traditional discussions of rational deterrence theory. I will apply the framework on deterrence broadly, not focusing just on attribution, because attribution may be redundant in some cases. This framework focuses on conventional deterrence that could dissuade an adversary from attacking. States and terrorists can also be deterred from attacking with some methods of denial, but attribution plays no role in that denial. There are four main requirements for deterrence to succeed: 1) The actors are rational. 2) The actors are in control. 3) The actors view the deterrent threat as credible. 4) The possible belligerent calculates the cost of action as worse than the cost of inaction.79 Deterrence theory requires nothing more than this. As Patrick Morgan notes, the concept is simple. In practice, especially in the case of nuclear terrorism, all four of these topics have almost infinite nuance. But in projecting any possible set of policies, we must at least attempt to explain all four. I will analyze these four criteria with respect to a set of cases chosen to be representative of the different dangers of nuclear terrorism. The situations are chosen not to be exhaustive, but to examine the range of possible threats. Different sets of actors could combine from those I focus on—some scholars may consider certain threats more serious than others. But the four cases I choose are meant as a starting point for further discussion, especially considering that the current discussions of deterrence are often too abstract or too specific. These four cases are: a stolen Russian weapon or weapons material from the former Soviet Union finding its way into the hands of Chechen terrorists; North Korea providing weapons material to a terrorist group for
79 For example, see Morgan, Deterrence Now. The only aspect he does not include is whether the actors are in control, since he assumes a realist model for statecraft.
39 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER eventual detonation in the United States;80 a Pakistani nuclear scientist sympathetic with al Qaeda giving an agent access to nuclear material; and highly enriched uranium being stolen by a millenarian terrorist group from a research reactor in a developing country.81 Each one of these situations follows a realistic premise outlined in any number of research pieces on nuclear terrorism.82 This is not a coincidence. There are a limited number of possible threats, though there are a large number of variations on each threat. By focusing on threats that can be conceived and are the most dangerous, yet using a broad deterrence framework that can encompass, for example, all possible delivery systems, we can hope to avoid the fallacy of the last move while keeping security costs reasonable. Russian nuclear material has not been fully secured in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and although physical security measures and accounting systems are improving, their improvement is not as fast as would be ideal. Chechen terrorists have proven that they have an appetite for radiological terror,83 mass-casualty terrorist attacks, and attacks on nuclear facilities,84 and there have been numerous foiled attempts at selling nuclear material from Russia on the black market.85 The task of securing all weapons material and eliminating all possible threats will never be
80 The scenario would be similar if the weapon were set off somewhere else against U.S. interests, such as the Middle East. 81 The combinations of terrorist groups with states are not meant to be exclusive but are meant merely to provide examples. 82 These are four of the five threatening examples cited in Allison, Nuclear Terrorism, and encompass the three examples cited in Matthew Bunn and Anthony Weir, Securing the Bomb: An Agenda For Action. Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2004. In William C. Potter, Charles D. Ferguson, and Leonard S. Spector. “The Four Faces of Nuclear Terror and the Need for a Prioritized Response.” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004, and Ferguson et al. Four Faces the threatening scenarios are expanded quite a bit to include radiological dispersal devices and attacks on nuclear installations. I ignore these because the former would involve conventional explosion forensics and the latter would involve attribution but not nuclear attribution, since everyone would know where the nuclear material came from. 83 Chechen terrorists committed the only documented act of nuclear terror, placing a dirty bomb of Cesium 137 in a Moscow park and alerting a television station. 84 Terrorists considered sabotaging a nuclear submarine and threatened, especially in the mid- to late 90’s, to use nuclear weapons. See Jeffrey M. Bale. “The Chechen Resistance and Radiological Terrorism.” Nuclear Threat Initiative. April 2004. http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_47a.html for a discussion of why nuclear terror may have been considered and also how little good it did in achieving the goals of the Chechens. He uses this to explain why radiological threats by Chechen rebels have decreased despite constant or increasing terrorism intensity in Russia. 85 Enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb has never emerged on the black market, leading some optimists to lessen the threat of such a sale. The IAEA database contains only 18 incidents of weapons material smuggling and just three that involve kilogram amounts of HEU. However, only one large sale or the accumulation of many smaller purchases would be enough to allow a nuclear terrorist incident. IAEA. The IAEA Illicit Trafficking Database. Technical Report, International Atomic Energy Agency, 2005.
40 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER completed and will remain challenging for all nuclear states, but especially for Russia. 86 Russia has focused on physical security at nuclear facilities, but has not developed as rigorous material accounting controls as exist in the United States. And Russia and other nuclear states—including the United States—will always face the issue that they deal with large amounts of nuclear material and that the amount necessary for a nuclear bomb can be written off as a rounding error in their large accounting systems. Kim Jong Il in North Korea has proven willing to buck international norms by selling drugs and counterfeit currency. In the past, the country has acted in seemingly irrational ways by abducting South Koreans and Japanese citizens and attempting to assassinate world leaders.87 Selling a nuclear weapon or giving it to a terrorist would both flout international norms and be close to irrational, but it just might be possible. North Korea has publicly stated that it would not sell weapons,88 and, even the most optimistic assessments of the value of a nuclear weapon on the black market would not make a dent in North Korean fortunes.89 Still, the country already exports missiles, and, while supplying nuclear weapons to terrorists might not bring enough money to prop up the regime, in some situations it might make strategic sense. A nuclear diversion in Pakistan is perhaps the scenario most likely to come true. Pakistan has a small nuclear arsenal, which is kept fairly secure, with the weapons material stored separately from the other weapons components. But Pakistan is run by a military dictatorship that is unpopular among many elements of society, especially those affiliated with al Qaeda. The nuclear program in Pakistan is well controlled by the central government, but loyalty is not guaranteed along the chain of command. Pakistani nuclear scientists have met with Osama bin Laden to advise him on building a nuclear weapon. If scientists such as these could get enough material for a weapon, they might not hesitate to pass it on to al Qaeda, who claim they would not be hesitant
86 Hecker, “Comprehensive Safeguards System” 87 Such behavior seems to have ended, but neither North Korean negotiating tactics nor internal human rights abuses have inspired trust. 88 Though in a rumored statement by Li Gun in 2003, North Korea threatened to sell weapons or weapons material if demands for negotiations were not meant. Such a position has never been declared publicly, but it does shape U.S. policy. See Victor Cha. “A Nuclear Fission: The North Korea Debate in Washington.” Harvard International Review, Vol. 25, No. 4, Winter 2004. 89 Blackmailing the international community would seem to be a much more effective method for profiting. Selling nuclear material on the black market would risk getting caught. Nonetheless, North Korea continues to sell drugs, counterfeit money, and ballistic missiles, despite international protest. The difference is that nuclear weapons have a less established international market and more potential repercussions.
41 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER to use it.90 Similarly, a general might divert a weapon or two in the immediate aftermath of a coup, and few might know that the weapon was missing. Finally, unsecured research reactors around the world pose a serious threat. Many have small amounts of highly enriched uranium and are running at universities or in government laboratories in states where smuggling and Islamic militancy are issues.91 Uranium from research reactors has ended up on the black market, including one bar of uranium from the Congo which was found in the hands of the Italian mafia. It was 19.9 percent enriched, which is not enough to make a bomb, but there are other research reactors with much more dangerous fuel.92 In examining these four cases, I am consciously excluding a number of theoretical possibilities, either because they are unlikely or because they would not involve nuclear attribution. For example, if Kim Jong Il wanted to use a nuclear weapon to persuade the United States to stay out of North Korea, detonating one in Los Angeles would be an unproductive course of action. The U.S. would not hesitate to take out the North Korean leadership if North Korea claimed the weapon, and if the country had an obvious motive—say, to repel an imminent invasion—attribution could be inferred instead of scientifically determined.93 When we examine nuclear terrorism, we must first determine who the actors actually are. In most cases, there are at least two sets of actors that would be associated with an unattributed nuclear weapon: states and terrorists. In some cases, a state might decide to attack for strategic purposes, but this is unlikely. In other cases a rogue element within the state might choose to give weapons material to a terrorist—a situation in which neither the state nor the terrorists are the actors that the U.S. would be trying to deter. In order to simplify, I further break down my cases and outline how
90 Hamid Mir. “Osama Claims He Has Nukes: If US Uses N-arms It Will Get Same Response.” Dawn, November 10, 2001. http://www.dawn.com/2001/11/10/top1.htm. Possession does not guarantee use, and al Qaeda might hesitate and consider using a weapon for blackmail, but few besides Thomas Schelling (“The Nuclear Taboo” Nuclear Policy Research Institute, October 2005, p. 14) would bet on that outcome. 91 About 100 research reactors in 40 countries use weapons-grade uranium. Ferguson et al., Four Faces. The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to repatriate much of the HEU outside the U.S. and Russia by 2010. “Secret Mission to Remove Highly Enriched Uranium Spent Nuclear Fuel from Uzbekistan Successfully Completed” http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/docs/newsreleases/2006/PR_2006-04-20_NA-06-10.htm. 92 Allison, Nuclear Terrorism, p. 82. Reactors in developed countries also pose a less obvious threat, and armed groups have proven capable of taking control of large (non-nuclear) research facilities in Russia. Nabi Abdullaev. Chechen rebels have the upper hand in russia, International Relations and Security Network, 2004. http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=9150. 93 There might still be some credibility issues that will be similar to those I discuss, but attribution will not play a role.
42 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER the situation differs for each actor, and how some may be deterrable while others are not.
Former Soviet Union: Putin; Russian state Nuclear scientists Chechen terrorists Rational? Yes Yes Probably—they rely on international support but they have proved willing to conduct appalling attacks In control? Probably—may not N/A N/A realize when he is not Face a credible No—a threat would Yes—but only with Unlikely deterrent? be counterproductive attribution that traces the weapon back to the scientist Cost of action worse Securing materials is Yes—with attribution No than inaction? costly, but progress is or the risk of getting being made caught
To prevent a weapon from being stolen in Russia, three different actors must be dealt with. The state, which may or may not be in control, must be given the incentive to maintain high security around all nuclear material. Scientists, who for a period were paid little and underappreciated, must be discouraged from sharing their access or expertise with the highest bidder or someone with whom they agree ideologically.94, 95 And finally, Chechen terrorists must be convinced that nuclear terrorism is the wrong strategy to pursue because it will set back their movement and prevent them from accomplishing their goals. Deterrence isn’t the only method of stopping these actors from putting nuclear weapons in harm’s way. Direct security and a reduction in nuclear stockpiles is by far the most effective way to control proliferation to terrorists. These measures can be applied through direct intervention, technological and financial
94 Accounts disagree somewhat on the current pay and motivation for the Soviet nuclear scientific establishment, though most scholars agree that the situation is much better today than it was a decade ago. Hecker, “Comprehensive Safeguards System” notes that scientists now feel less underappreciated but Bunn and Weir, Securing the Bomb 2005, argue that money may still be a factor, especially if the size of the nuclear complex continues to shrink, even if the shrinking is gradual. 95 Hecker argues that ideology will not be an issue in Russian nuclear complexes (personal communication). However, while al Qaeda militancy might be less of a risk, Aum Shinrikyo, an apocalyptic cult, gathered more than 300 scientists in the advanced nation of Japan and had 35,000 followers in Russia. Sara Daly, John Parachini, and William Rosenau. Aum Shinrikyo, Al Qaeda, and the Kinshasha Reactor: Implications of Three Case Studies for Combating Nuclear Terrorism. RAND Corporation, 2005.
