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Cheryl Rofer, one of the trio of bloggers at the respected diplo oriented blog Whirledview and a field expert on nuclear arms issues, has called for a “Blog-Tank” discussion of American nuclear policy, or more to the point, the current difficulty the Bush administration is having updating nuclear policy to match the strategic environment of 2007.  In fairness to the bureaucrats and semi-official wonks, at no time has nuclear policy seemed less clear except when the Truman administration initially wrestled with what to do with America’s brief atomic monopoly. Today we sit poised upon the brink of the other end of the proliferation spectrum and, as in 1945, crafting nuclear policy means identifying our assumptions about the world and making strategic choices against an uncertain future.

Rofer was kind enough to invite me to participate as well as Cernig, guiding spirit of the feisty and fast-paced Liberal-Left blog, The NewsHoggers. Everyone though, is welcome and I will be linking to those who participate in the discussion.

Like Cernig, I’ll let Cheryl lay out the ground rules and background material, many excellent links, by presenting her post in full:

 “The Bloggers Develop Nuclear Weapons Policy“

by CKR

The other day, Cernig reminded me of something I’ve let drop. Back in August, Cernig, ZenPundit and I were having a conversation on nuclear policy and were agreeing on quite a few points. This seemed to me to be a hopeful sign, since we inhabit different points on the political spectrum.

It was also a hopeful sign because others seem to be having so much trouble with nuclear policy. United States nuclear policy is stuck in the Cold War. For the decade of the nineties, we wanted to be cautious that Russia wouldn’t fall back into a Soviet foreign policy. It hasn’t, so it’s time to think about a nuclear policy for a world in which the big nuclear problem is proliferation, not a single enormous nuclear arsenal on the other side of the world.

Among those having a hard time are the Departments of State, Defense and Energy. Back in July, after Congress told the administration that it wanted to see a nuclear policy before it would consider funding the Reliable Replacement Warhead, those three departments quickly got out a statement saying that they would indeed work up a nuclear policy. Jeffrey Lewis now reports a rumor that Secretary of Defense Gates is holding up the full white paper because it is so amateurishly done. Sorry, Jeffrey, I can’t confirm your rumor, but it tends to support my suspicion that such a thing will be very difficult indeed for those agencies.

The presidential candidates are mostly trying not to think about it. Some of the Republicans haven’t even bothered to address the issue, and the Democrats are not too far from continuing the sameold Cold War stuff.

And the Very Special People who do foreign policy for a living at the think tanks and universities haven’t said much. These are the folks who the blogosphere found, a few months back, aren’t necessarily any more insightful or intelligent than bloggers. Because they do foreign policy for a living, their views can be swayed by what sells their product. All too often, that is war. They also tend to get very specialized, and most have little science background, which they may think is necessary to discuss nuclear policy. It helps, but the issues are more political than technical. Occasionally the technical clamps limits on the possible.

So I’d like to pick up that thread again, because The Bloggers^TM seem to be willing to try to figure it out. I propose what we might call a blog-tank approach. Here’s how I suggest we do it:

Each blogger writes a post on what the US’s nuclear policy should be on her/his own blog. Then please notify me by e-mail or a comment on this post. I have e-mailed some folks I would like to have participate, but everyone is welcome to join. Invite your blogfriends. I would like to have participants who represent a range of political opinion.

Commenters are encouraged to contribute as well, both here and on other participating blogs.

On Friday, 12/28, I will summarize the arguments, emphasizing novel ideas and points of agreement and disagreement.

Bloggers will then write another round of posts, trying to move to consensus positions.

I will then summarize again on Friday, 1/4. At that point, I think we’re going to be close to agreement on most of the big points.

I’ve linked above to some of my posts and here, here, here, here, and here are several more.

A range of political opinion is represented by four gentlemen who wrote an op-ed on US nuclear weapons policy in the January 4 Wall Street Journal. The Foreign Secretary of the UK built on those ideas, and the UK is actually doing something about them. Recently, two Americans have responded to the gang of four’s op-ed, although they seem to agree as much as they disagree. And here’s my review of a report from another group of dissenters.

Recently, Joe Cirincione, William Langewiesche, Richard Rhodes and Jonathan Schell (excerpt) have published books on the subject that are useful background for policy. They are exceptions to the Very Special People rule.

The two big treaties:
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization

I apologize, sort of, for doing this over the holiday season. We’re starting just before the solstice and should finish up around Orthodox Christmas. I hope everyone will find some time to contribute. After all, this is the time of year to think about peace on earth”

Thank you Cheryl for being the prime mover on this important topic. I look forward to the discussion.

