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1. Present Danger: Nuclear Power Plants in War

Author:
Henry Sokolski
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
After Russia’s unprecedented seizure of Ukraine’s nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhya, the United States needs to adjust its military planning and policies to cope with hostile military forces’ targeting, seizure, and garrisoning of armed forces at large operating nuclear plants and clarify its policies regarding possible US targeting of such plants. This article is the first to analyze these concerns. It compares Russia’s assaults with previous strikes against research reactors and nonoperating nuclear plants in the Middle East and clarifies what new military measures and policies will be needed to cope with military operations against large, operating nuclear plants. US Army and Pentagon officials, as well as military and civilian staff, will discover ways to mitigate and reduce future military harm to civilians in war zones and understand the operational implications of military assaults on and seizures of civilian nuclear facilities.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Military Strategy, Nuclear Power, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

2. Blocking the Gateways to Nuclear Disorder in the Middle East

Author:
John Spacapan
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
This study will explain how the United States and like-minded states can still stop, or at least significantly slow down, the bomb’s spread in the Middle East. The historical record as well as the current intentions of potential proliferators in the region suggests this is possible, but Washington will need to start planning now. The three case countries of this monograph – Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia – are all taking aggressive steps toward nuclearization.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
Middle East

3. Arresting Nuclear Adventurism: China, Article VI, and the NPT

Author:
Henry Sokolski and Andrea Beck
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
Given the current crisis in Ukraine, it’s tempting to consider focusing on Chinese compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to be an academic indulgence. Giving into this inclination, however, would be a mistake. As dangerous as Russia currently is, China will be more threatening in the long run. As we are learning with Russia’s violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, enforcing binding understandings is critical lest violators run roughshod over law and good order. This is true with Russia’s behavior in Ukraine. It is no less so with China’s nuclear weapons buildup and its repeated refusal to join in good faith negotiations to limit its nuclear weapons activities, which is required by Article VI of the NPT. This buildup and refusal clearly flies in the face of China’s legal NPT obligations. The question is what might bring Beijing back into compliance. To get the answers, NPEC held a battery of workshops last fall, followed by a week-long diplomatic simulation. The game participants included U.S., Japanese, and Australian former and current officials and staff as well as outside experts. The group concluded that Beijing is unlikely to comply willingly with the NPT anytime soon, but that U.S. and international security would still be best served by spotlighting Beijing’s nuclear adventurism and suggesting diplomatic off-ramps to arrest its nuclear buildup.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Diplomacy, Military Strategy, Peace, and Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Ukraine, and Asia

4. Keeping Secrets

Author:
Henry Sokolski
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
With Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Americans have had a ringside seat at one of the most unusual of presidential shows: President Joe Biden publicly divulging some of our nation’s most protected, secret insights on what Vladimir Putin and his military might be planning. Some have criticized this; most think it has prevented Putin from controlling the war’s narrative. If we are lucky, it could be part of a more important movement toward liberalizing the use and sharing of intelligence. America and its allies could finally be progressing from a vision of war first theorized a hundred years ago. That violent and indiscriminate vision was fully realized with the city-busting aerial attacks of World War II. Ever since, we have believed that being able to decimate a nation’s military, industrial, and demographic capital promises deterrence in peace and quick victories in war. Today, this vision is being slowly supplanted with weaponry and tactics that can target terror precisely, in order to disable nations without decimating them.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Military Strategy, Classification, and Secrecy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

5. Grim Prospect: Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East

Author:
Eva M. Lisowski
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was formed in 1957 to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inspect civilian nuclear materials and activities to deter military diversions. To decide the frequency of inspections and inspection criteria, the IAEA set its safeguard standards with the objective of assuring “timely detection of diversion of significant quantities of nuclear material from peaceful nuclear activities to the manufacture of nuclear weapons.” The two nuclear weapon designs developed and detonated during World War II were the “gun-type” and “implosion” designs. Because implosion device technology requires much less fissile material than guntype technology, the IAEA significant quantity6 (SQ) values were determined based on the fissile material requirements of nuclear implosion devices like the plutonium-based “Fat Man” detonated over Nagasaki in 1945. Utilizing implosion designs perfected in the late 1940s, however, the explosive yields achieved in 1945 can be produced with much less fissile material. Table 1 lists the fissile material requirements of contemporary nuclear weapon technology. “Low Technical Capability” in Table 1 refers to the Mark III implosion device set off at Nagasaki. “Medium Technical Capability” refers to implosion designs perfected in the late 1940s and “High Technical Capability” in Table 1 refers to the implosion technologies the United States perfected in the 1950s.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Science and Technology, Nonproliferation, Nuclear Energy, and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Political Geography:
Middle East

