Here’s a good NYT article suggesting that the Administration is looking at new deterrence models, and on the technical difficulties involved in doing so:
Security specialists said Mr. Bush’s warning signaled a significant expansion of longstanding policies of deterrence, extending the threat of reprisals to the transfer of nuclear weapons or materials to another country or to terrorists.
That has long been a concern about the North Korean program, but the tools to prevent it are still limited.
Robert Joseph, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, said in an interview on Thursday that “to be credible, declaratory policy must be backed up by effective capabilities.”
Here’s how it’s done:
The Pentagon, in carrying out one of its most sensitive missions, maintains a team of nuclear experts to analyze the fallout from any nuclear attack by terrorists, not only to identify the attackers but also to figure out where they got their bomb.
Separately, the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations unit based in Vienna, compiles identifying markers drawn from the chemistry and physics of processes that produce radioactive material in nuclear programs around the world.
Using that kind of data and technology, it might be possible to figure out the likely origin of an intercepted shipment of bomb material … or of the radioactive debris of a weapon that was used. The atomic energy agency’s inspectors have significant records from their time in North Korea before they were expelled, and they could rule out many other possible sources of radioactive material by calling on records from nations that cooperate with the agency.
And what it means:
Mr. Bush’s statement was viewed by national security experts as a major shift in deterrence doctrine, one that acknowledges that the mission today is no longer preventing North Korea from building a nuclear weapon, but deterring its use or transfer.
“The administration will continue saying that a nuclear weapon in North Korea is unacceptable, but in fact they are beginning to accept it,” said Scott D. Sagan, director of Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. “The administration is switching from a nonproliferation policy to a deterrence and defense policy. It is a form of containment rather than a form of nonproliferation.”
And why it’s hard:
…while the Bush administration at first charged that North Korea had been the source of Libya’s uranium, experts spent months trying to determine whether the contents of the cask had come from there as well or whether it had been filled up elsewhere. The result: plenty of suspicions, but no hard proof.
“We took months and months and months and still couldn’t come to a 100 percent conclusion,” one senior administration official said this year. “That happens. But it doesn’t help you justify a counterstrike against someone.”
There’s also the question of delay.
How long will tests take to obtain what limited confidence can be obtained?
An immediate nuclear retaliatory attack, in hot blood, based on undoubted facts, before dealing with the consequences of a city being nuked, with a political culture where plain facts are undoubted facts, is not the same as a cold-blooded nuclear attack days, weeks or months after a tragedy, with the facts in dispute and conspiracy theories raging, and dealing with the aftermath having become the issue, and in a diplomatic environment where everybody will have lined up and in various ways gone to cover.
After many terrorist incidents, we have heard that there would be an adequate reaction, just later, but history proves that vengeance postponed has often been vengeance foregone.
The bad guys know all this. And some of them are extremely risk-tolerant.
Good point.
Best to put the thing on auto pilot and take out the whole bloody lot in one fell swoop.
Be enough time to say opps later and then listen to the recriminations from the (greatful) world at our leasure.
bq. “We took months and months and months and still couldn’t come to a 100 percent conclusion,” one senior administration official said this year. “That happens. But it doesn’t help you justify a counterstrike against someone.”
It’s a problem.
In four to six months, you might know that 90% of the jihadis in Operation Qurayza were Saudi, the leader was Egyptian, two scientists were Jordanian, conscious backers were from a variety of other countries, and the bomb was probably Pakistani, with the second most likely option being that it was North Korean.
Does anybody think the Americans can keep secret for months and months who the suspects would be for such an attack? I think people in the CIA would have leaked the news and sold the right to their tell-all autobiographies by then. We know now that there is no national security issue so serious that such things are off limits.
Meanwhile, the likely suspects, if they had the brains of an ant, would be providing humanitarian aid, making no real difference but making themselves hard to hit.
Does anybody think that in a speculation-filled and leak-filled hiatus like this, states such as France and Germany would be friends fast and true? Or would they exert themselves as much as they could to prevent the American cowboys going off on a vengeful rampage, creating or perpetuating a cycle of violence? (Add pseudo-pacifist Euro cliches to taste.)
In my opinion, one of the lessons of World War I is that you can reply to an extreme and serious provocation by taking it on the chin, or by going to war, but the worst option may be to have a long diplomatic process of threats and counter-threats, during which everybody chooses allies and lines up ready in their maximum diplomatic and military posture to deter you, and then you go to war.
_Does anybody think the Americans can keep secret for months and months who the suspects would be for such an attack? I think people in the CIA would have leaked the news and sold the right to their tell-all autobiographies by then._
Are all US intelligence entities made aware of all US secrets? Would anyone in the CIA necessarily be privy to secret US nuclear targeting scenarios? I would think that for the CIA there would not be a pressing ‘need to know’ in this case. This could explain the lack of leaks from the CIA.
