Proliferating Thoughts

I have returned from the Carnegie Nonproliferation Conference in Washington. A good time was had and some interesting questions arose for me. Several of the panels raised important issues that will need to be addressed much more rigorously by the nonproliferation, arms control and disarmament communities as nuclear numbers continue to come down. At present it is difficult to avoid the feeling that at a community level, if not an individual one, many of these issues are simply being dismissed or waved off as though they do not matter. Such a position may have been justifiable in the days when tens of thousands of NW were deployed by both the USSR and USA but it is difficult to sustain now.

I also got to talk to some very interesting people about a range of issues including the state of the nuclear energy industry, missile proliferation and deterrence issues.

Been a little while but work is intense. Nevertheless I have a couple of things on the boil including observations on Syrian CW, pet military history peeves, and when I get the chance to finish reading it, maybe even some thoughts regarding the nuclear weapons disarmament debate flagged at arms control wonk.

As an aside ACW is a great “blog” that demonstrates potential of new media, such as blogs, to make major contributions to informing and educating. I really wish that there were more like it.

Why is he is Washington I hear you ask. Well this should explain, though alas my name is spelt wrong.

In the 1980s and 1990s CW proliferation was a major international concern. There was some hope for change associated with the signing of the CWC in 1993 but as the decade progressed this seemed less justified. CWC related optimism was undermined by a constant parade of claims that Iraq was reestablishing its CW and other WMD arsenals, and that other countries, such as Libya, Syria or even Yugoslavia, possessed or were actively seeking to develop secret offensive CW programs, all of which represented a major menace to the security of the West.

As if this was not enough of a concern a religious cult in Japan, Aum Shinrikyo was able to develop a fairly sophisticated CW, and a much less successful BW capability. At once there was a firestorm of concern about the new danger of CW terrorism. Adding to the concerns raised by the Aum case were the increasing official awareness of the threat posed by Islamic terrorist and insurgent groups; all of which were violently opposed to the West, whether it be Christian or secular.

It did not take long for a new concern to surface; the fear that states engaged in CW proliferation might sell or gift their weapons or at least the necessary technology to terrorists that they were in ideological or strategic sympathy with. The thought did not seem so unreasonable at first glance, after all proliferators were already operating outside the norms of international behaviour.

Now, in 2009, the situation is seemly completely different and CW proliferation gets very little attention. There are a number of reasons for this.

One is simply that concern over Iran’s efforts to master the Uranium fuel cycle is sucking all of the air out of the room.

Another is that several of the CW proliferation bogeymen of the past have abandoned their programs. Although Libya is the main example that comes to mind in this regard it is important to remember that in 1999 Yugoslavia (as it then was) and Iraq were also considered to be active proliferators. Having said that the use of the term “proliferator” in this context was a bit of a stretch and I will return to that point shortly. But to return  to my point,  all three of these countries have abandoned, or been shown to have not had an active CW program in the mid to late 90s. As if this is not enough the US Govt has retracted the most assertive of its public assessments of Iran’s CW program. Indeed the retreat is so extensive that US intelligence agencies now only claim that Iran has a chemical industry with capabilities that could be turned to the production of weapons if the decision were made. (There is one thing that I will mention at the end regarding Iran that might be problematic.)

So who are we left with as CW proliferators. The list is actually quite short, Egypt, North Korea, and Syria. However, this is where we come back to the point I alluded to earlier. None of these are proliferators in the sense that they are engaged in a program to secretly develop a CW program in contravention of international norms and treaties. The simple fact is that all of them undertook the necessary developments many years ago, indeed several decades ago. They are not proliferating, in the sense of attempting to develop something, they have proliferated. Nevertheless their programs are described as a nonproliferation problem. This is the same fallacious thinking that saw the nonproliferation (and related policies) community massacre countless forests setting down their views on how to undertake the futile task of countering nuclear proliferation in India, Israel and Pakistan in the 1990s and 2000s. Why was this effort futile? Simply put, all three countries had already developed nuclear weapons capabilities in the 1970s and 1980s. The debate was a false one, despite all the nuanced terms used to get around the reality that the deed was done. Once these countries had mastered the production of fissile material, acquired the capability to produce the various components needed for a bomb, and secured a delivery system the issue became one of disarmament rather than nonproliferation.

