Disarmament Agency Research Articles

Nuclear crisis management

The theory and practice of “crisis management” are increasingly attracting the attention of officials and policy analysts. One basic cause of this renewed interest is the growing recognition that a failure of communication between the superpowers in the face of a crisis provoked by some third party—particularly a terrorist group or rogue national leader—could issue in a nuclear war. Another is the fear of miscalculation and runaway escalation, if the United States and the Soviet Union were drawn into a regional war in which each had vital interests. A third general cause is the heightened apprehension that a missile might be fired on either side by accident or without proper authorization, all precautions notwithstanding.“Perhaps most dangerous of all is the scenario that no one foresees,” in the words of William Langer Ury and Richard Smoke. Their Beyond the Hotline: Controlling a Nuclear Crisis, a report to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, was recently released by the Nuclear Negotiation Pr...

The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency: an unfinished history

The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was established by Congress in 1961 as an independent agency of the federal government with responsibility for developing, negotiating and implementing international agreements to control and reduce arms. In the words of Senator Claiborne Pell, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and an original sponsor of the Agency: “we intended it to play the role of an advocate for arms control… as a way to enhance our national security. We wanted, in short, an agency that would more often than not counter-balance what was coming out of the Pentagon.”Since the advent of the Reagan Administration the Agency has become mired in controversy, as was clearly apparent in the three months of hearings and debate conducted by the Senate last year on the appointment of Kenneth L. Adelman to head the Agency. In the following article Ambassador Smith raises a number of questions concerning the Agency's status and activity—or inactivity—during the Reagan years, questions which in turn raise doubts about the Administration's commitment to arms control.—The Editors

Arms Control Developments

Interplay between the public, the press, Congress, and the executive branch helps shape American arms control policy. Presidential initiatives set the stage for the negotiating process; the senator cites President Kennedy's 1963 speech at American University, and President Reagan's April 1983 decisions to end the ban on long-term grain sale agreement with the Soviet Union, and to withhold charging the Soviet Union with violations of the SALT Treaty. Such signals may imply a readiness to reach accommodation and may induce a reciprocal signal. Moreover, the senator advocates an early summit of the superpowers. For President Reagan, who in 1984 will be a candidate for either reelection or retirement, 1983 will be the most productive time. A Senate resolution urging a prompt summit was reintroduced by the senator in April 1983. Finally, discussions between individual senators and top officials can affect the direction, tone, and pace of arms control efforts; the senator describes his own discussions with the president and National Security Adviser Clark on the nomination of Kenneth Adelman to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and on the MX missile.

Controlling instability and conflict through arms transfers: Testing a policy assumption

This paper examines the policy assumption that conventional arms transfers and the conflict behavior of 87 Third World countries are linked causally. It uses World Event Interaction Survey (WEIS) data and U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency data from 1967 through 1976 to measure conflict and arms transfers. Based on a series of regression analyses, the paper's principal conclusions are, in general, that conflict and arms transfers are not linked causally, that variations in the two variables occur simultaneously, and that a deeper understanding of Third World conflict processes is required before those processes can be controlled by reducing conventional arms transfers.

On behalf of the public: the reports of Ruth Leger Sivard

First at the Arms Control Disarmament Agency and then on her own, Ruth Leger Sivard documents the allocation of world resources to military purposes and analyzes the Impact upon social and economic growth.

Defense and Development: A Critique of the Benoit Study

Although the industrialized member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) remain by far the largest spenders on military-related activities, the share of the Third World in total defense expenditures has risen considerably over the last 2 decades. Particular countries have been raising their expenditures on defense at a rapid rate in recent years.' According to statistics produced by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), about 30% of the 90 Third World countries for which data were available spent more than 15% of their national budgets for defense in 1977 while approximately half spent over 10%.2 There are good reasons for suspecting that these figures understate the amount spent for security in some of these countries and that the burden of military-related expenditures in developing nations is even higher than these figures suggest. What is the impact of this burden on the development process? For the industrialized countries, it has been shown that high rates of economic growth, investment, and employment are inversely related to high levels of military expenditure.3 For the developing countries the evidence is less clear. Resources devoted to one form of expenditure, such as military, cannot be used in other sectors, such as for investment in productive undertakings or in social services. Nonetheless, the argument is often made that military expenditure may have some net positive developmental effects. The study generally cited as supporting this contention is that conducted by Emile Benoit for ACDA at the end of the 1960s.4 The original goal of the Benoit study was to determine what effect military expenditure has on the development process in Third World

