Aff document Map



Download 0.86 Mb.
Page3/15
Date10.08.2017
Size0.86 Mb.
#30691
1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   ...   15

North Korea

1ac Frontline

North Korea prolif is accelerating now- recent submarine tests- also leads to Iranian acquisition


Huessy 6/11 (Peter, 2015, Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, founded in 1981, and the senior defense consultant at the Air Force Association and National Security Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, “North Korea's Serious New Nuclear Missile Threat,” http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5914/north-korea-nuclear-missile)//RTF

North Korea appears to have made significant progress in extending its capability as a nuclear-armed rogue nation, to where its missiles may become capable of hitting American cities with little or no warning. What new evidence makes such a threat compelling? North Korea claims to have nuclear warheads small enough to fit on their ballistic missiles and missiles capable of being launched from a submerged platform such as a submarine. Shortly after North Korea's April 22, 2015 missile test, which heightened international concern about the military capabilities of North Korea, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged China and our regional allies to restart the 2003 "six-party talks" aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula and reining in North Korea's expanding nuclear missile program. There are some "experts," however, who believe that North Korea's threat is highly exaggerated and poses no immediate danger to the United States. Consequently, many believe that, given China's oft-repeated support for a "nuclear weapons free" Korean peninsula, time is on America's side to get an agreement that will guarantee just such a full de-nuclearization. But, if North Korea's technical advances are substantive, its missiles, armed with small nuclear weapons, might soon be able to reach the continental United States -- not just Hawaii and Alaska. Further, if such missile threats were to come from submarines near the U.S., North Korea would be able to launch a surprise nuclear-armed missile attack on an American city. In this view, time is not on the side of the U.S. Submarine-launched missiles come without a "return address" to indicate what country or terrorist organization fired the missile. The implications for American security do not stop there. As North Korea is Iran's primary missile-development partner, whatever North Korea can do with its missiles and nuclear warheads, Iran will presumably be able to do as well. One can assume the arrangement is reciprocal. Given recent warnings that North Korea may have upwards of 20 nuclear warheads, the United States seems to be facing a critical new danger. Would renewed negotiations with China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea really be able to address this threat? Two years ago, Andrew Tarantola and Brian Barrett said there was "no reason to panic;" that North Korea was "a long way off" -- in fact "years" -- before its missiles and nuclear weapons could be "put together in any meaningful way." At the same time, in April 2013, an official U.S. assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency stated the U.S. had "moderate" confidence that "North Korea had indeed developed a nuclear device small enough to mount on a ballistic missile." That was followed up two years later, on April 7, 2015, when the commander of Northcom, Admiral Bill Gortney, one of the nation's leading homeland security defenders, said the threat was considerably more serious. He noted that, "North Korea has deployed its new road-mobile KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile and was capable of mounting a miniaturized nuclear warhead on it."[1] At a Pentagon press briefing in April, Admiral Cecil Haney, Commander of the US Strategic Command and America's senior military expert on nuclear deterrence and missile defense, said it was important to take seriously reports that North Korea can now make small nuclear warheads and put them on their ballistic missiles.[2] And sure enough, in April, North Korea launched a ballistic missile from a submerged platform. Media reaction to the North Korean test has been confused. Reuters, citing the analysis of two German "experts," claimed the North Korean test was fake -- a not-too-clever manipulation of video images. The Wall Street Journal, on May 21, 2015, echoed this view, noting: "[F]or evidence of North Korea's bending of reality to drum up fears about its military prowess," one need look no further than a consensus that North Korea "doctored" pictures of an alleged missile test from a submarine. This, they claimed, was proof that the "technology developments" by North Korea were nothing more than elaborately faked fairy tales. However, Israeli missile defense expert Uzi Rubin -- widely known as the "father" of Israel's successful Arrow missile defense program -- explained to this author that previous North Korean missile developments, which have often been dismissed as nothing more than mocked-up missiles made of plywood, actually turned out to be the real thing -- findings confirmed by subsequent intelligence assessments. Rubin, as well as the South Korean Defense Ministry, insist that on April 22, the North Korean military did, in fact, launch a missile from a submerged platform.