Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Disarmament

The following is a guest post by my colleague Adam Mount, a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Though the atomic bomb was first developed in 1945, it was not until 1957 that the U.S. intelligence community conducted its first forecast of how nuclear weapons might spread around the world. That first estimate concluded that some ten countries had the capability to build the bomb in the next decade. Six years later, President John F. Kennedy warned that the 1970s could see a world in which twenty-five countries possessed nuclear weapons. This counterfactual—what would the world look like without the nonproliferation regime?—is one of the most important and vexing questions in international politics. Thankfully, this is only a counterfactual. The nine nuclear weapons states that exist in the world today are still too many, but this number is a far cry from what might have been. Nevertheless, this month’s deal with Iran is an historic step for nonproliferation: for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear era, no country is publicly known to be pursuing a nuclear weapon. As the calendar counts down the sixty days that Congress has to review the deal, the U.S. political system is embroiled in debate over the merits of the deal for the United States and the Middle East. The Iran deal is also significant in that it is an enormous testament to the effectiveness of the complex system of international institutions that govern the nuclear world. In the case of Iran, the process for detecting states seeking nuclear weapons and returning them to compliance worked as intended: the IAEA and national intelligence agencies detected noncompliant behavior in a timely fashion; when Iran refused to resolve the concerns, the IAEA referred its case to the UN Security Council, which imposed strict and escalating sanctions; finally, tireless multilateral negotiations reached agreement about how to bring Iran back into compliance with its international obligations and imposed unprecedented safeguards to constrain the program from prohibited activity. The negotiations set new standards for rigor, cooperation, and creativity, generating several novel instruments that could serve as valuable tools for correcting future proliferation challenges, including a monitored procurement channel through which the international community can approve Iran’s purchases of sensitive components, a requirement that Iran ship its enriched uranium out of the country for downblending, and unprecedented verification measures.  In short, the agreement with Iran strengthens the system of institutions that not only must take on the difficult task of verifying this agreement, but must also work to catch and restrain the next aspirant. The agreement could not come at a better time for the global nuclear regime. Those components of the regime that are already in place are wracked by discord, while other essential pieces have not yet been allowed to enter into force. Though attention has focused on the negotiating teams in Vienna, the Iran deal is proof that the regime functions best as a coherent whole. Each component faces real challenges and needs continued attention if the regime is to thrive. As the foundation of the global nuclear order, the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) provides an unambiguous affirmation that new nuclear weapons programs are illegal. The solidity of the NPT is endangered by the nuclear states’ poor progress on disarmament and the movement of concerned states that is considering drafting a global ban on nuclear weapons. The treaty needs the superpowers to make new progress on arms control and for the humanitarian movement to find constructive ways of pursuing their valid goals. Reading the text of the Iran deal, it is clear how much the international community relies on the IAEA—not only as an impartial inspector of countries but also as a patient negotiator that can help them back into compliance. The IAEA will need additional funding to implement the rigorous inspection and monitoring requirements in the Iran deal. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, though not in force, operates an International Monitoring System (IMS) that ensures all states that their adversaries are not racing ahead by testing weapons. This certainty allows the nuclear countries to reduce their stockpiles and reduces proliferation pressures for nonnuclear countries. For the IMS to be fully effective at detecting a nuclear test, eight more countries must ratify the treaty, led by the United States. The Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty is a well-liked proposal that would prohibit the production of the fissile material for nuclear bombs worldwide, providing another layer of restriction and inspection on countries that might want to race ahead of their adversaries. Unfortunately, Pakistan is holding up the treaty in the United Nations. All countries should rededicate themselves to finding solutions to Pakistan’s objections and to pressuring them to allow the treaty to advance. Though not an institution, U.S.