This is also the case with Egypt, North Korea and Syria and CW. The issue is not preventing the spread of CW; rather it is a question of finding a way to extend the existing system of CW disarmament to those countries in addition to those that have already accepted it.

The list of those countries that have been disarmed of their CW or are actively engaged in so-doing is actually quite impressive.

Albania, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Russia, South Korea, UK, USA, Yugoslavia.

So there we are. Has CW proliferation ended? I think a case can be made.

Now what was it I was going to say about Iran? Well several years ago now (October 2005) Jane’s contended that Iran had contracted to supply Syria with several chemical plants and associated equipment to better enable Syria to produce CW. Then in September 2007 Jane’s reported that a number of Iranian technicians had been killed in the premature detonation of a CW warhead (or warheads, or stockpiled CW agents, or all three) in the course of their efforts to assist Syria with the development of a CW warhead for its Scud missiles. Either one of these events would be pretty egregious cases of CW proliferation if they were true. But that is just the problem, if they were true, or more precisely, if the public reports accurately reflected the details of the actual events. And this is not guaranteed. The CW explosion story never really made sense which I covered in an article for WMD insights back in November 2007 (“Explosion at Syrian Military Facility: A Chemical Weapons Accident?”). As for the other “event” the sourcing of the interpretation was dubious at best (”diplomatic sources”). I accept that Iran might have been selling a variety of chemical production related equipment to Syria. But the basic reality is that Syria engages in all sorts of chemical production that is not in the service of producing CW. I actually would have found the story more convincing if it had contended that Iran was assisting Syria in the production of fuel for its missile program.

So in sum, I don’t think that either of these Iranian “issues” undermine the contention that CW proliferation, at least that involving the classic agents of the 20th Century, is over.

As to the threat of terrorists with CW, well, for that you will have to buy the book which is now available. (”Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Growing Threat.”)

The UK Newspaper The Guardian is running an opinion piece entitled “The Palestinians say: ‘This is a war of extermination’” which is being picked up in a variety of places and run as a news story. There are a number of problems with this piece, not the least of which is the continuing breakdown of the ability to distinguish between editorials and news.

Now, I have refrained from commenting on the Israel military campaign in Gaza up to now. There really is no winning when you do. If you say something supportive of the Israeli side you attract the loonies who label you a supporter of war crimes, the massacre of children, even perhaps genocide. If you say something supportive of the Palestinian cause, though in this case it might be useful to at least try and differentiate between the Palestinian and HAMAS causes, given that there is no reason to treat them as identical or interchangeable, then you are clearly a supporter of terrorism and anti-semitism.

But this particular Guardian item just is ridiculous. Are we seriously meant to accept a claim that Israel is engaged in the extermination of the Palestinian population of Gaza? Even if we accept the latest casualty figures to come out of Gaza as accurate then there are no more than 1,300 or so dead on the Palestinian side. Clearly some of those who have been wounded will not survive and there will be others who have died in the fighting but have not yet been discovered in the rubble. so we may reasonably expect that the final death toll will be somewhat higher, though on the basis of the current count I would be surprised if it significantly exceeded 2,000.

If we accept that the Gazan population is around 1.4 million which seems to be the general consensus then the Israeli campaign of “extermination” has managed to kill 0.14% of the Gazan population. Call me picky if you will but “extermination” seems to be a somewhat sensationalized term for this sort of result. If we accept the claim then the only possible conclusion is that the Israelis are probably the least effective exterminators in history, the more so given the tools they have at their disposal.

Ludicrous assertions such as this one that has been made by Ahdaf Soueif should not even see the light of day. But in so far as they do, and there really is no way of stopping them, they should at least be seen for what they truly are, propaganda on behalf of one party to a conflict.

Just a rambling top of my head sort of thing. Provoked in part, certainly not in whole, by the current controversy over the fighting between Israel and HAMAS and the frequent references to the need to suspend the conflict in order to minister to the humanitarian needs of the local population. Is humanitarian aid to conflict zones, especially zones of very hot conflict, a good thing?