43 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER assistance for the Russian government, and gainful employment for nuclear scientists, for example. All three of these aspects are pillars of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. But can deterrence be applied to the Russian case? Let’s examine the parameters. We know that the Russian leadership is rational and that generally the Kremlin is in control of the nation’s nuclear program. Any lack of control could be remedied with the right amount of high-level attention and monetary effort.96 The uncertainty in the Russian situation relates to the deterrent or coercive threat that the United States and the international community can place on the Russian state as a whole if a weapon detonated somewhere else in the world. A retaliatory attack on Russia is unthinkable, but Russia does value international credibility and international approval. However, it is difficult for international approval to hinge on something like nuclear security when many Russian leaders think they are doing a good job and that the risk of nuclear terrorism is overstated. In the end, the best threat doesn’t even involve the United States. Vladimir Putin merely needs to realize that any nuclear weapon stolen from Russia is just as likely to go off in Moscow as in New York. Finally, is the cost of inaction for Putin worse than the cost of action? In this case, that question has changed, because in Russia we are not examining classic status quo deterrence. Instead, we are attempting to use the logic of deterrence to compel Russia to take more complete security measures. In this case, the cost of action is monetary and political, and the result is a lessened chance of a nuclear attack on a Russian city. Might this logic work? Perhaps, but attribution would have nothing to do with it. For a Russian nuclear scientist, technician, or security guard, the situation is quite different. The Russian nuclear complex is still shrinking, and more than 30,000 scientists face unemployment in the next five years. Fewer than 30 percent of the vulnerable scientists had found permanent jobs or had retired as of 2004.97 These scientists are probably quite reliably rational, but their motivations do not always align with nonproliferation interests. Most scientists are in control of their situation, though their options may be limited. They may face future unemployment with little option of a permanent job, and a few may have access to the black market to sell their access or expertise before they lose it. The goal of deterrence would be to discourage these
96 Bunn and Weir, Securing the Bomb 2005, p. ix. More money is less essential than high-level priority. 97 Bunn and Weir, Securing the Bomb 2005, p. 68. The outlook is definitely improving for the Russian nuclear complex, but there are still gaps in the safety net for workers.
44 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER scientists from selling their expertise on the international market. There are two possible credible threats that could be offered to discourage stealing of knowledge or material: harsh sanctions when material is recovered, and strict penalties (including death) if the goal of their work is successful and a nuclear weapon is detonated. Some of this is already happening; Bunn and Weir argue that one reason nuclear scientists have not sold expertise is the fear that they would be caught by the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB.98 Another possible reason could be patriotism. Could this deterrent threat be greater than the gain that scientists might get for helping a rebel group gain access to a bomb? It could be if two conditions were fulfilled: the scientist’s goal was money or security, not ideology, and the scientist feared that the weapon would be traced back to him or her and not just to the country or region.99 In deterring rational individuals who value their own lives, we are basically considering traditional criminal deterrence, and many of the lessons of criminal deterrence are important to keep in mind.100 First, those committing crimes must understand the nature of their crime; second, they must feel as though they are reasonably likely to get caught. Such danger can be demonstrated in many ways, with high-level prominent prosecutions and low-level detection of petty crimes. The criminals must feel as though they have other options in order to be deterred. Also important, but often neglected, are norms. In the case of Russian nuclear scientists, positive reinforcement and trust may be effective in garnering the patriotism that can discourage thieves and make theft more likely to be reported. Such norms are not foolproof, but they are often neglected in favor of more quantifiable aspects such as fences and guards. Finally, in this case we also have to determine whether deterrence would work against a Chechen terrorist group. For the most part, Chechen terrorists are rational and strategic. Their goal, an independent Chechnya, is clear, and they are clearly motivated to commit large-scale terrorist attacks.101 There are few credible threats that the international community can aim at Chechen terrorists, largely because Russia has
98 Bunn and Weir, Securing the Bomb 2005, p. 27. 99 “Last Best Chance.” In the movie “Last Best Chance,” as well as Sum of All Fears, the intermediaries in the bomb deals all end up dead. After a bomb is procured, a scientist is of no use to the terrorist organization. Scientists may anticipate this as well. 100 Freedman, Deterrence, compares deterrence in international relations to criminal deterrence. 101 The siege in Beslan or the Moscow theater hostage crisis are examples, though they might also fit the Jenkins model of a lot of people watching and not a lot (relatively) of people dead.
45 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER already used massive military force and tried to limit sources of support. The only threats that can be offered are massive retaliation, including destruction of their families and communities, increase in intensity in the conflict, and international condemnation. Massive retaliation might be credible if the weapon could be attributed, but attacking collateral targets, friends and family is likely to be difficult to accomplish due to international opinion.102 The conflict would probably increase in intensity, but Chechen terrorists (and especially foreign mujahidin) have little to lose; they might even think that an increase in intensity would encourage Russia to give up sooner or drive more Chechens into the arms of the revolutionaries.103 Finally, the siege of an elementary school in Beslan demonstrates that the Chechen fear of international opinion does not keep them from committing large terrorist atrocities. The Chechen rebels are supported by an international diaspora of Chechens, and this support (like that of the Tamils in Sri Lanka) has not dried up, despite international condemnation and rebels’ brutal terrorist attacks. Broad and strict condemnation for a nuclear attack, especially if it were projected in advance, might help, but it would provide no guarantees.104
North Korea Kim Organized The case of North Korea is somewhat Jong Il crime Rational? Yes Yes simpler than the Russian case. Since the state In Yes N/A exerts nearly total control on the economic and control? Face a Yes: Yes: loss foreign policy of the country and its nuclear credible regime of profit weapons and material, there is only really one deterrent? change Cost of Yes If it can be actor to worry about deterring. North Korea could action except traced to sell weapons to anyone from an aspiring nuclear worse when them than desperate state to a Chinese organized crime syndicate, but inaction?
102 Robert Jervis, “Dustbin of History.” Foreign Policy. November/December 2001, pp. 41-43, among others, makes this argument. Although morality is widely cited as the disadvantage to broad deterrence conducted by a democracy, few realize that under intense duress some of these societal qualms disappear. For example, see Almog, “Cumulative Deterrence” for an account of the Israeli experience. 103 Bale, “The Chechen Resistance and Radiological Terrorism,” notes two scenarios where he sees Chechen separatists using nuclear weapons. One would be if the Chechen leaders feel there is no other possible way to expel Russian troops—a last ditch effort. The other would be if foreign mujahidin took the action and disregarded the fate of Chechnya. Native Chechens probably do reach a point where they can be deterred, given that the 1944-1957 deportation of the whole population is still seared in the collective memory of the region. 104 All of these points should be taken with the caveat that due to the many factions in Chechnya, “it is difficult if not impossible to generalize about Chechen attitudes toward radiological or nuclear terrorism.” Bale, “The Chechen Resistance.”
46 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER these other actors can be considered to be similar to the other ones we are dealing with in other scenarios. So we’ll look closely at North Korea’s motivations and how exactly the four criteria we have established could deter North Korea from passing on weapons material. North Korea’s rationality is widely debated, but the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, clearly values his own survival.105 He is undoubtedly in control of the state where every aspect of culture is oriented around a personality cult. The only obvious situation to fear is one where Kim Jong Il loses control, most likely through death; such a situation is difficult to analyze, though he is grooming his son for power. The United States already projects a clear deterrent threat with a military strike aimed at the North Korean leadership. Even a nuclear-armed North Korea would have to fear an attack after an explosion in an American, Japanese, or South Korean city.106 U.S. security guarantees from the six-party talks would disappear instantly under provoked action. Kim Jong Il is likely to view this threat as credible so long as the weapon can be traced back to his country. This threat is probably enough to deter North Korea in all but the most extreme cases where the regime feels like it has its back against the wall.107
105 Some hawks view Kim Jong Il as a “malignant narcissist” who is essentially revisionist and hopes to forcefully reunify the peninsula. (Terry C. Stevens, David J. Smith, Chuck Downs, and Robert Dujarric. “Deterring North Korea: U.S. Options.” Contemporary Strategy, Vol. 22, No. 5, 2003. pp. 489–514) This is the minority view. Most scholars see Kim Jong Il as difficult to understand but fundamentally concerned about his own survival. They note that North Korea has not conducted any acts of terrorism since Kim Jong Il rose to power and has not tried to provoke military confrontation. David Kang. “The Avoidable Crisis in North Korea.” Orbis, Summer 2003. p. 6. 106 Many scholars make simple security-based arguments. “For Kim Jong Il to contemplate the use of nuclear weapons, he would have to calculate that the United States would not retaliate in kind. Since this obviously won’t happen, Kim is deterred.” Kang. “The Avoidable Crisis.” p. 6. Also see footnote 67. 107 Castillo, “Deterring Nuclear Terrorism” addresses this topic and claims that this is the most important danger with rogue states. p. 477.
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Pakistan Musharraf Nuclear scientists Al Qaeda Rational? Yes Yes—looking for Yes—aiming for money or ideological specific religious success goals In control? Somewhat N/A N/A Face a credible Yes Not without specific No—only failure can deterrent? attribution deter them Cost of action worse Securing materials is Yes—with attribution If success is unlikely than inaction? costly and facing and good intelligence and failure has costs opposition has political costs The actors in the Pakistani case are similar in the abstract to those in the Russian situation.108 There are three sets of parties involved. First, of course, there is the Pakistani leadership, especially President Pervez Musharraf. He controls the country through military power but faces significant internal opposition and has survived two assassination attempts. Second, we must consider generals disloyal to the current regime or scientists who might offer inside information or nuclear material to al Qaeda. We know that Osama Bin Laden met with Pakistani nuclear scientists and that at least one of these scientists had been fired for advocating sharing nuclear secrets with the rest of the Islamic world. 109 Pakistani nuclear weapons are held with less-than-perfect security, and the forces of al Qaeda are strong in many regions of Pakistan.110 Finally, we must consider al Qaeda, a fanatical but still strategic terrorist group. Like Putin, Musharraf already has a strong incentive to try to control his nuclear weapons. Al Qaeda might use a weapon as easily in Delhi, provoking a nuclear exchange with India, or in another capital in the Middle East, in both cases inviting retaliation that would remove Musharraf as the leader of Pakistan. However, Musharraf also has domestic bureaucratic forces pushing back against any efforts to rein in the nuclear program. He probably knew about, but was unwilling to stop A.Q. Khan because of the power Khan had gained establishing the nuclear program.111 Any U.S. deterrent effort directed at Musharraf would probably be superfluous. Clearly, he is rational, sees an obvious and powerful threat in U.S. ability to remove his
108 Most importantly, the actors are not unitary and control is a key issue. 109 Kamran Khan and Molly Moore, “2 Nuclear Experts Briefed Bin Laden, Pakistanis Say,” Washington Post, December 12, 2001. 110 Bunn and Weir, Securing the Bomb 2004, p. 38. 111 William Langewiesche. “The Point of No Return.” The Atlantic Monthly, January/February 2006.