Teaching about the arms race

If progress is to be made toward peace, public education on arms‐race issues is crucial both in the short run and for the long term. Because technical information is invariably essential to an understanding of issues, physicists can make a major contribution. However, educational efforts on the arms race face great difficulties, which we must first recognize if we are to overcome them:• Teaching about the arms race has in the past been a cyclical activity, rising and falling in parallel with public concern. These cycles are not all bad; the arms race is a real problem, not just an academic one, and hence it must be addressed whenever it surfaces in the political arena. But cycles tend to inject an aura of crisis into discussions, providing short‐term motivation at the cost of credibility and efficiency in the long run. The longer‐term approach has more educational implications. It means that arms‐race education must be general enough to be useful for analyzing unknown future issues. The danger with short‐term education is that by the time current educational efforts have roused public support for, say, a new round of arms control, the political need and opportunity may have passed.• The arms race presents interdisciplinary problems. Physicists may be unaware of contributions other disciplines can make to this issue and insensitive to their own biases.• There is little encouragement for physicists undertaking arms‐race educational efforts. Peer recognition for either research or teaching in the area is sparse. There is little financial support for this kind of work. The DOD looks for technical research of direct use to its missions, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency is in disfavor within the government, the National Science Foundation has difficulty supporting anything involving the social sciences or science education and the Ford Foundation also appears to be decreasing its support for these activities.

Arms Control : the Soviet Approach and Its Implications

AbstractThe Soviet Union has no discrete arms control goals, although it does have a variety of diplomatic and military objectives which can be pursued via arms control negotiations. In the Soviet Union, there is no organization comparable to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), which is charged with advancing the cause of arms control. Instead, there appears to be only a military bureaucracy and a foreign policy apparatus, whose purposes are reconciled at the highest levels of Soviet politics.1 Nor does the Soviet Union have an arms control theory compaiable to that of the United States. In the U.S., strategic thinking is concentrated at the level of generality where political purpose and military capabilities intersect. It is at this level that concepts of "stability," "esealation-dominance," and "action-reaction arms races" emerge. The intellectual underpinnings of Western arms control policy is provided primarily by the first and last of these. While there is a serious professional military literature in the Soviet press. focusing largely on operational-tactical questions, little is written at the level of generality where political ends and military power meet, and what is written is often propagandistic. This is an area preserved for the top Party leadership, which generally does not, and does not need to, share its reflections with the outside world. The absence of a serious arms control theory and the apparent absence of a bureaucratic framework designed to give arms control considerations an independent voice in the decision-making process are symptomatic of Soviet arms control policy-a policy which uses negotiations as a means of furthering Soviet power, both military and diplomatic.

What in the Name of God is Strategic Superiority?

In 1974, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger exclaimed, in the name of God is strategic superiority? What is the significance of it, politically, militarily, operationally, at these levels of numbers? What do you do with it?' Although he would state subsequently that his comment reflected fatigue and exasperation, not analysis, the secretary's questions are not to be dismissed so lightly. The issues he raised have profound implications for the size and composition of the defense budget, to say nothing of the character and content of U.S. foreign policy. They have yet to be answered satisfactorily. Although many individuals and organizations have argued that strategic superiority is necessary for the nation's security, few have even attempted to demonstrate this position. An exception is Eugene V. Rostow who, in 1981 during the hearings confirming his nomination as director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, offered the American experience in ending the Korean War as an illustration of the ways in which superiority could be useful. In a prepared statement, Mr. Rostow attributed the end of the long stalemate at the negotiating table to a nuclear hint from President Eisenhower. He suggested further that Eisenhower's threat was credible only because in 1953, the United States enjoyed a clear strategic advantage as compared to the Soviet Union.2