-Russia bilateral arms control treaties are another important component of the global nuclear regime. Continued reductions of the world’s largest arsenals is crucial to assuring all states that nuclear weapons are relics of the past, but in recent years, progress has stalled. Other countries should pressure Russia to accept the Obama administration’s proposal to negotiate a further one-third reduction in deployed strategic weapons. In addition, diplomats and analysts around the world should explore new proposals for limiting nuclear dangers. Among the most promising are the proposals for a global regime to control fissile material, regardless of its form, purposes, or location. Versions have been proposed by Amb. Richard Burt and Jan Lodal and by the Nuclear Futures Lab at Princeton University. The approach is related to those provisions in the Iran deal that require Iran to ship its nuclear material out of the country for reprocessing, downblending, or conversion. Currently, the IAEA is working on a global version, an international fuel bank, that would provide countries with an assured supply of low enriched uranium that can be used for peaceful purposes. In subsequent years, world powers should work to ensure that the bank gains broad acceptance and expands its mandate to cover other forms of sensitive material and provide other services to states. The nuclear nonproliferation regime rightly elicits skepticism among politicians and analysts around the world. Deep-seated concerns over national security and justice kept the world powers from designing and implementing a rational and comprehensive regime to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. The existing system was pieced together over the decades by different statesmen with evolving motives. Yet, the Iran agreement proves that the system can still generate new ideas under pressure; meanwhile, proposals like the fissile material agreements discussed above offer a distinct hope of recovering the rationality and comprehensiveness that underwrite a sustainable and effective international regime. Though decades of concerted effort have severely constrained nuclear proliferation, the regime is more important than ever. World powers will rely on the regime as they attempt to implement the Iran deal, roll back the North Korean nuclear program, gain more information about recent events in Syria, and detect the next nuclear aspirant in time to prevent a tenth nuclear state. Like other areas of global governance, the nuclear nonproliferation regime needs to continually improve if it is to survive. At this precarious moment, world powers should not allow themselves to become complacent or to disparage the regime to score political points at home. The world must rededicate itself to building a regime that can make the world safe from the most dangerous weapons.

U.S. and international sanctions have battered the Iranian economy and brought Tehran to negotiate over its nuclear program. Lifting them is central to a deal but will be a complex process.

Coauthored with Naomi Egel, research associate in the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Although ongoing negotiations with Iran have captured global attention, they are not the only critical nuclear meeting underway. On Monday, UN member states launched the latest five-year review conference (RevCon) of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). This core legal instrument of the nonproliferation regime provides the basis for international efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation. But expectations are modest. Unlike the last RevCon in 2010, no breakthroughs are on the horizon. Still, the month-long meeting in New York offers an opportunity to develop a plan for further progress during the next five-year cycle that will strengthen the basic bargains at the core of the NPT. The NPT, which came into force in 1970, rests on three mutually reinforcing pillars. States without nuclear weapons agree not to acquire them. The five officially recognized nuclear weapons states (the United States, Russia, China, France and Great Britain) agree to move toward disarmament. And nonnuclear weapons states should be granted access to civilian nuclear technology for peaceful energy development. This essential bargain is inherently fragile, and the challenges are growing, as our newly updated Global Governance Monitor: Nuclear Proliferation, details. Four non-recognized nuclear weapons states (India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan) are known to possess weapons, and recognized nuclear weapons states are generally perceived to be dragging their feet on disarmament. Moreover, the spread of ostensibly peaceful nuclear technology brings new proliferation dangers. Despite these underlying tensions, the last RevCon in 2010 achieved historic results. Parties approved a 64-part action plan [PDF] to advance progress in all three areas of nonproliferation, disarmament, and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Particularly noteworthy was the endorsement of a conference to discuss the establishment of a weapons of mass destruction (WMD)-free zone in the Middle East. Progress in advancing these goals, alas, has been uneven. The deadline for the Middle East conference has come and gone. More significantly, the deterioration of the U.S.-Russia relationship has curtailed bilateral progress on disarmament by the two nations with (by far) the biggest nuclear arsenals. Although both countries continue to comply with the 2011 New Start treaty (which limits each country to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads by 2018), prospects for a follow-on treaty are dismal, and Russia has cancelled cooperative nonproliferation initiatives. A hostile Russian statement [PDF] on the first day of the review conference reinforced these tensions. This perceived inertia comes at an awkward time. The last five years have witnessed the rise of a vigorous humanitarian disarmament initiative, a broad movement of nonnuclear weapons states and civil society actors frustrated by the slow pace of disarmament. Many of its members call for a total ban on nuclear weapons, akin to the Chemical Weapons Convention or the Mine Ban Treaty. The United States and other P5 members adamantly oppose such a ban. The major global bright spot has been the negotiation of a framework agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (the permanent five Security Council members plus Germany). If the preliminary terms are fully implemented, this accord will grant Iran gradual relief from sanctions and access to peaceful nuclear energy in return for internationally monitored limitations on its nuclear enrichment activities and its full compliance with the