48 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER regime, and calculates this threat as worse than deliberately helping al Qaeda— otherwise he would not have easily cooperated in the aftermath of Sept. 11. But the deterrence would fail because it becomes coercion rather than deterrence, a much more difficult topic. Musharraf must be persuaded to act more forcefully and exert control he may not have, a difficult challenge when the result of action has immediate costs and inaction has only vague future costs. Rogue elements within Pakistan are probably the most dangerous nuclear threat faced by the international community. We already know of a black supermarket run by A.Q. Khan for nuclear material and we know that there are many al Qaeda sympathizers within the Pakistani establishment. Could deterrence play a role in reducing this threat? Pakistani scientists are rational and might hope to achieve certain ends through nuclear collaboration with al Qaeda. They probably also value their own lives (though perhaps not as much as their objective). In this case, the only effective threat would be finding the scientists after a nuclear explosion and preventing their goals from being realized. For this threat to be credible, the United States would have to make it clear not only that it could trace any weapon to Pakistan, but that it could trace the weapon to the exact time and batch where the material was produced, close enough that the collaborators would be discovered. In this limited case, the cost could be worse than the cost of not collaborating, and deterrence might work—but it would be difficult to achieve. Finally, deterring al Qaeda would be difficult or impossible. While rational and strategic—they aim for theocracies in the Middle East—there are few credible deterrent threats that can be leveled at al Qaeda. Note that in this case we are not discussing deterrence by denial but merely conventional deterrence. And the traditional threat of conventional deterrence, total destruction, has more or less already occurred to the al Qaeda network. The network has transformed itself to the point where further punishment threats are unlikely to be effective. The only deterrent threat that could be added with a nuclear weapon would be broad international and regional condemnation, but even this is unlikely to exceed the current disdain al Qaeda has outside of the Middle East due to the September 11 attacks.
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Research Reactors State Millenarian In the case of research reactors, many leaders terrorists Rational? Yes Yes exist in countries with little nuclear or even In control? Probably; N/A scientific infrastructure. While there are can increase programs to move many from highly enriched Face a Not that No—the uranium to low enriched uranium and to credible they deterrent is deterrent? anticipate their goal remove fuel from ones in insecure facilities, at as serious the current pace it may be difficult to finish by threat 112 Cost of Requires No the avowed goal of 2010. The goals of any action persuasion; deterrent program in this case would be to worse not than standard either encourage the leaders of a country to inaction? deterrence tighten security in nuclear facilities or to stop a terrorist from stealing material from one of the reactors. In one hypothetical scenario, the threat comes from a millenarian terrorist group such as Aum Shinrikyo. The state holding the weapons material is probably rational, and it could probably increase security at its nuclear facilities. All but the most anarchic states can usually accomplish this. But the cost-benefit analysis will not come out favorably unless the threat emerging from not securing the material is made clear. Possible deterrent threats are obvious—regime change and international condemnation—but these will only be salient if the leaders know that they will be held accountable, know that the material will be traced to their reactors, and know that the threat of stolen material is significant. All three are difficult, but not impossible to convey. In the current literature and policy, much of the focus is on the United States and Russia, the original providers of the material. Developing and even developed countries with research reactors are not seen to have any incentive to improve security. And finally, we end with a millenarian terrorist group. Such an organization is the most difficult to deter because its goals are not reached by a nuclear attack; they are a nuclear attack. Aum Shinrikyo, for example, hoped to bring about the end of the world with their nerve gas attacks. They also pursued nuclear research with the goal of bringing about Armageddon. Total destruction, international condemnation, or harm to loved ones will not stop them but will merely help accomplish their goals. Although
112 Bunn and Weir, Securing the Bomb 2004, p. 58
50 CHAPTER 3: DETERRENCE MICHAEL MILLER they are rational, terrorist groups like this prove that there are some actors who are completely undeterrable.
Putting the deterrence together Any final deterrence scheme will incorporate both conventional deterrence and deterrence by denial. As we can see from the situations above, there is no one-size-fits- all solution to deterrence, no matter what some authors suggest when discussing rogue states and non-state actors. So in the next two chapters I will elaborate on the specific scenarios that involve attribution and focus on three aspects: what must be gained through attribution, how important accurate attribution is, and what the adversary currently thinks or is likely to think in the future. I will address these in the next chapter where I focus on both the current projection of attribution capabilities through government statements, selective press leaks, and technical documents, and on attribution more generally as a deterrence mechanism.
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Chapter 4: Attribution as Deterrence
Among the many actors involved in a possible nuclear terrorist incident, only a few can possibly be deterred. But deterring even a few actors may be enough to stop a nuclear attack, and so deterrence clearly should play a role in determining the future of the nuclear attribution program. We now come to the central question posed in this paper, whether and to what extent attribution capabilities can play a role in deterring a future nuclear terrorist incident. We have noted that carrying out a terrorist nuclear attack successfully would require the cooperation of a chain of intermediaries. Let us look at four places where deterrent logic might enter the mind of some of the actors. • Nuclear attribution might keep a rational government (or more specifically, state leader) from making a clandestine deal with terrorists to supply nuclear material in exchange for money or loyalty. • A state might hold its weapons more securely if the leaders knew they would be held responsible for any material that leaked from their nuclear weapons complex. • A rogue actor within a state—a scientist or general—might be deterred from assisting a terrorist organization if he knew that the material could be traced back to him and that he was unlikely to profit from such an enterprise. • Finally, a terrorist group itself might be deterred from pursuing nuclear terrorism if it believed the chances of failure were high enough. The first three of these deterrence scenarios definitely rely on a post-explosion attribution capability and its effectiveness. The fourth, deterrence by denial, requires a fairly effective interdiction capacity and the ability to trace the weapon once it has been interdicted. Such interdiction capability would also be useful in the other cases and stands on its own.
Stopping a clandestine deal For a state to be deterred from making a clandestine deal with terrorists, the leaders of the state would first of all have to be rational and well informed. While the rationality of some leaders is debated, it’s more essential to examine how well informed the leaders of states like North Korea and Iran are. Recent revelations about Saddam
CHAPTER 4: ATTRIBUTION MICHAEL MILLER
Hussein have demonstrated the extent to which he lived inside a bubble,113 and in a case like this deterrence only works as well as communication works. According to Robert Jervis, “in almost no interactions do two adversaries understand each other’s goals, fears, means–ends beliefs, and perceptions.”114 Schneider gives another example in that Mullah Omar in Afghanistan was not effectively persuaded because he was ill informed about the capabilities of the United States in Afghanistan.115 But in many foreign policy situations, even those leaders who seem crazy are actually well informed. After all, if they are contemplating a deal with nuclear weapons, which could threaten their very own survival, they have the highest motivation to be informed. But, for a state to believe that it will be pinned to a nuclear explosion, leaders must believe that U.S. attribution capabilities are good enough. Are attribution capabilities good enough to pinpoint a nuclear explosion to a country within a reasonable period of time? Probably. The only two dissenting sources in the public domain are a 2002 report by the National Academy of Sciences116 (which has been widely cited in other work117) and a 2003 article by Jay Davis,118 which lacks specifics but argues that post-explosion attribution is still being developed. More recent coverage of attribution capabilities has been markedly more optimistic about capabilities, to the point where the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is leaking information about how successful the program currently is.119 The program currently has an $18 million budget (about seven percent of the nuclear detection budget) and has been transferred from the Defense Department to the Department of Homeland Security, perhaps moving it from an experimental program to one that is expected to be operational.120 The technologies for attribution are well developed away from nuclear forensics, and most conclusions
113 Woods et al., “Saddam’s Delusions.” 114 Robert Jervis, “Rational Deterrence: Theory and Evidence.” World Politics. Vol. 41, No. 2, January 1989, pp. 183-207. Quoted in Bowen, “Deterrence and Asymmetry,” p. 64. 115 Barry Schneider. Know Thy Enemy: Profiles of Adversary Leaders and Their Strategic Cultures, chapter Deterring International Rivals From War and Escalation, pp. 1–15. USAF Counterproliferation Center, 2003, pp. 5-6. 116 “The technology for developing this capability exists but needs to be assembled, an effort that is expected to take several years.” Committee for International Security, Making the Nation Safer, p. 60. 117 Note especially Levi, “Deterring Nuclear Terrorism” 118 Jay Davis, “The Attribution of WMD Events” 119 Broad, “New Team.” The program has achieved “initial integrated operational attribution capability for accurate and rapid attribution” according to one report in the article. 120 Joe Fiorill. “U.S. Homeland Security Department Seeks Big Jump in Radiation-Detection Budget for Fiscal 2007.” Global Security Newswire, February 9, 2006. http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2006_2_9.html. The program builds off nuclear forensics efforts, which are often funded separately, especially for research and development.
54 CHAPTER 4: ATTRIBUTION MICHAEL MILLER could be verified in a few specially equipped labs around the world.121 And even if post-explosion attribution proved difficult for some reason, there is a non-negligible chance that the materials would be caught en-route and then could probably be traced to their source. Traditional nuclear forensics does not present a guarantee of attribution, but an unexploded weapon would have a variety of non-nuclear forensic clues in addition to well-studied nuclear material. So any leader hoping to escape attribution would have to bet on a small chance, assuming he knew what current technology existed. More important than technology, which can be demonstrated to be feasible, is the perception of that technological capability. A leader may be totally rational but may jump to the logical conclusion that after an explosion the weapon will be hard to trace or that he can claim that the material was stolen and not sold. Thus, rather than worry that the technology will not be successful, the U.S. should fear that this technology has not been demonstrated well enough. There has been extremely little press coverage on nuclear attribution. The previously cited Broad article in 2006 and one that he wrote in 2004122 are the only articles written on attribution in the United States in the last ten years, even though one post-9/11 movie, Sum of All Fears, dealt with the topic in detail. The 2006 article was picked up by a number of international news sources and a similar story ran in The Guardian,123 but that attention quickly dissipated. In comparison to the effort that the United States has made in persuading countries to renounce nuclear ambitions and even the effort to selectively publicize information about North Korean actions, nuclear attribution has lived in secrecy. Neither the articles nor the few technical pieces that have been written point out technological specifics of post- explosion attribution. While this may have been intentional, to make the attribution more difficult to spoof, it can also give the impression that the technology is less-than- perfect. And while the technology probably has some flaws, it is much more well developed than ballistic missile defense, a technology that has been widely publicized, complete with enough technical details for some countermeasures. At the same time, a country that is truly committed to smuggling a weapon clandestinely into the United States and using a terrorist group as the intermediary
121 The analysis of the isotopic ratios has been peer-reviewed, and the simulation of nuclear reactors is a standard process with a variety of software available. 122 Broad, “Addressing the Unthinkable.” 123 Julian Borger. “Pentagon Sets Up Robot Unit to Identify Source of Nuclear Attacks.” The Guardian, February 3, 2006.
55 CHAPTER 4: ATTRIBUTION MICHAEL MILLER would do its best to cover its tracks. It might attempt to use material from an unsafeguarded reactor where no international samples had ever been taken, or it might use material taken or bought from a former ally. It might try to imperfectly refine plutonium multiple times so that the signature from any one refining process would be difficult to discern. Since technological details are not present in any current account of attribution, some scientists might think they can get away with this type of subterfuge.124 Finally, due to the secrecy in the current system, successes can come across as failures. The most prominent example of this is of material found in Libya that was traced back to North Korea using two different methods. Redundancy is normally useful, but in this case the New York Times and Washington Post reported methods of nuclear forensics that seemed to contradict each other. One said the U.S. had drawn conclusions from uranium hexafluoride; the other cited plutonium particles that were found on the equipment.125 In the end, the numerous conclusions and unconvincing explanations combined with doubts about intelligence in Iraq to undermine the effort of the U.S. government to convincingly trace the weapons back to North Korea. Public confusion about the technology made it seem more dubious whether the U.S. has mastered standard nuclear forensics.