“Check out this Muslim describing why America is to be hated and why it is as bad as Nazi Germany”:http://www.sheffieldmayday.ukf.net/war/whyihate.htm
Of course, there is no mention of violence by Muslims, Saddam killing other Muslims, or the traits of Islamic culture being counterproductive to economic prosperity.
The entire point of a deterrence policy is that it not be a “secret” policy, though. It doesn’t do any good to decide to engage in massive retaliatory strikes on rogue nuclear nations in the event of an attack if you don’t TELL them that you’re going to do it. That goes double if they don’t expect that you’ll really do it.
Even if we had no intention of actually following through with it, it’d be a good policy to announce that we’d do so.
#4 from grackle: “Are all US intelligence entities made aware of all US secrets? Would anyone in the CIA necessarily be privy to secret US nuclear targeting scenarios?”
Good point: if you can keep the CIA from knowing, you can diminish its leaking. You don’t stop it entirely, because people can lie and invent stuff. (The remarkable case of Joseph Wilson, put in adventure’s way by his CIA wife, shown there need not be any fire where there is smoke.) But if the leaking is less, and less credible, that’s good.
Re: #5 from Tood: It is indeed a problem that we would like to deter people who act on the basis of deductive and implacable contempt and hostility, and on the basis of equally implacable ideas of Islamic dominance and of honor that subsume or override interest (link) (The Terror War Is An Honor War, By Jonathan Rauch, National Journal, as an illustration), and who act because of conflicts and competitions internal to Islam which we would have the greatest difficulty affecting favorably and without unintended consequences making things even worse (link) (Running from Iraq, Don’t imagine it will reduce the jihadist threat., by Reuel Marc Gerecht, illustrating the way that any action, inaction or retreat can force Muslims into savage hostility, such that in my opinion there is no practical solution as long as you assume that you must permanently keep dealing with Muslims and not non-Muslims), and who act on the basis of conspiracy theories and broadly accepted fantasies, such as you point to.
“America is the all-powerful devil that spreads oppression and death in my neighborhood. How can I not hate this “great Satan,” the evil empire?”
How not indeed? And how can we ever count on people who think like that not to act accordingly?
Deterrence is only a stopgap, and a weak one, against a civilization and a culture like this. We must diminish it, because in the long run we can’t deter it.
#6 from Avatar: “The entire point of a deterrence policy is that it not be a “secret” policy, though. It doesn’t do any good to decide to engage in massive retaliatory strikes on rogue nuclear nations in the event of an attack if you don’t TELL them that you’re going to do it. That goes double if they don’t expect that you’ll really do it.
Even if we had no intention of actually following through with it, it’d be a good policy to announce that we’d do so.”
I have no problem with the idea of deterrence in general. Only, in this thread I pointed to one small aspect of it: the threat of retaliation is less valuable if it will come, if at all, only after a delay. I pointed to secrecy only in the context of identifying the culprits of actions that have already happened. You’re following through – if you do follow through – on a threat that was made to deter people from doing something that happened months and months ago. Your deterrent policy has already failed, so there is no objection on the grounds of deterrence to keeping your scientific investigations and deliberations secret.
Are all US intelligence entities made aware of all US secrets? Would anyone in the CIA necessarily be privy to secret US nuclear targeting scenarios? I would think that for the CIA there would not be a pressing ‘need to know’ in this case. This could explain the lack of leaks from the CIA.
I can say definitively that all US intelligence entities are NOT aware of all US secrets. They aren’t even aware of all us Intelligence activities and information. It’s doubtful that the CIA as a whole would have any detailed knowledge on the details of our nuclear war planning at the operational and tactical levels. Certainly some in the CIA would have access, but it wouldn’t extend to the rank-and-file. Real-world war plans are, naturally, very closely guarded secrets.
The fallacy in this conversation is assumiing the US has secrets.
“Here’s another good article”:http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1546300,00.html talking about the new nuclear deterrence quagmire.
_U.S. intelligence agencies believed it came from North Korea but spent months trying to prove it. They still haven’t._
I think we all need to be resigned to the fact that some important decisions will have to be made without Constitutional level of proofs. To require such rigorous proofs leads to doing nothing – which is what Clinton mostly did for 8 long years. Besides, after their gutting(especially in ’96), our intel agencies are in no shape to provide such proof – that would require counterintelligence agents and the CIA(and the FBI) has problems recruiting mere translators, much less counterintelligence agents.
We don’t _know_ as an absolute whether Saddam would have slipped a WMD to a terrorist once he reconstituted his WMD programs. We’ll never know for sure but if there were a way to prove it one way or another and I had to bet money on the answer I would have to put all my chips on ‘yes.’
To wait for such sureties before acting is part of the flawed doctrine of the old passive foreign policy(diplomacy and hope for the best) of the Carter and Clinton administrations that led to 9/11 and is a guarantee of another atrocity, perhaps next time a suitcase nuke in DC.
Please note North Korea’s interest in multilateral meetings again:
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008287.php