Jordan Reimer, MPA
After a long hiatus, there is renewed international focus on Iran’s nuclear program, from hyperventilating Israeli media reports last month on an imminent attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities to the recent release of an unprecedented International Atomic Energy Agency report pointing to Iranian activities “relevant to the development of a nuclear device.”
In the international debate on what to do about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, for those who advocate taking military action against the Islamic Republic the conventional wisdom has settled on Israel doing the world’s dirty work – as it did against Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. Those who oppose Iran's nuclear activities but are still circumspect of this course of action advance a counterargument that falls essentially along two lines of thought: logistical infeasibility and geopolitical inadvisability.
The first contention details several obstacles: a) the vast geographic distance between Iran and Israel, b) the fact that Iranian nuclear sites are dispersed throughout the country (a lesson learned no doubt from Iraq’s vulnerability), c) the reality that such sites are situated in hardened bunkers located either underground or deep inside mountain ranges, and d) the possible existence of secret sites unknown to Israeli and American intelligence.
A successful action plan would therefore mandate continuous multi-sortie strikes over several parts of the country by Israeli fighter jets. (Israel does have a long-range missile program, but such a weapon is inappropriate for precision strikes.) However, an attack of this sort would soon fall susceptible to advanced Iranian anti-aircraft capabilities. Israeli airplanes would therefore be limited to execute only a quick once-over before returning home. And, in light of Israel’s deep concern for the lives of its soldiers, given the distance between Jerusalem and Tehran a viable plan would require mid-air refueling to guarantee the pilots’ safe return, a near impossibility considering the non-hospitable airspace Israel must traverse to reach Iran.
With all of these constraints, even if Israel did successfully pull off this type of limited mission, it would hardly improve Israel’s national security: experts assume Israel would set back Iranian efforts only a few years at the most. If anything, it would be merely a strategic victory, signaling the resolve behind Israel’s rhetoric and indicating its sincere desperate determination to prevent Iran from going further in its nuclear work.
For all of these reasons, an Israeli attack with potential to severely cripple Iranian nuclear ambitions was largely considered a fantasy.
No longer. On February 21st, 2010, Israel Aerospace Industries unveiled a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the Heron TP, nicknamed “Eitan.” Able to fly at medium-to-high altitudes for over 20 hours while carrying a variety of payloads, equipped with a silent engine ensuring stealth, and significantly, capable of reaching Iran, the drone relieves Israeli military logisticians of concerns regarding refueling and the safety of its airmen against anti-aircraft artillery. The drones could be mass-produced and then flown incessantly until all Iranian nuclear sites are obliterated. Even if the drones are shot down, it would come at a relatively modest cost (the price tag might be steep but it would be infinitely better than an Israeli soldier in Tehran’s hands). The UAVs could be equipped with self-detonation devices should they be captured to avoid Iran gaining insight into Israeli military technology.
Importantly, the second line of reasoning against an attack – geopolitical considerations – remains unchanged: bombing Iran is still a terrible idea. It will indefinitely delay the moribund Middle East peace process, inflame the Arab and Muslim world against the US at a time when it has a legitimate chance to turn over a new leaf, force a wedge between both US-Israel and US-Arab/US-Muslim relations, and almost certainly provoke Hezbollah and possibly Hamas to launch retaliatory attacks against the Israeli civilian populace. Not least, it could conceivably convince Iran to finally declare its intention for a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against future Israeli aggression, a stand which it has consistently refused to take.
To (mis)quote Rudy Giuliani, “The use of military force against Iran would be very dangerous. It would be provocative.” Yes. And it shouldn’t be done. (Though it’s outside the purview of this article, let me at least acknowledge that though there is no silver bullet, a healthy mix of sanctions, coalition-building, and containment should be sufficient to keep Iran at bay, should it develop the dreaded weapon.)
