One of my favorite bloggers is Glenn Greenwald, formerly of Salon.com and now at The Guardian. Greenwald has achieved international notoriety for his biting and perceptive political commentary. Many themes consistently recur in Greenwald’s blog posts, and one that has always stuck with me is his critique of the use of the term ‘terrorism.’ Greenwald frequently points out that terrorism has ceased to have objective meaning, and is now entirely dependent on the identities of the victims and the perpetrators. For example, a Palestinian suicide bomber is considered a terrorist, but an armed Israeli settler is not. Greenwald also pushes for a definition of state terror, something that many, especially the U.S. and Israel, oppose. 

Nuclear terrorism is rightly considered to be a grave current threat. An article in The Atlantic in 2006, in which a journalist set how to see how hard it is to obtain nuclear material, concluded that building a nuclear bomb would be very difficult, but not impossible, for a terrorist. Even if a terrorist were to obtain nuclear material, it is unlikely that the terrorist organization would have the ability to build a missile system that could deliver the bomb from afar. Therefore, a nuclear terrorist attack would have to be a bomb planted somewhere, either in a city, or a boat in the harbor of a city. Such scenarios are the stuff of nightmares, but surveillance is now so strong that it is unlikely these bombs would be undetected.  Many experts deem nuclear terrorism to be a preventable catastrophe.

I want to apply Greenwald’s point to nuclear weapons: states can be nuclear terrorists as well. Whether it’s on a regional level, like Israel’s continued threats towards Iran or North Korea’s posturing towards South Korea and Japan, or on an existential level, such as the combined humanity-threatening power of the United States’ and Russia’s combined arsenals, I think that the destructive power of states’ nuclear weapons necessarily renders them “state terror.”  If we cannot tolerate nuclear weapons in the hands of non-state actors, then we should also not tolerate them in the possession of states, who actually have the present capability to use them.

Jon Miller
Fellow

Our blog here at PNA isn’t always a rose-colored picture of good news and optimism. This is at least in part due to the nature of the beast: any timely news story about potential nuclear weaponization is, or at least ought to be, a crisis, and in our blog posts we must respond accordingly. Nevertheless, we should also not lose sight of the progress that some of the world has made in recognizing that nuclear weapons are unnecessary and contrary to the collective good.

In 1968 the Treaty of Tlatelolco came into force, prohibiting nuclear weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean. The treaty was really the first of its kind; the Antarctic Treaty was enacted in 1961, banning not just nuclear weapons but all military activity on the continent, but the Treaty of Tlatelolco was the first treaty to ban nuclear weapons over a wide expanse of populated areas. What is particularly significant is that it holds the weaponized states accountable to a certain extent. The US, the UK, France, and the Netherlands all have territories in the region, and the treaty prohibits those nations from stationing weapons in their territories.  The US, the UK, France, and Russia have all signed and ratified the treaty, which binds them from undermining the nonproliferation efforts in any way (the Netherlands does not have its own nuclear weapons, but does store about 20 US nukes).

More recently, the Treaty of Pelindaba established Africa as a nuclear-weapon-free zone in 2009. Thirty-six African countries have ratified the treaty; of all African nations, only South Sudan has neither signed nor ratified. The main aspect of the Treaty of Pelindaba that gives me hope is that some African nations had or were pursuing nuclear weapons: under leader Muammar Gaddafi, Libya intended to begin researching nuclear weapons, and even before the Treaty of Pelindaba came into force, South Africa had dismantled its seven weapons. These are countries that collectively recognized the threat posed by nuclear weapons and attempted to solve the issue via international treaties.

The irony here is that the US had a hand in either encouraging or writing these two treaties. There is a certain illogic to congratulating other countries (and even continents) for banning nuclear weapons while expanding and modernizing our own arsenal, one that prioritizes our own international power over the good of the rest of the world. We can hope that the progressive thinking shown in Africa and Latin American is contagious. 

Jon Miller
Fellow

A point from Jonathan Granoff’s article “Nuclear Weapons, Ethics, Morals, and Law” in the Brigham Young University Law Review of December, 2000, struck me as particularly relevant to current Washington politics. Granoff cites Judge Weeramantry of the International Criminal Court as saying, “Least of all can there be one law for the powerful and another law for the rest. No domestic system would accept such a principle, nor can any international system which is premised on a concept of equality.” This, in essence, is an argument for state equality under law, and, thereby, the inherent contradiction of a world that depends on nuclear weapons for power and laws for enforcement.

