Steps toward increased nuclear transparency

Abstract

While there is no doubt that some information on nuclear weapons must remain undisclosed, excessive nuclear secrecy hinders progress toward the twin goals of improved nuclear materials security and the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide. With the March 2012 Nuclear Security Summit afoot and the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in sight, now is the time for nuclear weapons states to implement new transparency measures such as declaring additional information regarding the capabilities, size, and purpose of weapons stockpiles and fissile materials, and providing the means to verify a larger portion of those declarations. Increased transparency can reduce uncertainty, build trust, establish baselines for future reductions, and place political pressure on other states possessing nuclear weapons to take similar steps. Because they possess the vast majority of nuclear weapons and fissile material in the world, the United States and Russia should lead the way by creating a model for declarations, including non-deployed and nonstrategic weapons. Declarations of nuclear weapons and fissile materials could be verified bilaterally, through new multilateral agreements and a multilateral inspections agency or by expanding the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Some transparency actions can be taken immediately, either unilaterally or reciprocally. Increased transparency can provide short-term benefits for some states and establish a foundation for additional bilateral and multilateral nuclear arms reductions. Transparency can be embraced by non-nuclear weapons states and states with nuclear weapons outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty without undertaking new treaty obligations.

How many nuclear weapons—or fissile materials that can be made into nuclear weapons—exist in the world today? There is no clear answer to this question, only estimates, because many of the essential numbers remain unknown or hidden from public view. Estimates of China’s nuclear arsenal, for example, vary by an order of magnitude from approximately 300 total weapons to 3,000 or more (De Luce, 2011). ¹ Russia has never declared how much plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) the Soviet Union produced for military purposes, and it has failed to disclose the size of its stockpile of nonstrategic or tactical nuclear weapons. Nuclear secrecy in these and other countries hinders progress toward the twin goals of improved nuclear materials security and a future world without nuclear weapons. Gaps in knowledge fuel suspicions regarding strategic intentions and motivate states to hedge against uncertainty. The result is a tendency to retain large arsenals, resist new nuclear arms reductions agreements, and maintain ambiguity about the size and disposition of fissile material stocks.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference held in 2000 and 2010 reaffirmed the desire of the vast majority of the world’s nations to seek the elimination of nuclear weapons, increase nuclear transparency, and tighten security while accounting for existing weapons-usable fissile materials (NPT, 2000, 2010). Unprecedented numbers of world leaders, notable political and cultural figures, and ordinary citizens embraced these goals. ²

However, significant quantities of weapons-usable fissile materials remain inadequately secured and are vulnerable to accounting errors. The status of some fissile stocks continues to be veiled in official secrecy. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has yet to enter into force, and the UN Conference on Disarmament has faced deadlock in discussions on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran are all incrementally increasing their nuclear arsenals or seeking a latent capability for nuclear breakout. And although the United States, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom have sharply reduced their nuclear arsenals, they are simultaneously modernizing their nuclear weapons infrastructures and strategic delivery systems.

Against this background, new transparency measures can help move the world closer to the ultimate goal of universal nuclear transparency—the full declaration of all forms of nuclear warheads and all fissile material inventories, including non-deployed warheads and fissile materials found in waste or that are otherwise unaccounted for. These new steps include declaring additional information regarding the capabilities, size, and purpose of weapons stockpiles and fissile materials, and providing the means to verify a larger portion of those declarations. States can increase transparency unilaterally, reciprocally, or as part of negotiated agreements. This provides flexibility and avoids some of the political maneuvering that complicates and delays legally binding treaties. With milestones such as the March 2012 Nuclear Security Summit under way and the 2015 NPT Review Conference fast approaching, now is the time for states to consider adopting new transparency measures to achieve confidence in arms reduction and global nuclear security objectives. ³

Advantages of increased transparency

In the absence of reliable knowledge about the capabilities and intentions of a potential adversary, countries tend to fall back on worst-case analyses. The result: nuclear arms races and arsenal buildups. Greater transparency can reduce uncertainty, build trust, establish baselines for future reductions, create peer pressure for similar steps by other states, and advance nuclear security and nonproliferation efforts. For example, a fact sheet issued by the US Defense Department in May 2010 states, “Increasing the transparency of global nuclear stockpiles is important to nonproliferation efforts and to pursuing follow-on reductions after the ratification and entry into force of the New START Treaty that cover all nuclear weapons: deployed and non-deployed, strategic and non-strategic” (Department of Defense, 2010: 1). More detailed declarations on nuclear force levels can build confidence within the international community that progress is being made by the United States, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom toward nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Greater transparency may even reduce tensions created by countries that are gradually expanding their nuclear arsenals—such as India, Pakistan, North Korea, and China. All of these states have declared their support for a world without nuclear weapons once conditions permit. Annual declarations of their stockpiles, combined with an explanation of why nuclear weapons are necessary for their security, can provide a tangible demonstration of their support for such a future. Such declarations can ease the task of future reductions and might prevent new arms races. Caution must be taken, however, because it is possible that increased nuclear transparency could lead a state to conclude that its force lags behind that of its rival and to accelerate its buildup in response.

