Stability with Russia After Nunn-Lugar

On the radar: A reckless move; Confidence building, after Nunn-Lugar; Haass says time to deal; U.S.-Israel exercise; Y-12 pulls an audible; Nuclear trafficking getting sophisticated; and Radiation effects, not that interesting for Oppenheimer.

October 18th, 2012 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Marianne Nari Fisher

Lapse - Russia’s cutting off of Nunn-Lugar is “perverse and reckless — and all too typical of President Vladimir Putin’s sour, xenophobic and self-isolating worldview,” writes The New York Times.

--”If Moscow lets the cooperative program lapse, it needs to replace it with adequately financed Russian programs. The continuing cleanup must be transparent enough to earn the world’s trust.” http://nyti.ms/Rb9W4M

Verification and stability - Russia’s ending of the Nunn-Lugar program could be part of a trend where Russia is gradually walking back from long-standing arms control verification measures, argues Jeffrey Lewis at Foreign Policy. Such measures add great stability to the U.S.-Russia relationship, and their absence will be missed.

--This is not an excuse to forego further arms reductions, notes Lewis, but is a warning that the U.S. and Russia will need to pursue new initiatives (beyond mere reductions) to reduce mutual suspicion and strengthen strategic stability. http://bit.ly/Pcrqkh

A proposal - One cause of Russia’s recent behavior might be a persistent worry about Russian command and control during a feared “decapitation” strike. At Arms Control Wonk, Jeffrey Lewis offers a feasible recommendation for starting to talk about command and control in a way that adds stability between the U.S. and Russia: Prohibit Nuclear Armed Missile Defense Interceptors.

--Benefits of such a proposal: it would address the least sensitive piece of Russia’s nonstrategic nuclear weapons arsenal and it would also enhance strategic stability “by reinforcing the prohibition on intermediate-range nuclear forces.” Read the full post. http://bit.ly/Pcrj8f

Time to negotiate - Now is the time to engage Iran and present it with a comprehensive negotiating package that caps Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, argues Richard Haass in Project Syndicate.

--Suggestions for the package: cap how much uranium Iran could possess or enrich as lower levels, cap number of centrifuges, limit where centrifuges can be housed, and strengthen the inspections regime. All in exchange for removal of sanctions.

--”The offer’s essential elements should be made public. That way, if the regime balked, it would have to explain to its own people why it was not prepared to abandon its nuclear-weapons program, despite a reasonable US proposal that was not designed to humiliate Iran, and that, if accepted, promised a major improvement in Iranian living standards,” writes Haass. http://bit.ly/Rb8WgO

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Russian spending - Russia plans to spend 101.15 billion rubles (about $3.3 billion) from 2013-2015 on its nuclear weapons complex. Story from Pravda. http://bit.ly/WEDgnr

Missile defense exercise - Starting later this month, the U.S. and Israel “will spend three weeks jointly testing the abilities of their Patriot missile batteries, Aegis ships, networked command systems and newer interceptors to prevent everything from rockets to armed drones to long-range ballistic missiles from hitting Israel from multiple locations.”

--Spencer Ackerman at Danger Room has the story of the military exercise that officials say is, um, directed at no regional missile power in particular. http://bit.ly/PE4wSG

Reflecting on the crisis - The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists asked prominent nuclear experts to write about “what the Cuban Missile Crisis meant and didn't mean then, and what it should mean today.” Responses from Dhanapala, Hoodbhoy, Kraus, Rees, Sagdeev, von Hippel, Eden, Korb, Rajaraman, Ramana, Rosenbaum, and Socolow. http://bit.ly/T1y1ZC

Audible alarms - Responding to the recent break-in at the Y-12 nuclear facilities, the complex has brought online an “audible alarm system” and other measures to do things like keep out intruders, nuns. Global Security Newswire has the info. http://bit.ly/PE7BSG

Dirty bombs - “Terrorists (gaining) access to nuclear material is a real threat ... The amount (trafficked illicitly) is small but they are getting more and more professional,” said IAEA Chief Yukiya Amano. Reuters has the quote. http://reut.rs/OL8lEn

Radiation effects - During the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer and Gen. Leslie Groves were not that interested in assessing the potential the radiation effects of the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a result, those factors were not considered by decision-makers before the bombs were used. Alex Wellerstein looks at the history and explains how compartmentalization might explain why radiation became an afterthought. At Restricted Data. http://bit.ly/Va33k3