124 Selective reprocessing would be extremely difficult, but using an unknown reactor or enrichment plant might be feasible. In fact, much of the difficulty in tracing uranium hexafluoride back to North Korea stems from the fact that North Korea has no known enrichment facilities. 125 Glenn Kessler and Dafna Linzer. “Nuclear Evidence Could Point to Pakistan.” Washington Post, February 3, 2005 summarizes both findings and notes that the IAEA had not yet drawn conclusions. Glenn Kessler. “North Korea May Have Sent Libya Nuclear Material, U.S. Tells Allies.” Washington Post, February 2, 2005, noted the plutonium sample, which the IAEA originally said it did not have and David E. Sanger and William J. Broad. “Tests Said to Tie Deal on Uranium to North Korea.” New York Times, February 2, 2005, noted the ratios of uranium-234 in the hexafluoride sample. Comparing uranium-234 signatures is quite difficult, especially without a sample of uranium from the existing mine. Some scientists consider such sourcing impossible. This method, which was originally said in the Sanger and Broad article to be “90 percent certain” was discounted in later reports about North Korean involvement. I was first alerted to this discrepancy by Cheryl Rofer. “Whirledview: North Korea Sold Uranium Hexafluoride to Libya? The Evidence,” February 2, 2005. http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2005/02/north_korea_sol.html. David E. Sanger and William J. Broad. “Using Clues From Libya to Study a Nuclear Mystery.” New York Times, March 30, 2005, points out that a more complete picture emerged when additional evidence including financial records came to light. However, even in later March, after a year of investigation, many experts and China doubted the official U.S. conclusion about the source of the Libyan hexafluoride. The United States has not been able to point to a source for uranium hexafluoride in North Korea, and it took the United States until late March, months after preliminary conclusions, to publicly finger North Korea in addition to Pakistan for involvement with the Libyan program. Even then, North Korea protested because the evidence pointed that the transaction had taken place between Libya and Pakistan using North Korean components, without North Korea’s direct involvement (Dafna Linzer. “U.S. Misled Allies About Nuclear Export.” Washington Post, March 20, 2005).
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Under current conditions, a well-informed leader of another state would have a hard time thinking he could get away with selling a weapon or nuclear materials to terrorists with the intention of the materials being used directly in a weapon. However, it is reasonable for him to expect that he can get away with selling nuclear precursors, as North Korea and Pakistan did to Libya through Sudan, so long as he is willing to live as an international pariah. In addition, if the leader has only a cursory understanding of current technical capabilities, he could reasonably think that he could get away with a nuclear transfer because such a transfer would be hard to trace.126
Credibility of retribution For a leader to be deterred from making a clandestine deal, he must not only be fairly sure that the deal can be traced back to him, but also face a credible threat from the United States or the international community that such a deal will cause negative consequences. Three things could happen if nuclear material were transferred to a terrorist organization. First, the material could be intercepted before it was put together in a bomb. Second, the material could be intercepted after it was assembled into a bomb but before it went off. And third, of course, the bomb could be successfully set off at a target. A rational leader would need to think that the bomb would be unlikely to be traced in any of these scenarios. But these situations are not equally likely, so the probability of interception at each stage must be taken into account. We could easily write an equation for the deterrent calculation,127 but it’s unlikely that even rational leaders calculate all their risks this completely, and it’s unlikely that they could conduct a complete analysis. Instead, I will examine each scenario, the chance of the material being intercepted, and the current projected consequences of being caught at any one of these stages. All three of these scenarios are difficult to project because none has specifically occurred. But these scenarios must be considered because a risk-taking leader might make a nuclear deal, inclined to take a chance given the absence of previous failures.
126 This discussion does not include private assurances and technological exchanges, which play a prominent role in discussions with China and informally with North Korea. 127 P=Probability and C=Consequences. If P(material interception)*P(material attribution)*C(material interception)+P(weapon interception)*P(weapon attribution)*C(weapon interception)+P(detonation)*P(post- explosion attribution)*C(post-explosion attribution) > C(current status quo political situation with no action), deterrence will be successful.
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If nuclear material were sold to a terrorist group, it would probably take months of hard work, including some explosives tests, to be assembled into a functional weapon. If the material was 50 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, the design would be a simple gun-type bomb, and less expert assistance would probably be needed. If less highly enriched uranium was available, an implosion device could be manufactured with special triggers and precision timing for the detonators. A bomb design (such as those available on the black market) and a number of experienced designers would be required. If the material was plutonium, more advice would be necessary, more care would have to be taken with the material, and more advanced engineering would be required, but the above bomb designs should be effective if modified correctly.128 The pursuit of such expertise would be one area where the deal might be detected. The deal might also be detected at border crossings or through other intelligence methods. But, if nuclear material were intercepted before it was put into a bomb, a leader might be able to claim ignorance of the deal, or the state could report theft. At the same time, before a bomb is assembled, the issue might be treated as a criminal matter and not one of dire international security. It might be dealt with harshly, and perhaps such punishment would not be public, but no one can know at this time. The only partial precedents for these issues are Pakistan after the A.Q. Khan revelations and the 18 documented incidents of trafficking in weapons-grade material.129 The former set a poor precedent because the material trafficked was not completely illegal (much was questionable or only illegally exported, not illegally imported) and it dealt only in nuclear equipment for sovereign states. The consequences for everyone involved were minimal. Beyond a few low-level agents,130 there were few punishments. A.Q. Khan was forced to confess on television in English and is held to house arrest, and Pakistan has not suffered much from allowing Khan to trade nuclear secrets for a decade. At the same time, there has been no comprehensive study of the punishment meted out to the lower-level perpetrators of weapons-grade material smuggling, but a
128 The technology behind a plutonium or uranium implosion device would require a wide variety of skills and a variety of special technology. It would require, among other things, the special ability to machine the plutonium into the right shape while avoiding accidents, high-speed fusing and firing circuitry, and a neutron generator to start the reaction. Falkenrath et al., America’s Achilles Heel, pp. 131-137. 129 Lyudmila Zaitseva and Friedrich Steinhausler. “Illicit Trafficking of Weapons-usable Nuclear Material: Facts and Uncertainties.” Physics and Society, Vol. 33, No. 1, January 2004, contains a useful summary of all incidents until 2002. 130 Farah Stockman and Victoria Burnett. “From Salem to Pakistan, an atomic smuggler’s plot.” Boston Globe, March 14, 2004.
58 CHAPTER 4: ATTRIBUTION MICHAEL MILLER few reports suggest that punishment has varied.131 In one case, a man in Bulgaria was let off with a fine of a few thousand dollars after nuclear workers told the judge that his grams of HEU would only fetch that much on the legal market.132 Of course, in most of these 18 cases, the smugglers had much too little material to build a bomb, so these are also an imperfect measure. But taken together, the private and state cases of smuggling have been punished relatively little. There is little precedent for harsh punishment for possession of nuclear material, so whether it is true or not, a state leader might think that early interception is a reasonable risk to run. Once a terrorist group has constructed the bomb, the situation becomes totally unprecedented. The chance of interception on technical means alone is small—and probably much less if the weapon is well shielded133—and there is no reliable gauge as to how a country would react if a weapon were intercepted en route. The weapon could likely be traced, though if the material was chosen perfectly (from stolen stockpiles or research reactor fuel) it might be difficult to pinpoint a source with certainty.134 Before an explosion, attribution technology is at least well tested and internationally verified such that no state leader could expect a weapon intercepted at this stage to go unattributed. But even if the weapon were attributed, the question that would remain for a state leader would be whether the United States or a coalition of states would retaliate given that the weapon had not been used. The issue becomes a classic test of credibility, but one that has not been well anticipated. Quinlan notes both sides of this issue concisely: A state implicated in the offence might be tempted to gamble on that, and perhaps also on the possibility that international signatories would not hold solidly to their commitment, or might find it difficult in identifying and agreeing upon effective action to
131 Emily S. Ewell, “NIS Nuclear Smuggling Since 1995: A Lull in Significant Cases?” Nonproliferation Review. Spring-Summer 1998, contains a summary of sentences for different cases before 1998. “Information on Nuclear Smuggling Incidents” http://www.atomicarchive.com/Almanac/Smuggling_details.shtml also discusses different punishments. Sentences averaged a few years for such smuggling. 132 Gretchen Vogel. “Crime and (Puny) Punishment.” Science, Vol. 298, No. 5595, November 1, 2002, pp. 952– 953. 133 As of February 2006, 77 percent of private vehicles and 62 percent of containers entering through legal ports of entry are screened with radiation detectors. However, highly enriched uranium is not very radioactive and can be easily shielded. Government Accountability Office. “Challenges Facing U.S. Efforts to Deploy Radiation Detection Equipment in Other Countries and in the United States.” Report GAO-06-558T. March 28, 2006. Such shielding is detectable, but current monitors are unlikely to detect it. Stephen Flynn and Lawrence Wein, “Think inside the box.” New York Times, Nov. 29, 2005. 134 Vogel, “Crime” notes one situation and some of the round-robin tests by the IAEA have resulted in less- than-perfect agreement between parties. Dudder et al., “Round Robin Tests.”
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fulfil it. Once more, however, the converse is true: the wrongdoer would have to reckon, in advance, with the risk that involvement would be detected and that the declared consequences would indeed flow from that.135 Beyond a certain threshold, the United States has reacted to cases of international terrorism by holding the state sponsor responsible, most notably in the cases of Libya and Iran.136 Most major U.S. allies have signed the International Convention for the Prevention of Nuclear Terrorism, which at least sets out the illegality of nuclear materials possession by individuals, and all states are required to abide by Security Council Resolution 1540 which also criminalizes such trading.137 While the treaty specifically excludes state actions, it does allow more justification under international law for a U.S. response to a foiled terrorist attack.138 Thus, if the credibility of a provoked U.S. attack on a smaller nuclear power can be established in general, it can be established in the case of an intercepted weapon. Finally we get to the question of what would happen after an explosion, and specifically whether a weapon could be traced after an explosion. As I noted in Chapter 2, the U.S. capability for such attribution is unknown (or classified), but it is fairly sophisticated. However, given how little information is in the public domain, it would not be unreasonable for a state leader to think he could get away with an attack at this stage. If the weapon were traced, a leader would also have a hard, but not impossible, challenge of convincing himself that the United States still would not attack. After an explosion there would, of course, be much more of a clamor for retribution—as evidenced in fiction by Sum of All Fears and in reality in Bush at War.139 But the analysis of the material would probably take at least a week, especially because all complementary forensics such as fingerprints, dust particles, and hair samples would be missing, and such analysis might require special inspections of a number of nuclear weapons complexes. These delays mean that a decision for action would not occur immediately, and the leader might have time for two things. First, the guilty state could argue against an attack within the international community, especially if the evidence is
135 Quinlan, “Deterrence and Deterrability” p. 17 136 In return, terrorist groups have tried to cover their tracks. Hoffman, “Credit”. But some scholars have also noted a decrease in state sponsorship of terrorism (Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin. “The Next Debate: Al Qaeda Link.” New York Times, July 20 2003.) 137 “International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism,” 2005. 138 As Barry Kellman. “WMD Proliferation: An International Crime?” Nonproliferation Review, pages 93–101, Summer 2001, notes, “the implications for law enforcement are … far murkier.” p. 95. 139 Woodward, Bush at War, and Clancy, Sum of All Fears.