Greater nuclear transparency— particularly by the United States and Russia, but also by the United Kingdom, France, and eventually China—can increase political pressure for transparency among states that are widely known or presumed to have nuclear weapons outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. Of these states, only Israel has yet to formally acknowledge a nuclear weapons capability.

Recent transparency actions

France, the United States, and the United Kingdom have already taken initial steps to disclose basic categories of information about their nuclear arsenals. In 2008, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was the first politician ever to disclose the active arsenal of a nuclear weapon state: 300 active nuclear warheads that would be reduced to about 290. In 2010, the United States followed suit when the Defense Department announced it had 5,113 active and inactive warheads. After the US declaration, British Foreign Secretary William Hague declared in the House of Commons that the United Kingdom would limit the number of its warheads to 225, with no more than 160 being operationally available, leaving 65 warheads in inactive status. This number was subsequently revised in the United Kingdom’s Strategic Defense and Security Review to no more than 180 deployed and non-deployed nuclear weapons, with no more than 120 operationally available warheads, and a maximum of 40 warheads on each submarine.

While these declarations shed some light on the actual composition of the nuclear arsenals of the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, they were also limited enough to maintain ambiguity and secrecy regarding key details of the forces. This hidden information, especially in the case of the United States with its large and diverse stockpile, is the source of uncertainty regarding the capabilities and purpose of the force. Even more opaque are the details of Russia’s nuclear stockpile, especially its inventory of nonstrategic nuclear weapons.

India, Pakistan, and North Korea have not openly disclosed the specifics of their nuclear forces, although none are believed to have more than a few hundred weapons at most—and in the case of North Korea, fewer than 20. ⁴ Israel has never officially declared that it possesses nuclear weapons. Some states claim that ambiguity regarding the structure and composition of their nuclear arsenals is necessary for their security. The international community should not accept this argument. Because of the destructiveness of nuclear weapons, the consequences of nuclear war will not be limited to a region nor to the individual states that use them, so no nation should be able to claim that its self-interest entitles it to complete nuclear secrecy. All countries retaining nuclear weapons and fissile materials should accept the obligation to provide confidence to the world that these stocks are safe and secure from diversion.

Leadership for universal nuclear transparency

Achieving universal nuclear transparency will require significant action over the next decade: setting standards and timelines for what information should be declared and creating multilateral mechanisms for verifying these declarations. Because they possess the vast majority of nuclear weapons and fissile material in the world, the United States and Russia share responsibility for leadership. Action toward increased nuclear transparency by these two states would not only help relieve lingering mutual concerns regarding the purpose of their respective arsenals, but would also be more consistent with their improved strategic relationship and the reduced salience of nuclear weapons in the twenty-first-century security environment. Russia and the United States have the opportunity to set a precedent for other states possessing nuclear weapons, by creating a model declaration that includes the following categories:

Stockpiles of military fissile materials, identified by plutonium and highly enriched uranium.

Deployed and non-deployed strategic warheads. ⁵

Deployed and non-deployed nonstrategic or “tactical” nuclear warheads.

Nuclear warheads deployed within the territories of allies.

Warheads produced annually (for states still adding to their arsenals).

Warheads retired and awaiting dismantlement.

Warheads dismantled annually.

Verification

The obligation for all states to provide this basic information about their nuclear arsenals is commensurate with the “special” status of nuclear weapons and the network of international norms and legal prohibitions that have evolved regarding their possession, location, and use. Eventually, it will be necessary to have reliable multilateral mechanisms for verifying such declarations. These could emerge in at least two possible ways. First, several categories of nuclear warheads could be verified by expanding US–Russian nuclear arms control treaties to involve more states. Many experts have suggested that, after another round of bilateral reductions in which US and Russian inventories might drop below a total of 1,000 nuclear warheads each, it will be time to seek formal multilateral treaties with China, France, the United Kingdom, and perhaps India and Pakistan to establish verifiable limits on their inventories of deployed and non-deployed nuclear arms. ⁶

Any multilateral nuclear arms control agreement will require a multilateral inspection agency to verify compliance. The inspection rights and procedures of such an agency would be negotiated in a protocol to the treaty, and could build upon on-site inspections already used bilaterally by the United States and Russia in New START and other treaties. The multilateral inspection agency could use a combination of on-site inspection, open-source analysis, and data provided by the intelligence services and national technical means (satellite imagery, for example) of member states to verify initial declarations and monitor treaty compliance. A multilateral compliance commission could be created to resolve questions regarding declarations, compliance, and verification. Several years would be required to verify states’ declarations.

