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1. Intelligence and Policy Community Cooperation in the Libya WMD Disarmament Case

Author:
William H. Tobey
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
As the Trump Administration prepares to negotiate with North Korea, a question has arisen as to what model Washington should follow. National Security Advisor John Bolton has suggested that the Libyan nuclear case represents the best example to emulate. Given the violence Libya suffered after it disarmed, this recommendation provoked criticism, not only from the North Korean government, but a number of American analysts. Anticipating the importance of this case, NPEC commissioned William Tobey, former Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration, to write a primary history. Mr. Tobey served on the National Security Council in the Bush (43) Administration when the Libyan nuclear case was being worked.
Topic:
Intelligence, International Affairs, and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
Libya

2. Avoiding a Nuclear Wild, Wild West in the Middle East

Author:
Henry Sokolski (ed)
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
With the Trump Administration’s announcement last fall that it intended to negotiate a civil nuclear cooperative agreement with Saudi Arabia, a debate has ensued over how restrictive any such agreement should be over the enrichment of uranium and the reprocessing of plutonium. These nuclear activities can bring a country within weeks of making its first batch of bombs. This announcement immediately raised the question, how much economic sense it made for Saudi Arabia to invest in nuclear power. It also raised a number of security questions. Should the United States allow Riyadh to reprocess and enrich even though these activities could bring Saudi Arabia within weeks of acquiring nuclear weapons? If Washington acceded to this demand by Riyadh, what would be the implications for the terms of nuclear cooperation with the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Morocco? How would such an agreement impact efforts to tighten the terms of our nuclear understanding with Iran? Would such a permissive deal with Riyadh make it more difficult to say no to Seoul’s demand that we allow them to enrich uranium? All of these questions and more are discussed in this volume’s four sections
Topic:
International Affairs and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
Middle East

3. A Fresh Examination of the Proliferation Dangers of Light Water Reactors

Author:
Victor Gilinsky
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
Even before the ink was dry on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in l968, officials in the U.S. State Policy Planning staff had privately warned their superiors that non-weapons member states to the treaty could come within weeks of acquiring a nuclear arsenal by amassing nuclear weapons useable fuels claiming that these were intended for peaceful purposes. The advice was quietly filed away. Six years later, with India’s “peaceful” nuclear explosion, the warning seemed more salient. Still, even after a series of studies pointing out the military risks associated with proliferating civilian nuclear technology, most policy makers believed that the danger was speculative and still, at worst, many years away.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Should We Let The Bomb Spread

Author:
Henry Sokolski (ed)
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
In 1966, Leonard Beaton, a journalist and strategic scholar, published a short book that asked must the bomb spread.1 Mr. Beaton’s query reflected the profound alarm with which proliferation was viewed shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today that alarm is all but absent: Now, not only is proliferation increasingly viewed as a given (more of a fact than a problem), but some security experts actually see advantages in nuclear weapons spreading or, at least, little harm. Cultivation of this latter view took time—nearly a half century— and considerable scholarship. In 1981, Kenneth Waltz popularized French and American finite deterrence thinking of the late 1950s by asking whether or not nuclear weapons in more hands might be better. His answer was yes. As nuclear weapons spread, he argued, adversaries would view war as being self-defeating and peace would become more certain.
Topic:
International Affairs and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. The Nuclear Terrorism Threat: How Real Is It?

Author:
Michael Brian Jenkins and John Lauder
Publication Date:
08-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
NPEC Working Paper 1602, “The Nuclear Terrorism Threat: How Real Is It?” presents two opposed views on the threat of nuclear terrorism. Brian M. Jenkins, a Rand analyst and a leading expert on nuclear terrorism, argues that the threat is overblown. John Lauder, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Nonproliferation Center, argues the opposing case that the threat is growing and we need to be hedging against it now.
Topic:
Terrorism, International Affairs, and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. How Dark Might East Asia’s Nuclear Future Be?

Author:
Henry D. Sokolski
Publication Date:
08-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
NPEC Working Paper 1601, “How Dark Might East Asia’s Nuclear Future Be?” contains detailed projections of what the future holds for a more nuclear-armed China, Japan, North Korea and South Korea. None are predictions. The volume’s purpose is to encourage deeper debate about the security implications of nuclear proliferation in East Asia.
Topic:
International Affairs and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Alternative North Korean Nuclear Futures

Author:
Shane Smith
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
On February 12, 2013, North Korea’s state media announced that it had conducted a third nuclear test “of a smaller and light A-bomb unlike the previous ones, yet with great explosive power…demonstrating the good performance of the DPRK's nuclear deterrence that has become diversified.”[1] Since then, there has been renewed debate and speculation over the nature and direction of North Korea’s nuclear program. Can it develop weapons using both plutonium and uranium? How far away is it from having a deliverable warhead and how capable are its delivery systems? How many and what kind of weapons is it looking to build? These are not easy questions to answer. North Korea remains one of the most notoriously secret nations, and details about its nuclear program are undoubtedly some of its most valued secrets. Yet, the answers to these questions have far reaching implications for U.S. and regional security.
Topic:
International Affairs and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. "Japanese Strategic Weapons Programs and Strategies: Future Scenarios and Alternative Approaches

Author:
Ian Easton
Publication Date:
11-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
The balance of power in Northeast Asia is shifting in ways that are dangerous to the security of Japan. That is certainly how the picture has appeared to the eyes of many observers in recent years.The reasons are many, and they are compelling. First, China’s emergence as a regional military power has taken place in a far more disruptive fashion than was expected. Attempts to shape China into a “responsible stakeholder” have failed. Beijing now threatens Tokyo with a growing number of coercive air and maritime operations around the Japanadministered Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands. Chinese fighters, bombers, ships, and submarines have greatly expanded the scope of their training operations. They now frequently pass through Japan’s Ryukyu Island Chain on their way out into the Philippine Sea where they conduct exercises that undermine confidence in the ability of the U.S. Navy to intervene in a regional conflict.
Topic:
International Affairs and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
Japan