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September 3, 2008 6:32 AM

How feasible is nuclear disarmament?

I'm a big fan of nuclear disarmament.
I don't support unilateral disarmament, but I think a major focus of all governments should be dismantling the world's nuclear arsenals and rigorously inspecting and enforcing a ban. At the moment, this idea doesn’t seem to be taken seriously anywhere outside of Norway.
However, I've read various things which have suggested that such an inspection system would be completely unworkable. Not politically, but practically. So even if, let us imagine, the inspectors had powers to look anywhere, rifle through government files, march into Area 51 and the Kremlin, there's still no way that they'd be able to find all the missiles buried out in the mountains somewhere, ready to launch at the flick of a switch. Is this true? I suspect it would be difficult to create new nuclear weapons without inspectors noticing, even with the smokescreen of a civilian nuclear programme, but surely hiding already existent weapons would be fairly easy? Have there been any feasibility studies on this? At the time of the Iraq war it was assumed that inspectors were fairly ineffectual, but hindsight has perhaps suggested otherwise.
I appreciate that the main barriers to nuclear disarmament are political, but let us suppose that the majority of the world’s governments came to their senses for long enough, would it be remotely practical?

posted by greytape to law & government (27 comments total)

I read The Fate of the Earth and The Abolition a few years ago and it presented (what seemed to me at the time - gullible teenager warning) a pretty workable path to disarmament, might be worth checking out.
posted by nfg at 6:41 AM on September 3, 2008

I don't support unilateral disarmament, but I think a major focus of all governments should be dismantling the world's nuclear arsenals and rigorously inspecting and enforcing a ban. At the moment, this idea doesn’t seem to be taken seriously anywhere outside of Norway.

It already exists in the form of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The first pillar of the NPT is non-proliferation. Here one should not underestimate the good work done by the IAEA. Despite the well-deserved abuse they have received over Pakistan, Iran, Israel, India, North Korea, etc. the nuclear safeguards division contributes mightily to controlling proliferation. My wife was working in Safeguards in Vienna during the break-up of the Soviet Union. They do an important job and they do it pretty well.

As for the second pillar.... that'll have to wait until a few countries deplete their arsenals in anger and the remaining parts of the planet decide to do something about it.
posted by three blind mice at 6:56 AM on September 3, 2008

Yes, it's possible to hide things. The world is a big place and our ability to know what's going on is much smaller.

Is it possible? Sure, it could be done. Is it likely? No. Is it a good idea? I don't know. There will always be some power hungry government that won't follow the treaty, and then be able to hold te world hostage to their demands. On the other hand, now that the big threats to world peace are non-state entities, it's hard to threaten them with destruction when they don't have a home.
posted by gjc at 6:57 AM on September 3, 2008

Very feasible. Have you heard of START? START II? The US and Russia traded inspectors and auditors and went through each other's documents and observed weapon production/decommission facilities. If there is political will, transparency in ND is proven to be workable.

Also, part of the odd thinking around nukes is that you want your opponent to know that you have them, and how many. This is because it's more useful to maintain the threat of nuclear strike as a political strategy than it is to tactically use one or many. For rogue states or terrorists who don't recognize detente as a legitimate political philosophy, obviously, this won't apply. But those types of ND initiatives have been the most successful of late (North Korea) compared to US/Russia ND and testing treaties falling apart.

In action movie logic, the possibility of a nuke stockpile belonging to a shadow government will always be there. But in reality, there is a massive amount of accountability, protocol, and paperwork that go along with nuclear weapons. Conspiracies aside, the logistical apparatus for ND already exists and has been proven effective.

On preview: what they said.
posted by cowbellemoo at 7:04 AM on September 3, 2008

I dont think this is possible. The delivery systems are too small to be detected, especially when you consider mobile launchers and submarines. I could see this happening but only in conjunction with a ban on all rocketry and missiles, which would be quite a feat.