A second possibility would be to empower the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to verify declarations of nuclear weapons and fissile materials. The International Panel on Fissile Materials has already proposed that the IAEA is the logical entity to verify a potential Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. The IAEA has relationships with all states thought to possess nuclear arms. It also has some experience with monitoring excess military fissile materials. For example, IAEA involvement was recently requested by the United States and Russia to help verify the disposition of their excess weapon-grade plutonium as required by the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement. A 2010 protocol to the agreement expands the amount of plutonium that can be disposed of by each country under the original agreement, allowing for any additional quantity of excess military plutonium that might be declared by the parties in the future. ⁷ IAEA monitoring, along with bilateral transparency measures, continues to be applied to significant portions of excess US highly enriched uranium stocks under the 1993 HEU Purchase Agreement and 1994 protocol. ⁸

Currently, the IAEA’s major roles are to verify declared holdings of nuclear materials, to confirm that those materials have not been diverted to military use, and to ensure that no undeclared nuclear facilities exist that might support a clandestine nuclear weapons program. An expansion of the IAEA’s mission would require the agreement of member states and the creation of procedures that would allow it to verify nuclear weapons inventories without revealing information that could lead to the further proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Both of these alternatives would require new institutional and legal mechanisms and new verification procedures for declared inventories of nuclear arms. It would also require substantial changes in the political and strategic positions of several states. For example, China and Russia would have to change their practices of not disclosing details of their nuclear forces and fissile material stocks. In addition, Israel would have to end its policy of nuclear ambiguity.

Immediate action

Making these policy and institutional changes won’t be easy. Fortunately, it is in the interests of some nuclear weapons states to implement additional transparency initiatives on their own without waiting for political, institutional, or technical change. Some positive steps have been taken recently. For example, the US State Department released a full accounting of its nuclear delivery vehicles and the warheads attributed to them under New START (Department of State, 2011). This provides a baseline for New START implementation, clarifying how many nuclear delivery vehicles and warheads will have to be eliminated to meet treaty obligations by 2018. Russia now has a responsibility to follow suit and increase transparency regarding nuclear forces.

Other positive steps should be taken. For example, because the United States, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom are reducing their nuclear weapons stockpiles, they could release annual data on the backlog of weapons awaiting dismantlement and, every three to five years, declare additional quantities of fissile materials in excess of military needs as a result of the dismantlement. The IAEA could be invited to verify that these materials are not returned to military stocks.

Once former military fissile materials are stored, the effectiveness of the security procedures to protect them against theft and diversion should be open to evaluation by an independent organization. Two nongovernmental organizations, the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Economist Intelligence Unit, have already joined forces to rate the adequacy of security measures for fissile materials in all countries that possess them. ⁹

In the case of the United States and Russia, the legal and institutional mechanisms for declaring additional excess weapons materials already exist in the form of the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement and its 2010 Protocol. It would also be beneficial to complete the objectives of the Trilateral Initiative between Russia, the United States, and the IAEA to have the IAEA perform inspections of the excess materials. These procedures could be a model for monitoring other states’ excess fissile material once it has been declared. The United States and Russia already have under construction the operational infrastructure for converting their excess weapons materials into civilian reactor fuel, and the IAEA could monitor this process as a model for the future as well.

Other transparency actions that could be taken immediately by the United States and Russia, either unilaterally or reciprocally, include declaring the retirement schedule for nonstrategic nuclear weapons and the size of fissile reserves needed for naval nuclear propulsion and other military reactors. Another category of information that could decrease uncertainty would be for the United States and Russia to declare how their weapons systems life-extension and modernization programs relate to the accountable warhead and delivery vehicle limitations of the New START agreement in future years.

Moving toward change

Increased transparency in nuclear forces and stockpiles of fissile materials can provide short-term benefits for some states and establish a foundation for additional bilateral and multilateral nuclear arms reductions. Transparency can be embraced by non-nuclear weapons states and states with nuclear weapons outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty without undertaking new treaty obligations. Transparency can help demonstrate compliance with Article VI of the treaty, and in light of the Nuclear Security Summit in March 2012 and the NPT Review Conference in 2015, states should announce some of the transparency measures suggested above.

The goal of universal nuclear transparency—whereby every state possessing nuclear arms and military fissile materials declares its inventories of these items, and those declarations are independently verified—will require major political and institutional changes. However, such transparency is a prerequisite to a world free of nuclear weapons. The United States and Russia have declared that they will work toward such a world together. By virtue of their nuclear stockpiles, which remain far larger than those of any other nations and in excess of military needs, the United States and Russia have the greatest opportunity to establish precedents and create the international mechanisms that can expand and verify nuclear transparency. Accordingly, the United States and Russia should raise transparency measures as a way forward at the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit.