Walking away from a very good deal

The Acorn has been a supporter of the India-US nuclear deal as concluded between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George Bush in March 2006. It has argued that for India, the benefits of the deal are worth making some difficult concessions---separating civilian nuclear facilities from military ones, and accepting constraints on the amount of fissile material India needs to produce nuclear weapons. The agreement allows India to retain a dynamic credible nuclear deterrent---although the contours of the deterrence need to change---while ending its costly isolation from the international nuclear power industry. The deal, moreover, is also part of a strategic transformation of relations with the United States mandated by convergence of interests in the geopolitics of the twenty-first century.

The Hyde Act, passed by the US Congress last year, introduced a qualitative change in the letter and spirit of the agreement that negotiators worked so hard to achieve. It has raised several contentious issues, but the most significant one involves linking America's keeping its end of the deal (to supply nuclear technology and fuel for India's civilian nuclear power industry) to India's non-testing of nuclear weapons.

read the rest! »

Nicht Zum Kernkrieg, As They Say

The Polish government, in an effort to "...draw a line under the country's Communist past, and "educate" the Polish public about the old regime" has released the documents from a 1979 Eastern Bloc war game, in which Poland is sacrificed to Allied nuclear weapons blocking Soviet reinforcements, and Soviet citybusters strike most Western European cities. Note that the Soviets did not expect NATO to launch against Eastern cities.

The new conservative government that released them said "It's important for citizens to know who was a hero, and who was a villain. It is important for the civic health of society to make these things public."

I'm less sanguine; I'm thinking it's possible we have files full of similar plans.

But it's both important to note what the Soviet military leadership expected from us - and planned to do about it - and to put into context the challenges and risks we face as compared to those we faced as recently as the 1980's.

Lots has improved since then. But we do have a ways to go...

The clash of convictions and the remaking of the world of wars

The outcome of modern wars is decided in the mind

Armed combat, of course, is not about to disappear, although it may increasingly take the form of 'asymmetric warfare' as seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. It could also take the shape of proxy war, like the one India is fighting in Jammu & Kashmir and the United States and NATO are fighting in Afghanistan. But days in which armed combat alone decided the fate of wars ended a long time ago: with World War II and perhaps, the India-Pakistan war of 1971.

This is old hat. All out war became unimaginable as soon as the major powers acquired nuclear weapons. Those that didn't have their own usually came under the umbrella of one of those that did. The game of nuclear deterrence--in spite of bizarrely escalating to the level where there were thousands of warheads--kept the peace. The stability/instability paradox argued that while nuclear deterrence ensured stability at the highest (nuclear) level of escalation, it nevertheless created instability at lower (non-nuclear) levels. The United States relied on this to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But the Pakistani general staff realised just how low the ceiling was at Kargil in 1999-2000. They were fine so long as they were only arming and injecting jihadis into Jammu & Kashmir. But when they decided to take a step further and actually try to capture and hold territory, they quickly found out exactly where the buck stopped.

But the outcome of most of these asymmetrical, low-intensity wars can go either way.

read the rest! »

Fibonacci's Nukes II: The Road to Atomic Perdition

So, all kinds of American election races are going on... and here's my prediction. About 20 years from now, the vast majority of you won't even think of these elections as a footnote in history. Instead, November 2006 will be remembered as the month that made atomic war all but inevitable, and ushered in a new age of world history.

In Britain's The Times Online, Richard Beeston reports that 4-6 Arab states announced that they were embarking on programs to master atomic technology [also RCI]:

"The countries involved were named by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Tunisia and the UAE have also shown interest...."

Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert on nuclear proliferation... "If Iran was not on the path to a nuclear weapons capability you would probably not see this sudden rush [in the Arab world]," he said.

He's almost right. If Iran was not on the path to a nuclear weapons capability with no meaningful checks in sight and none even imagined by the majority of Western policy-makers, plus tacit support from Russia and China, you probably would not see this sudden rush. But it is, and they do, and you're seeing it. And if you believe the bit about powering de-salination plants, you're dumber than all the dirt in Arabia.

Back in October 2003, I penned "Fibonacci's Nukes: Is Proliferation Unstoppable?" noting the accelerating failure of global non-proliferation mechanisms. That failure is now all but certain.

Corollary: As these regimes pursue their programs, the probability of atomic war rises toward 100% in our lifetime. Note the regimes, and their prospects:

read the rest! »

Speaking Of Nuclear Deterrence...

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."

read the rest! »

Tim Oren's Nuclear Strawman

In the comments to my 'Godfather' post below, Tim Oren made a really smart comment that elaborated on my idea and turned it into something vaguely practical:

May I suggest an alternative framing that may find some common ground? In the commentary here and on Joe's post there's at minimum a volks-wisdom that we can grudgingly trust some newer nuke powers to act responsibly - India, Israel, China (let's hope), but others we cannot: NK, Pakistan, Iran. Is question is how to convert that intuition into a framing that is understandable by all, not seen to be simply arbitrary, and is utterly convincing to transgressors in regards of their fate. It should also be able to survive the probably inevitable further proliferation of nuclear power reactors. In short, a de facto effective 'Nuclear Proliferation Treaty', with nasty, sharp, pointy teeth.

read the rest! »

McCain on North Korea - Good, But Not Enough

Sen. John McCain has a CQ Guest Blog about the recent North Korean nuke test. In "Why North Korea is the Wrong Focus," I warned about next steps that won't be enough to make a difference - and unfortunately, McCain's suggestions are a good example of that dynamic at work.

