‘Hope Over Experience’ (Part Deux): Secret Soviet Nuclear Stocks Shows Dangers Of Clinton UN Paean To Arms Control

A front-page story in the 26 September editions of the New York Times provided a bizarre backdrop to President Clinton’s address at the United Nations yesterday with its promises of brave new arms control solutions to the vexing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. According to the Times, the former Soviet official who now heads the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy, Viktor Mikhailov, has in recent days made a strategically stunning revelation: The USSR’s secretive totalitarian system had succeeded in covertly manufacturing vastly larger quantities of nuclear arms and associated materials — "45,000 nuclear weapons" to be precise — or "12,000 more than generally believed, twice the number held by the United States at the time and exceeding all estimates save those of the most hawkish analysts," notably, former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

The New York Times offers a sense of the momentous significance of this revelation:

"Surprised analysts say the [Mikhailov] remarks could rewrite parts of the Cold War’s history, with one suggesting that the West’s blindness to the arsenal’s size was an intelligence failure that might have had disastrous consequences.

 

"’The large numbers lead you to worry that some of the planners may have had a first strike in mind — using large numbers of weapons and having large numbers in reserve,’ said Bobby Ray Inman, a retired admiral and former head of the National Security Agency."

 

It goes on to observe:

"Surprisingly large, the 45,000 number rivals what Western analysts had previously thought to be the size of the world’s combined nuclear arsenals at their apex — 50,000 weapons spread among the Soviet Union, The United States, France, Britain, China and Israel." (Emphasis added.)

 

A ‘Wake-up Call’

The implications of this revelation are astounding. For example, the deep reductions in the U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals agreed to in START I and II were predicated upon American calculations that these cuts would leave the two nations with approximate parity at substantially lower levels. In fact — even if the START accords are fully and faithfully implementedthis prospect should inspire a new debate about the ostensible benefits and potential risks of these agreements. (something that cannot be assumed given the former Soviet Union’s dismal record of compliance with arms control agreements) — the United States will be left with a small fraction of the stockpile now largely in the hands of the Russian Federation. At a minimum,

What is more, the prospect that as much as 400 metric tons of as-yet-unaccounted-for bomb-grade uranium is in Russian hands adds new urgency to already serious questions about Moscow’s ability (if not about its willingness) to prevent the transfer of such material to third-parties. A 1992 proposal by President Bush to purchase 500 tons of this dangerous commodity over the next twenty years may be of marginal value if, as Mr. Mikhailov now asserts, this quantity represents just "30 to 40 percent of all reserves that we possess."

The Facts of Life About Arms Control

Mr. Mikhailov’s disclosures are a stark reminder, moreover, of a point often made by Secretary Weinberger and his many colleagues and admirers at the Center for Security Policy: Closed societies ruled by repressive regimes do not make reliable partners in arms control agreements. In fact, it is an act of dangerous hubris to believe — as many arms control enthusiasts contend — that such societies can be successfully and consistently penetrated and their behavior controlled through arms control agreements.

Mr. Mikhailov’s evidence of past failures of U.S. arms control initiatives and attendant intelligence capabilities to constrain — or even to monitor effectively — the true size of the Soviet threat is not merely of historical interest. It also constitutes a much-needed warning against the sort of undue reliance now being placed upon arms control arrangements to protect U.S. interests against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Specifically, Mr. Clinton’s latest proposals to impose a global ban on the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, to end nuclear testing and to enhance controls on chemical and biological weapons and the ballistic missiles with which they might be delivered represent initiatives that would be of limited, if any, positive effect. They are exceedingly difficult to verify and, as a practical matter, impossible to enforce.

Worse yet, if past experience is any guide, these measures will be permitted to substitute for a more balanced and comprehensive approach to non-proliferation. Such an approach would integrate appropriate arms control steps with: rigorous export controls and other supplier arrangements; expanded intelligence collection efforts; and an array of capabilities required to execute various prophylactic military options (including both preemption and retaliation). In the absence of the latter, the likelihood that the former will succeed diminishes to the vanishing point.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy believes that the conceit of arms control advocates prepared to trust in negotiated arrangements with authoritarian regimes like Saddam Hussein’s and Kim Il Sung’s is no more prudent a basis for U.S. security policy than was the confidence they typically placed in similar deals with Soviet totalitarians. If anything, the latest evidence of a vast secret Soviet nuclear weapons capability and the distinct probability that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will continue apace argues for greater realism and less overreaching hopes for arms control than those outlined at the U.N. by President Clinton.

Specifically, the United States must ensure that its non-proliferation strategy incorporates the following elements:

• Maintain an effective nuclear deterrent. For the foreseeable future, the United States will require a credible offensive nuclear capability. And yet, it is not taking the steps necessary to maintain such a capability. To the contrary, as documented in an important minority staff analysis just published by the House Armed Services Committee, "the Clinton Administration appears to be pursuing a policy of nuclear atrophy."

 

Instead, the Administration must immediately abandon current policies opposing limited nuclear testing, dismantling the industrial capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons and associated materials and the liquidation of the skilled workforce necessary to operate such an infrastructure.

 

• Get serious about missile defenses. Given previous experience, it is irresponsible to place virtually complete reliance on arms control measures like the Missile Technology Control Regime to prevent the hemorrhage of ballistic missiles to hostile powers. At the very least, a national defense against missile attack can serve as a useful insurance policy against the probable failure of such efforts. Better yet, an effective global missile defense system can — by threatening to neutralize offensive missiles — discourage would-be proliferators from making investments in such weapons.

 

Recent indications that Japan is determined to end its vulnerability to missile attack from North Korea should inspire not only vigorous cooperation toward this end between the United States and the Japanese. It should also prompt Americans to demand that no less a step be taken for the defense of this country. Every effort should be made to maximize the military and cost-effectiveness of such collaboration by emphasizing space-based global defense mechanisms.

 

• Forget about further dismantling of export controls on sensitive technologies. One of the most troubling aspects of President Clinton’s address to the United Nations was a somewhat incoherent announcement of his intention to "reform our own system of export controls…to reflect the realities of the post-Cold War world." By this, he evidently means rewarding "former adversaries" for their cooperation in the battle against proliferation by "remov[ing] outdated controls that unfairly burden legitimate commerce and unduly restrain growth and opportunity all over the world."

 

As the Center for Security Policy has frequently observed in the past, this is, under present circumstances, a formula for disaster. The principal "former adversary" — the old Soviet Union — is now one of the preeminent sources of technology transfers fueling international proliferation. Absent the establishment of competent export control mechanisms in Russia and safeguards against the diversion of sensitive technologies to possibly threatening "end-users" in Russia itself, it is utterly irresponsible to remove what few U.S. controls remain on the sale of such technologies to Moscow.