6. Space and Missile Wars: What Awaits

Author:
Henry D. Sokolski
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
Sometimes, slow, steady changes produce revolutionary results. A case in point is missile and space technologies, which Space and Missile Wars: What Awaits will examine. Long-range missiles, satellites, and space launch vehicles used to be high technology exclusive to the superpowers. Now, scores of states have both. As for ballistic missiles and drones, even non-state actors have them, and these systems are far more accurate than anything the superpowers had even at the height of the Cold War. Then, long-range missiles could only be certain of destroying their targets if they were nuclear-armed and wiped out areas as large as cities. Now, drones are so accurate they can pinpoint and kill single individuals. As for space satellite launchers, they originally were derived from nuclear delivery missiles. None were privately owned. Similarly, almost all space satellites were government property and, until 1965, the owners were only American and Soviet. Now, the French, Chinese, Japanese, British, Indians, Israelis, Ukrainians, Iranians, and North Koreans have all launched satellites of their own. In addition, more than 60 nations own and operate their own satellites and increasingly, satellites are launched, owned, and operated entirely by private entities. These developments are nontrivial. They will define the military competitions with China, Russia, and other hostile states for the next two to three decades. Will the spread of accurate missiles embolden weak actors – small states and terrorist organizations – to threaten stronger states with missile attacks against key civilian targets (dams, reactors, petrochemical plants)? Will weak actors be tempted to use accurate drones to assassinate their adversaries’ key leaders? Will such attacks catalyze war, producing modern Sarajevos that draw in nuclear-armed states (e.g. Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea, or the superpowers)? With so many new space actors, will anyone be able to attribute hostile actions in space? Will states attack satellites mostly in low Earth orbit or geosynchronous orbit? Will the most important attacks come from antisatellite systems based on Earth, in low Earth orbit, or on or near the moon? This volume is designed to answer these questions.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Science and Technology, Non State Actors, Military Affairs, Drones, Nonproliferation, Space, Missile Defense, Satellite, and Nuclear Energy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. China's Civil Nuclear Sector: Plowshares to Swords?

Author:
Henry D. Sokolski
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
Although much has been said about the fusion of China’s civilian and military sectors, no detailed, unclassified analysis has been done of how Beijing’s “peaceful” nuclear efforts might be exploited to make more nuclear warheads. Even the U.S. Department of Energy’s own explanations of the export restrictions it imposed on “advanced” nuclear exports to China failed to discuss this. This volume is dedicated to clarifying just what the connection could be. Much of it focuses on China’s advanced fast breeder reactor program and its related plutonium recycling efforts. As explained in this volume’s first chapter, “How Many Nuclear Warheads China Might Acquire by 2030,” the least burdensome way for China to achieve nuclear weapons parity with the United States is simply to use the weaponsgrade plutonium that its planned “peaceful” fast breeder reactor and reprocessing programs will produce to make primaries for the two-stage thermonuclear weapons designs they already have perfected. By exploiting this weapons plutonium and the highly enriched uranium and tritium that China can easily access or make, Beijing by 2030 could conservatively assemble an arsenal of 1,270 warheads (nearly as many as the US currently has deployed on its intercontinental missiles).
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Science and Technology, Military Affairs, Nonproliferation, Missile Defense, Denuclearization, and Nuclear Energy
Political Geography:
United States and China