The success of NPT is partly due to the fact that a more powerful nation is telling weaker nations to get rid of their weapons. This is a short-term strategy that is backed up with the theat of both conventional war and ironically, nuclear war. How this strategy could apply to the five permanent members of the security council is beyond me. All it takes is one nation to not follow the rules. Arguably, we could put some weapons in escrow with the UN to threaten NTP treaty scofflaws but now you have the problem of new perhaps less controllable bogeyman and the real possibility of a planet-ending nuclear war.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:17 AM on September 3, 2008

I think the lack of trust we have for each other will ever prevent full disarmament. We might say we will disarm if you disarm, but you know there will be the back room discussion of keeping a few around in case the "other" guy does.
We missed the opportunity to not have nukes back when we first tested/used them. That would have been the time to get everyone on board with not developing them imo. Now, there are too many and the world political stage has become very complicated. And with smaller nations like India and Pakistan having them proliferation has occurred. I don't think we can roll back from where we are, and I think it is inevitable that we will see a detonation. I actually am very surprised that we haven't had one yet, post Soviet Union break down. But I guess we have 3BM's wife and associates for keeping us clear for the time being.
posted by a3matrix at 7:25 AM on September 3, 2008

there's still no way that they'd be able to find all the missiles buried out in the mountains somewhere, ready to launch at the flick of a switch.

Those would be hard to find. But they require maintenance and servicing and parts and whatnot; they don't just sit in a hole untended for 40 years. At least not if you want them to work.

The factories building missile parts: easier to find.
The factories building rocket motors: easier to find.
The bases maintaining the missiles: easier to find.
The factories producing tritium for replacement: easier to find.
Building the secret holes if that ain't done yet: easier to find.

I suppose you could do it if you first created a new solid-fueled "satellite launcher" and just used extra units from its production runs as ICBMs. But that act itself would be suspicious enough to more or less guarantee strict accounting for parts.

More worrying than secret ICBMs: secret stocks of bombs.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:42 AM on September 3, 2008

As you suggest, verification is one of the major stubmling blocks for states disarmament. Non-state actors are quite another matter — and a much harder problem!

If you can spare $3, this is one of the best articles I've read on the issue in the past couple of years. Alternatively Joe Cironcione, the author of that article, discusses his own views on the matter (and his book!) in this MIT lecture, which you can watch online.
posted by caek at 7:47 AM on September 3, 2008

Briefly:

(1) NPT is NOT a disarmament treaty. And assuming one regarded it as successful, it does not say much of anything about the prospects for adopting and enforcing a disarmament treaty.

(2) As to START I and START II, these have a variety of limitations, and fall far short of anything like disarmament. A better example would be the Moscow Treaty, which -- to be simplistic -- is more ambitious, less vulnerable to accounting tricks, but also has no teeth. These are all bilateral in origin, and none are in any sense permanent . . . which given the pressures of the moment, is a serious limitation.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 7:56 AM on September 3, 2008

GlobalSecurity.org has a lot of details on nulear programs. Brazil I think is the best example of nuclear disarmament, and shows that it is feasible on a country-by-country basis. The unfettered IAEA access is usally the key. (The worst disarmament example would of course be Iraq)
posted by FuManchu at 8:15 AM on September 3, 2008

(1) NPT is NOT a disarmament treaty. And assuming one regarded it as successful, it does not say much of anything about the prospects for adopting and enforcing a disarmament treaty.

Yes. It is. The second pillar of the NPT is disarmament. The third is peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Verification works very well when you have cooperative actors - or even uncooperative actors who are forced to cooperate. Saddam Hussein, for example, didn't have any nuclear material the IAEA did not know about. Months of exhaustive searching by an occupying Army failed to uncover anything not already catalogued by the IAEA. Kim Jong Il withdrew from the NPT and restarted his reactors famously removing the "UN seal."

The UN is supposed to place pressure on those nations which are uncooperative. In light of developments in India, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea etc. it would seem the nations of the world are not too interested in enforcing their own rules. No amount of verification can fix that.
posted by three blind mice at 8:21 AM on September 3, 2008

OK, I'll bite. The second pillar is, nominally, about disarmament. Article VI says: "Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control."

Some argue that this means that the NPT imposes an obligation to disarm. Others suggest that it amounts to a weak obligation to negotiate toward an obligation to disarm -- that is, that it contemplates that some other treaty will eventually arise imposing an obligation to disarm, and encourages that process.

