WASHINGTON — There are three ways in which I believe recent decisions by the Obama administration are, unintentionally, actually fostering the proliferation of nuclear weapons rather than constraining them.
When judging the various policies President Obama has put forth in recent weeks to move toward zero nuclear weapons, we should bear in mind the old dictum of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. — to really understand the law, “look at it as a bad man, who cares only for the material consequences which such knowledge enables him to predict.”
First, the president and others have proposed to enhance nonproliferation by sequestering nuclear material into one international depository. The idea is that those who need enriched uranium for peaceful means can obtain it from this facility as needed if they promise not to continue down the path of making weapons-grade material. More advanced reactor design may someday lower the proliferation risk. But this is also in the future.
We should not look at how the current nonproliferation regime would work through the eyes of, say, the Irish. We should look at it through the eyes of the governing powers in Iran and North Korea or like regimes who are inclined to secretly pursue weapons-grade material. In the world we live in, they are entirely capable of working hard to exploit the current regime or a future one in pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty as it currently exists grew out of President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program in the 1950s. It actually encourages countries that obtain nuclear reactors to produce electricity to also enrich uranium. The problem is that if a country enriches uranium up to 3 percent, which is suitable to generate electricity, it has done nearly three-quarters of the work needed to move along the road to 90 percent enrichment, which is what is required to make a bomb.
Once a country reaches that higher level of enrichment, the weapons are the relatively easy part. A simple “shotgun” device like the bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima is unfortunately, quite easy to design and construct. (That is why the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that said Iran had halted its effort to build a nuclear weapon was deceptive. It gave the impression that the Iranians had halted what was most important to get to the nuclear bomb threshold — enriching uranium. But they were doing that in spades. They had possibly merely halted weapons design work.)
Either by withdrawing from the NPT — and thus avoiding monitoring — or by secretly placing their facility in a mountain, Iran or like-minded regimes elsewhere can process enough low-enriched uranium up to the 90 percent enrichment level it needs for a weapon.
The first Iranian bomb doesn’t have to be that sophisticated. Something that goes boom and sends a mushroom cloud up in the northern Iranian desert — even if it would not fit into the nose cone of a Scud — would still make Iran a nuclear power.
That would change the world.
Like Iran, other countries — including Venezuela and Saudi Arabia — say they want “peaceful” nuclear power for electricity. Given their vast oil resources, that is patent nonsense. They want a reactor in order to get on the road to highly enriched uranium and bomb material.
If we persist in sponsoring nuclear energy exports from the United States as well as other countries so that nations can have the technology for today’s light-water reactors — which gets them into the fuel cycle — we will become the Johnny Appleseed of nuclear weapons.
If the United States is helping spread light-water reactors and thus enriched uranium around the world in the name of peaceful atomic energy, it is creating a huge and dangerous problem.
Second, President Obama’s “Nuclear Posture Review,” which seeks to limit the circumstances in which the United States might use nuclear weapons, embodies hesitancy with respect to deterrence.
R. James Woolsey is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Global Viewpoint/Tribune Media Services
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