8. New Frontiers for Security Cooperation with Seoul and Tokyo

Author:
Henry D. Sokolski
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
With a new Democratic administration, Washington is almost certain to moderate its demands that Japan and South Korea pay more for American forces on their soil. This should ease tensions with Seoul to Tokyo. To strengthen security relations with Japan and South Korea, though, more will be required. Rather than simply increase their conventional military deployments, Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo will need to collaborate in new ways to enhance allied security. This will entail working more closely on new military frontiers, such as enhancing allied command of outer and cyber space as well as in underwater warfare. Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo will also want to carve out new functional areas of cooperation to make existing energy sources more secure, communications more reliable, data sharing easier and safer, and allied economic assistance to developing nations in strategic zones more effective. Enhanced collaboration in each of these areas has begun but is not yet locked in or fully institutionalized. It should be. Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo need one another to deal with China and North Korea. Yet, how each currently strategically views Beijing and Pyongyang differs. Nor is America’s preferred military approach to deterring Chinese and North Korean adventurism — by preventing Beijing and Pyongyang from projecting military strikes against their neighbors — all that easy to achieve. Adding new, more tractable items to America’s Asian security alliance agenda won’t immediately eliminate these misalignments. But it will strengthen the security ties they have as liberal democracies — bonds Beijing and Pyongyang are straining to fray.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Nuclear Weapons, Science and Technology, International Security, Military Affairs, Cyberspace, and Nuclear Energy
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, and South Korea

9. Dealing Preventively with NPT Withdrawal

Author:
Pierre Goldschmidt
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
Since it came into force in 1970, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has worked remarkably well to prevent the horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons. The one major exception is North Korea, which withdrew from the NPT in 2003. Despite this track record of success, the stability of the current non-proliferation regime could be significantly undermined by further withdrawals by countries such as Iran. The right of states to withdraw from the NPT is clearly stated in the Treaty. Article X.1 provides that: “Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.” Since it is impossible to deny the right of states parties to withdraw from the NPT, it is all the more important to put in place appropriate preventive measures to dissuade withdrawal from the Treaty. The urgency of dealing preventively with NPT withdrawal increases as more nonnuclear-weapon states are poised to become “nuclear threshold states.”1 As the IAEA reported in 2008: “Much of the sensitive information coming from the [Abdul Qadeer Khan] network existed in electronic form, enabling easier use and dissemination. This includes information that relates to uranium centrifuge enrichment and, more disturbing, information that relates to nuclear weapon design.”2 and: “a substantial amount of sensitive information related to the fabrication of a nuclear weapon was available to members of the network."3 The widespread dissemination of this type of scientific and technical information raises the prospect that more states will acquire the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons and their means of delivery, thus increasing the
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, Disarmament, and Nonproliferation
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

10. North Korea’s Nuclear Program: The Early Days, 1984–2002

Author:
Torrey Froscher
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
The North Korean nuclear program has been a major intelligence and policy challenge for more than 30 years. Former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry described the problem as “perhaps the most unsuccessful exercise of diplomacy in our country’s history.”1 Donald Gregg, who was CIA station chief in Seoul as well as US ambassador to South Korea, called North Korea the “longest running intelligence failure in the history of American espionage.”2 To be fair, Gregg was referring specifically to a lack of success in recruiting human sources—not necessarily errors in specific or overall assessments. Nonetheless, his comment underscores the difficulty of figuring out what North Korea is up to. In 2005, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), which was convened to investigate the failed 2002 national intelligence estimate on Iraqi WMD capabilities, indicated that we know “disturbingly little about the weapons programs and even less about the intentions of many of our most dangerous adversaries,”3 presumably including North Korea. Today we know a lot more about North Korea’s nuclear program— but mostly it is what they want us to know. Pyongyang has conducted six nuclear tests. We know that North Korea has nuclear weapons, a significant fissile material production capacity, and an ambitious nuclear and missile development effort. These programs are completely unconstrained. The United States has tried many approaches to deal with the problem over the years, and intelligence has played a key role in support. Are there lessons to be learned from this experience? Obviously, it’s a very big question and I will sketch out just a few thoughts, mostly from an intelligence perspective: What we knew and when and how we thought about the problem. North Korea was one of many issues I worked on as an analyst and manager in CIA until my retirement in 2006. The views that follow are my own, of course, and the specific information is drawn from the extensive public literature on the issue, as well as declassified intelligence documents.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Intelligence, Nuclear Weapons, and History
Political Geography:
Asia, North Korea, and United States of America