I guess I have signaled which side I favor -- that at most, this is a treaty about the subject of disarmament treaties -- and I'd add that I think regarding this as a disarmament treaty shows a pretty low threshold. One could try to say that the non-prolif part was in keeping with an obligation to disarm, but I read you to be accepting that the first part was not properly characterized that way.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 8:32 AM on September 3, 2008

[Nuclear missiles] require maintenance and servicing and parts and whatnot; they don't just sit in a hole untended for 40 years. At least not if you want them to work.

True, but the very function of nuclear submarines is to be hidden, while carrying a large number of working nuclear missiles.

Inspecting hidden caches of nuclear weapons, such as nuclear submarines, relies on the cooperation and honesty of the controlling country. And if you can rely on that, why do the inspections at all?
posted by Mike1024 at 8:43 AM on September 3, 2008

Total nuclear disarmament is impractical not because of the difficulty of verification but because of the extreme cost of building equivalently effective conventional deterrents or the even more extreme cost of fighting the wars that nuclear weapons deter. This is especially true since there can never be an guarantee that nuclear weapons will not exist. If you're a disarmed superpower, you would need either to maintain conventional forces sufficient to keep another state from using a small number of hidden nuclear weapons against you or to accept that such attacks could not be deterred.
posted by backupjesus at 9:11 AM on September 3, 2008

True, but the very function of nuclear submarines is to be hidden

...for a few months at a time. Then they come back for resupply, recrew, and refit. And every now and again they swap the missiles out for maintenance (supposedly).

You can easily keep the location of an SSBN on patrol secret, even from yourself.

You can't easily keep the fact that you have SSBNs on patrol secret.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:00 AM on September 3, 2008

However, I've read various things which have suggested that such an inspection system would be completely unworkable. Not politically, but practically. So even if, let us imagine, the inspectors had powers to look anywhere, rifle through government files, march into Area 51 and the Kremlin, there's still no way that they'd be able to find all the missiles buried out in the mountains somewhere, ready to launch at the flick of a switch. Is this true?

I suspect so. The world is a big place, and the big nuclear nations (US/Russia/China) have plenty of wilderness to hide in. The real question is whether the government's could keep all the engineers and technicians involved in maintaining such a secret arsenal quiet - here I think there is some hope, but still, and uphill battle.

I've often wondered whether any engineers out there quietly sabotage the components they design for nukes. I mean, they don't do full integrations tests anymore (you know: light those suckers up), so while they may do unit tests on parts of the bombs, they really aren't totally sure whether they work. It's conceivable that you could design crucial components to fail (in very subtle and complicated ways) during an actual attempted firing, but work during unit tests. You'd still get paid, to all outward appearances everything would work, but the moral weight would be lifted from your shoulders.

Wouldn't it be great if when the big day came, the generals gave the orders and nothing happened except a bunch of unexploded bombs landing in population centers? Military leaders would be furious, but when it became clear what had happened, the public (having faced a collective near death experience) would likely realize the lunacy of the situation and lionize the saboteurs.

This would make a great scifi short story, because it's really pretty plausible. Depending on how these systems are set up, a very small number of people on each side would be needed to save all of man kind.
posted by phrontist at 10:13 AM on September 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

(Tangentially, Stanislav Petrov is an interesting case)
posted by phrontist at 10:21 AM on September 3, 2008

The problem is a lack of a fail safe. It only takes one idiot to nuke a city and the whole regime will fall apart. I don't think it'd get broad political support for a total ban (including on the development, existence, etc.) for this reason. Aside from finding a technological way to do that, the only possibility is to try for something less than that. Collating them in the hands of one nation or NGO isn't wise, but perhaps trustee nations, etc. The nordic countries would be at the top of my list for possible trustees.

Implementing such a beast would require generations of effort just to route out all the die hard skeptics. I grew up in a US government family. My dad built nuclear submarines for a living. I know myths I'm afraid to share with anyone purely because of the paranoia they breed, and I pray they're all just myths. My point is these things aren't just objects - they're ingrained in the cultures that make them. Simple treaties will never quell something like that. It's going to take generations of serious, concentrated, consistent effort to do that.