[3] Kim Jong Un, the "Supreme Leader" of North Korea, supervises the April 22 test-launch of a missile from a submerged platform. (Image source: KCNA) What gave the "faked" test story some prominence were the misunderstood remarks of the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral James Winnefeld. He had said, on May 19, that the North Korean missile launch was "not all" that North Korea said it was. He also mentioned that North Korea used clever video editors to "crop" the missile test-launch images. Apparently, that was exactly what the editors did. The Admiral, however, never claimed in his speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies there had been no successful missile test.[4] The same day, a high-ranking State Department official, Frank Rose -- Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance -- told a Korean security seminar on Capitol Hill that North Korea had successfully conducted a "missile ejection" test, but from an underwater barge rather than a submarine.[5] To confuse matters further, additional pictures were released by the South Korean media to illustrate stories about the North Korean test. Those pictures, however, were of American missiles, which use both solid and liquid propellant; as a result, one photo showed a U.S. missile with a solid propellant smoke trail and one, from a liquid propellant, without a smoke trail. These photographs apparently befuddled Reuters' "experts," who may have jumped to the conclusion that the photos of the North Korean test were "faked," when they were simply of entirely different missile tests, and had been used only to "illustrate" ocean-going missile launches and not the actual North Korean test.[6] According to Uzi Rubin, to achieve the capability to eject a missile from an underwater platform is a significant technological advancement. The accomplishment again illustrates "that rogue states such as North Korea can achieve military capabilities which pose a notable threat to the United States and its allies." Rubin also stated that the North Korean underwater launch test was closely related to the development of a missile-firing submarine, "a first step in achieving a very serious and dangerous new military capability."[7] Admiral Winnefeld and Secretary Rose, in their remarks, confirmed that the North Korean test was not the "dog and pony show" some have claimed. In other words, the U.S. government has officially confirmed that the North Koreans have made a serious step toward producing a sea-launched ballistic missile capability. While such an operational capability may be "years away," Rubin warns that "even many years eventually pass, and it will also take many years to build up the missile defenses, so we had better use the time wisely."[8] Will diplomacy succeed in stopping the North Korean threats? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry seemed to think it worth a try; so he began the push to restart the old 2003 "six-party" talks between the United States, North Korea, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan, to bring North Korea's nuclear weapons under some kind of international control and eventual elimination. After all, supporters of such talks claim, similar talks with Iran appear to be leading to some kind of "deal" with Tehran, to corral its nuclear weapons program, so why not duplicate that effort and bring North Korea back into the non-nuclear fold? What such a "deal," if any, with Iran, will contain, is at this point unknown. Celebrations definitely seem premature. If the "deal" with North Korea is as "successful" as the P5+1's efforts to rein in Iran's illegal nuclear weapons program, the prognosis for the success of diplomacy could scarcely be more troubling. Bloomberg's defense writer, Tony Carpaccio, reflecting Washington's conventional wisdom, recently wrote that of course China will rein in North Korea's nuclear program: "What might be a bigger preventative will be the protestations of China, North Korea's primary trade partner and only prominent international ally. Making China angry would put an already deeply impoverished, isolated North Korea in even more dire straits." Unfortunately, no matter how attractive a strategy of diplomatically ending North Korea's nuclear program might look on the surface, it is painfully at odds with China's established and documented track record in supporting and carrying out nuclear proliferation with such collapsed or rogue states as Iran, Syria, Pakistan, North Korea and Libya, as detailed by the 2009 book The Nuclear Express, by Tom C. Reed (former Secretary of the Air Force under President Gerald Ford and Special Assistant to the President of National Security Affairs during the Ronald Reagan administration) and Daniel Stillman (former Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). Far from being a potential partner in seeking a non-nuclear Korean peninsula, China, say the authors, has been and is actually actively pushing the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue states, as a means of asserting Chinese hegemony, complicating American security policy and undermining American influence. The problem is not that China has little influence with North Korea, as China's leadership repeatedly claims. The problem is that China has no interest in pushing North Korea away from its nuclear weapons path because the North Korean nuclear program serves China's geostrategic purposes. As Reed and Stillman write, "China has been using North Korea as the re-transfer point for the sale of nuclear and missile technology to Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Libya and Yemen". They explain, "Chinese and North Korean military officers were in close communication prior to North Korea's missile tests of 1998 and 2006". Thus, if China takes action to curtail North Korea's nuclear program, China will likely be under pressure from the United States and its allies to take similar action against Iran and vice versa. China, however, seems to want to curry favor with Iran because of its vast oil and gas supplies, as well as to use North Korea to sell and transfer nuclear technology to both North Korea and Iran, as well as other states such as Pakistan. As Reed again explains, "China has catered to the nuclear ambitions of the Iranian ayatollahs in a blatant attempt to secure an ongoing supply of oil". North Korea is a partner with Iran in the missile and nuclear weapons development business, as Uzi Rubin has long documented. Thus, it is reasonable to believe that China may see any curtailment of North Korea's nuclear program as also curtailing Iran's access to the same nuclear technology being supplied by North Korea. Any curtailment would also harm the Chinese nuclear sales business to Iran and North Korea, especially if China continues to use the "North Korea to Iran route" as an indirect means of selling its own nuclear expertise and technology to Iran. It is not as if Chinese nuclear proliferation is a recent development or a "one of a kind" activity. As far back as 1982, China gave nuclear warhead blueprints to Pakistan, according to Reed. These findings indicate that China's nuclear weapons proliferation activities are over three decades old.[9] Reed and Stillman also note that nearly a decade later, China tested a nuclear bomb "for Pakistan" on May 26, 1990, and that documents discovered in Libya when the George W. Bush administration shut down Libyan leader Muammar Kaddafi's nuclear program revealed that China gave Pakistan the CHIC-4 nuclear weapon design. Unfortunately, China's nuclear assistance to Pakistan did not stay just in Pakistan. The nuclear technology made its way from Pakistan to North Korea. For example, high explosive craters, construction of a 50 megawatt nuclear reactor (finished in 1986) and a secret reprocessing facility begun in 1987 all were done in North Korea with major Pakistani help from the A.Q. Khan "Nukes R Us" smuggling group, as Reed and Stillman document in their book. Reed and Stillman write that when, amid disclosures in 2003 of a major Libyan nuclear weapons program, the U.S. government sought help in shutting down the Khan nuclear smuggling ring, "Chinese authorities were totally unhelpful, to the point of stonewalling any investigation into Libya's nuclear supply network." More recently, Chinese companies have now twice -- in 2009 and 2011 -- been indicted by the Attorney for the City of New York for trying to provide Iran with nuclear weapons technology. The indictments document that Chinese companies were selling Iran steel for nuclear centrifuges and other banned technology. A leaked State Department cable, discussing the indictments at the time, revealed "details on China's role as a supplier of materials for Iran's nuclear program," and that "China helped North Korea ship goods to Iran through Chinese airports." And more recently, in April 2015, the Czech government interdicted additional nuclear technology destined for Iran -- the origin of which remains unknown -- in violation of current sanctions against Iran. From 1982 through at least the first part of 2015, the accumulation of documentary evidence on nuclear proliferation reveals two key facts: First, despite literally hundreds of denials by Iran that it is seeking nuclear weapons, and amid current negotiations to end Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, there is solid evidence that Iran still seeks nuclear weapons technology; and that North Korea has nuclear weapons and is advancing their capability. Second, China continues to transfer, through its own territory, nuclear weapons technology involving both North Korea and Iran. Although the Chinese profess to be against nuclear proliferation, their track record from the documented evidence illustrates just the opposite. In summary, it is obvious North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles are a serious threat to America and its allies. And China, from its proliferation record for the past three decades, is making such a threat more widespread. In this light, is dismissing North Korea's advances in military technology and ignoring China's record of advancing its neighbors' nuclear weapons technology really best for U.S. interests?

