Index



            THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS:

                    After the 50th Anniversary, What?


                                    by

                            Richard L. Garwin

                             Fellow Emeritus
                          IBM Research Division
                     Thomas J. Watson Research Center
                               P.O. Box 218
                        Yorktown Heights, NY 10598

                           Tel: (914) 945-2555
                           FAX: (914) 945-4419
                      Email: RLG2 at watson.ibm.com

                                  (also
                      Adjunct Professor of Physics,
                           Columbia University)


                             May 17-18, 1995

                        Notes for Presentations at
                           Frankfurt University
                                   and
                          University of Marburg
                              GERMANY





       U158PPNW             060795PPNW DRAFT 1             06/07/95








       We  have  already  marked the 50th anniversary of the end of
       World War II in Europe, May 8, and I am  here  because  1945
       was also the beginning of the age of nuclear weapons.

       Of  the  two  nuclear  explosives  thus far used in war, the
       first burst upon the consciousness of the world at Hiroshima
       August 6, 1945 (local time) with an explosive yield of about
       20,000 metric tons  of  high  explosive,  killing  at  least
       50,000  people.    Three  days  later a nuclear explosive of
       similar power destroyed Nagasaki.

       The twin of the Nagasaki bomb had been tested in the  desert
       of  New Mexico as the "Trinity" shot July 16, unknown to all
       but a few hundred Americans in the Manhattan Project.

       After Nagasaki, there was not a single nuclear  weapon  left
       in the world.

       Trinity,  Nagasaki,  and  Hiroshima weapons each derived its
       energy release from the conversion of  just  about  1 kg  of
       heavy metal atoms into 1 kg of "fission products"-- atoms of
       about  half  the  mass  of  a  uranium atom.   The Hiroshima
       "little boy" nuclear weapon contained as its essential  core
       about  60 kg  of  the  naturally  occurring  lighter isotope
       U-235, present (in historic times)  as  about  0.7%  of  any
       sample  of  naturally occurring uranium.  That U-235, so far
       as we know, was created near the beginning of  the  universe
       but  was separated in 1944-1945 at Oak Ridge Tennessee by an
       industrial process of unprecedented magnitude.

       In contrast, the Trinity and Nagasaki weapons each contained
       about  6 kg  of  the  element  plutonium  ("Pu")  previously
       unknown to mankind and newly created in 1943 for the nuclear
       weapon itself.

       On  August  14,  less  than  a week after the destruction of
       Nagasaki, the emperor of Japan  in  an  unprecedented  radio
       speech announced his decision to surrender, and World War II
       was over, worldwide.

       That  very  month saw the publication of the "Smythe Report"
       commissioned by General Leslie C. Groves, the commandant  of
       the  Manhattan Project, which provided an enormous amount of
       information  about  the  construction  and  capabilities  of
       nuclear weapons.  The plutonium for Trinity and Nagasaki had
       been  produced  in  nuclear reactors (now a commonplace), in
       which the abundant isotope of uranium, U-238, was  converted
       by  the  capture  of a neutron and the passage of time (more
       technically, by two successive  beta  decays)  into  Pu-239.
       That  "neutron"  was discovered in 1932 but was liberated in
       kilogram quantities in the reactor in which U-238 played  no
       role,  but  U-235  supported  a  "nuclear chain reaction" in
       which the fission of U-235 gave rise not only to energy  and
       to  fission  products  but  on  the average to more than two
       neutrons.

       The nuclear weapon project in the United  States  benefitted
       greatly from analyses in the United Kingdom of the potential
       for  making  weapons by the use of nuclear fission, and also
       from  the  participation  of  British  scientists   in   the
       Manhattan  Project.    The level of American science at that
       time was not world class, and the Manhattan Project profited
       enormously from the participation  of  those  who  had  fled
       fascist  regimes  in  Europe-- Hans Bethe, Enrico Fermi, Leo
       Szilard, and Edward Teller,  to  name  a  few  of  the  most
       prominent.    Indeed,  none  of those could have remained in
       Europe, given the fact that their family or  that  of  their
       spouse was Jewish.

       Now I should introduce myself a bit.  In 1945 I was 17 years
       old,  having  been  born  in  Cleveland,  Ohio,  part of the
       American "Midwest".  My father had a  Bachelor's  Degree  in
       electrical engineering in 1921, but the entire decade of the
       1930s  was  an  era of depression in the United States, with
       large-scale unemployment and desperation.   We  had  nothing
       like the monetary hyper-inflation that so marked the history
       of  Germany.    However,  my  father  worked as a teacher of
       "electricity" in the public high school  in  Cleveland,  and
       had   also  a  second  job,  nights,  as  a  motion  picture
       projectionist.  Before her marriage to my father, my  mother
       had been a legal stenographer.

       My  family  was far from the diplomatic center of Washington
       or the financial center of New York, although we  were  very
       concerned  about  the  outbreak  of  war  in  Europe and the
       apparently insatiable desires of Adolf Hitler.

       I should say that until May 8, 1945, we had no idea  of  the
       extermination camps in Europe, and I believe that the emigre
       scientists  who worked on the Manhattan Project did not know
       of them either.  In fact, during the war the U.S. government
       hid from the American people whatever knowledge  it  had  of
       such  activities.    I  believe  that  the Manhattan Project
       scientists were motivated by the  fear  that  Germany  would
       obtain  the  nuclear weapon and with that conquer the world.
       They wanted, instead, to prevent  further  conquest  and  to
       restore  civil order to Europe.  In just the last few months
       one can read the  assertion  that  the  nuclear  weapon  was
       always  intended  for use against Japan but not a single one
       of those working on the Manhattan Project, to my  knowledge,
       was  of that opinion.  They were racing to build the nuclear
       weapon lest Germany get it first.

       And there is no doubt in my mind that  it  would  have  been
       used  against  a  German  city  and  its military-industrial
       complex, had the atomic bomb been ready in 1944, or had  the
       war in Europe still raged in August 1945.

       Indeed, the Allies learned very well the lesson of attack on
       civilian   populations,   and  the  initial  abhorrence  and
       reluctance to respond had vanished by the end  of  the  war.
       The  destruction  of  Dresden  by  incendiaries is a case in
       point.

       I graduated from high school in 1944 and enrolled in college
       in Cleveland (physics) from which I graduated in  1947.    I
       then  studied  at  the University of Chicago and received my
       Ph.D. in Physics (some harmless properties of atomic nuclei)
       in 1949.   As a member of the  faculty  of  physics  at  the
       University  of  Chicago,  I  then  began a summer consulting
       arrangement at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1950,
       which was to last for many years.  During these years I  was
       intimately  involved  in  nuclear  weapons,  nuclear weapons
       testing, and (as commented to me on my most recent visit  to
       Los  Alamos  May  11,  "In our modern parlance, you were the
       designer of the first hydrogen bomb."