The double standard idea that Judge Weeramantry refers to has, unfortunately, become entrenched as an axiom of Washington’s policy decisions. This idea extends past nuclear weapons into other arenas. For example, Washington and Israel launched cyber attacks against Iran’s nuclear reactors, a country with which the United States is not at war; the U.S. governments official stance is that cyber attacks constitute acts of war, and now, with Chinese agents hacking U.S. systems, Washington calls for international rules and regulations. Washington wants a bilateral agreement with Jordan to prevent the Jordanians from enriching uranium (their right under the NPT), yet boycotts an Arab League-sponsored conference on making the Middle East a WMD-free zone because Israel would be force to admit its nuclear arsenal. And it’s not just Washington’s foreign policies where the double standards shine through; many Muslim American citizens have been imprisoned for merely visiting pro-Islamist websites, while the prominent politicians who received money from the Mujahideen-e Khalq (an Iranian anti-regime group that, until recently, was on the United States’ official terrorist list), which, according to federal law, is a felony. These instances of double standards are not lost on the rest of the world.

What I fear is that the abolition of nuclear weapons cannot be achieved globally, in good faith, without a substantial repositioning of Washington’s moral compass. The idea that the U.S. and its allies are somehow immune from the standards and rules that apply to the rest of the world undermines any effort to drastically reduce the world’s supply of nuclear weapons.

Jon Miller
Fellow

Israel, since its inception, has been a point of controversy and consternation for its neighbors. From its issues with Palestine to the extreme measures it has taken with Lebanon and Egypt, Israel has quite a turbulent history. With respect to nuclear weapons, however, Israel currently maintains two stances that serve to actively destabilize the region.

First, Israel has what is commonly called a posture of nuclear opacity. This means that although Israel has an arsenal of nuclear weapons, the arsenal has never been formally acknowledged or inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Combined with the fact that Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation that is not a signatory of the NPT, Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal actually drives its neighbors and enemies to pursue deterrent weapons.

Second, Israel and the U.S. have consistently undermined attempts by the Arab League to host a conference on the possibility of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Egypt has, in fact, been promoting this idea in the 1970s, but the effort did not gain steam until 2009, when the P5 took it up and decided to host the conference in Helsinki in 2012. The conference was delayed until some undetermined time in 2013, largely because Israel refuses to attend. Israel’s logic is simple if misguided: why should they attend a conference designed to pressure them to admit and dismantle their nuclear arsenal, particularly when they are not party to the NPT? 

Whetever the motivations for the WMD-free zone conference might be, I think it is nevertheless a noble goal and should be pursued. Israel obviously has concerns about both its security and also the regional supremacy that they maintain through their nuclear arsenal, but the fact that they are not a signatory of the NPT is unacceptable and the rest of the region has legitimate reasons to be peeved.

Jon Miller
Fellow

Stuxnet, the virus that arose out of President Bush’s Operation Olympic Games and attacked centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz plant, offers a glimpse into what warfare might look like in the future. More relevant for the discussion of Iran, however, is the impact that Operation Olympic Games will have on future policies designed to prevent or contain emerging nuclear nations. The viability of cyber warfare as an effective containment strategy hinges on two simple questions:

Is it effective? Is it legal?

These two questions have more overlap than may first meet the eye. Certainly, Stuxnet set Iranian development back in the short run, but the longer-term effects of the cyber attacks might outweigh any current benefit. Relations with Iran will only become more strained, and Iran might become even more determine to resist American pressures and continue enrichment.

The legality of cyber attacks is made more complicated by the U.S. government’s own stance on cyber warfare. The government has declared that if cyber attacks are launched against the United States, they constitute acts of war, governed, in theory, by the rules and regulations of armed conflict. The U.S. has not declared war on Iran, and has now set a dangerous precedent for future cyber warfare. If, for example, China were to use cyber attacks against the United States, they could point to Stuxnet and Operation Olympic Games as corroboration for their own actions. The laws governing cyber warfare must be clarified before future attacks are launched.

For the previous reasons, I feel that cyber warfare should only be a last-gasp strategy, for either breakout scenarios or rogue regimes. Cyber warfare’s strain on diplomatic relations is great, and has the potential to escalate into actual armed conflict. The Iran case is complex in large part because of the diversity of global opinion, but nevertheless I feel that the focus should be on ensuring that Iran does not withdraw from the NPT, rather than giving them reasons to do so.