Foreign Exchange Costs of the Indian Military 1950 - 1972

From the day of Independence onwards, India has tried to find shifting compromises between three (partially) conflicting policy goals: (1) reducing foreign political dependence through non-alignment; (2) building up a strong defense apparatus; (3) minimizing the defense claim upon foreign exchange earnings in order to further economic growth. This article analyses the degree of success with respect to the third goal for the period 1950 - 1972. It presents quantitative findings about the burden of defense on the Indian balance of payments for the period 1950 - 1972. This burden is expressed in the estimated value of foreign exchange (US dollars of 1972) used for military purposes. Three components are distringuished: direct military imports (ready made military hardware); imports for defense industries; imports for civil industries which provide goods and services to the military sector. For each component and each year, dollar estimates are provided, based on whatever evidence could be found in published sources. Main sources used are those of Stockholm Internatio nal Peace Research Institute, and US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. As India during the second halve of the sixties imported much military hardware from Communist countries under favourable credit arrangements, a method had to be found for converting these credits into their dollar-equivalent. The two-fold strategy of India for reducing the foreign exchange burden of an increased defense effort - especially after the traumatic military experience of the war with China in 1962 - was (1) to build up domestic defense industries; (2) in spite of non-alignment to accept increasing amounts of military aid. The second policy did have temporary positive effects during the first half of the sixties, but it appears that both policies were structurally inadequate to offer permanent relief to the Indian balance of payments. In the late sixties, the military claim on foreign exchange was nearly half the value of Indian civil imports of machinery and equipment.

Arms Transfer Data Sources

Different issues related to arms transfers demand differing arms transfer data. At the moment, there are two sources available that aggregate data on military expenditures: the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). The data given cover only part of the requirements for comprehensive arms trade data. SIPRI's definition is too limited to be of much value for serious research into the economic and social consequences of the arms build-up. ACDA, on the other hand, has a very serious coverage problem. Both sources are very confusing on pricing arms transfers. All in all, there is no good source on arms transfers on which detailed studies or judgments can be based.