       In 1951, during the Korean War, I spent three weeks in Korea
       and a week in Japan, with a colleague from the University of
       Chicago, to see  whether  we  could  determine  some  useful
       potential  contributions  from the newly formed Tactical Air
       Command.  But it was clear to me that there was no  use  for
       nuclear  weapons in the Korean conflict.  And when I went to
       Southeast Asia in 1968 during the Vietnam War, it  had  also
       nothing to do with nuclear weapons.

       Indeed,  although  I  joined the IBM Corporation in 1952, it
       was with a contract that gave me one-third of my  time  free
       to  work  with the U.S. government on matters of interest to
       national and international security, and after  that  I  was
       thoroughly  involved in both strategic and tactical military
       problems for the United States, and also in arms control.

       For instance, in 1958 I was on the official U.S.  delegation
       to the U.N.-sponsored 10-Nation Conference on "Prevention of
       Surprise   Attack"  and  also  was  involved  in  the  first
       negotiations on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  And that
       kind of involvement with the U.S. government  has  continued
       to the present day.

       But  I  want  to talk about what happened in the world after
       the explosion of the first nuclear  weapons,  where  we  are
       now, and where we might (and should) be going.

       With  experience as a physicist and a military technologist,
       and even in international negotiations and analyses of  arms
       control,  I fully realize that I am no authority on history,
       and some of  you  in  the  audience  may  see  things  quite
       differently  from  the  way I do.   I would be glad for your
       corrections and comments at the end of this talk.

       At  the  conclusion  of  the  Second  World  War,   military
       occupation  governments were installed in Germany and Japan,
       and soon the Marshall Plan was offered to Europe, which,  in
       my  opinion,  made a major contribution to the political and
       economic evolution of Germany.   As I recall,  the  Marshall
       Plan  was  offered also to the Soviet Union, which declined,
       and  who  knows  what   might   have   happened   had   they
       participated.

       A reasonably enlightened U.S. military occupation government
       in  Japan  focused  on  creating  a democratic system there,
       which has succeeded economically and politically.

       However, U.S. diplomacy  was  not  so  successful  with  the
       Soviet Union, our ally during World War II.  The division of
       Europe  endorsed  at  the  Yalta  Conference gave the Soviet
       Union free rein over Eastern Europe, and by  reason  of  the
       reign  of terror in the Soviet Union and the various purges,
       there was little understanding of the potential  benefit  of
       cooperation  with  the  United  States.   Nor was the United
       States all wise.

       Notwithstanding the British contributions to  the  Manhattan
       Project,  after the war the U.S. did not fully share nuclear
       (then  popularly  called  "atomic")  developments  with  the
       British,  compelling  the  British  (by reason of pride, not
       security concerns  in  my  opinion)  to  develop  their  own
       nuclear weapon.

       Although the Manhattan Project scientists had predicted that
       it  would  take  the  Soviets  about four years to produce a
       nuclear weapon, it was unexpected to the world  public  when
       the  Soviet  Union  detonated their first nuclear explosion,
       "JOE-1", in 1949.   Now we know from  the  writings  of  the
       Soviet   nuclear   scientists   themselves,  including  Yuli
       Khariton, prime contributor to the  Soviet  nuclear  weapon,
       that  they  were  fully capable of designing independently a
       nuclear  weapon,  given  the  information  from  the  Smythe
       Report;  however,  their  fear  of  Lavrenti  Beria  and the
       "guidance" of Igor Kurchatov (with information  provided  by
       Soviet  spy Klaus Fuchs, a member of the British team at Los
       Alamos) led them to produce an essentially identical copy of
       the Nagasaki bomb for the first Soviet explosion.

       In the United States, the efforts of the "atomic scientists"
       as represented  by  the  Federation  of  Atomic  Scientists,
       resulted  in a clear-cut civilian control of atomic energy--
       of both weapons  and  nuclear  power,  while  naval  nuclear
       propulsion  remained under military control.  Of course, the
       U.S. nuclear power  industry  has  grown  up  under  private
       ownership,  while  in the Soviet Union both civilian nuclear
       power and nuclear weapons are under  the  same  ministry  of
       Russia,  MINATOM,  now  led  by  theoretical  nuclear weapon
       scientist Viktor Mikhailov.

       But 46 years intervened between  the  first  Soviet  nuclear
       explosion  in  1949  and this discussion in 1995.  A lot has
       happened in the interim, including the explosion by the U.S.
       of 1149 nuclear test devices, some 1100 by the former Soviet
       Union, 45 by Britain, 191 by France, 42 by China, and one by
       India.

       The United States tested a pure fission weapon with a  yield
       of 500 KT, but such weapons are difficult to make adequately
       safe,  and  heavy and awkward to deliver.  In 1951 Stanislaw
       Ulam (mathematician) and Edward Teller (physicist), both  at
       Los  Alamos,  conceived  a  practical  scheme  of "radiation
       implosion" so that a small fission explosion  could  prepare
       and  ignite a charge of thermonuclear fuel.  Energy from the
       "primary" fission explosive is thus used to assemble and  to
       compress  a  charge containing light isotopes (deuterium and
       perhaps tritium) that when sufficiently hot  and  dense  can
       react  with  one  another  to form heavier isotopes (helium)
       with the release of energy.  This thermonuclear or  "fusion"
       reaction is of an entirely different nature from the fission
       reaction,  in  that  the  fission  chain  reaction with fast
       neutrons takes place perfectly well at ordinary temperature.

       The first thermonuclear weapon demonstration--  MIKE--  took
       place  November  1,  1952,  with  a  measured yield of about
       11 megatons (11 MT), more than 500 times the  yield  of  the
       first  fission  weapons.   MIKE used liquid deuterium in its
       secondary, and some six Emergency  Capability  Weapons  were
       built for aircraft delivery that also used liquid deuterium.
       By  the  next  test  series  in  1954,  the U.S. had changed
       instead to a solid thermonuclear fuel--  lithium  deuteride,
       that  was  also  to be used by the Soviets and eventually by
       Britain, France, and China.

       A whole series of lectures could be devoted to  nuclear  and
       thermonuclear weapons themselves, for which I obviously have
       no time nor authorization now.  However, the initial concern
       and  attraction  of  thermonuclear  weapons  was  that their
       explosive power was essentially unlimited,  and  there  were
       discussions  of  the  practicality and utility of weapons of
       hundred megaton or even thousand megaton yield.

       As it turned out, the major impact of thermonuclear  weapons
       was to allow a given stockpile of fissile material (U-235 or
       plutonium)  to  make  many more weapons of 300 KT yield (for
       instance) than could  be  achieved  with  the  pure  fission
       design,  and  these  two-stage  weapons  would  be  lighter,
       smaller,  and  safer  than  their  fission  counterparts  of
       equivalent yield.

       There  have  been  qualitative,  quantitative, and political
       developments-- yes, revolutions.  On the political side, the
       Iron Curtain descended upon Europe (as it was  unforgettably
       named  by  Winston  Churchill  in  his  speech in the United
       States) dividing Germany and leading to the infamous  Berlin
       Wall.    The  isolation  of West Berlin, linked by a tenuous
       corridor to West Germany, and the  Soviet-supported  cutting
       of  land  contact between Germany and West Berlin led to the
       Berlin airlift.  President Kennedy responded with a show  of
       force,  deploying  7000  nuclear  weapons to Western Europe,
       including the deployment of U.S. nuclear  weapons  in  "West
       Germany."