At first blush the answer is of course yes. What moral person could object to the idea of providing food, medicines and shelter to civilians who have been injured, displaced or otherwise disadvantaged as a result of warfare? The alternative is seemingly barbaric: to leave them to die of starvation, exposure, disease or wounds. Surely that is wrong.

As a rule the provision of humanitarian aid recognizes that the source of the problem being addressed is the actual conflict and that ending, suppressing, or otherwise suspending that conflict in some fashion is necessary if civilians are to receive the aid they need to survive. For some years now there has been a determined effort to ensure that ceasefires or temporary truces are put in place to enable aid to reach civilians in war-zones.

I wonder however if perhaps these efforts are not in fact, at least in a limited number of cases, actually making things worse by allowing the weaker party in a conflict to hang-on much longer than their own resources permit. Furthermore the ceasefires, there is usually more than one, rarely seem to involve any resolution of the issues driving the conflict in the first place meaning that sooner or later the conflict will resume. In the meantime it is difficult for people to pick up their lives in the face of an impending resumption of fighting.

The effect of these regular humanitarian pauses in conflicts and introductions of food, water, medicines, etc, might be likened to allowing fresh supplies into a besieged fortress on a regular basis. It prolongs the siege by enabling the garrison to sustain itself long past the time when it would have had to capitulate. Furthermore it has the effect of freeing the involved conflict party, usually the one that is doing less well, of responsibility for the welfare of their dependant population. Instead the outside world, or even their enemy, who may for good reason wish to prevent the introduction of external support, becomes responsible for the poor condition of the population. Indeed rather than having to consider whether to abandon the fight in order to preserve their people they are able to confine their decision-making to narrower considerations.

If this was not enough of a problem the provision of humanitarian aid can give hope to the defenders that more aid, perhaps even aid of a more directly useful sort in the ongong conflict such as intelligence, weapons or even direct military intervention will come in the future. In days gone by one of the things most calculated to prolong the resistance of a besieged garrison was the expectation, or even the hope that a relief army might be on its way. This was certain to extend the duration of the battle, making it more likely that any particular individual would come to harm and that the city and surrounding countryside would sustain greater damage.

Which highlights the point that the longer a conflict rolls on the worse it is for the civilian population. Short wars are often extremely intense, especially if all parties involved are assuming that the war will be short. In such an instance the parties throw all of their resources into the battle holding nothing back. Even when there is not an expectation that the war will be short the effect may be achieved when one of the parties is desperate and fears that they cannot sustain a long war. In contrast long wars, which tend to result from a rough equivalence of resources whether it be equal strength or equal weakness reach very deeply into societies. In such a case the needs of the civilian population may be sacrificed at the altar of military necessity, or even worse the civilian population may itself become a target in the conflict. This process seems to apply irrespective of whether we are looking at massive wars on the scale of WW2 or the never ending conflicts of sub-Saharan Africa.

So I suppose the wandering thought is, what if we denied international aid to all ongoing conflicts, instead preparing ourselves to go in immediately the conflict ends to minister to the needs of the civilian population. The suffering might indeed be severe while the conflict was underway, probably even more severe than it would be under the current system whereby the outside world provides doctors, medicines, food, shelter etc. But if this led to the fighting ending sooner than might otherwise be the case, with a clear defeat for one of the parties involved, followed by a massive international humanitarian aid effort would the balance of human suffering be less than if the conflict dragged on without end with the civilians subsisting on patchy international life-support?

To flog a dead horse just a little longer it seems that the issue may actually be one of whether we are more comfortable with accepting the deaths of 50 people this week or the deaths of 500 this year. It is not hard to arrive at the impression that public opinion, in the West, is more tolerant of a constant dribble of small numbers of foreign deaths leading to a high final total than it is of a sudden intense surge of deaths resulting in a smaller overall total.

Now having said that, I am not advocating an end to aid to conflict zones. Rather I am wondering about the balances of benefit and whether it might not be useful to give more thought to the advantages of letting conflicts run their course. Something that might be worth study. As I said a ramble.