Nuclear Strategy at the Crossroads

NUCLEAR STRATEGY _ AT THE CROSSROADS Charles A. Appleby I? 1957, Henry Kissinger argued that, "Perhaps the basic problem of strategy in the nuclear age is how to establish a relationship between a policy of deterrence and a strategy for fighting a nuclear war in case deterrence fails." Developing a strategy which provides both an adequate deterrent to attack and a rational defense in the event deterrence fails has challenged statesmen, strategists, and military planners since the dawn of the nuclear age. This dilemma between deterrence and defense can best be illustrated by discussing the two major schools of deterrence strategy in the United States: deterrence through societal punishment and deterrence through victory denial. The punishment strategy places primary emphasis on massive societal destruction to deter the outbreak ofnuclear war. According to this school, any attempt to limit nuclear reprisals or generate selective responses against military (counterforce) targets runs the risk of depreciating deterrence by reducing the costs of initiating an attack. The punishment strategy does not rely on matching an adversary's nuclear forces; rather, the emphasis is on assuring unacceptable damage to the opponent's population and industry (countervalue targets) following a worst-case surprise attack against the nation's retaliatory forces. Thus, even a relatively small number ofinvulnerable nuclear weapons might be adequate for a deterrent strategy based on societal punishment. The denial school ofdeterrence gives precedence to military targets such as missile silos and command and control centers. This targeting policy, known as damage limitation, is alleged to enhance deterrence by denying the adversary the possibility of military victory, as well as limiting damage to the homeland in the event deterrence fails. Charles A. Appleby is a candidate for the MA. degree at SAIS, and serves as a research assistant at the World Bank. A former naval officer assigned to nuclear submarines, he has also worked with the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. 69 70 SAIS REVIEW Members of the denial school view reliance on societal punishment as an irrational and even immoral response to the failure of deterrence. This school has traditionally favored superiority or, at minimum, rough equivalence vis-à-vis an adversary's nuclear forces. It is recognized that there are a thousand shades of gray between the two schools. Further, U.S. strategy has never been linked exclusively to either extreme. For purposes of argumentation, the punishment school will be referred to as the assured destruction school and the denial advocates will be called the war-fighting school. Bernard Brodie in The Absolute Weapon (1946) laid the foundation for the assured destruction school in arguing that nuclear weapons would make deterrence , not war-fighting, the primary function of military force. The war-fighting school, on the other hand, has never fully supported the proposition that atomic weapons have fundamentally altered the nature ofwar. One ofthe earliest statements ofthe war-fighting philosophy can be found in The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report (Pacific Summary) (1946) which asserts that the threat ofretaliation is not an absolute deterrent and should therefore be complemented by a rational strategy to fight a war if deterrence fails. The deterrence-defense dilemma is manifested in three recurring problems which have faced strategists throughout the nuclear era, including those who drafted our current "countervailing" strategy as announced to the world in August 1980 in Presidential Directive 59 (PD-59). The first problem concerns the vulnerability of our strategic forces to a Soviet first strike. The vulnerability debate has traditionally arisen during projected gaps between the strategic forces of the United States and the Soviet Union. The bomber gap (1955-1956) and the missile gap (1957-1961) are two of the most familiar historical examples. More recent is the prediction by a large body of analysts that the 1980s will contain a period of vulnerability during which the Soviet Union could theoretically destroy more than 90 percent of the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force. Quantitative superiority, it is often argued, makes one side vulnerable to a potential disarming first strike, leaving the target nation with few options other than surrender or launching a suicidal retaliatory strike. A strategy ofdeterrence through punishment is implicitly less concerned with...

Arms control and foreign policy under Reagan

The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, a relative newcomer in Washington, has experienced traumatic shifts in leadership and support. These shifts coincide with the acceleration of the arms race and the failure to negotiate reductions.

Watchdog for nuclear development: Technology can help monitor civilian uses of nuclear energy while discouraging military applications

At a time when nuclear proliferation seems a growing threat to world peace, many countries are supporting technical efforts to monitor the constructive uses of nuclear, energy to help ensure that nuclear materials and technology are not diverted to weapons use. Recover (for REmote Continual VERification) is an experimental system designed to transmit data automatically from sensors at nuclear sites around the world to the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria. The system was developed under the auspices of the IAEA in a program initiated by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA).

Politics of Arms Control: The Role and Effectiveness of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

Politics of Arms Control: The Role and Effectiveness of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

Politics of Arms Control: The Role and Effectiveness of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, by Duncan L. Clarke

Politics of Arms Control: The Role and Effectiveness of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, <i>by Duncan L. Clarke</i>

Politics of Arms Control: The Role and Effectiveness of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. By Duncan L. Clarke. (New York: Free Press, 1979. Pp. x + 277. $15.95.)

Politics of Arms Control: The Role and Effectiveness of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. By Duncan L. Clarke. (New York: Free Press, 1979. Pp. x + 277. $15.95.)

Disturbing the Universe (review)