       The  apparent  division  of the world into two nuclear-armed
       camps, with the  Soviet  Union  and  the  United  States  as
       protagonists,  led  to  the  confrontation  between NATO and
       Warsaw Pact (Warsaw Treaty Organization-- WTO), which in the
       West was perceived as a monolithic  bloc  with  conventional
       (non-nuclear)  forces (especially numbers of Army personnel)
       far exceeding those available to NATO.   The  NATO  response
       was  a  greater  dependence on nuclear weapons, ranging from
       tactical  nuclear  weapons  fully  equivalent  to  strategic
       weapons   in  yield,  to  shoulder-fired  "bazooka"  nuclear
       rounds.

       By 1962 nuclear weapon development and manufacture had  long
       been  consolidated  in  the Atomic Energy Commission, and an
       inspection mission of the Joint Committee on  Atomic  Energy
       (of  the  U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives)
       showed serious deficiencies in safety and security  of  U.S.
       nuclear weapons within NATO, leading within less than a year
       to  the installation of Permissive Action Links on many U.S.
       nuclear weapons deployed abroad.

       During the  Kennedy  Administration,  Secretary  of  Defense
       Robert  McNamara  tried  to  put  U.S. strategic forces on a
       rational  basis,  which  to  a  large  extent  resulted   in
       "rationalizing"  what existed or what could not be resisted,
       thrust upon the Administration  by  the  U.S.  Congress,  or
       adopted by the political leadership for electoral advantage.

       Thus  McNamara  reported  to  Kennedy  that  he accepted the
       commitment to deploy 1000 Minuteman  missiles  when  he  had
       intended  to  have  only  500,  because  had he resisted the
       Congress would have insisted on many more.

       I do not know the details of Soviet rationale for the number
       of nuclear weapons they deployed, but I do know some of  the
       influences on both sides.

       The  fact is that numerically U.S. nuclear weapons peaked at
       a number of about 33,000 in the 1970s, while Soviet  nuclear
       weapons numbered 45,000 in 1986.

       Two influences were involved.

       First,  so  long  as  nuclear  weapons  were  considered  as
       strategic weapons (in the sense of strategic weapons at  the
       close  of  the  Second  World War-- to attack the industrial
       infrastructure of the other side) there was a finite  number
       needed.    In  fact,  McNamara  made  this  explicit  in his
       statement that 400  weapons  delivered  against  the  Soviet
       Union  would suffice to destroy 20-30% of the population and
       50-70% of industrial capacity, and this  he  defined  as  an
       adequate  "deterrent"  of  the  Soviet Union against nuclear
       attack against the United States or its Allies.  How,  then,
       did  one  get  to  15,000  or  more  U.S.  strategic nuclear
       weapons?

       In part, this was the result of dividing by two  independent
       factors,  each  less  than unity, and perhaps much less than
       unity.  These were the probability  that  a  nuclear  weapon
       would   penetrate  Soviet  defenses  (air  defenses  against
       bombers or projected ballistic missile defenses against  our
       ICBM  force),  and  also the probability that U.S. strategic
       weapons would survive to  be  launched  in  case  of  Soviet
       all-out nuclear attack.

       I must tell you that these were both taken very seriously by
       influential  elements  in the U.S. public and government, to
       the extent that even Secretary  McNamara  adopted  not  only
       "worst   case   planning"  but  "greater  than  worst  case"
       responses.

       He should not have done this.

       The  "missile  gap"  was  an  important   element   of   the
       presidential  election  campaign of John F. Kennedy in 1960.
       At that time President Eisenhower knew  that  there  was  no
       "missile  gap," and the United States proved to be far ahead
       of the Soviet Union in the deployment of ballistic missiles,
       even though the Soviet Union had launched  the  first  Earth
       satellite (Sputnik 1) October 4, 1957.

       Indeed,  the  argument  over "missile gap" was a tragedy, in
       view of the fact that President Kennedy's  Science  Advisor,
       Dr. Jerome B. Wiesner,  was  a thoroughly trusted advisor to
       the U.S. government, who (if he had  not  been  allied  with
       candidate  John F. Kennedy) could readily have been informed
       of the  intelligence  data  provided  by  the  first  CORONA
       satellite  imagery,  in  August 1960, three months after the
       Soviet Union shot down the  U-2  aircraft  piloted  by  Gary
       Powers.

       Regarding   the  strategic  counter-industrial  requirement,
       fantasies  were  spun  in  the  United  States   about   the
       capability  of the Soviet Union to deploy nationwide defense
       against ballistic missiles, even by  integrating  individual
       air defense units, and the like.

       At  the same time, worst-case analyses over the years argued
       that potential Soviet ICBM nuclear weapon deployments  could
       (with unprecedented accuracy) threaten the hardened silos of
       U.S.   ICBMs,   and  the  product  of  these  two  factors--
       penetration  against  worst-case  defenses,   and   survival
       against  worst-case  offense,  fueled a mindless increase in
       nuclear warheads on the U.S. side.

       At the same time, the relative ineffectiveness  of  tactical
       nuclear  warheads  against  military forces in the field (if
       one took seriously the commitment to using  nuclear  weapons
       against battlefield enemies) greatly escalated the number of
       tactical  warheads required.   The problem here was that the
       fruitful targets  of  conventional  military  operations  to
       nuclear  attack were very soon eliminated by the U.S. change
       to "pentomic" divisions, and the response of the WTO to  the
       threat  of  tactical  nuclear  weapons.    Thus, there was a
       virtual effect  of  tactical  nuclear  weapons  in  reducing
       military  effectiveness  on both sides, and greatly reducing
       vulnerability of deployed forces to nuclear weapons.

       Under this situation, a typical tactical nuclear weapon used
       against military forces in action might destroy three tanks.
       In general, in the confined battlefields  of  Europe,  there
       would   be   far  more  civilian  casualties  than  military
       casualties.

       But the greatest problem with "tactical nuclear weapons" was
       that such a  nuclear  warhead  that  might  be  expected  to
       destroy  three enemy tanks in battle and perhaps 20 military
       personnel, could  be  used  to  destroy  many  thousands  of
       civilians.    Since  the  strategic  potential  of  tactical
       nuclear weapons was far greater than the  potential  against
       military  forces,  NATO  superiority  and sophistication and
       tactical nuclear weapons could trivially be nullified by WTO
       (that is, Soviet) use of nuclear weapons  against  far  more
       important targets-- NATO cities.

       In   the  United  States,  the  Kennedy  Administration  was
       brutally terminated with  the  assassination  in  Dallas  of
       President  Kennedy,  and  Vice  President  Lyndon B. Johnson
       assumed the Presidency in 1963, and was elected in  his  own
       right  in 1964.   By the election of 1968, the United States
       had clearly become bogged down in the Vietnam War, Secretary
       of Defense McNamara was  encouraged  to  leave  office,  and
       Johnson refused to campaign for the Presidency.