60 CHAPTER 4: ATTRIBUTION MICHAEL MILLER less than perfect. Iraq war intelligence failures and the imperfect attribution in Libya hurt the United States in this case.140 Second, the guilty state could beef up or demonstrate its own deterrent. If a country can farm out weapons to terrorists, it must have a few weapons in reserve. If these can be threatened as retaliation, a leader might think he is immune to regime change.141 While U.S. credibility has been damaged by intelligence failures, it has also been bolstered somewhat by the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan (though subsequently hurt by the resulting chaos). Credibility could further be increased if statements were made in advance that the U.S. would not hesitate to attack any state that perpetrated nuclear terrorism and that standards of evidence would be lowered in the event of a nuclear attack.142 Putting these three different outcomes together, would a rational, sufficiently motivated leader give weapons material to terrorists to attack the United States? Such an outcome is possible. A leader might bet that before a bomb was assembled the punishment meted out would be light and the issue would be treated as a criminal matter in which the laws of the state where the terrorists were caught would take precedence.143 The leader might bet that, once assembled, the weapon would not be intercepted, especially if it was smuggled along the same route as drugs or with a forged document attesting to its legality.144 Finally, the state might hope that either the post-explosion attribution would be difficult (the Libyan investigation took more than a year) or that a nuclear deterrent would prevent a retaliatory attack by the victimized country. None of these conclusions are highly probable, and, if only minimal degree of deterrence is required, it has already been achieved. Capabilities for interdiction, attribution, and punishment have been demonstrated. But in proposing deterrence as a solution, we must remember how often deterrence has failed, and in this situation, the process and consequences are not as clear-cut as they were between the Soviet Union
140 Lewis A. Dunn. “Can al Qaeda Be Deterred From Using Nuclear Weapons?” Occasional paper, National Defense University: Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction, 2005. 141 This last point is debated by scholars. While Levi, “Deterring Nuclear Terrorism” argues that attribution will make such an attack simple, no matter what the situation, and Morgan, Deterrence Now (p. 278), says that weapons of mass destruction will not stop a retaliatory threat that is sufficiently credible, Freedman, Deterrence (p. 120), and Schneider, Know Thy Enemy (p. 4), point out that such a scenario has never occurred before and by the logic of a state like North Korea, nuclear weapons are a powerful deterrent when attribution can possibly be disputed. This was supposedly one reason why Saddam Hussein refused to completely forswear his weapons of mass destruction. 142 “It must be clear that the United States will lower standards of evidence in ascribing guilt and may violate sovereignty,” Davis and Jenkins, Deterrence and Influence, p. xv. 143 This is the rule for the 2005 International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism,. 144 GAO, “Combating Nuclear Smuggling”
61 CHAPTER 4: ATTRIBUTION MICHAEL MILLER and the United States during the Cold War. If a rational leader had a reason to offer weapons material to terrorists, he could probably justify such an action. The last two points of logic, the unknown attribution capability and the uncertainty of retaliation in the face of a nuclear deterrent, are the two aspects of the calculus that are most easily transformed. I will address these further in the next chapter when I explore policy prescriptions.
Improving weapons security—a negligence doctrine? Many of the issues that are encountered dealing with improved security are similar to those met preventing a rogue state deliberately selling a weapon to terrorists. To encourage a country to tighten security, the leaders must know that they will be caught and that they will be held accountable. There must be a credible deterrent threat, and it must be strong enough (this time dependent on both the chance of a weapon being stolen and the chance of positive attribution) to outweigh the political or financial costs of boosting security. The issues are similar, but the specifics are vastly different. While a large and powerful member of the international community such as Russia or even Pakistan would never sell nuclear weapons to terrorists, such a country might let material slip out. In fact, every large nuclear theft has occurred in the former Soviet Union. The standard answer to the threat of loose nuclear material is to secure it more thoroughly, first by spending more money and then by making a larger political commitment to nuclear security. This is the idea behind the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and further expansions of the program are pushed for by Bunn and Weir, Allison, and Ferguson et al.145 These authors argue that the main piece of the puzzle for nuclear terrorism that can be affected is the supply of nuclear material, and, while the supplies are vast, they are finite and can be secured. Sig Hecker adds to this argument, noting that while securing the material is more difficult than most imagine, it is still both necessary and possible.146 Anders Corr makes the counterargument in his article on the need for a negligence doctrine.147 He points out that the increasing security budget is a huge target for corruption, and that when all the material in Russia is secured this
145 Bunn and Weir, Securing the Bomb 2005, Allison, Nuclear Terrorism, and Ferguson et al., Four Faces 146 Hecker, “Comprehensive Safeguards System” 147 Corr, “Deterrence of Nuclear Terror.” Gallucci, “Averting Nuclear Catastrophe” makes a very similar point about negligence.
62 CHAPTER 4: ATTRIBUTION MICHAEL MILLER foreign aid will decrease dramatically. By looking at the situation from the perspective of individual actors instead of states, Corr notices that there is very little incentive within the system to actually secure material. He goes on to advocate a harsh form of deterrence where those who permit nuclear theft, especially the leaders of the state, would be held completely accountable. Since Russia’s forces have deteriorated, he says, a nuclear strike against Russia could be contemplated if nuclear material was stolen and detonated inside the United States. In reality, a debilitating strike, probably not nuclear, could be threatened against Pakistan or North Korea, but not Russia. Although his argument is too extreme, Corr gets the main points right. A negligence doctrine dealing with nuclear weapons material is necessary for deterrence. If such a policy is never articulated in advance, a negligent state can very reasonably think that it will pay only a small price for 50 kg of lost HEU. Corr’s other point is also essential. If only a state is held accountable, individuals at various stages—nuclear power plants, weapons labs, border crossings—have less individual incentive to stop theft. They do have patriotism and collective norms, and these should not be underestimated, but deterrent logic could assist in this situation. If a weapon can be traced back to an individual plant and if its route can be determined—probably with the assistance of a large investigation beyond the nuclear forensics—the individuals in the path of the weapon can be punished severely. Such punishment at this point is mostly theoretical (since there have been no cases of nuclear terrorism), but steps could be taken to make this more concrete. The individual level is actually easier to deal with than the state level in terms of a negligence doctrine. This is why Robert Gallucci, a seasoned diplomat, argues that nuclear options must be considered to persuade Russia to step up security. The only other options that seem viable are yet more political exhortation and international sanctions, both of which are imperfect weapons. The advantage to a negligence doctrine is that it can have a well-defined red line, one that the state would not want to cross, whereas in the current situation Russia is told to improve security but not given specific enforceable targets. I will address a more complete formulation of a moderated negligence doctrine in the next chapter—one that can deal with both states and individuals.
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Deterring terrorists from using nuclear weapons with attribution For small states that might attack the United States knowingly, deterrence will probably work. Although there are areas that need improvement, and a leader could justify an attack under certain logic, the risk to the leader would be very high. In contrast, terrorists are difficult or impossible to deter. As described in the previous chapter, there are four main lines of thinking regarding terrorist deterrence. • Terrorists, especially suicidal terrorists, are impossible to deter because they have nothing they hold dear that can be threatened. • Certain terrorists groups can be deterred by holding their ultimate political goals hostage in such a way that violence or cooperation with other groups will threaten these aims. • Most terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda, can be deterred from certain acts by making the acts have a high chance of failure. As Brian Jenkins noted, if success is a sign of divine intervention then failure must be a sign that God is not on the side of the terrorists. Therefore failure must be avoided, even if the attacks become less spectacular. • Retribution on the hometown, family members, and relatives can decrease support for terrorism, especially over time. This is the Israeli model and it is by far the most controversial. Most treatments of terrorist deterrence ignore this one completely (often out of “respect” for the morals of democracy). There is a fifth situation, not frequently a focus of the literature on deterring terrorists, where peripheral actors who can help terrorists are deterred. Paul Davis and Brian Jenkins address this topic briefly, especially noting that one might attempt to catch the financiers of terrorism and deter them, and Doron Almog sees this as a subset of community punishment that can deter the roots of terrorism. Deterrence of third parties is not frequently addressed because most suicide terrorism requires few third parties. Even the 9/11 plot only needed $500,000, a sum that can be easily laundered. But nuclear terrorism is different. In order to pair buyers and sellers, a number of intermediaries would be required. This is what has helped catch nuclear smugglers in the past fifteen years. More importantly, a purchased nuclear weapon would require a large amount of money, and assembling a nuclear weapon would require at least some expertise, ideally from a nuclear expert.148 These collaborators are the easiest to deter.
148 Schaper, “Nuclear Terrorism”
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Of the five possible scenarios, only two, retribution against those close to the terrorists and punishment of the intermediate actors, can be assisted by nuclear attribution, so let’s analyze those situations. To deter a nuclear terrorist with retribution, the threat would have to be announced in advance. While al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations know that terrorist acts will prompt retaliation against their group, at least after 9/11, there have been no cases of attack or punishment on the families of the perpetrators. In addition, attribution would have to be much better established (or the group would have to claim credit) if terrorists are to expect the weapon to be traced back to the person or people who set it off. Existing attribution capabilities are designed to trace the weapon to the country and reactor of origin; they tell nothing about who was in possession of the weapon at the time of the explosion. Other information such as the nature of the container where the explosion occurred might be available, but this would have to be paired with other information derived from human or signals intelligence to pinpoint a specific terrorist. And if the response from countries where these terrorists had resided was slow or unenthusiastic, the investigation would take long enough that broad retaliation would be perceived as killing or punishing innocent victims. Israel has this problem even for fast and well- justified retaliatory attacks—targeted assassinations and demolishing houses. Most importantly, however, the Israeli model of retaliation is described as “cumulative deterrence” for a reason.149 Individual attacks are only discouraged because influential people within the community know the consequences of each attack. Any act of nuclear terror would most likely be a singular event. Finally, Israeli deterrence has not yet proved its success over the long term, and any strategy to deter nuclear terrorism would hope for a better success rate than Israel has maintained. Deterring peripheral actors is much more plausible, but only with credible attribution and stringent standards of punishment. Widely publicizing fictional accounts such as Sum of All Fears or Last Best Chance might be effective as well, because all the collaborators in these movies get their throats slit by the terrorists. Credible attribution has the same standards discussed above, but even more capability in human intelligence would be required. Some of this may already exist in Russia through the FSB, which has foiled numerous smuggling attempts and may serve as a formidable
149 Almog, “Cumulative Deterrence”
65 CHAPTER 4: ATTRIBUTION MICHAEL MILLER threat for any potential nuclear collaborator.150 Since the U.S. capability for human intelligence has been admitted to be lacking, and since it is hard to penetrate terrorist cells, this capability or at least its appearance, must be improved to present a credible deterrent.151 In addition, those who might be deterrable must be convinced that they will be caught and punished, not merely fined and let off, as has happened in both the former Soviet Union and Pakistan in a few instances. In this case, especially when discussing nuclear scientists, technical details of how attribution would be carried out might be quite useful. Countries and individuals have a tendency to generalize from their own experience, so if a nation has trouble tracing nuclear material itself or success in concealing things from the IAEA, they may anticipate further success—something a complete explanation of the attribution process might discourage. Finally, even the most difficult terrorists or collaborators could probably be deterred if they knew their goals would not be accomplished. But for this to occur, their exact goals would have to be determined. For example, if Pakistani scientists hoped to help al Qaeda and depose Musharraf, a retaliatory attack on the Pakistani leadership would not be a deterrent; it would merely fulfill the wishes of the terrorists. If the clamor to retaliate could be contained and the actual motives of the perpetrators could be deciphered, deterrence might be possibility. But the difficulty of having the requisite human intelligence to discern true motives, telling all possible perpetrators that the United States has that intelligence, and proving that such a course of action is politically feasible together make this strategy purely hypothetical. Attribution is not the most effective part of terrorism deterrence. As noted above, human intelligence and those in direct contact with possible terrorist collaborators have much more influence. Well-publicized interdiction at borders or within countries, due to technical means or intercepted messages, may deter terrorists from making a risky investment in the novel technology of nuclear weapons. But in the current situation, where interdiction is spotty or nonexistent and human intelligence resources are weak, attribution for post-explosion retaliation against collaborators is a useful deterrent. It can’t always be counted on to work; the collaborators may be ideologically aligned with the terrorists, be under duress, or have little to lose by collaborating. But deterrence is one effective strategy. The other effective strategy,
150 Bunn and Wier, Securing the Bomb 2004 notes this. 151 Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command. New York: Harper Collins. p. 76, and 9/11 Commission Report. New York: Norton, 2004. p. 263.