Honestly it sounds like a great project for the Long Now Foundation.
posted by jwells at 10:48 AM on September 3, 2008

Sorry, thats science fiction. If I know anything about engineers, then they would consider it a point of professional pride that their work would result in the annihilation of the human race. Anything less would be an ego-shattering failure.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:56 AM on September 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

However, I've read various things which have suggested that such an inspection system would be completely unworkable. Not politically, but practically.

I think the Iraq WMD inspections proves otherwise. Iraq is a huge place, and WMD are orders of magnitude easier to hide than nuclear weapons, and Iraq was (until about 1998 or so) highly uncooperative and trying hard to deceive the inspections, and yet the inspections were still well on top of things.

I don't see it as very realistic to suggest that even a superpower could successfully hide nukes if a mutual inspection system has been agreed to (and in today's inter-dependent world, not even a superpower could realistically refuse mutual inspections if enough of the world held it as important enough to back up with trade sanctions).
The current location of a suitcase nuke, you could hide for long periods of time by simply not knowing where it was, (just who it was with for example), but you could not hide that you had one deployed, or details of the deployment.

The barrier to ND used to be the deterrent value of MAD. But in today's world, an argument is increasingly being made that risks of having your own warheads fall into terrorist hands and used against you, or malfunction, or be mistakenly launched, is greater than the security they offer via MAD. Currently, I think everyone - including the military* - likes the idea of fewer warheads, but the world will have to change a bit more before enough people are serious about getting to zero nukes.

*After the nuclear adrenaline rush of the 50's wore off, larger chunks of the military realized it would be better to spend their budget on toys that they're actually allowed to play with. Nukes suck up a tremendous amount of the budget, and then are declared off limits by leadership! And as MAD is still easily achieved by having half as many warheads, why is all this budget going to stuff that can't even be used? So there is military support for reduction in arms, though not disarmament.
posted by -harlequin- at 11:47 AM on September 3, 2008

harlequin,

I think the Iraq WMD inspections proves otherwise. Iraq is a huge place, and WMD are orders of magnitude easier to hide than nuclear weapons, and Iraq was (until about 1998 or so) highly uncooperative and trying hard to deceive the inspections, and yet the inspections were still well on top of things.

You may be right about this. However, don't discount the fact that (a) it did take some time, and had Iraq such weapons and an inclination to use them, it might have; (b) Iraq is big, but it was also uniquely vulnerable, given the UN Security Council and the sanctions regime. Also, as to whether the inspections regime was well on top of things, accounts at the time varied -- and I'm not sure what we know about the capacity to find weapons if Iraq had indeed had them.

I don't see it as very realistic to suggest that even a superpower could successfully hide nukes if a mutual inspection system has been agreed to (and in today's inter-dependent world, not even a superpower could realistically refuse mutual inspections if enough of the world held it as important enough to back up with trade sanctions).

Note: IF a mutual inspection regime had been agreed to; it would have to be an agreed, mutual concession. And yes, trade sanctions can be painful, but someone has to adopt them and implement them -- and usually they cost the implementing parties quite a lot.

The current location of a suitcase nuke, you could hide for long periods of time by simply not knowing where it was, (just who it was with for example), but you could not hide that you had one deployed, or details of the deployment.

Again, you may be right. But what is the basis for this assertion?
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 12:29 PM on September 3, 2008

I think the Iraq WMD inspections proves otherwise. Iraq is a huge place, and WMD are orders of magnitude easier to hide than nuclear weapons, and Iraq was (until about 1998 or so) highly uncooperative and trying hard to deceive the inspections, and yet the inspections were still well on top of things.

Wasn't a key part of the American/British case for invading Iraq that they had WMDs? That is, the statement that though inspections had not found any WMDs, Iraq had them and was concealing them?

In other words, the inspections achieved the goal of "prevent WMD development" but did not achieve the goal of "convince hostile powers WMD development has been prevented".