NPT. Beyond reducing the specific threat posed by Iran, U.S. officials regard the framework agreement as a demonstration that noncompliance with the NPT can be addressed. Given this context, achieving a consensus outcome document will be a tall order. That should not stop U.S. negotiators from doing all they can to strengthen the three pillars of the nonproliferation regime, including by advancing the goals outlined in the 2010 action plan and securing agreement on other critical issues where progress is possible. Reinvigorate commitment to the NPT: The United States should redouble efforts to close the loophole under Article X of the NPT that enables parties to withdraw scot-free after they have violated treaty provisions, as North Korea did in 2003. Working with other permanent Security Council members, the Obama administration can ensure that there is no “get out of jail free” card in the future, by passing a resolution mandating automatic sanctions on countries that abuse Article X. The United States should also work with its partners in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to agree to cease exports of all nuclear related materials (including for peaceful purposes) to any such country. Continue to advance old, but valuable ideas: In parallel with these steps, the United States should promote steps toward disarmament that enjoy broad support, despite longstanding challenges. The Obama administration should continue to endorse universalization of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, notwithstanding continued Congressional resistance to approving U.S. ratification of this treaty. It should also continue advocating the negotiation of a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), despite the high hurdles (notably Pakistan’s opposition). Support the IAEA: The United States can also build international goodwill by enhancing the third pillar of the NPT, expanded access to peaceful nuclear energy, which benefits more parties than any other provision. On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry made a welcome gesture in this direction, announcing that the United States will donate an additional $50 million to the IAEA’s peaceful uses initiative. The Obama administration should build on this initiative by agreeing to increase funding to advance the IAEA’s work in areas such as promoting global health and boosting agricultural yields. At the same time, the United States must continue to encourage all countries to implement the Additional Protocol, a safeguards agreement that allows IAEA inspectors enhanced access to make sure states are not developing clandestine nuclear weapons programs. Consolidate nuclear security gains: At the RevCon, the United States should take advantage of the opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the NPT regime and the biennial Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) that the Obama administration began in 2010. While there are advantages to the informal, flexible NSS format, there is a danger that momentum will slow and progress will be lost when a new U.S. administration takes office. To consolidate the gains it has spearheaded, the United States must create an enduring mechanism to advance nuclear security after the NSS summits end in 2016. The way to do so is by strengthening the IAEA’s own nuclear security mandate, giving it both the responsibility and adequate funding it needs to coordinate and implement the myriad initiatives promoted and developed by the NSS process. While expectations are modest, the overall state of the nuclear nonproliferation regime is strong. The NPT is necessarily a delicate balance between the haves and have nots, between the goals of nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament, and peaceful access. It is not perfect. But nor is it replaceable. Despite ongoing challenges, the nuclear nonproliferation regime—with the NPT at its core—has been largely effective, as our Global Governance Monitor lays out. The challenge for U.S. negotiators over the next month is to advance these conflicting goals within the limits of the possible.

Last week, the Obama administration rolled out an executive order on cyber sanctions (Adam Segal’s excellent first take is here). During the various press briefings explaining the order, administration officials responsibly chose not to speculate on the circumstances under which they might use this authority. No longer having the burden of being responsible, let me do what people in think tanks are supposed to do and offer some wild conjecture. Below are three potential targets for sanctions under this executive order. Bulletproof Hosting Providers Bulletproof Hosting Providers get their name because they ignore requests of victims of cyber crime and slow-roll law enforcement. They would be a perfect target for the new sanctions. Cyber criminals use these companies to host the command and control infrastructure for their malicious activity. For example, bulletproof providers played a significant role in the 2012-13 denial of service attacks against the financial sector by hosting the infrastructure used to flood the banks with junk traffic. Under the new sanctions regime, these hosting providers could be sanctioned for aiding the crime that they make possible. An interesting question is whether legitimate hosting companies that often have servers taken over for malicious purposes could be the target of sanctions if they are unresponsive to takedown requests. While Michael Daniel’s blog post says point blank that the order won’t be used to target "people whose computers are unwittingly hijacked by botnets or hackers," nothing in the actual order would seem to prevent that. Vulnerability and Attack Tool Resellers Let’s imagine a hypothetical event in which a malicious cyber actor purchases a vulnerability on the grey market from a company like Vupen. The malicious cyber actor uses the vulnerability to carry out an attack