66 CHAPTER 4: ATTRIBUTION MICHAEL MILLER downplayed by those who think strategically and who view the world in terms of states, is a norms-based set of tactics. Most who examine the issue of nuclear terrorism with respect to al Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo note that Russian nuclear scientists who have been approached were either too loyal to Russia or too frightened of a possible sting operation.152 Distinguishing the two is impossible, but both should be encouraged simultaneously, following Freedman’s perspective that norms-based deterrence is more effective than that related directly to punishment.153 Deterrence may be effective now, but it can be strengthened with a few relatively simple projects.
152 Daly et al., Three Case Studies 153 Freedman, Deterrence
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Chapter 5: Conclusion and policy recommendation
Since post-explosion nuclear attribution can only assist deterrence on the margins, what concrete steps can be taken to decrease the danger of nuclear terrorism? Once more, let’s look at the situation. We know that for the most part the technology behind nuclear attribution is established scientifically, but has not been thoroughly tested, especially (and obviously) not in a real attack-or-not situation. It has also been established that nuclear attribution would take a reasonable period of time, and though some determination could be made in the first 24 hours, we will not get a Sum of All Fears or 9/11-like nearly instantaneous determination. Even more importantly, a determination may require supplemental inspections of nuclear facilities, which will be intrusive and may be contentious. There has been little specific discussion of attribution in the popular literature and as little in scholarly discussions, and nuclear attribution is relatively undefined on the international stage. No international nuclear forensics work explores post-event analyses. While a whole industry built up around some policy debates, like missile defense, and although there is significant research relating to nuclear smuggling and nuclear proliferation in general, little discussion is made of the key technical aspects of nuclear forensics and nuclear attribution. In order to improve deterrence versus various actors who might contribute to nuclear terrorism, existing nuclear attribution could be strengthened in a number of ways. A comprehensive international database of nuclear material fingerprints could be created that would supplement or supplant ones run by the United States and the IAEA. This idea has been championed by some scholars, but it brings up huge challenges relating to sovereignty and secrecy. An even more ambitious program could be created to make the nuclear materials more easily identifiable by tagging them with distinctive markers of uranium-233 and plutonium-244. Such a program is unlikely to succeed, but is a worthwhile long-term goal. More simply, the United States could take either of two strategies unilaterally. First, it could attempt to alter the supply landscape for nuclear proliferation by explicitly threatening a nuclear attack if any nation allowed its weapons-grade nuclear material to be stolen or smuggled. Alternatively, the United States could leave the threats implicit—for there are numerous implicit threats that any nation or terrorist group contemplating attacking the U.S. must notice—and it could make more of its nuclear attribution capabilities public. Releasing technical documents
CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER on nuclear attribution would give other states more information about how to fool the U.S. system, but would also, and more importantly, demonstrate how difficult such deception is, even after a successful nuclear explosion. Such a declaration of capabilities would also serve as a deterrent toward mid-level players in the nuclear terrorism arena who might think twice before cooperating with terrorists if they felt they might be pinned to the attack. Finally, a fifth option is for either of the U.S. actions to be taken more multilaterally, either through the United Nations and IAEA or through a coalition of nuclear and non-nuclear states. Each of these possible courses of action must be compared with the status quo, so the first step is to define the status quo with respect to nuclear attribution and deterrence. As we examined in Chapter 3, communication and credibility are important to any deterrent effort. With regards to states perpetrating an act of nuclear terrorism, the credibility of a retaliatory strike by the U.S. is unlikely to be doubted, even if the state possessed a nuclear deterrent. The only time credibility may be questioned is if the state in question is uncertain whether the U.S. will be able to trace a weapon—probably due to a lack of communication of this ability. Currently, such uncertainty might occur. A 2006 New York Times article was confident of U.S. capabilities,154 and an examination of the mass spectrographic techniques that would be used to identify a sample would lead to the conclusion that no state could be confident in evading detection. However, a 2002 National Academies report155 that has been cited by a number of other papers and a 2003 article by Jay Davis156 note that post-explosion nuclear attribution is difficult and that the technology is not totally developed yet. In addition, if scientists use mirror- image logic on the U.S. capabilities, as Russians might, they may underestimate the U.S. abilities for attribution. At the same time, many states and individuals have an almost mythic view of U.S. scientific capabilities and would not try to defeat an unknown technology like this. Also missing from current examinations is any mention of direct interaction and direct diplomatic description of this technology. While the public may not know that nuclear attribution is well-developed, Washington may have made sure that decision-makers in Pyongyang did. Even if the technology is well developed and its sophistication is communicated, a state might still bet on being able to sow doubt on a certain attribution. North Korea
154 Broad, “New Team” 155 Committee on International Security, Making the Nation Safer 156 Jay Davis, “Attribution of WMD”
70 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER might try to escape retribution through a combination of a direct threat to South Korea and the hope that the U.S. would not attack unless it had convinced its allies in the region that the evidence was solid. Such convincing would take more than the mere ability to attribute the weapon; it would require other nations’ confidence in the technology. If we are not discussing a state, then the actors who would need to be deterred are the intermediaries. Scientists, smugglers, and financiers are unlikely to be persuaded in the current system because a threat the United States makes does not include a well-defined attribution capability that can pinpoint the middleman. In addition, even those middlemen who have been caught have been given varying sentences. So while in Russia it may be dangerous to be a nuclear criminal, it may not be so risky in other parts of the former Soviet Union, where the security services lack power or reach, or in parts of the Middle East. There is currently no uniform system of punishments or even a guarantee of punishment at all.
A database A comprehensive nuclear database is the simplest solution to the problem of post-event nuclear attribution. It would be comforting to know that after an explosion the mystery of the material’s origins could be solved by looking it up in an electronic archive. A number of the component parts for a nuclear database are in place. Most nuclear powers have a fairly thorough accounting system of nuclear materials, and there are a limited number of available processes to create weapons-grade uranium or plutonium.157, 158 In regards to uranium enrichment, there are small-scale operations in India, Pakistan, and probably North Korea, but the large-scale operations are all run by
157 Victor S. Rezendes. “Concerns with the U.S. International Nuclear Materials Tracking System.” Testimony Before the Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate. No. 156311, United States General Accounting Office, 1996. The U.S. nuclear accounting system has been criticized, and there are discrepancies in records, but most exports are accounted for. Further transportation of those exports has not always been well-accounted. 158 Russian nuclear accounting has been better than some acknowledge, but the country lacks a perfect record of past transfers, and some labs kept a buffer of excess material that was not accounted for. And according to Bunn and Weir, Securing the Bomb 2004, p. 34, numerous facilities have spent at least some time with lax accounting standards. While a record of all past transfers would be impossible to reestablish, tracking down much of the material might be possible with a concerted effort. Currently, more efforts have been focused on the security aspects such as fences, but accounting is gradually taking more of a priority as Russians realize that insider theft is a serious danger.
71 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER a few conglomerates in the U.S., Russia, Japan, China, and Europe.159 Because uranium enrichment requires such a massive investment, the plants of origin can be determined, and most of the plants have been keeping track of the highly enriched uranium that was distributed or sold to other countries. This data could be consolidated, and some effort is currently being made along these lines within the U.S.,160 but there is not yet a comprehensive database. The IAEA also keeps track of samples from safeguarded reactors and monitors reactor history from these plants, but its database is far from comprehensive. The European Commission’s Institute for Transuranium Elements works with the Bochvar Institute in Moscow to contribute to a database on nuclear material that specifically excludes weapons-grade material.161 On the plutonium front, only a few countries reprocess plutonium for fuel purposes, and the United States, the United Kingdon, France, and China have stopped making plutonium for weapons. Stocks of civil plutonium are large and increasing. However, the most dangerous (unirradiated) plutonium for proliferation to terrorists is concentrated in the France, Germany, Japan, Britain, and Russia.162 Many states have an idea what the material inside their weapons and reactors looks like, and many could give a sample to the IAEA or some other international body if they thought conditions were right.163 But most countries are hesitant to internationalize the most sensitive parts of their nuclear infrastructure—the material in their nuclear weapons or the material that could end up in someone else’s nuclear weapon. In fact, according to May et al., such reticence is coded into law in some states.164 To overcome this problem, May and
159 Uranium Information Centre. “Uranium enrichment: Nuclear issues briefing paper 33,” 2006. http://www.uic.com.au/nip33.htm and WISE Uranium Project. “World nuclear fuel facilities,” March 25, 2006. http://www.wise-uranium.org/efac.html. 160 “To help Livermore improve its capabilities in this area, a nuclear engineer recently joined the team to manage a new attribution database of nuclear signatures.” Rennie, “Tracing the Steps” 161 Susan Ladika. “Tracing the Shadowy Origins of Nuclear Contraband.” Science, Vol. 292, No. 5522, June 1, 2001, p. 1634. 162 Here I am using Albright’s table for unirradiated plutonium, the type that would be useable in a bomb with less processing. Spain, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and India also have metric tons of civilian plutonium and would need to join any accounting system. (All but India are members of EURATOM and would likely join together.) David Albright and Kimberly Kramer. “Plutonium watch: Tracking plutonium inventories,” June 2004. http://www.isis-online.org/global_stocks/plutonium_watch2004.html 163 Even Russia, which is secretive about its weapons-grade materials, has one database with samples and another with characteristics of the materials. In 1996, the country did consider sharing this information, and MINATOM has worked with the Germany-based ITU to establish a comprehensive database of non-weapons- grade materials. See Niemeyer et al. “Synopsis of International Workshop” p. 3 where officials from VNIIEF note the milligram samples of weapons material that they store. 164 May et al., “International Databank” p. 3. In Russia, isotope ratios are considered a state secret and the risk of divulging these ratios has derailed all plutonium monitoring agreements with the United States. Committee
72 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER colleagues propose a database that is partially open and partially closed, where participants place encoded or hashed data that could be verified in the event of a nuclear explosion. Such a database would make nuclear attribution more likely and would help exclude states from suspicion after a nuclear terrorist incident. It could also be a powerful coercive tool: place samples in this database or become a prime suspect after a nuclear attack. While such a global database is an ideal that should be pursued, it is unlikely to succeed. First, and most importantly, key states like the United States are likely to have trouble convincing domestic constituents to give up nuclear secrets to an international monitor.165 Even though most of the nuclear materials compositions are not secret, nuclear materials are sensitive to many competing political demands. Second, states are unlikely to trust such a database enough. They may doubt how well encoded the database is, and they may assume that the secret aspects will be decodable in the future—allowing possible nuclear blackmail.166 Or, if they are only required to reveal a certain portion of information, a hash of the data, it’s likely that some will worry about potential enemies faking the hashing system.167 And even if both of these fears can be overcome, it is challenging to create such a universal database while acknowledging that perfect coverage could be avoided if a country merely faked or declined to make submissions for one of its nuclear facilities. The May et al. paper anticipates this difficulty and notes that such a database would also need the ability for challenge inspections. Such inspections are important, but I will argue that they will be most effective on their own.
for International Security and Arms Control. Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Explosive Materials: An Assessment of Methods and Capabilities. National Academies Press. 2005. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11265.html. 165 In the United States the president probably already has the power to do so, since all nuclear facilities are regulated and all uranium enrichment occurs through a private but governmentally-chartered company. However, such disclosure would likely become a political issue even if little of the information is actually secret—nuclear issues are not always treated rationally in the political arena. 166 Although it would be impossible to reverse-engineer a nuclear fingerprint due to the decay properties of nuclear materials, such fears might prevent leaders or parliaments from consenting to the treaty. 167 The two most obvious ways to deal with private data would be an encryption system where the origin country held the exclusive code for encryption and decryption or a hashing system where only a small encoded subset of the information was reported to an international monitor. A method for encoding could definitely be found that would be difficult to break within ten or twenty years. However, countries might worry about advances in computer technology that could put their data at risk. The latter option, a hash, would indicate whether two documents were the same but would not be able to be put back in the original document. The risk here is that an incomplete report could be submitted by any member and such deception would not be noted until after an explosion.
