Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter by Henry D. Sokolski (Editors) Robert Zarate

Author:Henry D. Sokolski (Editors) Robert Zarate [(Editors) Robert Zarate, Henry D. Sokolski]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Strategic Studies, Nuclear Age, Defense Policy, Albert Wohlstetter, Henry D. Sokolski, policy analysis, Nuclear Heuristics, SSI, Roberta Wohlstetter, Robert Zarate, U.S. Army War College

Time, Warning Time and Article IV

The interpretation of Article IV is by no means a trivial matter. If, in fact, technological transfers can bring a "non-nuclear weapon state" within weeks, days or even hours of the ability to use a nuclear explosive, in the operational sense that "non-nuclear weapon state" will have nuclear weapons. The point is even more fundamental than the fact that effective safeguards mean timely warning. A necessary condition for having timely warning is that there be a substantial elapsed time. But if there is no substantial elapsed time before a government may use nuclear weapons, in effect it has them.

Consider, for example, the situation of a government engaged in a very short war with an adversary that has no nuclear weapons. If its adversary appears to be winning, and [if] the government has plutonium in explosive concentrations and the capability of assembling an implosion system developed by years of experiments with nonnuclear explosives in the rapid compression of heavy metal, then from the standpoint of the adversary who had been winning, it would be facing a government which to all practical effect had nuclear weapons.

Or, consider the case of a government which is not at war, but is capable of quickly assembling a nuclear device to use or threaten to use against another government without such a capability. Once again, there is no practical difference between the coercion it could use or the threat it could execute from what a nuclear power might manage.

Or, one might even consider a case where both of two adversaries were that close to potential assembly and use. The instability might be at least that which we associate with some possible confrontations between two vulnerable nuclear powers.

The point may be driven home if we recall that in 1947, for example, the United States stored its plutonium weapons in disassembled form. Moreover, since the design was quite

primitive and used much more inconvenient components than are commercially available today, the process of putting the weapon together took many hours. In fact, it took a longer time than would be needed today by a well prepared government laboratory to make highly concentrated fissile material ready for insertion in a nonnuclear assembly for compressing it rapidly. 8 The United States did have nuclear weapons in 1947. And if the rules are relaxed enough, so can nonnuclear weapon states today. 9

There have been a number of recent statements suggesting as implausible "an overnight scenario" by which is meant apparently a contingency in which a non-weapon state assembled a weapon in less than a day or so. 10 There is, of course, nothing magical or even anything of critical importance in the interval of 24 hours. For purposes of policy against the spread of nuclear weapons, it would be bad enough if a prospective nuclear power were able to get ready in a few days or a few weeks. In suggesting that it would be a great failure in proliferation policy if the rules made it legitimate

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.