Dialog on Nukes and Other Intresting Issues

Tony snet me a thoughtful email discussing several things.  Thought it deservfed a more public reponse.

You mention seven nations that have admitted nukes (with Israel's denials and PRNK's claims being suspect) but eight nations as a baseline for the Nth Nation Problem; is the 8th South Africa?  Was it not true that they dismantled one or more working weapons before the fall of Apartheid?  (I am asking that sincerely, not rhetorically).  If so, was it not the case that their program was pursued hand-in-hand with Israel?  I thought that that was factual and that it was inconceivable that Israel would participate and not also produce.

I’m counting Israel as a nuclear weapons state, despite fact that it is undeclared.  South Africa did have an active weapons program almost certainly with Israeli help.  And the weapons and program were dismantled when it became clear that the apartheid regime was doomed.  This is the only example of a state abandoning an active weapons program -- Libya did have some kind of development program but apparently was a long way from success when it dismantled its nuclear facility in cooperation with the U.S. and UK.

And at the risk of pedantry, you aren't including the US on the list of nations that haven't used nukes, are you?  Or does the list only start from when there was a plurality?

The atomic bomb was pursued as a bigger and better bomb for the kind of strategic bombing of cities that was carried out in both Germany and Japan.  Only at the end, especially after the successful test in New Mexico did some of the most prominent nuclear scientists in the project raise serious objections to their use.  The scale of destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a shock that led some people to wonder if these weapons were not different in kind.  Serious thinking about how and when to use nuclear weapons began after the USSR developed an atomic weapon in 1949.   It was not until the early 1950s that deterrence theory emerged as a serious subject and the first wave of civilian defense intellectuals began to use game theory and simulations to elaborate increasingly complex scenarios in which I try to decide what to do to deter my opponent when I know that he knows that I know that he knows ... 

As I look back on worst days of the Cold War and back at the week of lectures I used to give on nuclear weapons, it seems to me it is a mark of real progress that we don’t have to worry about how much death and destruction is enough, that we do not live in a world in which we’d have about 10 minutes between the time a Soviet submarine launched missile was detected emerging from the Pacific and the time the war head hit LA.  I remember being puzzled in the earliest days of the nuclear era, when the threat was lumbering bombers, by the formal evacuation plan for Portland.  The idea was that we’d have several hours notice of Soviet bombers coming over the pole and everyone on the east side would get in their cars and escape the city by driving out of town toward Mt. Hood where the Red Cross or somebody would have tents, cots and donuts waiting.  The plan called for all the east-west streets to become eastbound and people would drive side by side, bumper to bumper and 60 miles an hour.  I could see us driving north on 18th Avenue and stopping at Fremont Street but I couldn’t figure out how we were going to get into the stream of cars on Fremont whizzing away to safety.  Would some polite person stop and let us in?  Or was it like church where you waited until the folks in front of you went by and then got out of the pew?  I think I was also worried that they’d run out of donuts.

I have always been quite confused about the political bodies acting within Iran, and it looks like it isn't clear to others either.  Does Clinton's State Department have an official published stance on how they think it works?

I was not as clear as I should have been.  We (both “we” the U.S. intelligence community and “we” students of the Middle East) know a great deal about the Iranian system, in the same we know a great deal about American politics.  But for both the U.S. and Iran, dissecting specific policies and programs is very difficult.  Perhaps ethanol is a helpful example.  Instead of waste material like sugar cane or weeds, we use corn even though it is an inferior source on every dimension except putting money in the pockets of big corn producers.  Are the members of the House and Senate from corn growing states the key players, or is it the influence of giant corporations like ADM and CONAGRA, or the fact that every president began by trudging through Iowa farms before the caucasuses?  If you wanted to change that set of laws and policies, where would you begin, who would you attempt to influence?

Your point about nukes being a deterrent and not an instrument of compliance reminds me of the Vietnam-era personage (I forget who; was it Scowcroft?) who claimed he wanted to nuke Vietnam and put up a parking lot.  I assumed that that explicit sentiment was bandied about by the left because it was so inflammatory and by the right as a realpolitik trial balloon.

Probably thinking of Curtis LeMay who wanted to bomb North Vietnam back into the Stone Age.

My issue with a PRNK, Pakistan, or Iran with nukes is primarily maintenance.  I assume that with a great enough percentage of GDP any nation can get a nuke; fortunately, the higher the percentage the greater reluctance to part with the actual device and all that it entails.  And so the prize would sit, propping up some regional middle-weight on the international heavy-weight stage.  But as it sits it decays and leaks and is a constant health and security threat; how much GDP is set aside and prioritized year-after-year, decade-after-decade, in a turbulent kleptocracy for nuclear arsenal maintenance and safeguards?  Which might be part of the charm; it's one thing to push around Khadaffi and not care too much about who winds up with the keys put fomenting and abetting civil war in a nuclear Iran seems altogether different.

You are right ... and the same is true for Pakistan ... and a lot scarier because a lot more likely.

Lastly, it seemed to me that in Gulf War I, Saudi Arabia relied on the US to local problems like Iraq and by extension Iran.  Now with US exhaustion and withdrawal, we see the Saudi armed forces acting abroad (I have no idea how novel or significant that is but it's the first time I had even heard of Saudi security forces).  Has the baton been tacitly handed to the Saudi's to up their direct involvement in local areas of their immediate interest?  Is the US interested in letting Iran be a Saudi problem?

No.  Saudi military has been a major purchaser of U.S. and European weapons for some time.  The military is very well equipped and well trained, but small compared to Saddam’s Iraq or Iran.  Saudi Arabia could not defend itself against a concerted attack from Iran.  The recent operation in Bahrain to support the government was the first operation outside the country. It was meant to support a friendly monarch against a democracy movement that included significant numbers of the Shi’a minority. 

We will have finished withdrawing combat forces from Iraq by the end of the year and are going to begin winding down Afghanistan next year.  But I don’t think that’s the same thing as withdrawing from the Middle East or abandoning our role as protector in the Persian Gulf.