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A nuclear database would be a difficult product to sell politically. But it might still be productive, May argues.168 If a nuclear database could allow certain locations to be eliminated as potential sources of weapons material, this would speed up the investigation and increase the probability of pinpointing the right actors. A nuclear database designed with the goal of being comprehensive, however, only sets countries up for disappointment. If the only avenue for verification is after-the-fact challenge inspections, all those who submitted to the database may pass the first round of scrutiny, even if they secretly held out some material. If these states either deliberately provided material to terrorists or knew that some material was less secure and could no longer find such material, they could quickly confuse the post-event inspections.169 They might even think they could escape investigation altogether if the material was the only part not submitted to the database. A comprehensive nuclear database thus invites deception—either through cheating (if signatures are kept encoded and other states are perceived to be cheating) or through withholding key pieces of information. If only one state seemed to withhold information or just North Korea refused inspections, it would seem to make the culprit obvious. But it would also provide an ideal situation for an attack from another unknown adversary. A comprehensive international database would create a false sense of security. A better database would be voluntary and policed with the goal of being thorough but not exhaustive. States could be encouraged to submit gram samples of all material to the IAEA for well-defined testing and synchronize their internal databases with a central one. The IAEA could sample and index all of the fuel in the reactors under its safeguards.170 Such a database would help begin a nuclear forensics investigation but would not be the end. States that placed material in the database would be given the benefit of the doubt but not held immune from further inspections. States could declare that all their material was indexed but would only be considered immune from further suspicion if extensive inspections were allowed at any time. Because such a database would be incomplete, politicians and scientists would not be likely to use it as a crutch in figuring out who the culprit was. Some politicians might
168 Personal communication. April 26, 2006. 169 One concern would be material transmitted between nuclear states. If such material is fingerprinted to the original state but not the state the provided the material to terrorists, would that state be held responsible? For an example of the sticky situations that might emerge, see Dafna Linzer, “U.S. Misled Allies.” 170 The IAEA already runs the most extensive database of nuclear information. It also keeps track of the reactor history of numerous (but not all) power and research reactors worldwide. IAEA Nuclear Trafficking Database.
74 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER still fear that an open database like this would be more dangerous than advantageous because another advanced nuclear state could fake a revealed signature. To avoid this, material samples should be kept with the database, allowing further tests to be performed later if a spoof is suspected.
Nuclear tagging Nuclear fingerprints are a great way to describe the nuclear attribution process, but for all the science behind it, nuclear fingerprinting is inexact. Unlike DNA, the code is not almost infinitely long, and unlike conventional fingerprints, not every one is unique.171 More importantly, after a nuclear explosion, there is less evidence remaining, and the evidence is difficult to interpret. The technology has been developed, but not every lab may draw the same conclusions. Ideally, each nuclear sample would have a unique, irremovable fingerprint. Such is the idea behind nuclear tagging. Gilfoyle and Parmentola proposed nuclear tagging in 2001, and the idea has gone absolutely nowhere since then.172 Their proposal calls for tiny amounts of uranium-233 and uranium-232 to be mixed with uranium-239 in weapons-grade material and for tiny amounts of plutonium-244 to be mixed with plutonium stockpiles. They note that these materials are available as scrap within the U.S. nuclear industry and could be incorporated in parts per billion amounts to weapons-grade material. Their most important goal is that uranium-232 would make the HEU samples much more radioactive—enough so that they would need to be shielded and the shielding could be detected at border crossings. Additionally, they argue that since uranium-233 and plutonium-244 do not naturally occur, adding certain amounts of these materials would make the weapons-grade material distinctive between countries and between batches. Their proposal is undoubtedly wishful thinking. Tagging would be a great strategy if the states could just round up all their nuclear material and reblend it with these tags added. However, remanufacturing weapons is cost-prohibitive, and if physical security measures are difficult, it would seem that intensive redesigning of
171 For example, there are only two common uranium enrichment processes: gaseous diffusion and centrifuge methods. Almost all the weapons-grade uranium in the world has gone through one of these two methods, and almost all of it has passed through one of a dozen plants. A fingerprint might only lead back to the process or plant which would give very limited information for a positive attribution. 172 G.P. Gilfoyle and J.A. Parmentola. “Using Nuclear Materials to Prevent Nuclear Proliferation.” Science & Global Security, No. 9, 2001, pp. 81-92. U-232 tagging has been mentioned for better detection at border crossings, but this idea does not seem to have gained much traction. See Moody et al., Nuclear Forensic Analysis, p. 9.
75 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER materials would be even more impossible. Gilfoyle and Parmentola argue that tagging would be a simple process of adding a step to current weapons dismantling programs that are already underway.173 Already uranium is being purchased by the United States and reformulated into low enriched uranium, but in the meantime it is reblended and often sits for a month before final processing. They argue that tagging would be effective at this stage. They also argue that tagging could be included in any future plan for recasting weapons or shifting plutonium or more uranium from weapons to reactor uses.174 If the chemistry is reengineered, adding a small pellet of uranium-232 and uranium-233 is a simple step because the same element is being used. Gilfoyle and Parmentola ignore the issue that the material being converted from HEU to LEU is probably the less serious proliferation threat in Russia. Once the material has made it into the process of blending down, it will probably be fairly well accounted for. Still, their idea has gotten less attention than it deserves. The blend- down of Russian HEU fuel is not where the tagging focus should be. Once the material has finally been blended down, as 240 metric tons have been and another 240 will be by 2013, the material is no longer a threat.175 Tagging would have been a good intermediate step if the material spent much time as HEU in an intermediate stage, but this is not presented by many scholars as a serious concern. Instead, tagging might make more sense if put in place at the beginning of a plutonium disposal process, since plutonium must be burned in a reactor, not merely reblended, and it might still be extractable for weapons when it is turned into reactor fuel.176 Mixing in a small amount of plutonium-244 would give the material a signature that would not be removed in reprocessing and would thus be an effective preliminary step in any plutonium disposal program. Even more important might be a situation where nuclear tagging was implemented from the beginning of a state’s nuclear program. If a state agreed to tag all its material, whether weapons-grade or not, or even to tag all its new material, it would prove a commitment to keeping the material in the hands of the state. It would improve
173 Gilfoyle and Parmentola, “Using Nuclear Materials” 174 Such plans in Russia are currently stalled. Bunn and Weir, Securing the Bomb 2005 p. 71 175 ibid. p. 70 176 There are a number of methods designed to reduce the proliferation risk of plutonium by combining it with other elements. For the most part, these should prevent proliferation to non-state actors, but in such a blending process is still a great opportunity to add irremovable tags.
76 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER accountability and allay fears of a rogue plant that falls outside a database system.177 Such a proposal is unlikely to be embraced at this historical moment because it implicitly condones the proliferation of weapons-grade material. It implies that there is such a thing as a “responsible new nuclear weapons state” against the premise of the nonproliferation treaty.178 But as proliferation continues, nuclear tagging could offer an option for improving the traceability of new stocks of weapons. The disadvantage to nuclear tagging is that a fully tagged nuclear state is an almost impossible ideal, or seems so. But the advantages, both to the state owning the material and to the inspecting states, are many. An attack with untagged materials would clear a tagging state of responsibility. Inspections could be designed merely to test for tags—if they were missing, sanctions could be imposed immediately. States could even be allowed to run their own tests for the tags that would reveal little other information about the material but would still be valid for verification purposes. Most importantly, tagging would create a clear line between those states that might offer their materials to terrorists and those who were determined to keep a tight hold on their materials. If properly promoted, this could be a boon for states like Pakistan and India that view themselves as responsible nuclear weapons states. Untagging a sample would be impossible. Because these tags are made of the same element as the material, separating the tag would require an enrichment process. Obscuring the tags would be much simpler, but would still only be accomplishable by a state with access to the tagging substances. A bigger fear, once again, is spoofing a tag, especially to mimic that of an adversary. If Iran copied Israel’s tag and set a weapon off in Saudi Arabia, the situation could quickly deteriorate. However, if a state claimed to be a victim of blackmail, a process that reverted to conventional nuclear forensics could be followed to establish true responsibility. Nuclear tagging will only ever be a small supplement to a robust forensics capability, but it might play an important role in the future.
Revealing more information No white papers have been issued on post-explosion nuclear attribution. Moody et al. devote a mere three pages to the topic and note that much of the technology is
177 A plant could fall outside the tagging system, but such deception could be checked in advance or after the fact. 178 The U.S.-India nuclear deal heads down this path, so such a discussion is not impossible.
77 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER classified.179 Some of this reticence could be related to a natural desire for secrecy within the nuclear weapons community.180 Post-explosion forensic technology has always been secret and there seems to be no pressing reason to change that. There is no “Manhattan Project for nuclear forensics,” so no public debate has emerged about capabilities (as one has with missile defense). Capabilities are being released selectively, in a newsletter,181 in a leak to the New York Times,182 and in a line-item in the budget that had not previously been acknowledged.183 A more systematic effort at revealing the technological basis for nuclear forensics and post-event nuclear attribution might be useful for deterrence because it would make punishment threats more credible and would make attribution seem more guaranteed. While the previous two techniques, a database and tagging, focus on altering the chance that a country will let its material inadvertently into the hands of terrorists, both solutions run into trouble against a determined proliferator. A truly rogue state that would sell weapons to terrorists has never been seen before. But such a state is the danger that George Bush saw with the “axis of evil” and still worries about.184 As Jasen Castillo comments, one perspective is that “consistent with their mischievous character, these states will risk retaliation to give terrorists a chance to strike at the American homeland or interests abroad.”185 A more consistent information campaign might be an element of deterrence that could target even these states. While databases rely on cooperation, general nuclear forensics does not. A state with little knowledge of nuclear forensics might assume that it could spoof the system, but the difficulty of such a fabrication could be explained with technical information. A technical dialogue, conducted directly or through the public, may help deterrence by decreasing the chance that one link in communication will fail. Nuclear attribution cannot succeed as a threat if the other side has no knowledge of it. And if
179 Moody et al., Nuclear Forensic Analysis 180 Classification is subject to government rules and regulations, but there is leeway for more or less secrecy in some areas. For example, all technical reports issued at Los Alamos National Laboratory are kept off the Internet though not classified, while most at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on similar topics are freely available. There are classified studies that are not available from either lab, but these rules could conceivably be altered for a specific scientific or diplomatic effort relating to nuclear forensics. 181 Rennie, “Tracing the Steps” 182 Broad, “New Team” 183 Department of Homeland Security. “Fact sheet: U.S. Department of Homeland Security Announces Six Percent Increase in Fiscal Year 2007 Budget Request.” http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interapp/press_release/press_release_0849.xml 184 Bush, “National Security Strategy” 185 Castillo, “Deterring Nuclear Terrorism” p. 426
78 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER the other side consists of individual scientists or technicians, obscure mentions of the capability in lab newsletters are unlikely to be noticed. Of course, revealing knowledge can give opponents the ability to bypass the system, but unlike ballistic missile defense, nuclear attribution requires an extensive knowledge to begin to design countermeasures. And even if countermeasures could be designed, they would leave their trace clearly and the age of the nuclear material—the most important identifier— could not be tampered with. Jay Davis also points out that capabilities can be exaggerated after they are initially established.186 But cautions should be taken. An international protocol for nuclear attribution would be even more effective than one- sided technical proclamations, and an international working group has no room for technical exaggerations. If capabilities are at the level the U.S. government claims, the attribution can be explained on its own merits.