       But  in the Fall of 1967, Secretary of Defense McNamara gave
       a famous speech in San Francisco, noting that the deployment
       of ballistic missile defenses (BMD)  by  the  United  States
       would  be  a  very bad idea, but in a very short addendum to
       his speech (printed separately  in  his  collected  papers!)
       McNamara  said  that  nevertheless  it would be desirable to
       deploy a very limited BMD against a Chinese ICBM threat that
       might materialize within a matter of weeks or  months.    In
       fact,  it took more than a decade for the Chinese to test an
       ICBM.

       The defense technology community in the  United  States  had
       been  carefully  watching Soviet experiments and deployments
       related to ballistic missile  defense,  and  concluded  that
       such   defenses   could   rather   readily  be  defeated  by
       "penetration aids", which might consist of decoys,  jammers,
       and  the  like,  or (much more simply) of multiple warheads,
       separated  from  the  launching  missile,  and  capable   of
       attacking various targets.

       Thus  was  born  the  MIRV  (Multiple Independently targeted
       Reentry Vehicle).  The very large number of U.S.   strategic
       warheads  on  our missiles was directly a consequence of the
       fear of Soviet  deployment  of  ballistic  missile  defense.
       Hans  Bethe and I published an unclassified analysis of this
       technology in Scientific American of March 1968, showing
       how nuclear-armed BMD could be defeated by  various  penetration
       aids,  especially  by  MIRVs and MaRVs-- Maneuvering Reentry
       Vehicles.

       If one considers the  strategic  confrontation  between  the
       Soviet Union and the United States as a physical system with
       both  positive  and negative "feedback" it is clear that the
       existence  of  positive  feedback   in   itself   does   not
       destabilize  a  system, and negative feedback in itself does
       not stabilize a system.   It is  the  sum  or  resultant  of
       positive  and  negative  feedbacks that determines whether a
       system is stable or not.

       But  the  U.S.-Soviet  confrontation  was  out  of  control,
       because  especially in the United States democratic Congress
       and  public   perception,   there   was   almost   exclusive
       concentration  or  exaggeration  of  "worst-case  analysis",
       which ignored the stabilizing feedbacks.

       Like a person  addicted  to  alcohol  ("alcoholic"  in  U.S.
       parlance),  the  U.S.  response  to a threat was to buy more
       nuclear weapons, whether that would really help or not.

       And it seems that was the action on the  Soviet  side  until
       Mikhail Gorbachev.

       By  the 1980s, when it was perfectly clear that there was no
       significant threat of WTO invasion of Western Europe, and by
       which time Soviet scholars and political figures had had  15
       years  of close contact with the West, U.S. President Ronald
       Reagan on March 23. 1983  announced  the  Strategic  Defense
       Initiative  (SDI).    The  U.S.  technical national security
       community, both within and outside government,  as  well  as
       the  Soviet  Union,  was  caught  totally  unawares  by this
       announcement, which in itself and by  Reagan  Administration
       interpretation  promised  to  protect  not  only  the United
       States but its Allies against missile attack, to the  extent
       that  if  10,000  were  launched,  not even a single nuclear
       warhead would reach its intended target.

       When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985,  he  announced
       that  the  Soviet  Union would not reply to SDI by deploying
       such a  system,  but  would  "respond  by  means  that  were
       asymmetric."    By  this  he  meant penetration aids such as
       those described in  the  1968  Bethe-Garwin  paper,  and  by
       attack on the SDI system deployed in space.



       OTHER INFLUENCES.


       At  the  same  time  that  nuclear  weapons  were growing in
       numbers  in  order  to  counter  defenses  and  to   survive
       destruction  before  launch  (DBL),  they  were, (not always
       admittedly), growing in numbers in order also to be able  to
       destroy  the  opposing  force.   Clearly there was no end to
       this increase, and U.S.  and  Soviet  nuclear  weapons  were
       built about as fast as was possible.

       However,  there was another quite different thread, and that
       was the attempt to limit by agreement the nuclear threat.

       I mentioned that I participated in 1958 in  the  "Conference
       on  Prevention of Surprise Attack ..."  and the beginning of
       the discussions to eliminate the testing of nuclear weapons.
       By 1963, these  efforts  resulted  in  the  negotiation  and
       entering  into  force  of the "Limited Test Ban" for nuclear
       weapons,  banning  (to  signatories)  the  testing  in   the
       atmosphere,  in  the  oceans,  and  in space, of any nuclear
       explosive.   This  left  unconstrained  underground  nuclear
       explosions.

       President  Johnson  met  with his Soviet counterpart in 1968
       together with Secretary of Defense McNamara,  in  Glassboro,
       Pennsylvania,  launching  the  negotiations  that led to the
       1972 (Nixon era) accords.  These were the "ABM  Treaty"  and
       the  "Interim Agreement on Limitation of Strategic Offensive
       Arms."

       Indeed, the ABM Treaty of 1972 has survived to  the  present
       day,  although  it was strongly resented (but not denounced)
       by the Reagan Administration.  The Limitation  of  Strategic
       Offensive  Arms  reduced  potential  growth of the strategic
       forces,  and   successive   negotiations   constituted   the
       Strategic  Arms Reduction Treaty (START 1 and START 2) which
       commit the U.S. and (now) Russia to deploy no more than 3500
       strategic warheads by the year 2003.

       Unfortunately, START does not limit "non-deployed" warheads,
       and the 1994 U.S.  Nuclear Posture Review (NPR)  anticipates
       that  the  United  States  will have 5000 additional reserve
       warheads at that time.

       Russia would be allowed any number of reserve warheads.



       THE PRESENT.


       With the dissolution of  the  Soviet  Union,  three  of  the
       former  Soviet  republics-- Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania--
       although exceedingly small in  population  are  sufficiently
       close  to Scandinavia and to the West probably to survive on
       their own.  I have neither time nor expertise to comment  on
       the  future of others of the NIS (Newly Independent States),
       except to note that I have been many  times  to  Russia  and
       December  1994  to Ukraine, and at times to the territory of
       Uzbekhestan, Georgia, Estonia, and Lithuania.

       As Germany knows from the integration of East Germany, it is
       not an easy matter to transform a society  from  the  former
       Soviet  model  to  a Western democratic, capitalist society,
       and East Germany was (if you  will  pardon  my  stating  the
       obvious)  a  far  simpler case than is Russia or many of the
       other former Soviet republics.

       The former East  Germany  had  the  same  language  as  West
       Germany, and West Germany (I will call it "Germany" from now
       on)  had a well defined and perfected legislature, system of
       laws, public order, and the like.  With very few exceptions,
       these were extended intact to the unified Germany.

       But none of these facilitating features is  present  in  the
       fSU (former Soviet Union).



       WHAT IS BEING DONE?