11. The NPT turns 50: Will it get to 60?

Author:
Henry Sokolski
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
In the next decade, it is all too likely that the past success of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons among the world’s nations will be reversed. Three trends make more proliferation likely. First is the decay of nuclear taboos. Second, and arguably worse, is renewed vertical proliferation—the increase in size and sophistication of nuclear arsenals by states that already have them. Third, the technical information to fuel nuclear breakouts and ramp-ups is more available now than in the past. These trends toward increased proliferation are not yet facts. The author describes three steps the international community could take to save the NPT: making further withdrawals from the NPT unattractive; clamping down on the uneconomical stockpiling and civilian use of nuclear weapons materials (plutonium and highly enriched uranium); and giving real meaning to efforts to limit the threats that existing nuclear weapons pose.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, Nuclear Power, Disarmament, and Nonproliferation
Political Geography:
Russia, North Korea, Global Focus, and United States of America

12. Understanding and Reducing Military Vulnerabilities of Civilian Nuclear Plants: The Case for the Northeast Asia

Author:
Jungmin Kang
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
A Fukushima-like nuclear accident does not have to be caused by nature. Similar results could be wrought by military attack that disabled its safety systems, including cooling and power systems of nuclear power plants (NPPs). This study shows hypothetical releases from a core meltdown or spent fuel pool fire of NPPs occurred by military attack such as missile attacks in some of Northeast Asia countries, with atmospheric dispersion and deposition calculations using the HYSPLIT code with historical meteorological data for the region.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Science and Technology, Nuclear Power, and Crisis Management
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, and Korea

13. Improving the Role of Intelligence in Counterproliferation Policymaking: Report of the "Speaking Truth to Nonproliferation Project," 2018

Author:
Henry Sokolski
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
This report is the culmination of a two-year project sponsored by the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, which engaged more than 50 senior, retired and serving policymakers, intelligence officers, and top academic national security analysts. Its findings are based on hours of group discussions and private conversations that helped develop new primary histories of eight nuclear proliferation cases: India, Pakistan, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Libya, and an Argentine and a separate South African nuclear rocket case. Each history was prepared by an academic historian and was based on open sources. Former officials who had direct roles in these cases then critiqued these accounts. Additional private interviews were conducted with participants to fill in historical gaps. The purpose of the case studies was to identify when and how intelligence shaped or prompted nonproliferation policy actions and, if it did not, why. This set of historical conclusions prompted a more general discussion of how policy and intelligence officials might improve their collaboration to prevent and curb further nuclear proliferation and how academics might contribute by enhancing their treatment of such issues. The project addressed three broad, related questions: How can the role of intelligencein the making of nonproliferation policy be improved? How can the nonproliferation agenda get the priority it deserves? How can the nonproliferation community be sustained and strengthened?
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Intelligence, Nuclear Weapons, History, Nuclear Power, and Nonproliferation
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Africa, South Asia, Middle East, India, Israel, Taiwan, Asia, South Korea, Libya, South Africa, Argentina, South America, and North Africa

14. Commerical Space: Space Controls and the Invisible Hand

Author:
Brian G. Chow
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
This article reviewed three major projections of the global space industry by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch and extracted the trands that would significantly impact the design of both the domestic and international space traffic management (STM) schemes. If found that, in the next two decades, the United States will have the largest market share in practically every space industrial sector. It suggests how the United States, as well as the West, can use its market power to incentivize Russia and Chinna to fall in line with a STM that provides peace and prosperity to all. It also proposed five measures as building blocks for developing standards, practices, regulations and laws for such STM.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Space, Public Sector, and Private Sector
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Eurasia, Asia, North America, and United States of America

15. Future Space Controls and the Invisible Hand

Author:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and American Bar Association Standing Committee on Law and National Security
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) and the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Law and National Security (SCOLNS) held a law and policy workshop on Thursday, June 20, 2019. The workshop was the second collaboration between NPEC and SCOLNS, and it concerned the legal and policy issues that are emergin as space becomes increasingly commercialized and accesible. As the emerging space domain presents new challenges and opportunities, it is the hope of SCOLNS and NPEC that this report will guide future legal and policy decisions. The workshop sought to address a series of questions regarding national security challenges in space: Commercial Space: What will be profitable and when? Future Undesirable Space Conjunctions: Who is and should be liable? Insuring Against Unwanted Space Conjunctions: What new norms, regulations, laws, and understanding might be desirable? The workshop was comprised of experts from NPEC, SCOLNS, the U.S. Air Force, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Commece, the Department of States, nonprofits, think tanks, academia, and private companies and individuals. The discussion was governed under Chatham House rules, and therefore ideas and group affiliations from the workshop were not attributed to specific individuals.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Law, Space, Public Sector, Norms, and Private Sector
Political Geography:
Global Focus