The simple truth is that China will not implement or carry out the sanctions he envisions, for the reasons I discussed, unless faced with a downside large enough to both cancel their expected gains from enabling North Korea, and offer the reality of a fear greater than their fear of a North Korean refugee tsunami. McCain offers nothing of the kind. On the plus side, his post accurately diagnoses the failures of the previous policy, and correctly calls where this is probably headed.

The Nuclear Proliferation Nightmare -- A Retrospective

Now that the "Kim Regime" of North Korea has birthed the Nightmare of Rapid Nuclear Proliferation with it's Sunday nuclear test. I think a retrospective listing of "worst case posts" made here on Winds of Change on the subject of North Korean/Iranian nuclear proliferation is in order.

Starting with my 5-year anniversary September 11th prediction that North Korea was about to test a nuclear weapon:

NORTH KOREA'S COMING NUCLEAR TEST
by Trent Telenko at September 11, 2006 5:30 AM

This is my Sept. 11th prediction of the October 8th North Korean nuclear test. I make the points that
1) The Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs are not separate national programs, but are really a single, joint, international arms program;
2) That it can only be stopped via regime change in Iran,
3) That the logical assessment of the Libyan nuclear program meant If Libya could have nuclear weapons next year, Iran can have them now.
And finally,
4) That not stopping the Iranian nuclear program will lead to "A world of 20-30+ unstable nuclear-armed 3rd world tyrannies is less than a 15 years away, maybe as little as seven, if Iran succeeds in its goal of becoming a nuclear power."

IRAN'S NUCLEAR WARHEAD
by Trent Telenko at May 24, 2006 1:55 PM

Here I point out a Straegypage.com report that Iran is getting Russian and Chinese missile warhead design help.

COUNT DOWN TO IRAN’S NUCLEAR TEST REVISITED
by Trent Telenko at April 10, 2006 4:10 AM

I make the case that the US Government has chosen to mirror image the Iranian nuclear program rather than truly assess where Iran’s policy objective will lead its nuclear weapons development program. And that the result is that Iran has several gun-type fission warheads for its Scud missiles that the American intelligence and national security establishments deny the existence of.

Continued

read the rest! »

Why North Korea is the Wrong Focus

As fate would have it, I was sitting in a local Italian restaurant with Marc Armed "Liberal" Danziger when the call came in at around 8:30pm California time. Kim Jong-Il, the star of "Team America: World Police" and also incidentally the ruler of North Korea, had set off a nuke. Later research at home turns up the 4.2 quake near Chongjin, an area that doesn't have much of anything in the way of seismic activity history. That isn't a 100% lock as a nuke test... but I'd put it around 90%. Especially given that a Hiroshima size nuke in a chamber 100-150 ft. cubed would be expected to produce about this size quake.

So the day has likely come, as it inevitably had to. And with it comes the question: "Now what?"

And my first answer is: Forget North Korea. No proposal involving their government, from idiotic talk of sanctions (what, we're going to cut Kim out of the movie remake?) to even dumber and more craven responses around "rewards" (read: appeasement and a license to keep cheating) is worth even 10 seconds of your time. Search and boarding activities for ships from North Korea may be helpful, and preparations for that have been underway for a while, but ultimately this doesn't solve the problem and raises risks whenever used.

If you want to fix the problem, you have to see and understand the lever.

read the rest! »

BREAKING: North Korea Tests Nuke

North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful

North Korea said Monday it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test. The country's official Korean Central News Agency said the test was performed and there was no radioactive leakage from the site.

SEOUL, Oct. 9 (Yonhap) -- South Korea received intelligence on Monday that North Korea might have conducted a nuclear test, officials here said. "President Roh Moo-hyun called in an emergency meeting of related ministers on Monday to discuss the North Korean nuclear issue," Foreign Ministry spokesman Choo Kyu-ho said. "The meeting comes as there has been a grave change in the situation involving the North's nuclear activity."
He refused to go into further detail, citing the sensitivity of the issue.

Omri: And The Wheels Come Off [1] [2] [3]

This nuclear test will provide much grist for the Democrats' partisan mill; they've already tried to pin the lack of progress in North Korea on the Bush Administration, contrasting it with the "progress" made under Clinton. It will be interesting for this Republican to watch the response from across the aisle. More than anything else, this test is an indicator of incredible weakness and increasing desperation, not strength. A cornered lunatic can certainly be dangerous, but was he any less dangerous when he was Albright's and Carter's darling? The knives come out in the open.

China Confidential points out that the entire Axis of Evil is escalating tensions globally in tandem. Syria's unimpressive leader has been talking about declaring war on Israel.

We are living in excruciatingly interesting times.

UPDATE: Seismographic data here. Note that the stations in China et. al. seem to show a smaller event right around the 0130 GMT reported by South Korea's government as the time of the test - and here's the specific 4.2 event near Chongjin - in an area with no historical seismic activity since 1990.

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste says it was very likely a misfire. Another North Korean failure.

North Korea's Coming Nuclear Test

These opening lines from this UK TELEGRAPH article speak for themselves:

Russian diplomats believe it is now "highly probable" that North Korea will officially join the nuclear club by carrying out its first underground test of an atomic device.

Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, is said to have made clear his intention to explode a device during recent talks with Russian and Chinese officials in Pyongyang

Given the the joint international nature of North Korea's nuclear program, Iran will have an arsenal of tested nuclear missile warheads for its ballistic missile arsenal of Chinese design and North Korean construction in 30-90 days after that test.

read the rest! »

Canary in the Coal Mine, Meet the Sunfish in the Reservoir

As we wonder what's in store for August 22, I thought this was interesting on a number of levels.

New York and San Francisco have begun using the IAC 1090 Intelligent Aquatic BioMonitoring System (iABS) developed by Intelligent Automation Corporation (IAC) of Poway, CA to protect public drinking water from contamination and potential terrorism incidents. The system is also being used by the U.S. Army at Fort Detrick, MD, a development partner for the system along with the U.S. Army Center for Environmental Health Research (USACEHR), The US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Defense Legacy Program. The key to this whole system? Well, a neural network processor, and... fish. Bluegill sunfish, to be precise.

Read the rest at Defense Industry Daily...

How Libya Stopped Loving The Bomb

Speaking of Iran, check out this article in Opinion Journal which analyzes Libya's surrender of it's nuclear weapons program.

How and why did Col. Gadhafi, the despotic, still dangerously capricious leader, decide to abandon a lifetime of revolution and terrorism and abandon the WMD programs he had pursued since seizing power in a coup in 1969? What role did American intelligence play in that decision? And how much change can Col. Gadhafi tolerate and still retain power?

Col. Gadhafi's hip, 34-year-old son, Saif-al-Islam, told me in Vienna--where he earned an M.B.A. and lives when he's not carrying out tasks for his father, or studying for a doctorate in political philosophy at the London School of Economics--that his father changed course because he had to. "Overnight we found ourselves in a different world," said Saif, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks. "So Libya had to redesign its policies to cope with these new realities."

But a review of confidential government records and interviews with current and former officials in London, Tripoli, Vienna and Washington suggest that other factors were involved. Prominent among them is a heretofore undisclosed intelligence coup--the administration's decision in late 2003 to give Libyan officials a compact disc containing intercepts of a conversation about Libya's nuclear weapons program between Libya's nuclear chief and A.Q. Khan--that reinforced Col. Gadhafi's decision to reverse course on WMD.

(h/t Ann Althouse)

Reza Pahlavi on Iran & Its Democratic Opposition

Human Events has an interview with Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah of Iran who is now an advocate of a democratic Iran that can decide if it wants a monarchy or not. It's interesting on a number of levels - see esp. his scathing and accurate analysis of Iran's "reformers", his thoughts about the window of time left re: Iran's nuclear program and measures to take, and his view of Iran's Revolutionary Guard (the regime's core power base and praetorian guard) as a disjointed set of individual fifedoms, some of whom could be turned with the right persusasion:

"That explains the psychology of the regime. It also explains that the whole militia is not under one core unit. It's a whole mafia. There are various families of Revolutionary Guards. Each has its own portfolio and agenda. Some are behind Al Qaeda. Some are involved in Syria. Some are involved in Bekaa Valley. Some are involved in Iraq, etc. And they have their own independent means of finances. They don't have to report back to the government. They have their own bases of income, free ports, what have you."

The down-side is that if this is true, it also magnifies the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran another several-fold - because it means that you can't assume reliable control of those weapons by the government.

I was also paying attention to his efforts to create an umbrella group for a democratic opposition.

read the rest! »

Underground Bunkers 101

This post at Subtopia: A Field Guide to Military Urbanism manages all at once to be an unintentionally self-parodying commentary on the modern Left, and an informative piece. They show pictures of Iran's infamous Natanz facility in 2002 and then 2004, and note:

"Despite advances in satellite imaging, infrared and sensor technology, and a flexing global panoptic muscle, detection methods have suffered accuracy due to the expansion of a subterranean urbanism that’s become increasingly more sophisticated at deflecting aerial surveillance. Whether burrowing into ancient mountain caves, or digging tunneled networks deeper than ever (or so we think), or whether these dank hallways merely skim the surfaces dipping under the border, the tunnelers have kept remarkably ingenuitive and entrepreneurial in their masterful escape routes and renegade economies that pulsate through them. Signs of desperation maybe but also that a real thriving form of opposition is in effect here. Perhaps these dark places are all united in a landscape solidarity against the "iminanent domains" of transnational corporatism. The article is much too long and dense to summarize here, so just read it, if you are interested in the sciences of bunker architecture, ground penetrating radar technology, seismic shockwaves, and mapping the earth's gravitational fields from orbit. Fascinating stuff, to be sure."

It is. Now, if you want to step into true Loony Left surrealism, I recommend the Subtopia articles "Vegas, Baby!" about the forthcoming 'Divine Strake' test; and "'The Long War' enters its capsule." OK, couldn't resist a quote from the latter:

"With all this renewed nuclear tension boiling up around the world, the discovery of this spat up little fossil is a silly archaeological trace of the eerie paranoia that governed the American psyche for decades while posturing with the Soviet Union, but also makes us wonder: has the Cold War really ended, or is it something that constantly lurks just below the surface, regurgitating itself up off the geopolitical backburner when it needs to, playing the earth for a hollow museum of nuclear urbanism inscrolled in synchronous economic timebelts perpetuated by run-on projections of post-future nuclear war?"

The only urbanism here is the big flashing neon sign that says "Hello, I've lost contact with reality; and I'm never, ever coming back."

Iran's Nuclear Break Out Has Begun

According to an article in Bloomberg, an American State Department official is being quoted as saying the following in response to Iranian deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi's televised claim that Iran was about to move to ``industrial scale'' uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at its Natanz plant:

and

The time for diplomacy with Iran has come to an end. Mohammad Saeedi's announcement was a public declaration that Iran's nuclear break out has begun.

Welcome to the nuclear express elevator to hell, going down.

Count Down to Iran’s Nuclear Test Revisited

The U.S. government is missing the real issues in deciding what military action to take concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons program - how the Iranians are making nukes and what kind of nukes are they are attempting to build that counts. There are huge political/military implications to those choices. If America’s military and intelligence agencies have guessed wrong, the first we will know of it is when a nuclear tipped Iranian Scud or improved Scud missile detonates where it does America the most damage.

The government’s assumption that an American bombing campaign, no matter how successful, will slow down Iran’s nuclear program enough to buy time for a nonsensical regime change by revolution concept (no one outside the desperate-to-believe in fairy-tales idiots in D.C. believes the U.S. intelligence community can foment a successful revolution in Iran) would be laughable if so many lives were not at stake. Iran’s nuclear program is not a NATIONAL PROGRAM. It is an INTERNATIONAL ONE. As long as North Korea serves as an invulnerable sanctuary supplying ballistic missiles and nuclear fissile material to Iran in exchange for oil, Iran will get nukes. Looked at one way, nuclear proliferation may be seen as a phenomenon of globalization. Looked at in another, it may well be that nuclear proliferation is a game of covert nuclear warfare against the world’s sole superpower. No matter which is true, only forcible regime change will prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and setting off a chain reaction of proliferation that will add a least a dozen unstable, nuclear-armed, 3rd world states in a decade. Those will use their nukes on each, themselves and hand some off to terrorists, intentionally or otherwise, for use on us.

The kinds of nukes Iran is pursuing, given the self-evident need to remove the Mullah regime, is the most pressing and least thought through question of the proliferation debate. It is one colored by mirror-imaging conventional wisdom amounting to religious faith on the part of our nuclear weapons and intelligence communities.

read the rest! »

Threshold

I am quite aware of Thomas Friedman's 'Flat Earth,' and agree that globalization has done far more to spread wealth than just about any other historical economic influence. I know that telecommunications and the Internet have compressed the world economically and politically. I understand the interdependent ties between global regions and the nations within them. Look at isolated countries like North Korea or Talibanian Afghanistan, and it is obvious that in our time, countries that 'go it alone' face massive economic privations, often accompanied with the horror of internal repression.

In spite of the view that the globalized world will deliver long-term freedom and prosperity, I have begun to wonder if openness will be an option as we cross history's harsh thresholds, hidden in the tall grass. History always reaps the unexpected; its scythe is strident.

read the rest! »

How I Learned to Stop Worrying about Mullahs and Embrace The Bomb

Why We Must Nuke Iran; or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying about Mullahs and Embrace The Bomb

American foreign policy is approaching a crisis more catastrophic than any since at least World War 2. According to some sources, the terrorist nation of Iran has already acquired an unknown number of nuclear weapons of at least the Hiroshima variety. Trent Telenko has written about the high likelihood of Iran being in possession of nuclear weapons, and the "certainty of nuclear war" should we attempt to divest them of these weapons via a bombing campaign as some have suggested. Ladies and Gentlemen, this evidence is impossible to ignore. Even if by some unlikely quirk our Intelligence Services prove incorrect about Iran’s current state of nuclear readiness, it is still only a matter of time before the Mullahs retain a full nuclear arsenal, perhaps rivaling our own. Perhaps soon.

As glorious as the halcyon days of the Cold War proved to be, with our shining bombers and prowling submarines on constant standby to shower our enemies with American ingenuity, those days are gone forever. A standoff with Iran will prove to be a messy affair of dirty bombs and irradiated oil wells, hardly worthy of our bravest warriors and finest minds. The Mullahs have shown themselves to be mad religious zealots eager to martyr themselves and as many of their flock as possible, as quickly as possible. We would do well to send them on their way.

read the rest! »

Holsinger: The United States Will Attack Iran

Tom Holsinger explains why he thinks his future scenario re: Iran (W. leads an invasion before they get nukes) is more likely than mine (no invasion, they get nukes, 10-100 million or more dead within 20 years). Or does he?

America's ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, recently made a statement on the ABC News Nightline television program which irrevocably commits the Bush administration to use any necessary means, up to and including invasion, to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The Reuters story on this states:

"The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, on Wednesday compared the threat from Iran's nuclear programs to the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.

"Just like September 11, only with nuclear weapons this time, that's the threat. I think that is the threat," Bolton told ABC News' Nightline program.

"I think it's just facing reality. It's not a happy reality, but it's reality and if you don't deal with it, it will become even more unpleasant."

read the rest! »

The Mullah's Nuclear Saruman

The Ents shall hear of this!

That was the start of an e-mail sent to me this morning on Iranian efforts to hide their nuclear secrets. It seems that there is nothing the Mullahs of Iran will not stoop too, even stealing a page from the Lord of the Rings, and playing Saruman vs. the Ents. According to an article titled Teheran park 'cleansed' of traces from nuclear site , the mayor of Teheran, Mohamed Baker Khalibaf -- The Nuclear Saruman -- ordered 7,000 trees near the Teheran's Lavizan nuclear complex to be cut down to prevent their leaves and small branches for being tested for traces of highly enriched uranium or plutonium.

This is some of what the article said:

read the rest! »

EMP? Don't Lose Any Sleep This Year

OK, I'm looking at the likely effects of EMP and doing the classic blogger thing of dipping into serious issues as a rank amateur. But I may be right, and if not, I'll trigger a darn interesting discussion.

TG works close to the Los Angeles Public Library, and we have a deal where I'll find a book I'm interested in, email her the catalog link, and she'll pick it up and bring it home for me. The Department of Homeland Security is doubtless interested in her borrowing habits...

Today, she brought home Glasstone & Dolan's "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons," Third Edition.

Here's what I learned. To maximize EMP effect, the weapon has to explode at an altitude of over 19 miles - there's a dramatic increase in the amount of gamma converted to electricity at that height. The EMP effect is generally limited to the line-of-sight to the weapon, and does diminish somewhat as the weapon explodes at greater and greater heights - because more of the gamma radiation which is converted to electrical energy by the atmosphere is radiated upward.

The end result of my quick Excel calculations is the energy per square mile would vary between 0.03 joules/mile for a 10KT weapon detonated 15 miles up, with an effective radius of 350 miles and 17,800 joules/mile over an area with a radius of 1500 miles for a 1 megaton blast at 300 miles up.

Now this may sound like a lot, but recall that a lightning bolt has about 10⁹ - 10¹⁰ joules.

And a Shahab-1 has a maximum height of about 55 miles.

read the rest! »

Our Darkening Sky: Iran and the War

"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?"
  -- G.K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse

In the wake of Tom Holsinger's article "The Case For Invading Iran," I was going to enter a comment, but it became long enough to deserve a full post. To begin with, it's time to lay my own cards on the table.

I personally believe that we're very likely to see at least 10 million dead in the Middle East within the next two decades, with an upper limit near 100 million. I do not believe pre-emptive action will be taken against Iran. I do, however, believe the extremist mullahs in Iran mean exactly what they say. They are steeped in an ideology that believes suicide/murder to be the holiest and most moral act possible. They have been diligent in laying strategic plans for an offensive Islamic War against Israel, America and the West. Plans backed by 25 years of action, and stated no less clearly than Mein Kampf. I believe that Ahmedinajad's talk of 12th Imam end-times and halos around his head at the UN aren't the ravings of an isolated nut, simply an unusually public (and unusually noticed) expression of beliefs that are close to mainstream within their ruling class. That class of "true believer" imams and revolutionary guard types have been quietly consolidating their control over all sectors of Iranian society over the last few months, and I do not believe anyone in the world today has both the will and the capability to stop them. A key pillar of The Bush Doctrine is about to fail.

At some point within the next decade, therefore, I believe that they will not only have nuclear weapons, but that they will act to make good on their stated beliefs and plans. With eventual "3 Conjectures" level results as noted above. I hope you're all invested in solar, folks, and have some panels up on your houses.

It gets worse.

read the rest! »

The Case for Invading Iran

by Thomas Holsinger

America has come to another turning point � whether our inaction will again engulf the world and us in a nightmare comparable to World War Two. This will entail loss of our freedom as the price of domestic security measures against terrorist weapons of mass destruction, though we might suffer nuclear attack before implementing those measures. The only effective alternative is American use of pre-emptive military force against an imminent threat � Iranian nuclear weapons, which requires that we invade Iran and overthrow its mullah regime as we did to Iraq�s Baathist regime.

All the reasons for invading Iraq apply doubly to Iran, and with far greater urgency. Iran right now poses the imminent threat to America which Iraq did not in 2003. Iran may already have some nuclear weapons, purchased from North Korea or made with materials acquired from North Korea, which would increase its threat to us from imminent to direct and immediate.

Iran�s mullahs are about to produce their first home-built nuclear weapons this year. If we permit that, many other countries, some of whose governments are dangerously unstable, will build their own nuclear weapons to deter Iran and each other from nuclear attack as our inaction will have demonstrated our unwillingness to keep the peace. This rapid and widespread proliferation will inevitably lead to use of nuclear weapons in anger, both by terrorists and by fearful and unstable third world regimes, at which point the existing world order will break down and we will suffer every Hobbesian nightmare of nuclear proliferation.

read the rest! »

3 Touchstones, 3 Conjectures

(Originally published Sept. 8, 2004)

Some essays are so good that they become touchstones for discussion throughout the blogosphere. Recent updates to one of the items on this list, plus Iran's ambitions and atomic weapons program, make these essays more timely than ever.

• Steven Den Beste's straightforward, point form explanation of the Global War on Terror's strategy, aims and rationale in 2003 is one of the all-time touchstones. In Novmber 2005, Tigerhawk updated it. Den Beste's assessment: "excellent."

• American Digest's "The First Terrorist War" clearly explains of the stakes we face - avoiding the Islamic War by winning the Terrorist War - and much else besides (Hat Tip: reader John Simutis for finding it again). For a more visceral understanding of that concept, sci-fi writer Dan Simmons' story "The Time Traveler" and his excellent May 2006 follow-up discussion about that story are your best bet. All this ties nicely into...

• Wretchard's famous and chilling "3 Conjectures":

Conjecture 1: Terrorism has lowered the nuclear threshold
Conjecture 2: Attaining WMDs will destroy Islam
Conjecture 3: The War on Terror is the 'Golden Hour' -- the final chance

Belmont Club also has an important postscript that sums it all up so very well:

read the rest! »

Trends: Unabomber World

Saw this in a recent exchange over Cicero's essay "Freedom". After discussing certain elements of the 1918 influenza virus and publication of its genome sequence, Celebrim adds this point. It's a good one, because it defines our future. As you read it, consider its importance to the present global situation, esp. in context of past Winds articles like The S.P.E.C.T.R.E. of Terror, Inc. Fred Ikle on Intelligence, WMDs and the Future, Tim Oren's chilling addendum in 3 Touchstones, 3 Conjectures, Winds of Change.NET's coverage of the bioweapon threat, indeed our entire 4HA: Nukes, Poisons, Germs Topic Archive.

The Mad Scientist Postulate
by 'Celebrim'

All this brings us back around to the real sense in which 'information wants to be free'. Viruses want to be free too, in the sense that it requires more work to contain a virus than it does to spread one. At some point in the 20th century (or possibly earlier) we crossed a threshold in which in the society that we had created information became more expensive to contain than to distribute. This is not necessarily a natural state for society or information. It's entirely possible that absent the cultural and technological infrastructure that we've created, it takes more work to distribute information than it does to contain it, but it is I would argue a necessary precondition for sustaining our culture are we know it.

Hence we are at a point at which, through great effort we've made information easy to distribute to our own immense benefit. This condition will sustain progress up until the point at which this increasing power 'liberates' a subcommunity which is both capable of and willing to destroy the system. As information becomes more readily attainable and technological capacity increases, the minimum size of a subcommunity capable of destroying the rest of the system decreases. At some point, there will be (at best) equilibrium. No further progress will be possible because the n% dissidents in the system will be able to destroy all the economic output of the other 1-n%. With sufficiently advanced technology, the ordinary person can hold the entire rest of humanity hostage just on the simple fact that it will always be easier to destroy things than create them. You could call this the 'mad scientist' postulate.

Some writers have called the point at which humanity escaped from a perpetual cycle of dictatorial military oligarchies with slave economies by creating an alternative system capable of outproducing them as 'The Exit'. I would argue that we are by no means out of the woods yet. I would argue that the next 'exit' will involve finding a means of escaping the 'mad scientist' postulate.

Freedom

After a decade of painstaking research, federal and university scientists have reconstructed the 1918 influenza virus that killed 50 million people worldwide. Like the flu viruses now raising alarm bells in Asia, the 1918 virus was a bird flu that jumped directly to humans, the scientists reported. To shed light on how the virus evolved, the United States Department of Health and Human Services published the full genome of the 1918 influenza virus on the Internet in the GenBank database. This is extremely foolish. The genome is essentially the design of a weapon of mass destruction. No responsible scientist would advocate publishing precise designs for an atomic bomb, and in two ways revealing the sequence for the flu virus is even more dangerous.

read the rest! »

Hubris

Charles Johnson noted that while IAEA and Mohamed ElBaradei received the Nobel Peace Prize for working against nuclear proliferation, Britain's MI5 has uncovered 360 clandestine nuclear arms organizations -- MI5 Unmasks Covert Arms Programmes:

More than 360 private companies, university departments and government organisations in eight countries, including the Pakistan high commission in London, are identified as having procured goods or technology for use in weapons programmes.

The length of the list, compiled by MI5, suggests that the arms trade supermarket is bigger than has so far been publicly realised. MI5 warns against exports to organisations in Iran, Pakistan, India, Israel, Syria and Egypt and to beware of front companies in the United Arab Emirates, which appears to be a hub for the trade.

Mr. Johnson continued with a London Times piece that highlights the IAEA's failure to abate the proliferation of nuclear weapons materials:

read the rest! »

H5N1 -- An Influenza Pandemic Strain?

Since 1997, an RNA virus has been spreading through bird populations, starting with migratory flocks in East Asia. While the virus has been evolving, its two coat proteins have remained of the types "H5" and "N1." The H5N1 avain flu virus is lethal to nearly 100% of some birds (chickens), while sparing others (ducks). Like all avian flu viruses, it can sometimes establish a weak infection in domesticated mammals, particularly pigs--and that's where the real trouble may be brewing.

If a pig cell is infected with both the H5N1 avian flu and a mammalian influenza virus, a genetic mix-and-match will ensue. This assortment might--or might not--produce an amalgamated virus with the H5N1 surface coat, the avain virus' lethality, and the porcine virus' high infectivity. Some anonymous farmer would get unknowingly inoculated with this new variant. It would then spread to farms, markets, cities--and around the globe.

Because there has been no H5N1 infection of humans within living memory, nobody has a pre-existing immunity. So if these circumstances develop, the stage will be set for an influenza pandemic of the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu. Or worse.

Warnings of this potential crisis are being sounded by a small chorus of informed voices, including Randall Parker and Hugh Hewitt. He links to the July 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs, which includes The Next Pandemic by Laurie Garrett--well worth reading. From a companion article by Michael Osterholm:

Can disaster be avoided? The answer is a qualified yes. Although a coming pandemic cannot be avoided, its impact can be considerably lessened. It depends on how the leaders of the world -- from the heads of the G-8 to local officials -- decide to respond. They must recognize the economic, security, and health threat that the next influenza pandemic poses and invest accordingly. Each leader must realize that even if a country has enough vaccine to protect its citizens, the economic impact of a worldwide pandemic will inflict substantial pain on everyone. The resources required to prepare adequately will be extensive. But they must be considered in light of the cost of failing to invest: a global world economy that remains in a shambles for several years.

We can't know what this virus has in store for us. But with the best available information showing that the probablilty of a pandemic is much higher than zero, it would be prudent for our leaders to take the steps that would blunt its ferocity. That's what I'll be asking my representatives to do.

The Battle of Japan

Of all the hypothetical histories, Operation Olympic, the American invasion of Japan, is perhaps the most hotly contested. On it hinge two popular, and clashing, certainties about American power.

The first says it is essentially bloodthirsty and genocidal, that Truman A-bombed a Japan he knew was on the brink of collapse led by men yearning to surrender, and that he did so because he wanted to impress the Soviets with America's new weapon. The other holds that the bomb put a quick end to a long war, and, through the cruel calculations of the god of battles, the deaths of tens of thousands in a few minutes in two cities spared the lives of hundreds of thousands -- U.S. GIs, Japanese civilians, starving slave laborers, occupied Indonesians -- by convincing Japan to stop fighting at once. In this view, America can be ruthlessly efficient in war, but not radically more violent than is necessary to win.

read the rest! »

Playing Chicken With Avian Flu: Pandemic Rising?

Some of our readers will recall (a) China's dismal record of inaction and cover-up with SARS; (b) The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that killed 20-50 million people; (c ) Winds' article about global democracy promotion as a global development policy; it pointed out the inherent and inevitable failings of planned/ authoritarian socieites, and specifically noted their inability to react to things like avian flu pandemics as a key example of what we were talking about.

It seems the chickens may be coming home to roost a little earlier than we'd hoped. Reader Eric Kansa of the Alexandria Archive Institute writes in to say:

"I want to direct your attention toward avian flu, an issue that, given its scope and potential consequences, receives very little attention both in the traditional press and blogosphere. I've been following this for some time, basically the World Health Organization is doing everything NOT to raise the alert level from stage 3 to stage 5 or 6, and has tried to explain away clear cases of human-to-human transmission (these cases mean we're at Stage 5 at least). There are also LOTS of rumors China is covering up an outbreak of Stage 6 human-to-human bird flu. China has been completely uncooperative with the WHO, refuses to let out most medical samples, and has even threatened epidemiologists. Nevertheless, the few published samples available from China (obtained from dead birds in Qinghai) all have genetic traits of strains that infect mammals, including humans. The worry is that these samples come from a major nexus in bird migration routes, meaning that this dangerous virus will soon be dispersed throughout Eurasia (it's already popping up in Russia)."

Uh-oh. Eric also drew our attention to a few informative links on the subject of avian flu tracking, the consequences of a pandemic, etc:

read the rest! »

The Bush Doctrine As A Global Development Policy

Blogger Simon World recommended Pundita to me. Good call. She just opened my eyes to a perspective I had never considered before - but I'd better. And so should you, I think.

Winds of Change.NET has covered and explained The Bush Doctrine before, but Pundita looked at it from a new perspective - a global development perspective. This idea bring new insights to Barnett's "Pentagon's New Map" core/gap thesis. It clarifies some key issues around global socio-economic development (or non-development). And it links into concepts that touch on our survival in ways that go beyond WMDs.

We'll start with China and the rascal rabbit of life's surprises:

read the rest! »

Bioterrorism & Biodefense News

A little while back, VC and Winds team member Tim Oren noted that bioterrorism was the long-term threat for "3 Conjectures" type scenarios, with an event horizon of around 20-30 years before dual-use technologies and technology advancement/ diffusion made such scenarios very thinkable.

If you're looking for sources in this area, the Biotechnology Industry Council has a bioterrorism and biodefense news page.

David's (Nuclear) Sling: The EMP Threat

The Congressional Panel's warning is certainly serious, and Mr. Gaffney's points re: Iran's recent tests of ship-launched ballistic missiles in EMP trajectories adds a chilling dimenson. See also Gary Farber's The Threat from the Sea.

EMP: America's Achilles' Heel
by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
President, Center for Security Policy

If Osama bin Laden - or the dictators of North Korea or Iran - could destroy America as a twenty-first century society and superpower, would they be tempted to try? Given their track records and stated hostility to the United States, we have to operate on the assumption that they would. That assumption would be especially frightening if this destruction could be accomplished with a single attack involving just one relatively small-yield nuclear weapon - and if the nature of the attack would mean that its perpetrator might not be immediately or easily identified.

Unfortunately, such a scenario is not far-fetched. According to a report issued last summer by a blue-ribbon, Congressionally-mandated commission, a single specialized nuclear weapon delivered to an altitude of a few hundred miles over the United States by a ballistic missile would be "capable of causing catastrophe for the nation." The source of such a cataclysm might be considered the ultimate "weapon of mass destruction" (WMD) - yet it is hardly ever mentioned in the litany of dangerous WMDs we face today. It is known as electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

• How EMP Works
• The EMP Threat Today
• America the Vulnerable
• What Is To Be Done?
• Conclusion

read the rest! »

Monday Winds of War: June 06/05

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday.

Today's Winds of War briefing is brought to you by Bill Roggio of the fourth rail and evariste of Discarded Lies.

Top Topics

• The director of the CIA is no longer automatically present at the President's National Security Council and Homeland Security Council meetings. Instead, the director is present at the President's pleasure. The new director of National Intelligence, who is also now responsible for compiling the Presidential Daily Briefing, takes his place.

• The current ground-based interceptor system is inadequate to provide ballistic missile defense to the US, and a boost-phase defense capability would likely prove far more effective, according to an expert at a space-defense conference.

• JK: James Pinkerton looks at the logic of proliferation vs. non-proliferation, and sees The Rumblings of an Atomic Avalanche. See also Winds' coverage in Intelligence, WMDs and the Future, the gloomy assassments of Fibonacci's Nukes and Armed Liberal's Thresholds, our look at the problems re: the ex-Soviet states at DEF, and American Thinker on Russia's Nuclear Deception re: Iran. Is a "3 Conjectures" future on the way? And what about current U.S. non-proliferation policy, and how it fits with The Bush Doctrine?

• Arthur Chrenkoff's latest Good News from Afghanistan report is up!

Other Topics Today Include: Iranians smuggled into US; Iran keen on acquiring The Bomb, Iraq; Syria test-fires SCUDs; Zarqawi may not have held meetings in Syria; NCTC needs a boss; ports get radiation scanners; Mugabe stimulates housing market; CIA cosies up with Sudanese intelligence; Sri Lankan terrorists have an air force; Rummy criticises China; Aum Shinrikyo set to expand; law enforcement doings at the G8 summit; a new terror network in Europe; Al Qaeda has Waziristan camps; new anti-terror search engine and much more...

read the rest! »

Exploring the Impact of Nuclear Terrorism

Centrist liberal Milblogger (yeah, there are some) Alexander the Average has done a lot of good stuff. His 2-part set of posts exploring the aftermath of nuclear terrorism is highly recommended:

"The United States is, at the moment, not well prepared to manage an [emergency] evacuation of this sort in the relevant time frame," said Richard Falkenrath, former deputy homeland security adviser and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The federal government currently lacks the ability to [rapidly] generate and broadcast specific, geographically tailored evacuation instructions" across the country, he said.

Right on, Mr. Falkenrath. But, you don't know the half of it, and I'm guessing that 100-pound brains at the Brookings Institution don’t either. Welcome to my world."

It's a subject Amitai Etzioni of The Communitarian Network has addressed here before in "The 9/11 commission and Nuclear Terrorism." Now, Alexander draws on his own disaster coordination experience to explore the aftermath (complete with graphics).

• Houston, We Have a Problem: Exploring the Impact of Nuclear Terrorism (Part 1)
• Houston, We Have a Problem: Exploring the Impact of Nuclear Terrorism (Part 2)