International collaboration Some might claim that the United States has already revealed as much about its nuclear attribution program as it can without tempting states to try to fool it. The program, after all, is not secret, and has been written up in a couple of different forms. But the United States has not publicly collaborated internationally on attribution, and such collaboration could be vital to improved deterrence. With respect to deterrence, both of states and of individual actors, communication and credibility are necessary. Both can be difficult to achieve. They can also be achieved very simply. Although in some situations uncertainty may actually benefit United States’ deterrence efforts because terrorists or rogue scientists might be unwilling to simply assume they can get away with it, there are actually few downsides to explaining the technical truth of the situation. As we explored in Chapter 3, a nuclear state might believe that the United States is exaggerating its capabilities when nuclear attribution is described. More technical detail would decrease this chance, though such an assumption cannot be ruled out. At the same time, an individual might suspect that the United States cannot trace weapons material back to the exact source. It might be localizable to Russia, but perhaps not a specific reactor that uses highly enriched uranium. And the individual might suspect that punishments would be escapable or might have noticed that past sanctions have been inconsistent. If the helper was an
186 Jay Davis, “Attribution of WMD”
79 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER insider in the Kremlin, for example, he might suppose that in the worst case he would be treated like A.Q. Khan and confined to house arrest. The leader of a nuclear state might similarly doubt the credibility of a U.S. retaliatory threat. Especially in the case of North Korea, the country might bet not that the attack would go unattributed but instead that the attribution was weak enough that the U.S. would not be able to persuade an ally or risk further serious harm from nuclear weapons in attacking North Korea. Internationalizing some of the post-explosion forensics process could cut some of these possible communication and credibility gaps. It might also improve the quality of the science. To internationalize a post-explosion investigation, an IAEA working group would need to be established in advance. Individuals from multiple countries would need to be retrained to deal with the unique challenges of doing nuclear forensics after an explosion. Retraining is unlikely to be expensive because scientists are already familiar with most of the techniques. The United States would need to develop a protocol for sharing nuclear test data and nuclear materials databases with international scientists in such a way that the IAEA could verify conclusions. Such a process would not be difficult and would offer few downsides.187 Credibility would improve even without an international form of punishment. If attribution can occur internationally, an attack by the victim of nuclear terrorism or a coalition could be justified—even under international law—as self-defense after the fact. And if the victim were incapable of responding forcefully, an international declaration of guilt would give justification for a Security Council action.
A guaranteed retaliation While the previous four policy possibilities have dealt with communication and credibility, the other aspect of deterrence that applied to both states and individual actors has not yet been invoked. A strong retaliatory threat has been implicit in the above discussion, but the actual implementation of this threat has not been discussed. Most importantly, I have not yet examined whether a stronger, more automatic threat would contribute to deterrence based on attribution. Corr calls for such a threat, viewing an automatic threat as a strong incentive for nuclear states to secure their
187 One possible negative to any of these discussions is that it may be difficult politically to champion a post- explosion investigation team, implying that a nuclear explosion is a high possibility. Still, most politicians would like to be responsible, and there is unlikely to be a lasting political impact.
80 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER weapons-grade material.188 He argues that countries such as Russia should be held liable if nuclear material from their stockpiles ends up being used in a nuclear terrorist attack. By explicitly making such a threat in advance, he argues, the United States could force Russia and Pakistan to tighten security. In addition, such a threat would dissuade a nation from launching a deliberate nuclear terror attack because the credibility of retaliation would no longer be in question. A threat, however, would be counterproductive on a number of levels, some of which Corr already notices. First, Russia would view such a threat as a provocation. Russia already has a strong incentive to secure nuclear materials, for it faces a clear terrorist threat that has been demonstrated multiple times in Moscow and around the country. A stolen Russian weapon is as likely to go off in the Red Square as on the Washington Mall. A threat would thus seem adversarial, not cooperative, and cooperation is absolutely necessary to overcome the numerous administrative roadblocks that have occurred in the Cooperative Threat Reduction bureaucracy. Second, as Corr notes, one risk to any collaboration with Russia is that individuals below the top levels will view security funding as an opportunity for foreign aid that can be profitably diverted. A threat to the leadership or even the whole state can hardly dissuade these individual actors from continuing to divert resources into corruption. Finally, and most importantly, a retaliatory threat that directs the leadership of a state may fit the plans of the nuclear terrorists. If the United States deposes Musharraf or attempts to punish Russia (say, by sending peacekeepers into Chechnya), this may be the exact goal of the terrorist organization. And if such a threat is announced in advance, it removes much of the flexibility that could be used to deprive a rogue scientist or other individual of his aims. A doctrine of retaliation for a nuclear terrorist attack makes sense on paper but is unnecessary in reality. Pakistan and North Korea clearly already fear retaliation, and a threat will not increase this fear much. An international framework for that threat, perhaps codified in a U.N. resolution similar to 1540, would be more frightening to a proliferating state.189
188 Corr, “Deterrence of Nuclear Terror” 189 Resolution 1540 specifically ignores responses, but is issued under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, allowing for possible Security Council sanctions including the use of force. (“According to Mr. Arias of Spain, ‘[T]he draft resolution in no way explicitly or implicitly gives a blank check for the use of coercive measures, including the use of force, in cases of non-compliance.’” Barry Kellman. “Criminalization and Control of WMD
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Maintaining the status quo A final option that should not be forgotten is that the status quo can be maintained. The technology for post-explosion nuclear attribution is being developed and is officially at the implementable stage in the United States. The U.S. labs are among the best in the world at nuclear forensics, and after a nuclear terrorist attack anywhere around the globe, samples would be sent to Lawrence Livermore National Lab and other nuclear facilities. I have no way to evaluate whether the current research, development, and capabilities budget is sufficient. The technology behind attribution has been verified and peer-reviewed internationally, but without any programs specifically focusing on post-explosion attribution, the United States would have to say, “Trust us,” especially given the timeframe when a determination would be desired after an attack (probably less than a month). There are significant advantages to maintaining the status quo with U.S. capabilities held closely within the national labs. First, there are still domestic issues that need to be dealt with relating to the aftermath of a nuclear terrorist attack. Sept. 11 probably led to exceedingly high expectations for determining who perpetrated the terrorist act, so expectations management is important.190 Some might argue that placing too specific a priority on nuclear terrorism, to the point of emphasizing after- the-fact responses, encourages al Qaeda and others to set such attacks as a goal. But U.S. hijacking was not a common topic of discussion prior to 9/11, and however little nuclear terrorism is discussed, the issue will not disappear. Broad notes that one reason nuclear attribution has not been discussed is that it’s such a gory topic.191 No president wants to be preparing for the aftermath of a nuclear disaster, especially not for investigation rather than humanitarian response. Finally, the most compelling argument is that we need not worry excessively about deterrence because states like Russia and Pakistan already understand the issue. The most important observation we made in Chapter 3, however, was the deterrence is most effective with the intermediate actors, North Korea, Iran, and, to some extent, terrorists. A solid threat would help by making the issue clearer to a state like North Korea. Some downplay the threat of North Korea (saying that deterrence is self-evident), but other scholars consider North Korea
– The Security Council Acts.” In Symposium on Resolution 1540 as it Pertains to Biological Weapons, 2004. http://www.mcgeorge.edu/resolution_1540/criminalization_control_of_wmd_kellman.htm) 190 Jay Davis. “The Grand Challenges of Counter-Terrorism,” 2001. http://cgsr.llnl.gov/future2001/davis.html. 191 Broad, “Addressing the Unthinkable”
82 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER the most potent nuclear terrorism threat. Promoting the technology behind attribution would discourage those terrorists who did not want to be discovered and those who might help them. Even if a retaliatory threat is only marginally credible against such intermediate actors, knowing that they will be traced to the explosion will make them think twice.
Conclusion Deterrence is just one reason attribution capabilities should be improved. But this single goal gives concrete steps that can be taken. A task force should be spearheaded by the United States to examine post-explosion attribution within an international framework. United Nations backing is not specifically necessary, but the various IAEA-related groups that deal with nuclear smuggling and nuclear forensics provide a framework for an international collaboration. A task force could be combined with a broader push to strengthen nuclear forensics and the impressions of the science behind nuclear forensics worldwide. International capabilities for post-explosion attribution should be developed and tested. They need not be tested with a nuclear explosion—a conventional explosion could be used to disperse an unknown radioactive sample (unknown to the scientists examining it) and conclusions could be compared between labs. Similar tests are currently carried out in the arena of conventional nuclear forensics, but there is little publicity.192 Simultaneously, the international community should work toward defining a post-explosion process for fast analysis and an impartial scientific method for determining the location of origin for various samples. Scientists must be forced to pay attention not only to the accuracy of attribution techniques, but also their speed so that they can tell policymakers immediately how long it will take them and what resources they need to make conclusions. Such a determination should not be left to after the fact. Response actions and retribution, though important, should not be the initial focus of a discussion on nuclear terrorism. Military response will be too situational to be created effectively in advance (especially internationally) and military planning will create too many bickering factions that will sow confidence rather than doubt in the minds of possible enemies. The eventual goals should be technical. The United States should continue to improve its own database of nuclear signatures,
192 The only discussions of the round robin tests that go on in nuclear forensics are buried in a 500 page conference report from a 2002 IAEA conference. Advances in Destructive and Non-Destructive Analysis for Environmental Monitoring and Nuclear Forensics, Karlsruhle, Germany, October 2002. IAEA.
83 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS MICHAEL MILLER and it should work with its allies and even the IAEA to improve the database, but the catalog should remain proprietary. It should be shared and corrected within the U.S. nuclear community, but political effort should not be wasted trying to create perfect harmony between the U.S. one and, say, that of EURATOM. Simultaneously, the United States should put some effort into a legitimate tagging plan. For detection and pre- and post-event attribution, tagging would be effective. The U.S. should look into cost studies for such tagging with the eventual goal that no new nuclear material be produced anywhere on the globe that is not traceable and does not emit a bright gamma-ray signal. Finally, it is worth recalling that the current nuclear attribution situation is not deficient. There are numerous undeterrable actors, and some that can be deterred on the margins, but the most important ones, states, are probably already deterred. This impression could change tomorrow with a nuclear explosion in a U.S. city, creating a sudden pressing need to foil more attacks. Thus, today the international community needs to begin to respond. In addition to securing nuclear materials, a plan needs to be put into place for what to do the day after a nuclear terrorist incident. If designed properly, such a plan could even help prevent the event from occurring.
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