The Wilson Quarterly has a not terribly flattering review of the creation of The Department of Homeland Security:

“The Homeland Security Hash”

“Much as it opposed a new department, the Bush administration felt it could not let the Senate Demo­crats take the lead on homeland security, especially not with the congressional elections looming in November. By early spring, the White House had decided to design its own ­merger.

It could not be just any merger, however. According to a 2005 retrospective by Washington Post reporters Susan B. Glasser and Michael Grunwald and a study last year by four researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Defense Management Reform (Legislating Civil Service Reform: The Homeland Security Act of 2002), the White House concluded that if it wanted to take back the homeland security issue, nothing but the biggest merger in modern history would do. Ignoring warnings of bureaucratic train wrecks and a clash of cultures, the administration put five White House aides to work on designing a maximum ­merger.

Selected for their loyalty more than their collective knowledge of government reorganization, the Gang of Five-or the G-5, as its members liked to call themselves-included a future Internal Revenue Service commissioner, a National Guard major general, and three other ­mid-­level aides. But experienced or not, the G-5 was given firm instructions to think big. “The overriding guidance,” G-5 member Bruce M. Lawlor later told the Post, “was that everything was on the table for consideration.”

The members of the G-5 took their mandate seriously, and began searching the federal organization manual for merger targets. Although the G-5 used the Senate proposal as a foundation and certainly knew enough to get started, the planners soon strayed far from the notion that the new department should be built around agencies with similar missions. What about adding the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)? The Secret Service? The National Guard? The Drug Enforcement Administration? The Federal Aviation ­Administration?

The choices seemed endless. The G-5 even considered detaching the Lawrence Livermore ­nuclear ­research laboratory from the Department of Energy and slipping it into Homeland Security. Richard Falkenrath, a G-5 member, simply called up a friend and asked which laboratory might fit: “He goes, ‘Livermore.’ And I’m like, ‘All right. See you later.’ Click.”

It was all part of the ­maximum-­merger zeitgeist. More agencies equaled a better ­reorganization.”

Read the whole thing here.

I’m not an expert on DHS matters, so anyone who has some knowledge of this process is cordially invited to sound off in the comments.
 

ANNIHILATION FROM WITHIN

Fred C. Ikle, a former Undersecretary of Defense, senior arms control mandarin and long time security scholar, has produced a thoughtful and provocative book with his Annihilation From Within. In the tradition of his fellow RAND alumnus, Herman Kahn, Ikle has tasked himself with thinking about the unthinkable but he has done so without the former’s sense of humor or optimism, which renders AFW a slim yet dour read.

Back in 1999, in The Future and It’s Enemies, Virginia Postrel hypothesized a growing political split over the implications of technology and social change between “dynamists”, who favored freedom of experimentation and “stasists”who favor top-down, social and political controls over technological progress. Ikle is clearly in the latter camp; while much of AFW is devoted to the outcome of a nuclear attack “from within”, Ikle spends a fair amount of time worrying about the advent of “superintelligence“, the dystopian potential of exotic technology and ends with a plea for a consideration of “stationary-state”economic theory. Shades of the Club of Rome.

Ikle adeptly identifies critical security vulnerabilities and likely hypothetical scenarios that the national security and defense communities have not adequately addressed. More than identifies, Ikle himself has attempted to nudge policy makers into taking necessary steps to minimize the chances of nuclear catastrophe as he once convinced General Curtis LeMay to establish screening procedures for military personnel who had access to nuclear weapons and used coded safety locks on the weapons themselves. The concerns Ikle raises are well worth raising and most should be acted upon to some degree, which is one reason AFW is a “must read” book for anyone interested in strategic or security studies.

That being said, Ikle falls into the common fallacy of futurist books of this type on two counts. First assuming that all that which is necessary for the worst case scenario to come pass will fall perfectly in to place. He does this most strenuously with the subjects upon which he has the least to say, such as on “superintelligence” ( which, none of us, in actuality can assess the parameters of, for reasons of self-referential limitations). Secondly, aside from dismissing the benefits of the exotic technologies that Ikle fears, he corrupts his probabilistic estimates of disaster by not accounting for all the positive downstream effects of new technologies that will also be causing societal shifts.

A stimulating and serious book.

OTHER REVIEWS

James McCormick at Chicago Boyz

John Robb at Global Guerillas