       At  this  moment, we have a very fragile democracy in Russia
       and a kind of bandit capitalism.  Free enterprise exists not
       so such in production  and  transportation,  but  in  buying
       goods made in the West and selling them in Russia.

       There  is no coherent system of law or of the judiciary, and
       there is  widespread  fear,  suspicion,  and  reluctance  of
       Western organizations to invest in Russia for this reason.

       Nevertheless,  this  is a Russia of 150 million people, with
       at least 20,000 nuclear warheads.

       In my opinion, those in the Clinton  Administration  deserve
       high  marks in perceptiveness (and substantially lower marks
       in execution) in recognizing  the  threat  to  international
       security  of  the  dissolution  of  the  Soviet Union.   The
       problem of "loose nukes" was clearly apparent  to  Assistant
       Secretary     of     Defense     (Nuclear    Security    and
       Counterproliferation)  Dr.  Ashton B. Carter  (formerly   of
       Harvard    University)   and   to   Secretary   of   Defense
       William J. Perry.

       Senators Sam Nunn of Georgia  and  Richard  G.Lugar  deserve
       tremendous  credit  for their initiative in requiring $600 M
       per year to be allocated from the U.S. Department of Defense
       budget for "cooperative threat reduction" in the fSU.

       In reality, the previous year, then-head of the House  Armed
       Services  Committee  (later to be Secretary of Defense for a
       year) the late Les Aspin had proposed  taking  $1000 M  from
       the defense budget for a similar purpose, but his initiative
       was never enacted.

       To  make  a  long story short, the United States and Ukraine
       have agreed that by 1996 all  nuclear  warheads  in  Ukraine
       will be returned to Russia.  Among the republics of the fSU,
       only  Ukraine,  Belarus and Kazakhstan have nuclear weapons,
       and Belarus committed before Ukraine to return  all  of  its
       nuclear  weapons  to  Russia.    We  can  be  confident that
       Kazakhstan will do the same,  leaving  Russia  as  the  sole
       nuclear heir to the Soviet Union.



       WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?


       The  START-2  agreement  will  result  in the elimination of
       MIRVs from land-based ICBMs in U.S. and Russia, and  reduces
       one of the growth factors for the strategic force.  The 1972
       ABM  Treaty,  in  principle, reduces the other.   However, I
       have not noted the existence in the  world  of  three  other
       declared  nuclear  powers-- Britain, France, and China, each
       with a number of nuclear warheads in the range of 300-1000.

       The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has just been extended by
       the  1995  Review  Conference  in  New  York,   to   persist
       indefinitely,  but there is no strict commitment on the part
       of the five declared nuclear powers (declared, in  fact,  in
       conjunction  with  the  NPT  itself)  to reduce or eliminate
       their nuclear weapons.

       Although it is not one of the  five  NPT-designated  nuclear
       powers,    South  Africa  states that it had built six U-235
       Hiroshima type weapons, from U-235 enriched in South  Africa
       by  an  indigenous  process,  but  that  it  destroyed these
       weapons and the nuclear material, and has demonstrated  this
       to the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA).

       However,  there are three other nations commonly accepted to
       possess  nuclear  weapon  capability:  Israel,  India,   and
       Pakistan.

       The  Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 (not signed by Israel,
       India, or Pakistan) commits the non-nuclear signatories  not
       to  build  nuclear weapons or to accept nuclear weapons, and
       commits the nuclear weapons states not to transfer  or  help
       to produce nuclear weapons in non-nuclear weapon states.

       The  "club"  of  nuclear weapon states has expanded far more
       slowly than was anticipated in the 1960s.  But in  the  last
       ten  years  the  complexion of states and non-state entities
       has changed substantially.



       THE CURRENT & FUTURE AGENDA.


       We are now concerned with states that sponsor terrorism such
       as Libya, Iran, and  perhaps  Syria,  and  non-state  groups
       present in the United States (for instance, the perpetrators
       of  the  bombing  in  Oklahoma City) and in Japan (those who
       perpetrated  the  chemical  warfare  attack  in  the   Tokyo
       subways),  and  which  have  the property that they are less
       "deterrable" by threat of retaliation.

       Indeed, the United States has never been able to defend to a
       significant extent against nuclear weapons delivered  either
       by aircraft or by missile (and still less by freighter ...).
       It  has  relied, really, on the threat to perpetrate against
       an aggressor "unacceptable damage".

       But how does one punish a nihilist?  Or (as the  joke  goes)
       how does one punish a masochist?

       While  it  is  essential  to continue to stress the NPT goal
       that non-nuclear states should see their  security  improved
       by  rejecting  nuclear  weapons  and depending upon security
       guarantees, and that the nuclear weapon states reduce  their
       nuclear  arsenals  and  perhaps  eventually  eliminate  them
       either totally or transfer them to the command of the United
       Nations, it is essential now to  preclude  the  transfer  of
       nuclear  weapon  capability to rogue states outside the NPT,
       to states within the NPT that do not honor their  commitment
       to  NPT like Iraq and North Korea, and to non-state entities
       such as  the  "militias"  in  the  United  States,  militant
       religious groups, etc.

       I  should  say here that I have long advocated that the U.S.
       and Russia should reduce their nuclear  warhead  numbers  by
       95%  or  more,  so  that  each  would  have  a total of 1000
       (including  any  reserve  warheads).    At  the  same  time,
       Britain,  China,  and  France should voluntarily limit their
       armories to 300 nuclear warheads each, and the world  should
       take  seriously  the  need  to  provide  both  negative  and
       positive "security guarantees"  to  the  non-nuclear  states
       signatory to the NPT.

       A   new   problem   derives  in  part  from  the  successful
       negotiation of major reductions (by 80 or 90%, if  not  95%)
       in  U.S.  and Russian nuclear weapon holdings.  As a result,
       nuclear weapons in Russia and the fSU in general have become
       a burdensome waste rather than a prized weapon.

       Together with the economic dislocation prevalent in the fSU,
       and the desire of many wealthy non-nuclear countries (Libya,
       Iran, Iraq, and  perhaps  others)  to  possess  at  least  a
       limited   number  of  nuclear  weapons  and  nuclear  weapon
       expertise,  there  is  a  serious  problem  that  now-excess
       nuclear  weapon  material (Pu-239 and high-enriched uranium)
       will leak  from  the  fSU  to  these  countries,  driven  by
       individual  penury  in Russia and elsewhere, and the lack of
       civil law and common concern in the fSU.

       Indeed, this audience must be very familiar  with  the  many
       instances  in  which  real  amounts  of fissionable material
       (both plutonium and uranium) have appeared  in  Germany  and
       the  Czech  Republic (together with a lot of other instances
       in which there has been deception or "scam" on one  side  or
       another).

       It  is  difficult  to believe that these instances of seized
       fissile material constitute all of the material leaking from
       the fSU, and it is likely that a lot more has left or may be
       in flight.



       WHAT IS BEING DONE?


       I  have  previously  mentioned  the  Nunn-Lugar  funds   for
       nominally  "government  to  government"  interaction between
       U.S. and Russian and other republics of  the  fSU,  oriented
       toward "cooperative threat reduction."

