Why Security Assurances Are Losing Their Clout as a Nuclear Nonproliferation Instrument
Ariel E. Levite | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Security guarantees have long served as powerful nonproliferation instruments, helping convince countries to cap and walk back their nuclear programs. It was the creation of NATO with Article 5 collective security guarantees at its core that made it possible to wean Germany off the nuclear weapons path. The same goes for the Warsaw Pact and Romania. Elsewhere, South Korea, Taiwan, and even Italy, Sweden, and Australia all had nuclear weapons ambitions at some point that were squelched by the offer of various US security commitments. It has been mostly vulnerable states, lacking such assurances, that have ventured to press ahead. The likes of South Africa, Pakistan, and Israel immediately come to mind. Here the lessons of the most recent crisis with Ukraine come to mind.
U.S.-Iran Nuclear Negotiations in Qatar End Without Breakthrough
Dan De Luce | NBC News
Indirect talks between Iran and the U.S. have ended in Doha, Qatar, with no sign of a breakthrough in efforts to revive a 2015 nuclear deal, raising the risk of a potential confrontation with Tehran in coming months. “Unfortunately, not yet the progress the EU team as coordinator had hoped-for. We will keep working with even greater urgency to bring back on track a key deal for non-proliferation and regional stability,” European Union envoy Enrique Mora tweeted, calling the discussions “intense.” Mora was the intermediary in the Qatari capital between Iranian chief negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani and President Joe Biden’s special envoy, Rob Malley, passing messages back and forth between the two sides. Iran has refused to hold direct talks with the U.S. team.
IAEA Loses Transmission From Ukraine’s Russian-Held Nuclear Power Plant
Reuters
The U.N. atomic watchdog said on Wednesday it had again lost its connection to its surveillance systems keeping track of nuclear material at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Europe’s largest, which the watchdog wants to inspect. “The fact that our remote safeguards data transmission is down again – for the second time in the past month – only adds to the urgency to dispatch this mission (to Zaporizhzhia),” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement. The connection was lost on Saturday “due to a disruption of the facility’s communication systems”, it added.
Australia Talks Down Prospect of Having Nuclear Subs by 2030
Rod McGuirk | Associated Press
Australia’s new defense minister on Wednesday talked down the prospect of Australia acquiring U.S. nuclear-powered submarines by the end of the decade, describing such a timetable as “optimistic in the extreme.” Defense Minister Richard Marles, whose party came to power at elections last month, said his priority was closing a naval capability gap that is expected to open when Australia’s aging fleet of six Collins-class diesel-electric submarines begins to retire from 2038. The United States and Britain have agreed to provide Australia with a fleet of submarines powered by U.S. nuclear technology. But when the agreement was announced in September, the first submarine was not expected to be delivered until 2040.
US Hypersonic Missile Fails in Test in Fresh Setback for Program
Jon Herskovitz and Anthony Capaccio | Bloomberg
A flight test of a hypersonic missile system in Hawaii ended in failure due to a problem that took place after ignition, the Department of Defense said, delivering a fresh blow to a program that has suffered stumbles. It didn’t provide further details of what took place in the Wednesday test, but said in a statement sent by email “the Department remains confident that it is on track to field offensive and defensive hypersonic capabilities on target dates beginning in the early 2020s.”
A Confidence-Building Defense for NATO
Lukas Mengelkamp, Alexander Graef, and Ulrich Kühn | War on the Rocks
NATO knows what it needs to do at the upcoming Madrid Summit, but it still does not know how. The alliance is determined to strengthen conventional deterrence on its eastern front and soon its northern flank. Some allies argue that this requires abandoning NATO’s “tripwire” approach and adopting a strategy of “forward defense.” . . . The problem with forward defense, however, is that while it sounds good, it is not clear what it would mean in practice, or how it would play out against the many divergences and disagreements between NATO members. Instead, allies should embrace a strategy of confidence-building defense. To revive this late Cold War concept, NATO’s eastern members would create a highly mobile net of dispersed artillery, while more powerful European allies would build and supply heavy weapons depots in those countries, then prepare to rapidly deploy significant forces in case of a crisis. This approach would enable European allies to contribute to their own security, lessen first-strike pressures, and avoid deepening a dangerous new security dilemma with Russia.