That causes miscalc- leads to global nuclear war


Metz 13 – Chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department and Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute (Steven, 3/13/13, “Strategic Horizons: Thinking the Unthinkable on a Second Korean War,” http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12786/strategic-horizons-thinking-the-unthinkable-on-a-second-korean-war)

Today, North Korea is the most dangerous country on earth and the greatest threat to U.S. security. For years, the bizarre regime in Pyongyang has issued an unending stream of claims that a U.S. and South Korean invasion is imminent, while declaring that it will defeat this offensive just as -- according to official propaganda -- it overcame the unprovoked American attack in 1950. Often the press releases from the official North Korean news agency are absurdly funny, and American policymakers tend to ignore them as a result. Continuing to do so, though, could be dangerous as events and rhetoric turn even more ominous. In response to North Korea's Feb. 12 nuclear test, the U.N. Security Council recently tightened existing sanctions against Pyongyang. Even China, North Korea's long-standing benefactor and protector, went along. Convulsed by anger, Pyongyang then threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States and South Korea, abrogated the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and cut off the North-South hotline installed in 1971 to help avoid an escalation of tensions between the two neighbors. A spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry asserted that a second Korean War is unavoidable. He might be right; for the first time, an official statement from the North Korean government may prove true. No American leader wants another war in Korea. The problem is that the North Koreans make so many threatening and bizarre official statements and sustain such a high level of military readiness that American policymakers might fail to recognize the signs of impending attack. After all, every recent U.S. war began with miscalculation; American policymakers misunderstood the intent of their opponents, who in turn underestimated American determination. The conflict with North Korea could repeat this pattern. Since the regime of Kim Jong Un has continued its predecessors’ tradition of responding hysterically to every action and statement it doesn't like, it's hard to assess exactly what might push Pyongyang over the edge and cause it to lash out. It could be something that the United States considers modest and reasonable, or it could be some sort of internal power struggle within the North Korean regime invisible to the outside world. While we cannot know whether the recent round of threats from Pyongyang is serious or simply more of the same old lathering, it would be prudent to think the unthinkable and reason through what a war instigated by a fearful and delusional North Korean regime might mean for U.S. security. The second Korean War could begin with missile strikes against South Korean, Japanese or U.S. targets, or with a combination of missile strikes and a major conventional invasion of the South -- something North Korea has prepared for many decades. Early attacks might include nuclear weapons, but even if they didn't, the United States would probably move quickly to destroy any existing North Korean nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. The war itself would be extremely costly and probably long. North Korea is the most militarized society on earth. Its armed forces are backward but huge. It's hard to tell whether the North Korean people, having been fed a steady diet of propaganda based on adulation of the Kim regime, would resist U.S. and South Korean forces that entered the North or be thankful for relief from their brutally parasitic rulers. As the conflict in Iraq showed, the United States and its allies should prepare for widespread, protracted resistance even while hoping it doesn't occur. Extended guerrilla operations and insurgency could potentially last for years following the defeat of North Korea's conventional military. North Korea would need massive relief, as would South Korea and Japan if Pyongyang used nuclear weapons. Stabilizing North Korea and developing an effective and peaceful regime would require a lengthy occupation, whether U.S.-dominated or with the United States as a major contributor. The second Korean War would force military mobilization in the United States. This would initially involve the military's existing reserve component, but it would probably ultimately require a major expansion of the U.S. military and hence a draft. The military's training infrastructure and the defense industrial base would have to grow. This would be a body blow to efforts to cut government spending in the United States and postpone serious deficit reduction for some time, even if Washington increased taxes to help fund the war. Moreover, a second Korean conflict would shock the global economy and potentially have destabilizing effects outside Northeast Asia. Eventually, though, the United States and its allies would defeat the North Korean military. At that point it would be impossible for the United States to simply re-establish the status quo ante bellum as it did after the first Korean War. The Kim regime is too unpredictable, desperate and dangerous to tolerate. Hence regime change and a permanent ending to the threat from North Korea would have to be America's strategic objective. China would pose the most pressing and serious challenge to such a transformation of North Korea. After all, Beijing's intervention saved North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung after he invaded South Korea in the 1950s, and Chinese assistance has kept the subsequent members of the Kim family dictatorship in power. Since the second Korean War would invariably begin like the first one -- with North Korean aggression -- hopefully China has matured enough as a great power to allow the world to remove its dangerous allies this time. If the war began with out-of-the-blue North Korean missile strikes, China could conceivably even contribute to a multinational operation to remove the Kim regime. Still, China would vehemently oppose a long-term U.S. military presence in North Korea or a unified Korea allied with the United States. One way around this might be a grand bargain leaving a unified but neutral Korea. However appealing this might be, Korea might hesitate to adopt neutrality as it sits just across the Yalu River from a China that tends to claim all territory that it controlled at any point in its history. If the aftermath of the second Korean War is not handled adroitly, the result could easily be heightened hostility between the United States and China, perhaps even a new cold war. After all, history shows that deep economic connections do not automatically prevent nations from hostility and war -- in 1914 Germany was heavily involved in the Russian economy and had extensive trade and financial ties with France and Great Britain. It is not inconceivable then, that after the second Korean War, U.S.-China relations would be antagonistic and hostile at the same time that the two continued mutual trade and investment. Stranger things have happened in statecraft.