       But  the  U.S. Department of Energy has also a program-- the
       "lab to lab" program, which more informally and perhaps more
       effectively connects the U.S.   nuclear weapon  laboratories
       with  those  in Russia.  Advances have recently been made in
       MPC&A (Material Protection  Control  and  Accountancy),  and
       there  are  other  instruments  such  as  the  International
       Science & Technology  Center  (ISTC)  in  Moscow,  in  which
       Germany had a founding role, now assumed by the EU.

       The  ABM  Treaty  was  a  milestone in attempting to achieve
       international security by arms limitation.  It  constituted,
       in  fact, a recognition of the technical necessity to accept
       the fact of U.S.   vulnerability to Soviet  nuclear  weapons
       (and   vice versa)   so  that  the  "deterrence  by  assured
       destruction" that was the criterion of Secretary of  Defense
       McNamara   for   building   U.S.   strategic  forces  became
       explicitly a situation of Mutual Assured  Destruction.    An
       important   consequence   was  that  even  without  specific
       agreements to limit offensive strategic forces, there was no
       incentive for them to grow far beyond the  number  necessary
       for the assured destruction role.

       One  of  the  divisors leading to the expansion of offensive
       strategic arms had been eliminated-- the  potentially  small
       fraction  of  warheads that would penetrate an unconstrained
       defense.  Neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union showed  much
       sense, though, in controlling the other factor that was well
       within their individual control.  This other divisor related
       to  Destruction  Before  Launch  (DBL) in which only a small
       fraction of the strategic offensive force  might  survive  a
       massive first strike against the retaliatory force.

       How  is  it  that  nuclear  warheads of limited accuracy and
       reliability can threaten to destroy nearly all of the SOF on
       the other side?  Because of a choice by  the  United  States
       and  then  the  Soviet  Union  to  rely  largely on missiles
       carrying multiple warheads, indeed multiple  independently
       targeted reentry vehicles, MIRVs.

       With the evolution of the technology of nuclear weapons, and
       of  missile  systems,  it  became  possible to make compact,
       light nuclear weapons and to divide the payload capacity  of
       a  large rocket into multiple warheads.  These could be more
       flexibly assigned to destructive roles in the  target  area,
       and  even  in  the unlikely case in which all the MIRVs on a
       given missile would be assigned to  provide  a  large  local
       area  of  destruction  (mimicking  that  of  a  large single
       warhead) the  three  or  ten  MIRVs  to  do  the  job  would
       overwhelm  even  an  ABM  system that could effectively deal
       with one large warhead.

       It is ironic that the United States, having  considered  the
       prospect of MIRVing its missiles, rejected advice during the
       negotiation  of  the 1972 Limited Offensive Agreement to ban
       MIRVs, which would  no  longer  be  necessary  if  ABM  were
       banned.    As  a  result,  later  U.S.  claims  that  Soviet
       improvement of accuracy for their ICBMs  was  threatening  a
       "first  strike  capability"  against U.S. retaliatory forces
       ring particularly hollow; this was a  vulnerability  imposed
       by  the  United States on itself.  Nixon's National Security
       Advisor (and later Secretary  of  State)  Henry A. Kissinger
       acknowledged in a discussion with journalists that he wished
       he  "had  thought through the implications of a MIRVed world
       more thoughtfully ..."

       MORE POLITICAL OBSERVATIONS. In general the  administrations
       of  U.S.  Democratic  presidents  have  been more willing to
       pursue improvements in U.S. national security  by  means  of
       arms   limitation  agreements,  while  Republican  electoral
       campaigns  and  administrations  have  tended  to  emphasize
       achieving  national  security  by  increasing  U.S. military
       capability.

       Thus,  the  1980  Presidential  campaign  of  Ronald  Reagan
       explicitly  featured  a three-point program to build weapons
       to disarm the Soviet Union.

       In our two-party system, however, Democratic Administrations
       tended  to  be  blocked  from  achieving  their   goals   in
       limitation  of Soviet arms (and corresponding limits on U.S.
       arms) by Republican opposition, and several times the actual
       achievement of such  agreements  occurred  in  a  Republican
       presidential administration.

       Having    won    the    presidential   election   in   1980,
       President-to-be Ronald Reagan was  provided  with  briefings
       and  information  which  showed  him  (much to his shock and
       horror) that the complaints he had been  making  about  U.S.
       vulnerability to Soviet weapons were indeed valid.  He found
       it  more difficult to accept that this vulnerability was not
       a result of incompetence or cowardice on  the  part  of  the
       Democrats,  but  he  began  to  struggle with the problem of
       improving U.S. security in a world in which there were  tens
       of  thousands  of  nuclear  weapons,  each of which had many
       times the  explosive  yield  of  the  nuclear  weapons  that
       destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Of course, the posture of
       mutual deterrence depended on this very vulnerability.

       On  March  23,  1983,  in  a  brief attachment to his speech
       regarding the defense budget, President  Reagan  called  for
       "the  scientific community in our country, those who gave us
       nuclear weapons, to ...  give us a means of rendering  these
       nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."

       Specifically,  he  was  calling  for  a  space-based defense
       including powerful lasers on satellites, to  destroy  Soviet
       missiles and their nuclear warheads in flight.

       Reagan  had  not  discussed his Strategic Defense Initiative
       with his Presidential Science Advisory Committee, which  had
       just  completed  a  study  of  the  potential of space-based
       defenses and decided that they had  little  to  offer  as  a
       robust,   effective   defense   against  strategic  weapons.
       Nevertheless, a massive study was soon organized to put some
       attractive flesh on the skeleton of the SDI concept,  and  a
       massive  program  was  launched that would spend billions of
       dollars each year.

       The  problem  was  not  the  impossibility  of  weapons   on
       satellites  that  could  destroy  missiles  in  flight;  the
       problems was that the satellites  themselves  were  terribly
       vulnerable to destruction by the Soviet Union at any time.

       As already noted, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eventually
       announced  that  the  Soviet  Union  would  not mimic an SDI
       deployment  but  would  counter  it  by  "means   that   are
       asymmetric."

       When  that  historic figure Mikhail Gorbachev came to power,
       he  looked  outside  the  military-industrial   system   for
       technical  advice.   Interestingly, President Eisenhower had
       done the  same  when  he  took  office  in  1953.    Two  of
       Gorbachev's  principal scientific advisors, Evgenii Velikhov
       and Roald Sagdeev, had been meeting twice a year for several
       years with the Committee on International Security and  Arms
       Control  (CISAC) from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences,
       in a series of meetings that began in 1980, and of  which  I
       have been a member from the beginning.

       In the belief that national security is not always bought at
       the  cost  of  national security of the other side, and that
       one cannot fool Mother Nature,  the  CISAC  discussions  had
       included  topics  like a comprehensive ban on nuclear tests,
       the potential for reducing numbers of nuclear  weapons,  the
       requirements  and practicality of defenses against ballistic
       missiles carrying nuclear warheads, cutoff of production  of
       nuclear materials, and the like.  The Pugwash Conferences on
       Science and World Affairs, and specialized Pugwash workshops
       had  long  considered  such  questions, and Pugwash deserves
       much credit for some of these favorable developments.