reviews 267 some interesting things about style and how he taught himself to write. He concludes that he should "aim at lucidity, simplicity, and euphony." Both these biographies reflect that admirable quality of style. The Gittings' are particularly effective in their selettion of quotations—often no more than a phrase—from letters, memoirs, and the like, to enliven the text or to give authoritative support to their judgments. Although many of these quotations are from Florence's letters, some of the remarks come from others. One of the brighter figures in the rather gloomy Hardy circle was his younger sister Katherine , whom I myself remember well in her eighties as full of humor and lightness when I visited her one summer day in 1938. Kay-Robinson, too, portrays Kate, but reveals a sharper side of her personality. The Gittings' charaaerize Kate, Thomas, and Florence in three short sentences : Florence and Hardy celebrated the last day of 1913 with a visit to Emma 's grave. Kate Hardy, who saw them at Stinsford churchyard, remarked cheerfully that she "never saw two such dismal 'critters' in her life." Already the pattern of the future was being laid down. They have a knack for the incisive short sentence which concentrates one's attention on an amusing, or ironic, or essential point in the life. Kay-Robinson's style is more characterized by perceptive generalizations backed up by pertinent facts. One would have to conclude that the Hardy-Emma relationship was not only far stronger than the Hardy-Florence one, but that it was Emma who was Queen, while Florence was belated consort. Future students of the life and works of Thomas Hardy will be greatly indebted to both these biographies. Donald J. Winslow Boston University Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. 283 pp. $12.95. Freeman Dyson, a distinguished physicist, has published a volume of reminiscences which was well-reviewed in all the best places from Science to The New York Times Book Review. It was serialized in The New Yorker and Dyson plugged it on the talk shows. Few physicists make the limelight. Dyson's one-time boss, Robert Oppenheimer, and Edward Teller are exceptions—but for political reasons. Every century one or two giants become widely known for their revolutionary achievements. Our giants are Einstein and Bohr. Fermi maybe. The 268 biography Vol. 3, No. 3 public hears little about the others, Dirac or Feynman, for example. Most physicists are shy, many of them are asocial, or even anti-social. They don't crave the limelight nor does it seek them. The public looks on scientists as priests annointed into unfathomable secrets of nature, able by special means to unlock the energy of the stars. So when a noted physicist publishes his memoirs in The New Yorker something out of the ordinary is happening. Who is Dyson and why do the New Yorkers love him? Dyson was a prodigiously talented mathematician who came to the U.S. from England after World War II and studied with leading American physicists; made a smashing coup by cementing together two basic but apparently divergent views of subatomic interattions; caught the eye of Robert Oppenheimer (then Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton); and has been at The Institute ever since. In 1960 he vociferously opposed the atmospheric test ban treaty , and two years later, as a member of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, reversed himself and testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in favor of the treaty. All impressive achievements, but hardly such as would make you expect to find him featured in the magazine the stewardess hands you on your flight to L.A. Is Dyson a physicist of the first rank, a thinker like Bohr or Dirac who conceived striking new schemes for explaining the basic properties and behavior of matter? First of all he is not so much a physicist as a mathematician and something of a gypsy fiddler at that. His achievement in combining two apparently divergent views of subatomic interactions was impressive but did not fundamentally change the way physicists viewed matter. Instead it reconciled the views of two other physicists, Richard Feynman...

Debate on SALT II

SALT is a product of negotiation aimed at limiting strategic nuclear weapons spanning four administrations since 1967. Negotiations are not only across the table between the United States and the Soviet Union, but also involve resolutions of diverse positions at home on each side. Specifically, on the US side, SALT positions are the result of decisions by the President faced with inputs from the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Arms Control & Disarmament Agency, the CIA and the State Department. These decisions are also affected by consultation with Congressional leaders and with our Allies. One should be aware of this complex pattern to realize that the SALT outcome cannot make everyone happy. The negotiating history should be kept in mind when judging the sincerity of criticism that claims: “I support a SALT treaty but not this particular one.” Little purpose is served in discussing an “ideal” treaty that would be optimal only to a particular set of interests.

Commentary

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsG. B. KistiakowskyGeorge B. Kistiakowsky is professor of chemistry, emeritus, at Harvard University. He was Special Assistant for Science and Technology under President Eisenhower from July 1959 to January 1961, and a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee from 1957 to 1964.David LinebaughDavid Linebaugh was with the Department of State from 1944 to 1975, serving on the policy planning staff and on detail to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency as deputy director from 1969 to 1975.Walter C. PattersonWalter C. Patterson is energy consultant to the Friends of the Earth, London, and the author of Nuclear Power (1976).William SweetWilliam Sweet, historian, is currently working on arms control and disarmament issues in Washington, D. C.