16. Alternative East Asian Nuclear Futures, Volume I: Military Scenarios

Author:
Henry D. Sokolski
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
The 13 chapters contained in this book’s two volumes were prompt-ed by a single inquiry in 2012 from the MacArthur Foundation. Was there any way, I was asked, to further clarify the economic and nonproliferation downsides if further production of civilian pluto-nium proceeded in East Asia? My initial reply was no. So much already had been done.But the more I thought about it, two things that had yet to be at-tempted emerged. The first was any serious analysis of just how bad things could get militarily if Japan and South Korea acquired nuclear weapons and North Korea and Mainland China ramped up their own production of such arms. Such nuclear proliferation had long been assumed to be undesirable but nobody had specified how such proliferation might play out militarily. Second, no serious consideration had yet been given to how East Asia might be able to prosper economically without a massive buildup of civilian nucle-ar power. Since each of the key nations in East Asia—China, the Koreas, and Japan—all would likely exploit their civilian nuclear energy infrastructure to acquire their first bombs or to make more, such inattention seemed odd.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Science and Technology, Military Affairs, Nuclear Power, and Nonproliferation
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, North Korea, and Global Focus

17. Alternative East Asian Nuclear Futures, Volume II: Energy Scenarios

Author:
Henry D. Sokolski
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
The 13 chapters contained in this book’s two volumes were prompt- ed by a single inquiry in 2012 from the MacArthur Foundation. Was there any way, I was asked, to further clarify the economic and nonproliferation downsides if further production of civilian pluto- nium proceeded in East Asia? My initial reply was no. So much already had been done.But the more I thought about it, two things that had yet to be at- tempted emerged. The first was any serious analysis of just how bad things could get militarily if Japan and South Korea acquired nuclear weapons and North Korea and Mainland China ramped up their own production of such arms. Such nuclear proliferation had long been assumed to be undesirable but nobody had specified how such proliferation might play out militarily. Second, no serious consideration had yet been given to how East Asia might be able to prosper economically without a massive buildup of civilian nucle- ar power. Since each of the key nations in East Asia—China, the Koreas, and Japan—all would likely exploit their civilian nuclear energy infrastructure to acquire their first bombs or to make more, such inattention seemed odd.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Science and Technology, Military Affairs, Nuclear Power, and Nonproliferation
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, North Korea, and Global Focus

18. Intelligence and Policy Community Cooperation in the Libya WMD Disarmament Case

Author:
William H. Tobey
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
As the Trump Administration prepares to negotiate with North Korea, a question has arisen as to what model Washington should follow. National Security Advisor John Bolton has suggested that the Libyan nuclear case represents the best example to emulate. Given the violence Libya suffered after it disarmed, this recommendation provoked criticism, not only from the North Korean government, but a number of American analysts. Anticipating the importance of this case, NPEC commissioned William Tobey, former Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration, to write a primary history. Mr. Tobey served on the National Security Council in the Bush (43) Administration when the Libyan nuclear case was being worked.
Topic:
Intelligence, International Affairs, and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
Libya

19. Avoiding a Nuclear Wild, Wild West in the Middle East

Author:
Henry Sokolski (ed)
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
With the Trump Administration’s announcement last fall that it intended to negotiate a civil nuclear cooperative agreement with Saudi Arabia, a debate has ensued over how restrictive any such agreement should be over the enrichment of uranium and the reprocessing of plutonium. These nuclear activities can bring a country within weeks of making its first batch of bombs. This announcement immediately raised the question, how much economic sense it made for Saudi Arabia to invest in nuclear power. It also raised a number of security questions. Should the United States allow Riyadh to reprocess and enrich even though these activities could bring Saudi Arabia within weeks of acquiring nuclear weapons? If Washington acceded to this demand by Riyadh, what would be the implications for the terms of nuclear cooperation with the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Morocco? How would such an agreement impact efforts to tighten the terms of our nuclear understanding with Iran? Would such a permissive deal with Riyadh make it more difficult to say no to Seoul’s demand that we allow them to enrich uranium? All of these questions and more are discussed in this volume’s four sections
Topic:
International Affairs and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
Middle East