       It seems that only  the  personal  encounter  of  Presidents
       Reagan  and  General  Secretary  (later President) Gorbachev
       persuaded Reagan of the humanity and sincerity of Gorbachev,
       and led Reagan to take seriously the  opportunity  and  need
       for  reduction  in  numbers  of  nuclear  weapons.    Reagan
       competed with Gorbachev in rhetoric favoring the elimination
       of nuclear weapons, and if not  all  nuclear  weapons,  then
       President Reagan wanted to eliminate the "fast flyers"-- the
       ballistic  missiles that could deliver nuclear weapons in 30
       minutes anywhere on the globe.

       At this point I just note  that  U.S.  Presidents  and  even
       Secretaries  of  Defense  have often been ill informed about
       U.S. capabilities and also the capabilities of others, and I
       doubt that the situation was much better with  many  of  the
       Soviet leaders.

       Just  as  it  was Republican, anti-Communist President Nixon
       who was able to open U.S. relations with China 23 years ago,
       so  it  was  Reagan  who  was  able  to  convert  Republican
       criticism  of  arms  control  into  support  for  "real arms
       reduction" as exemplified by the  Strategic  Arms  Reduction
       Treaty-- START 1 and START 2.



       SOME BACKGROUND.


       A  1977  VIEW.  In a book published in 1977, Nuclear Weapons
       and  World  Politics,  I  provided   a   chapter   "Reducing
       Dependence on Nuclear Weapons" as my proposal for the future
       (of  the  1980s).    As  stated  there,  my  purpose  was to
       prescribe a viable posture from which nuclear weapon  states
       could
       "1.  Take effective measures against nuclear proliferation.
       "2.  Hold expenditures on strategic military capabilities to
       a minimum, while still providing adequate security.
       "3.  Avoid  overemphasis  on strategic threats-- which leads
       to the neglect of real and important problems that  threaten
       the  existence  of  national  and  world  society--  thereby
       permitting the removal of nuclear weapons (to  some  extent)
       from  the  conduct  of  world politics, i.e., a reduction in
       their value as instruments of power politics.
       "4.  Give individuals a feeling that the world of nations is
       understandable and controllable and that their own condition
       is improving.
       "5.  Provide a stable foundation from which a Third  Nuclear
       Regime might (but need not) evolve."
       This   chapter   recommended   a  nuclear  regime  based  on
       deterrence of attack, rather than defense,  the  elimination
       of  U.S. "tactical" or battlefield nuclear weapons and their
       replacement (with  increased  effectiveness)  by  dependence
       instead  on  conventionally  armed cruise missiles guided by
       the Global Positioning System, GPS.

       On  the  political  side,  I  recommended  an  international
       agreement   for  no-first-use  of  nuclear  weapons  against
       non-nuclear   weapon   states,   but   not    an    absolute
       "no-first-use"  agreement.    I wrote "The United States can
       make known its intention to  use  nuclear  weapons  only  in
       response to other's nuclear weapons without signing a formal
       agreement  that would eliminate first use as even an extreme
       option,  and  therefore  without  reducing  the  uncertainty
       regarding  American strategy that deters Soviet conventional
       aggression in Europe."

       I proposed also de-MIRVing  the  land-based  missile  force.
       Many of the recommendations have in fact been realized.

       That   same   1977   book   carries  a  useful  Appendix  by
       Franklin C. Miller that traces the U.S. thinking  about  its
       nuclear  weapons  from  "bigger bang for a buck" to "massive
       retaliation" to "flexible response" to  "damage  limitation"
       to  "assured  destruction",  to "mutual assured destruction"
       and to "assured retaliation."

       How much these terms had  to  do  with  reality  is  another
       matter, and later hopes for "mutually assured survival" as a
       result  of  SDI,  for  instance,  departed even farther from
       fact.

       THE COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN TREATY (CTBT). In just  the  same
       way that a military weapon is often used most effectively in
       a  mode  or mission not foreseen by its developers, the work
       that has gone into a comprehensive ban  on  nuclear  testing
       was originally oriented toward slowing the arms race between
       the  super  powers  by  halting the effective development of
       advanced nuclear weapons.

       Later it was recognized and emphasized  that  a  CTBT  would
       inhibit  proliferation of nuclear weapons, toward which goal
       it has considerable impact.   However,  as  demonstrated  by
       South  Africa  and  probably by Israel and Pakistan, (and of
       course  by  the  Hiroshima  bomb  which  was  used in combat
       without ever having been tested), it  is  not  necessary  to
       test  to  have  some confidence in a reliable nuclear weapon
       system of conservative design.

       To my mind, the greatest benefit of a CTBT now and  for  the
       future  lies  in conferring some legitimacy on the continued
       possession of nuclear weapons by relatively few nations, and
       in providing evidence that the trend in nuclear weaponry  is
       downward  in  numbers,  of weapons that will not be improved
       qualitatively as time goes by.

       THEATER  MISSILE  DEFENSE   AND   BEYOND.   The   television
       broadcasts  showing  launch  of the U.S. Patriot interceptor
       missiles against Iraqi Scud missiles  attacking  Israel  and
       Saudi   Arabia   augmented  both  the  desire  for  and  the
       enthusiasm for Theater Missile  Defense  (TMD),  to  protect
       U.S.  military  forces, allied military forces, and friendly
       cities against attack by  theater-range  ballistic  missiles
       carrying  high  explosive,  chemical, biological, or nuclear
       warheads.

       Ironically, in  part  because  Iraqi  modifications  to  the
       Soviet-built Scuds to extend their range caused the missiles
       to  follow  a  tight  helical  path  as  they  reentered the
       atmosphere, only a very small fraction of  the  Scuds  could
       have  been  destroyed  by  the  Patriot "intercepts".   I am
       persuaded of  this  having  followed  closely  the  work  of
       Professor  Theodore A. Postol  of  MIT,  and the work of his
       critics.

       The nuclear-armed theater missile threat to U.S.  forces  is
       essentially  nonexistent  now,  and  there  are many ways to
       deliver a nuclear weapon other than by ballistic missile.

       The first line of defense against  chemical  and  biological
       weapons, delivered by missile or not, is to move urgently to
       implement  the  Chemical  Weapons  Convention  (CWC)  and to
       strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC)  of  1972
       that entered into force in 1975.

       The  nations  of  the  world  must  also  show that they are
       serious in expecting and enforcing compliance so that  there
       will  be  no  chemical  or  biological  weapons ever used in
       warfare; their use would be a serious affront to the rule of
       law, whether or not  they  caused  significant  damage  when
       used.

       In  reality,  BW  attack  on  a  city  can be carried out by
       systems to disperse the BW agent, smuggled  into  the  city.
       We  have  an  example  from  the rather incompetent chemical
       agent attack on the Tokyo subways this year.