Jon Miller
Fellow

In my last post I attempted to detail how the Stuxnet virus, the first major cyber attack on physical infrastructure, was developed and how it disrupted the Iranian nuclear program. In this second of my three posts about Stuxnet, I want to briefly outline the problems brought about in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

There are two major, immediate issues that arose out of Operation Olympic Games. First, the virus, though in its initial form only targeting the Iranian systems, leaked out onto the internet. It’s not clear exactly how this happened; some combination of American and Israeli programmers failed to predict that the virus, once installed via an Iranian laptop connected to the nuclear systems at the Natanz plant, might then also view the internet as another network. However, the more general problem is actually quite common: new software always has bugs and unexpected effects. Once it was on the internet, the virus was, according a German computer security expert, “like a playbook.” The virus that leaked onto the internet was designed to target Iranian systems, but it gave programmers across the globe a blueprint for a very dangerous cyber attack.

The second issue stems from the first: once it was realized that the US government was at least partially responsible for the cyber attack, the US government had inadvertently set a risky precedent. A cyber attack on a sovereign nation’s nuclear program without a declaration of war opens the door for both retaliation from the Iranians, now legitimized by the actions of the US, and also similar cyber attacks from elsewhere. 

Though these two problems sent CIA higher-ups scrambling in the immediate aftermath of the cyber attack, it is also clear that the longer-term repercussions were either unforeseen or ignored by the government. The Stuxnet virus certainly set Iran’s program back, but it also bolstered Iran’s long-standing argument that it is surrounded and threatened (see the recent “pointed gun” comments). In my next post, I will explain some of the more general questions raised by Operation Olympic Games.  


Jon Miller
Fellow

In his most recent post, Drew raised the important issue of cyber security, particularly in light of the cyber attacks launched against Iran’s nuclear facilities. This is the first post of three in which I will first provide some background about how Stuxnet, the virus that brought down the Iranian centrifuges, works, discuss what risks this sort of cyber attack poses to cyber security, and discuss what implications Stuxnet might have for nuclear policy going forward.

The Stuxnet virus was borne out of a Bush-era program entitled “Operation Olympic Games.”  President Bush understood the need to slow down Iran’s nuclear development, but also recognized the reality that a CIA or Israeli military attack could (and likely would) devolve into an all-out armed conflict. Operation Olympic Games, however, was the most ambitious cyber operation the government had ever attempted, for two reasons. First, the scale was unprecedented: the government had launched smaller attacks on, for example, al Qaeda computer systems, but those attacks were essentially the extent of the government’s offensive cyber experience. Second, never before had the government attempted a cyber attack designed to cause actual physical damage to a facility; previous attacks had only tried to stymie computer systems.

Basically, the Stuxnet virus was designed to attack Iranian centrifuges at the Natanz plant, where Iran was enriching uranium, without the Iranians detecting, at least initially, that they were under attack. In a simplification of what occurred, the U.S. and Israeli governments obtained detailed information on the inner workings of the Natanz plant. The Iranian centrifuges depend on  delicate rotors that, if sped up or slowed down too quickly, can become imbalanced and rip through the rest of the device. Once installed, the virus caused the centrifuges to malfunction while broadcasting to the monitoring systems that all was operating as normal.  The Stuxnet virus caused the rotors to either speed up or slow down too quickly without tripping Iran’s security systems.

The immediate implications of the Stuxnet virus’ success were twofold. First, the virus did at least temporarily slow down Iranian nuclear development. As centrifuges began to crash, the Iranians overreacted and disabled many others, looking for faults. They also questioned the skill of some of their engineers, even going so far as to fire some of the technicians. It is impossible to say exactly how long the program was delayed by, but certainly the virus caused serious damage. Second, the U.S. government hoped to convince Israel that there were alternatives to a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Not only would a military attack likely end in war, but the Iranians would then rebuild their facilities much further underground, making them much more difficult to attack and nearly impossible to bomb. With a (hopefully) undetectable cyber attack, perhaps Iranian development could be slowed without Iranian knowledge of the attack. 

Obviously, the government’s cyber attacks did not remain covert, and, as I will explain in my next post, the Stuxnet cyber attack would have implications beyond the government’s relationship with Iran. 


Jon Miller
Fellow