What's the point of performing inspections if the people receiving the results don't trust them? And what's the point of disarming and admitting inspectors if doing so doesn't offer you security against invasion?
posted by Mike1024 at 4:23 PM on September 3, 2008

damn dirty ape: I'm an engineering student, and the way I see it, it would be even more brilliant to come up with a very carefully concealed failure mechanism. You have to basically solve two sets of engineering problems while concealing one.
posted by phrontist at 12:59 PM on September 4, 2008

Maybe, but considering the penalty for treason in most countries is a speedy execution, something tells me that the engineer savior hypothesis might not hold much water.
posted by damn dirty ape at 2:47 PM on September 4, 2008

Mike1024:

If the purpose of mutual inspections is to achieve disarmament, then they work and can be trusted.
If the purpose of mutual inspection is to ensure world peace, or that no-one will pick on you, then they can be deliberately undermined as with any other treaty or process.

I think that focusing on inspections as falling short of guaranteeing world peace is a strategic error. That is not their purpose. The tool is best used for the job it was designed for. Inspections were not intended to stop aggression, and inspections are not the only tool in the toolbox.

Distrust in the inspections was engineered as it would have been in the case of any other alternatives or obstacles to the invasion - it just so happened that inspections were the obstacle, I don't think distrust is an intrinsic property of mutual inspections where your guys are the ones "in ur base" doing the inspecting. In the case of Iraq, it is more accurate to describe WMD as a key part of the PR campaign to lower the political cost of a course of war that had already been largely decided, rather than as the key motivation of the invasion. (Your link supports this, and some of the people involved have conceded that WMD were not an important factor in their intention to invade, simply a means to that end. Of course, I'm sure that for many people in high places, WMD was indeed a huge concern despite the knowledge to the contrary at the time, of the inspectors. Those people were chumps who got taken for a ride. It happens.)

So while it is a valid concern in the sense that inspections cannot always save you from an influential aggressor that wants to find a pretext badly enough, this doesn't weaken inspections very much, because nothing else can save you from that scenario either, and alliances with others and people on your side, made possible in part by (vetted and respected) inspections still seem to be the best hope and strongest defense a nation could have in such a scenario. Furthermore, mutual inspections gains you a lot of time and does not cost you much regardless of whether they are trusted or not, because a conflict that uses your supposed nukes as a legal cover will not be nuclear, thus agreeing and inviting mutual inspections will have increased your strength by moving more resources into weapons that can be used, given you a lot more to work with in negotiations, and also greases the way for legal obstacles, for whatever that might be worth. (Probably not much once troops are on the ground)

Your suggestion is that it might not be in a country's interest to buy into mutual inspections because mutual inspections impose a burden and yet might fail to stop an invasion. I think this is incorrect - the benefits outweigh the costs regardless even when the treaties do not manage to stop a war.. That the USA and Russia already have these kinds of arrangements in place (for arms reductions though, not disarmament), and were not strong-armed into doing this, but proposed it themselves, supports this.
posted by -harlequin- at 1:41 PM on September 5, 2008

Those people were chumps who got taken for a ride.

Actually, this isn't accurate. Some were chumps, but as per your point (re distrust of inspectors), there were also those who were just living in their own idealogical fantasyland and simply discarding all the evidence that didn't fit their Iraq-has-WMD beliefs and so on. These people reduce the in-an-ideal-world utility of inspections, as you note, but not to the point where the advantages of inspections are outweighed.
posted by -harlequin- at 1:49 PM on September 5, 2008

Your suggestion is that it might not be in a country's interest to buy into mutual inspections because mutual inspections impose a burden and yet might fail to stop an invasion. I think this is incorrect - the benefits outweigh the costs regardless even when the treaties do not manage to stop a war.

My thinking was: If Iraq had nuclear weapons and was willing to use them if invaded, Iraq would not have been invaded.

If Iraq had nuclear weapons, then disarmed and admitted inspectors, it would have got exactly what it did get: Invaded by a vastly superior conventional military force. Legal obstacles? Negotiation? Moving resources into weapons that can be used? All worthless, as Iraq found out.

Mutual disarmament only makes sense if (1) you have a conventional military superior to or comparable to your current and future enemies, all of whom are taking part in mutual disarmament; or (2) if you do not have proven-to-work nuclear weapons, and you are faced with an invasion that will occur before you can complete and demonstrate said nuclear weapons.
posted by Mike1024 at 2:12 PM on September 9, 2008