Humint key to verification of nuclear weaponization in North Korea.


Johnson ‘9

Dr. Loch K. Johnson is Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia. He is editor of the journal "Intelligence and National Security" and has written numerous books on American foreign policy. Dr. Johnson served as staff director of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence Oversight from 1977 to 1979. Dr. Johnson earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Riverside. "Evaluating "Humint": The Role of Foreign Agents in U.S. Security" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 50th ANNUAL CONVENTION "EXPLORING THE PAST, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE", New York Marriott Marquis, NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA, Feb 15, 2009 – available via: http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/0/6/6/p310665_index.html



Despite the many negative critiques of humint, former DCI Tenet emphasizes that intelligence is still "primarily a human endeavor.” — He is obviously not referring to the government's intelligence budget priorities. Recall that the United States devotes only a small percentage of its annual intelligence budget to human spying. — Spy machines are costly, while human agents are relatively inexpensive to hire and sustain on an annual stipend. One of the ironies of American intelligence is that the vast percentage of its spending goes into expensive intelligence hardware, especially surveillance satellites, even though the value of these machines is questionable in helping the United States understand such contemporary global concerns as terrorism or China's economic might. Cameras mounted on satellites or airplanes are unable to peer inside the canvas tents, mud huts, or mountain caves in Afghanistan or Pakistan where terrorists plan their lethal operations, or into the deep underground caverns where North Koreans construct atomic weapons. "Space cameras cannot see into factories where missiles are made, or into the sheds of shipyards," writes an intelligence expert. "Photographs cannot tell whether stacks of drums outside an assumed chemical-warfare plant contain nerve gas or oil, or whether they are empty” — _As a U.S. intelligence officer has observed, we need "to know what's inside the building, not what the building looks like”.

Effective verification creates deals that stop prolif.


Hernandez 13 – Research Associate, Monterey Institute of International Studies (Jason, “Proliferation Pathways to a North Korean Intercontinental Ballistic Missile”, Nuclear Threat Initiative, Dec. 20, 2013) RMT

During the Clinton Administration, the United States and North Korea came extremely close to concluding a "Missile Deal" that would have halted North Korean development, production, and testing of increasingly longer-range missiles. However, the deal never came to fruition, and under the Bush Administration it was scrapped completely. One of the primary issues for both the Clinton and Bush administrations was monitoring and verification. The United States sought a comprehensive monitoring and verification regime that would have permitted U.S. inspectors on-site access to rocket and missile facilities, while North Korea believed that the United States could accomplish verification through imagery analysis and other national technical means. [20] It is therefore likely that any future missile deal negotiations will focus heavily upon verification. Detection and Monitoring Any advances in rocket technology using the three pathways described above will require numerous tests before the missile can be accepted into service and deployed. Given North Korea's limited geographical size, all long-range missile tests will result in debris falling into international waters. For the December 2012 Unha-3 launch, the rocket's first stage fell into the Yellow Sea, and the second fell off the coast of the Philippines. By recovering the first stage debris, South Korea was able to confirm some facts about the Unha, while discovering new data that indicated progress in the Unha's design. The debris demonstrated continued areas of struggle and primitive design elements, such as in the propellant, airframe, and welding, while also showing program advancements and new design elements, such as the use of steering engines in place of jet vanes for orientation. [21] It is reasonable to assume that over the course of a testing program, debris will be recovered to enlighten the world on the progress of North Korea's missile program. New deployment methods, such as the use of silos or road-mobile launchers in pathways two or three will not necessarily be detected. While the construction of silos could be detected by satellite imagery analysis, it is not guaranteed that the international community would detect every silo. Iran's Shahab silos went unnoticed in the open source until displayed on Iranian media during the Great Prophet 6 military exercises. [22] A road-mobile TD-2/Unha would seemingly go undetected unless paraded or displayed publically. The KN-08 was unknown in the open source until it was displayed at the April 2012 military parade in Pyongyang. Deployments and launches of silo-based or road-mobile TD-2/Unha's would be very difficult to detect and monitor. Verification The issue of verification is complex, and any missile deal will undoubtedly cover the entirety of North Korea's missile production, from battlefield and short-range ballistic missiles to space launch vehicles and ICBMs. However, this brief will only address the relationship between a missile deal and the three pathways to an ICBM. For the purpose of this section, the author assumes that a future missile deal will either aim to prevent or reverse a missile program in four key areas: development; manufacturing and production; acquisition; and deployment. The question becomes for each of the three pathways to an ICBM, can the international community verify that North Korea is abiding by a deal that prevents or reverses 1) development; 2) manufacturing and production; and 3) deployment of an ICBM?