like the one against Sony. In this scenario, the reseller will likely argue that they only sell to legitimate users of their products—law enforcement, military, and government intelligence agencies. The U.S. government is unlikely to be swayed by that argument if the company’s products are used to carry out cyber espionage or a destructive attack against a U.S. target, and could sanction the company accordingly. Where this could get tricky is with dual-use tools, the kind that are used both by malicious cyber actors and legitimate network security penetration testing companies. The most obvious example here is the Metasploit Framework, maintained by a very well respected and completely legitimate Boston-based company Rapid7. Could a company like Rapid7 be sanctioned if the tool it hosts is found to have been used by a malicious cyber actor? Again, Daniel expressly says it won’t be used to target "the cybersecurity research community" but that is a promise made in a blog post not a restraint written into policy or law. This administration is likely to honor it. Future administrations, who knows? Bitcoin Exchanges Because most financial transactions run through the United States and its allies, targeting the transactions of adversaries is always put on the table as an option to deal with problematic companies. Bitcoin has made that much harder. This executive order could help address the problem of bitcoin’s use by cyber criminals. If, for instance, a bulletproof hosting provider or a vulnerability reseller chooses to get paid in bitcoin, any bitcoin exchange that participates in the transaction could be subject to sanctions. That might make bitcoin exchanges take a closer look at who they are doing business with. Will the U.S. government try and use sanctions against targets like these? I don’t know. The specific facts around each of these scenarios and the overall geopolitical environment at the time will determine whether the lawyers say "yes" and the policymakers say "go."  But even if the sanctions are never used, we can expect that their use will be threatened to get legitimate companies to be more responsive and to get marginally bad actors to clean up their acts.

The April 24, 1984, edition of the British defense publication Jane’s Defence Weekly informed its readers: “Iran is engaged in the production of an atomic bomb, likely to be ready within two years, according to press reports in the Persian Gulf last week.” Subsequent warnings from U.S. and foreign sources about Iran’s imminent acquisition of a nuclear weapon have been offered over the past four decades. These false guesses are worth bearing in mind as news from the P5+1 nuclear negotiations in Lausanne, Switzerland emerges. More technical “breakout” estimates—the time it would take Iran to compile enough highly-enriched uranium (HEU) to fuel one nuclear weapon—continue to be published, with slightly varying timelines. Setting aside logic, wisdom, and a huge range of assumptions, if you average these five estimates, Iran would require 89.8 days, or three months, if it made a hypothetical rush for one bombs-worth of HEU. • 1.9-2.2 months (Institute for Science and International Security, October 24, 2013) • 6 months (Arms Control, September 29, 2014) • 1.7 months (Iran Watch, February 24, 2015) • 45-87 days (Bipartisan Policy Center February 23, 2015) • 3 months (Washington Institute, March 28, 2015) It is essential to recognize that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program, nor does it possess a nuclear weapon. On February 26, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Ayatollah Khomenei, the supreme leader of Iran, ended his country’s nuclear weapons program in 2003 and “as far as we know, he’s not made the decision to go for a nuclear weapon.” This repeats the “high-confidence” judgement of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) that was first made in November 2007. Clapper added that Iran “wants to preserve options across the capabilities it would take to build [a nuclear weapon], but right now they don’t have one, and have not made that decision.” To repeat: Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program, nor does it possess a nuclear weapon. So when a politician, analyst, or pundit mentions an Iranian “nuclear weapons program” they are referring to a program that the IC is not aware of. Moreover, if possible, tell them to contact the Central Intelligence Agency through its “report threats” website to let the agency’s nonproliferation analysts know about whatever secret information they are basing their judgment upon. Iran signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) on July 1, 1968. Under the NPT, Iran agreed that it was a non-nuclear weapon state party, which prohibits Iran from receiving, manufacturing, or otherwise acquiring nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices. Furthermore, like most other non-nuclear weapons, states parties to the treaty, Iran entered into a NPT Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which it did in May 1974.  The crux of the twelve-year dispute between Tehran and the IAEA is whether and to what extent Iran is in violation of its NPT obligations and UN Security Council resolution demands. As IAEA director generals have repeated, most recently last week by Yuki Amano, the inspection agency has never received adequate clarifying information about the “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program. While Iran has no bomb or nuclear weapons program, nine other countries do, including five that also signed the NPT. Under the treaty, the five signatories pledge to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating…to nuclear disarmament.” So while the world is focused on the nonproliferation requirements of a country with zero bombs, keep in mind the promises that remain unfulfilled from those countries with 9,835 of bombs, as well as the four countries that are nuclear outliers.