The revelation of the “Eitan,” then, is both a blessing and a curse. On the positive side it signals to Iran Israel’s credible conventional deterrent against development of a bomb (no doubt why the UAV’s unveiling was so public), which might induce the ayatollahs to rethink any potential attempts to acquire such a weapon. And yet, on the other hand, it removes the only barrier that Israel’s security hawks faced in their myopic and monomaniacal desire to carry out a strike on Iran. We can only hope that cooler heads prevail and the remaining reasons buttressing the argument not to attack remain foremost in the minds of Israeli policymakers and American interlocutors.
Showing posts with label nuclear weapons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nuclear weapons. Show all posts
Friday, November 18, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
New clear thinking about nuclear weapons
Alex Bollfrass, MPA
The dangers from nuclear weapons are often explained as terrible outgrowths of inhuman rationality. Dr. Strangelove stands as the paragon symbol of the madness in MAD, in which detached and logically consistent decision-making leads to catastrophe. But the trouble with nuclear weapons today is exactly the opposite. Instead of rational choices leading to irrational outcomes, now we find that it is irrational psychological processes that are leading nuclear policymakers astray.
To implement a sustainable strategy to protect Americans from nuclear dangers, decisions cannot be distorted by the psychological idiosyncrasies from which we all suffer. These foibles can be overcome, but first we must understand how they can impact the way national security decision-makers view their nuclear choices.
A Clear and Present Risk
Applying lessons from psychological research, the biggest scope for miscalculation is in deciding between present and future risk. As humans, we have a difficult time understanding risk and making decisions on questions with complex trade-offs. Studies have shown that that we are especially vulnerable to postponing difficult actions if the consequences of inaction – however grave – are in the future. Thus, when deciding how to mitigate the nuclear threat we end up overvaluing the US nuclear weapon arsenal at the expense of pushing for universal denuclearization, the only true way to protect against nuclear annihilation.
But such a course correction invariably produces short-term risks and trade-offs. The product of our reluctance to embrace these short-term obstacles is a nuclear weapons policy that implicitly accepts that weapons will continue to spread to more nations. The problem with that is that the likelihood that they will be used increases with the number of states deploying such weapons, as does the danger that they will fall into the arms of terrorist organizations.
There are steps we could take to shift the proliferation danger into a lower gear, but these come at a cost. Placing all uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing facilities under multinational control would be an enormous nonproliferation achievement, but would be vehemently resisted by the nuclear industry. Similarly, the implementation of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s “Additional Protocol” safeguards would prevent the exploitation of nationally-controlled nuclear reactors for building nuclear weapons. Getting more than the current 94 countries (all without nuclear weapons) to sign up and agree to these intrusive “anytime, anywhere” inspections would require significant concessions from the US and other nuclear weapon states, such as limiting their weapons’ capabilities as well as reducing their numbers.
Despite President Obama’s “Nuclear Security Summit” denuclearization initiative, given the difficulty of these short-term measures and the nebulous distance of their benefits, it is unlikely the administration and Congress will act to protect Americans from this gathering threat. This difficulty of translating good intentions for the future into unpleasant action today is familiar to everyone from dieters to well-intentioned savers.
The Final Count-up
We habitually take on more risk if we stand to gain something, but suddenly develop much greater caution if there is a chance of a loss. This status-quo bias also finds expression in what psychologists call an “endowment effect,” which was first demonstrated in a lab with subjects who consistently believed that the value of coffee mugs they owned were worth more than mugs they had no ownership claim over.
The same phenomenon exists in our nuclear debates and policies. We think about how many weapons we are willing to give up, which feels like a major security sacrifice, instead of surveying the strategic landscape and counting up the number of nuclear warheads necessary to fulfill the missions assigned to them.
This irrational overvaluation makes it hard to agree to the nonproliferation measures that aim to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands. To see this fallacy in motion, witness the favorite talking point of nuclear weapons hawks: our arsenal is at the lowest level since the Eisenhower administration. Referencing such an absurdly high baseline has little analytical use, while it creates the impression that we have very few nuclear weapons and any reductions would therefore be dangerous.
Fortunately, we can overcome these psychological impediments to a smarter nuclear strategy that balances the trade-offs of risks today and in the future. Several nations have demonstrated that it is possible. South Africa, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus went so far as to dispose of their nuclear arsenals. Throughout the nuclear age, more governments have started nuclear weapons programs and abandoned them than brought the programs to completion.
The US need not go that far, but the next time a senator denounces an arms control measure with Russia or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as too big a concession, it is worth asking which part of the Senator’s brain this judgment comes from.
The dangers from nuclear weapons are often explained as terrible outgrowths of inhuman rationality. Dr. Strangelove stands as the paragon symbol of the madness in MAD, in which detached and logically consistent decision-making leads to catastrophe. But the trouble with nuclear weapons today is exactly the opposite. Instead of rational choices leading to irrational outcomes, now we find that it is irrational psychological processes that are leading nuclear policymakers astray.
To implement a sustainable strategy to protect Americans from nuclear dangers, decisions cannot be distorted by the psychological idiosyncrasies from which we all suffer. These foibles can be overcome, but first we must understand how they can impact the way national security decision-makers view their nuclear choices.
A Clear and Present Risk
Applying lessons from psychological research, the biggest scope for miscalculation is in deciding between present and future risk. As humans, we have a difficult time understanding risk and making decisions on questions with complex trade-offs. Studies have shown that that we are especially vulnerable to postponing difficult actions if the consequences of inaction – however grave – are in the future. Thus, when deciding how to mitigate the nuclear threat we end up overvaluing the US nuclear weapon arsenal at the expense of pushing for universal denuclearization, the only true way to protect against nuclear annihilation.
But such a course correction invariably produces short-term risks and trade-offs. The product of our reluctance to embrace these short-term obstacles is a nuclear weapons policy that implicitly accepts that weapons will continue to spread to more nations. The problem with that is that the likelihood that they will be used increases with the number of states deploying such weapons, as does the danger that they will fall into the arms of terrorist organizations.
There are steps we could take to shift the proliferation danger into a lower gear, but these come at a cost. Placing all uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing facilities under multinational control would be an enormous nonproliferation achievement, but would be vehemently resisted by the nuclear industry. Similarly, the implementation of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s “Additional Protocol” safeguards would prevent the exploitation of nationally-controlled nuclear reactors for building nuclear weapons. Getting more than the current 94 countries (all without nuclear weapons) to sign up and agree to these intrusive “anytime, anywhere” inspections would require significant concessions from the US and other nuclear weapon states, such as limiting their weapons’ capabilities as well as reducing their numbers.
Despite President Obama’s “Nuclear Security Summit” denuclearization initiative, given the difficulty of these short-term measures and the nebulous distance of their benefits, it is unlikely the administration and Congress will act to protect Americans from this gathering threat. This difficulty of translating good intentions for the future into unpleasant action today is familiar to everyone from dieters to well-intentioned savers.
The Final Count-up
We habitually take on more risk if we stand to gain something, but suddenly develop much greater caution if there is a chance of a loss. This status-quo bias also finds expression in what psychologists call an “endowment effect,” which was first demonstrated in a lab with subjects who consistently believed that the value of coffee mugs they owned were worth more than mugs they had no ownership claim over.
The same phenomenon exists in our nuclear debates and policies. We think about how many weapons we are willing to give up, which feels like a major security sacrifice, instead of surveying the strategic landscape and counting up the number of nuclear warheads necessary to fulfill the missions assigned to them.
This irrational overvaluation makes it hard to agree to the nonproliferation measures that aim to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands. To see this fallacy in motion, witness the favorite talking point of nuclear weapons hawks: our arsenal is at the lowest level since the Eisenhower administration. Referencing such an absurdly high baseline has little analytical use, while it creates the impression that we have very few nuclear weapons and any reductions would therefore be dangerous.
Fortunately, we can overcome these psychological impediments to a smarter nuclear strategy that balances the trade-offs of risks today and in the future. Several nations have demonstrated that it is possible. South Africa, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus went so far as to dispose of their nuclear arsenals. Throughout the nuclear age, more governments have started nuclear weapons programs and abandoned them than brought the programs to completion.
The US need not go that far, but the next time a senator denounces an arms control measure with Russia or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as too big a concession, it is worth asking which part of the Senator’s brain this judgment comes from.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)