Verification efforts are a detterent and prevent tech development.


Walker 11--UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Arms Control and Disarmament Research Unit (ACDRU) since March 1985.Published widely on aspects of CBW history in the Harvard-Sussex Program’s ‘The CBW Conventions Bulletin’[John R., “The CTBT: Verification and Deterrence”, VERTIC BRIEF • 16 • OCTOBER 2011]RMT

We can however consider that any state contemplating a clandestine programme, or in this case one or more underground nuclear tests, must make certain calculations about its ability to conceal all of the evidence all of the time from a watchful international community. Balancing risks—military and strategic gains against the political, diplomatic and economic costs—is not easy. A potential violator has to be sure that his preparations to test, as well as its conduct and aftermath, can be concealed from the international community indefinitely. In the case of the CTBT, it will be a combination of national technical means (NTMs) and the treaty’s International Monitoring System (IMS) and on-site inspections that place a series of high hurdles in the face of a would-be proliferator. Tripping over just one can compromise his plans and negate any conceivable military advantage that he might have been hoping to derive from a clandestine test, or tests. It is worth recalling here that Sir William Penney, the leader of the UK’s nuclear weapons programme in the 1950s and early 1960s, advised Harold Macmillan’s government in 1962 that even though the Soviet Union might be confident in avoiding the detection of one test under the then envisaged verification system, it could not be at all sure that a series of, say, three tests would go unnoticed. Penney’s view was that one test would not alter the strategic balance and so the risk of a test ban treaty was worth taking as one would need a series of tests to obtain a strategically significant advantage. M ore than fifty years later we have the CTBT’s IMS, which, as of August 2011, has 86 per cent of its primary stations (including seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound and radionuclide stations), 83 per cent of its auxiliary seismic stations and 63 per cent of its radionuclide laboratories certified. Their detection capabilities are immeasurably superior to those planned by the 1958 Geneva seismic experts’ meeting. Simulations of global detection thresholds today, measured in terms of equivalent nuclear-yield in kilotons of TNT (kt), suggest that the IMS network is capable of detecting and identifying, worldwide, explosions fired close- coupled underground in hard rock, in the atmosphere, and in the ocean, with a yield equal to or more than one kiloton. In many areas of the world, such as continental Eurasia, the detection threshold is significantly less than one kiloton. In the 1977–1980 Tripartite Test Ban Treaty negotiations, UK and US scientists took the view The CTBT: Verification and Deterrence2 that it would only be yields of around ten kilotons that would permit meaningful developments in new warhead design. Any state contemplating a clandestine test has to be sure that, even assuming its preparations go undetected (it can take about a year to prepare for an underground test), it still must find the right geological conditions on its territory in a reasonably remote area. It has to be sure, too, that it can stem a borehole or tunnel effectively to guarantee no venting of radioactive particles or radioactive noble gases that could be picked up by IMS radionuclide stations. Such a task would be challenging for a state with no prior experience of underground testing. Then there is the small matter of the seismic stations— primary and auxiliary—detecting the event and the strong likelihood that it will be subsequently correctly identified as an explosion from the Treaty’s International Data Centre (IDC) Reviewed Events Bulletin. How convincing an explanation could a state provide when pressed for clarification under the Treaty’s Article IV provisions? Could it be absolutely confident that it could conjure up a fool-proof cover story that would hoodwink all of the treaty’s states parties? This is where we first begin to see that the more effective the verification system and the greater the integration of the elements that combine to make it up, the greater the level of deterrence of non-compliance is. A regime that can demonstrate a very high level of technical reliability, coverage and sensitivity presents a formidable obstacle to anyone who wants to cheat. The IMS does that. A state might hope that the CTBT Organisation’s Executive Council would fail to act on the compelling evidence presented by the IDC as well as any supporting information from states parties NTMs and other sources (such as commercial satellite data) and vote against an on-site inspection. However, could any state guarantee that this would indeed be the case? Just how confident ahead of time could it be? As Tibor Toth— the Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS) Executive Secretary—has pointed out, the very nature of the Treaty’s verification regime will be democratic in that the information behind an inspection request is derived from an independent system whose results are open to all states parties. There may, therefore, be very strong pressures to respond to a well-substantiated compliance concern, which it would be politically much more difficult to ignore or dismiss. Building an on-site inspection capability for the CTBT is a demanding and lengthy process—but such a capability provides the one clear way of confirming that an event that triggered an inspection was a nuclear test conducted in violation of the treaty’s Article I prohibitions. Effective inspections require a well-equipped, trained and experienced cadre of inspectors and an ability to deploy to the field promptly. If the future Technical Secretariat cannot meet these criteria then the OSI regime is a paper tiger. However, major strides have been taken by the PTS and some states signatories in recent years and efforts are continuing on building up an initial capability that would be fit for purpose on entry-into-force of the treaty. There will be a large-scale OSI exercise Integrated Field Exercise in 2014 that will be a key milestone in the development of the Treaty’s OSI regime. OSIs present a violator with an array of techniques and technologies that will make it immensely difficult to be sure that absolutely all incriminating traces of illegal activity can be concealed for up to the 130 days that an inspection could last. Deployment of these techniques and technologies in an integrated and intelligent manner provides a potent tool for detecting non-compliance. And, if the traces cannot be concealed, finding sustainable and convincing technical explanations that will persuade not just the inspectors but the Executive Council back in Vienna is no easy matter. The Council will review the final inspection report and determine whether any non-compliance has occurred. Knowing that the treaty’s OSI capability is effective and would stand a very good chance of uncovering facts strongly suggestive of non-compliance, a cheating state will have to obstruct the inspectors in the field. A systematic pattern of evasion, delay, obstruction, obfuscation and down-right hostility tells its own story, especially since inspectors are allowed to comment on the co-operation (or lack thereof ) provided by an Inspected State Party in their final inspection report. Even a remote chance of detection is a difficult thing for a would-be violator to guard against. Moreover, the greater the level of uncertainty in the mind of such a state, the greater the role that OSIs play in the deterrent effect of the treaty’s overall verification regime. During the 1977–1980 tripartite test ban treaty nego- tiations the UK noted that: ‘Ther e is no known remote method of determining unambiguously whether an underground event was man-made in origin and, if so, was due to a nuclear explosion. Such conclusive evidence is only obtainable b y a n o n-the-spot i nvestigation i nto t he p resence of radioactive materials. Provision for OSI would help deter clandestine testing by posing a threat that it would be identified as such; OSI would also enhance the confidence of all parties to the treaty that its provisions were being observed.’ This statement remains valid today. 1 The CTBT verification regime—comprising the IMS stations (i.e. primary seismic, auxiliary seismic, hyrdoacoustic, infrasound and radionuclide, including stations with radioactive noble gas detection capabilities), the International Data Centre, National Data Centres, consultations and clarification procedures and on-site inspections armed with an array of detection techniques and technologies—presents a formidable set of obstacles for a would-be violator to surmount. And in this equation we should not overlook the role that can be played by NTMs—remote sensing data such as multispectral and infrared images to give but one example. Nor should we forget that science and technology does not stand still and we can confidently expect that the capabilities of all aspects of the verification regime will increase. In particular, as the June 2011 Science and Technology for the CTBT Conference in Vienna noted, progress in sensors, networks and observational technologies as well as in computing and processing offer promising benefits for the efficacy of all components of the treaty’s verification regime. We might still not know exactly what deters in deterrence in the context of preventing non-compliance in arms control and disarmament agreements, but in the context of the CTBT the negotiators designed an integrated system that will clearly complicate the plans of any state thinking that it could evade that system successfully and derive a meaningful political, military or strategic advantage from doing so. The overall regime must inevitably impact on the calculations of a wouldbe evader, and the higher the assurance of detection the more uncertain he must be that he can get away with cheating. Deterrence of non-compliance is therefore strengthened.


Download 0.86 Mb.

Share with your friends:
1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   ...   15



The database is protected by copyright ©ininet.org 2024
send message
    Main page
united states
state department
primary focus
sheer amount
technological advances
increasing reliance