Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran

As Iran edges closer to acquiring a nuclear bomb and its missiles extend an ever darker diplomatic shadow over the Middle East and Europe, Iran is likely to pose three threats. First, Iran could dramatically up the price of oil by interfering with the free passage of vessels in and through the Persian Gulf as it did during the l980s or by threatening to use terrorist proxies to target other states\u27 oil facilities. Second, it could diminish American influence in the Gulf and Middle East by increasing the pace and scope of terrorist activities against Iraq, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states, Israel, and other perceived supporters of the United States. Finally, it could become a nuclear proliferation model for the world and its neighbors (including many states that otherwise would be more dependent on the United States for their security) by continuing to insist that it has a right to make nuclear fuel under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and then withdrawing once it decides to get a bomb. To contain and deter Iran from posing such threats, the United States and its friends could take a number of steps: increasing military cooperation (particularly in the naval sphere) to deter Iranian naval interference; reducing the vulnerability of oil facilities in the Gulf outside of Iran to terrorist attacks, building and completing pipelines in the lower Gulf region that would allow most of the non-Iranian oil and gas in the Gulf to be exported without having to transit the Straits of Hormuz; diplomatically isolating Iran by calling for the demilitarization of the Straits and adjacent islands, creating country-neutral rules against Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty state members who are suspected of violating the treaty from getting nuclear assistance from other state members and making withdrawal from the treaty more difficult; encouraging Israel to set the pace of nuclear restraint in the region by freezing its large reactor at Dimona and calling on all other states that have large nuclear reactors to follow suit; and getting the Europeans to back targeted economic sanctions against Iran if it fails to shut down its most sensitive nuclear activities.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1726/thumbnail.jp

Taming the Next Set of Strategic Weapons Threats

Missile defense and unmanned air vehicle related technologies, are proliferating for a variety of perfectly defensive and peaceful civilian applications. This same know-how can be used to defeat U.S. and allied air and missile defenses in new ways that are far more stressful than the existing set of ballistic missile threats. Unfortunately, the Missile Technology Control Regime is not yet optimized to cope with these challenges. Nuclear technologies have become much more difficult to control since new centrifuge uranium enrichment facilities and relatively small fuel reprocessing plants can now be built and hidden much more readily than nuclear fuel-making plants that were operating when the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the bulk of International Atomic Energy Agency inspections procedures were first devised 30 or more years ago. This volume is designed to highlight what might happen if these emerging threats go unattended and how best to mitigate them.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1026/thumbnail.jp

Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future

With the world focused on the nuclear crisis in Iran, it is tempting to think that addressing this case, North Korea, and the problem of nuclear terrorism is all that matters and is what matters most. Perhaps, but if states become more willing to use their nuclear weapons to achieve military advantage, the problem of proliferation will become much more unwieldy. In this case, U.S. security will be hostage not just to North Korea, Iran, or terrorists, but to nuclear proliferation more generally, diplomatic miscalculations, and wars between a much larger number of possible players. This, in a nutshell, is the premise of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future, which explores what nuclear futures we may face over the next 3 decades and how we currently think about this future. Will nuclear weapons spread in the next 20 years to more nations than just North Korea and possibly Iran? How great will the consequences be? What can be done?https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1006/thumbnail.jp

Prevailing in a Well-Armed World: Devising Competitive Strategies Against Weapons Proliferation

This book provides insights into the competitive strategies methodology. Andrew Marshall notes that policymakers and analysts can benefit by using an analytical tool that stimulates their thinking about strategy in terms of long-term competition between nations with conflicting values, policies, and objectives. The book also demonstrates the strengths of the competitive strategies approach as an instrument for examining U.S. policy. The method focuses on policies regarding the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In shaping the international environment in the next millennium, no other national security issue seems as complex or important. The imperative here is to look to competitive strategies to assist in asking critical questions and thinking both broadly, as well as more precisely, about alternatives for pitting U.S. strengths against opponents weaknesses in global, regional or interstate competitions. Part I suggests that the competitive strategies approach has value for both the practitioner and the scholar. Part II uses the framework to examine and evaluate U.S. nonproliferation and counterproliferation policies formed in the final years of the 20th century. In Part III, the competitive strategies method is used to analyze a regional case, that of Iran.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1139/thumbnail.jp

Planning for a Peaceful Korea

With the change of administrations in Washington, current U.S. policy toward North Korea will naturally undergo review and scrutiny. The essays in this volume offer an option to the current engagement approach. The authors suggest an alternative strategy for promoting peace and security in the Korean peninsula different from the ones contemplated or implemented by Washington in recent years.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1119/thumbnail.jp

Getting MAD: Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction, Its Origins and Practice

Getting MAD: Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction, Its Origins and Practice is the first critical history of the intellectual roots and actual application of the strategic doctrine of nuclear mutual assured destruction or MAD. Written by the world\u27s leading French, British, and American military policy planners and analysts, this volume examines how MAD and its emphasis on the military targeting of population centers influenced the operational plans of the major nuclear powers and states, such as Pakistan, India, and Israel. Given America\u27s efforts to move away from MAD and the continued reliance on MAD thinking by smaller nations to help justify further nuclear proliferation, Getting MAD is a timely must reading for anyone eager to understand our nuclear past and future.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1031/thumbnail.jp

Pakistan\u27s Nuclear Future: Worries Beyond War

This book, completed just before Pakistani President Musharraf imposed a state of emergency in November 2007, reflects research that the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center commissioned over the last 2 years. It tries to characterize specific nuclear problems that the ruling Pakistani government faces with the aim of establishing a base line set of challenges for remedial action. Its point of departure is to consider what nuclear challenges Pakistan will face if moderate forces remain in control of the government and no hot war breaks out against India.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1018/thumbnail.jp

Gauging U.S.-Indian Strategic Cooperation

This volume consists of research that the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) commissioned and vetted throughout 2006. For at least half of the chapters, authors presented versions of their work as testimony before Congressional oversight committees. No matter what one’s point of view, these chapters deserve close attention since all are focused on what is needed to assure U.S.-Indian strategic cooperation succeeds. The volume offers U.S. and Indian policy and law makers a detailed checklist of things to watch, avoid, and try to achieve.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1022/thumbnail.jp

Should We Let the Bomb Spread?

Nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation no longer enjoy the broad support they once did during the Cold War. Academics and security experts now question the ability of either to cope or check nuclear rogue states or terrorists. On the one hand, America’s closest allies—e.g., Japan and South Korea—believe American nuclear security guarantees are critical to their survival. If the United States is unwilling to provide Tokyo or Seoul with the assurance they believe they need, would it then not make sense for them to acquire nuclear forces of their own? On the other hand, with more nuclear-armed states and an increased willingness to use them, how likely is it that nuclear deterrence will work? This volume investigates these questions. In it, six experts offer a variety of perspectives to catalyze debate. The result is a rich debate that goes well beyond current scholarship to challenge the very basis of prevailing nonproliferation and security policies.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1003/thumbnail.jp

Falling Behind: International Scrutiny of the Peaceful Atom

If possible, it would be useful to enhance the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) ability to detect and prevent nuclear diversions. This would not only reduce the current risk of nuclear proliferation, it would make the further expansion of nuclear power much less risky. The question is what is possible? To date, little has been attempted to answer this basic question. Periodic reports by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the IAEA have highlighted budgetary, personnel, and and administrative challenges that are facing the agency. There also has been a 2-year internal IAEA review of how existing IAEA safeguards procedures might be improved. None of these assessments, however, has tackled the more fundamental question of how well the IAEA is actually doing in achieving its nuclear material accountancy mission.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1067/thumbnail.jp