       However, it would be highly desirable to be able  to  defend
       against  BW  delivered  by  ballistic  missile, aircraft, or
       cruise  missile,  even  if   there   were   an   alternative
       hand-delivery route.

       The dispersal of BW from a ballistic missile reentry vehicle
       is not a simple matter, and the approach of choice is likely
       to  be  to  package  the agent in sub-munitions or bomblets,
       which themselves would be  dispersed  before  they  in  turn
       dispense  the agent.  Probably the easiest way to accomplish
       this is not in the reentry at all,  but  during  the  ascent
       phase  of  flight,  so-called  Early Release of Submunitions
       (ERS) which negates any of the systems proposed for  Theater
       Missile Defense, except those few that may have some promise
       of destroying the missile in boost or ascent phase.

       The primary line of defense for U.S. military forces against
       BW or CW attack is a passive means, of appropriate defensive
       garb  and  decontamination facilities.  But the inclusion of
       the  "requirement"  to  protect  allied  cities  creates   a
       difficult  (and  with ERS an insoluble) problem for terminal
       defense.

       A major problem with U.S. TMD programs is that  there  is  a
       strong  undercurrent  in  U.S. defense and political circles
       that  wishes  to  eliminate  the  ABM  Treaty,  basing  U.S.
       security  on  our  supposed  ability  to  defend effectively
       against the threats posed by  possible  adversaries,  rather
       than  simply  to  retaliate  and thus to deter such attacks.
       But whether or not this is the objective of supporting major
       improvements in TMD, they would surely have  the  effect  of
       forcing  Russia  to  add  penetration  aids to their missile
       force, activities that Russia can ill-afford at present  but
       that  would  effectively  (but  not  assuredly)  counter the
       defense.

       Many supporters of SDI have  now  written  that  they  never
       believed  that  it  would be a technically effective system,
       but that the intent was to create  an  arms  race  that  the
       Soviet  Union  could  not afford to continue, and they claim
       that the destruction of the Soviet political system came  as
       a result of Soviet recognition that they could not afford to
       keep up with the U.S. militarily.

       Given  that background, specific U.S. proposals to interpret
       the ABM Treaty now as permitting  everything  that  had  not
       been    demonstrated    against   strategic   missiles   are
       unacceptable to Russia, and should be  unacceptable  to  the
       United States.

       Such  interpretation  or  amendment  of the ABM Treaty would
       surely drive Russia to the  creation  of  nuclear-armed  ABM
       systems,  and  rightly  so, because non-nuclear interceptors
       are too readily fooled in the vacuum  of  space  where  they
       would  presumably operate.  Just in the last week there have
       appeared newspaper articles  quoting  unnamed  U.S.  Defense
       Department  personnel  as  advocating  a  "force  on  force"
       criterion for the acceptability of a TMD system:  so long as
       it could be overwhelmed by a large Russian  missile  attack,
       it would be considered compliant with the ABM Treaty.

       The  offense-defense  reaction  in peacetime between TMD and
       allied systems on the one hand, and the strategic  offensive
       systems  on  the  other,  would  create an entirely new arms
       race.   It would begin,  in  fact,  by  forcing  the  lesser
       nuclear  powers--  Britain,  China, and France-- to increase
       their forces or to provide penetration aids to  counter  the
       kind  of  system  that  would  be permissible under the U.S.
       proposal.

       I believe  that  the  U.S.  should  accept  the  traditional
       self-imposed  limitation  by  which  the  U.S.    classed as
       non-ABM systems those in which interceptor speed  was  below
       2 km/s,  and  intercepts  took  place  below 40 km altitude.
       Anything else was classed as  an  ABM  interceptor  and  its
       deployment  was limited to the one allowable deployment area
       and its number to fewer than 100 interceptors.

       THE PROBLEM OF EXCESS PU. As a result of the START 1  Treaty
       and START 2 (which may or may not be ratified by the Russian
       Duma),   and   also   various   unilateral  but  coordinated
       statements and actions by Presidents George Bush  and  Boris
       Yeltsin,  both  the  U.S.  and  Russia  are  engaged  in the
       demilitarization and disassembly of nuclear  warheads.    In
       the  United  States  this is proceeding at the rate of about
       1800 per year, with the  nuclear  component  of  the  weapon
       primary  (the  sealed  "pit")  being  stored  in  individual
       containers in simple "igloos" at a U.S. Department of Energy
       facility at Pantex, in the state of Texas.  We are  informed
       that  similar  disassembly  is  proceeding  at four sites in
       Russia.

       Plutonium is not only a material that can be  used  to  make
       nuclear  weapons,  but  it  is  also  highly radioactive and
       dangerous to health and life, particularly when  inhaled  as
       small particles of the metal or compounds.  In contrast, the
       high-enriched  uranium  (HEU)  components of nuclear weapons
       have only this risk of proliferation or re-use, but  do  not
       pose  a  significant  radiological  hazard.    In the United
       States, HEU components are sent to the plant  at  Oak  Ridge
       where  they  were  manufactured, and they will eventually be
       diluted with normal or depleted uranium  to  form  fuel  for
       commercial nuclear reactors.

       More  than  50  tons  of excess weapon plutonium will emerge
       from the  disassembly  of  nuclear  weapons  in  the  United
       States,  and  an  even  larger amount in Russia, by the year
       2003.  In addition, at least 500 tons of HEU will appear  in
       the  same  way.    Note the magnitude of the "proliferation"
       problem-- the problem of the spread of nuclear materials and
       hence nuclear weapons or terrorist  governments  or  groups:
       the rather arbitrary "50 tons" of weapon plutonium is enough
       to  make  more than 8000 Nagasaki bombs, and the 500 tons of
       HEU could be used to make on the order of  30,000  implosion
       weapons  like  those  that  constituted  the  early  Chinese
       nuclear weapon force.

       These weapons-usable materials constitute an enormous  risk,
       which  has been the subject of intense study and activity in
       the  United  States  since  at  least  1991.    The  Clinton
       Administration  has  recognized  fully this problem, and the
       National Academy of Sciences CISAC published in January 1994
       a significant study "Management and  Disposition  of  Excess
       Weapons Plutonium".

       The  study was directed toward reducing the three hazards of
       excess weapon materials in Russia-- breakup,  breakout,  and
       breakdown.

       Breakup was the problem that the Soviet Union would fragment
       into  a  significant  number  of  entities  each  possessing
       nuclear weapons.    Indeed,  through  active  diplomacy  and
       perhaps good sense on both sides, all former Soviet tactical
       weapons  were  returned to Russia by 1992.  Strategic weapon
       in Belarus have also been returned, and those in Ukraine and
       Kazakhstan will be transferred to Russia over the  next  few
       years.

       Breakout refers to the possibility that at some future time,
       Russia  could  use  the  weapon  material  from disassembled
       weapons to rapidly rebuild its enormous  nuclear  stockpile.
       We  hope to cooperate with Russian in the use or disposition
       of the fissile material so that it cannot readily be reused.
       For instance, Russia has contracted to sell  to  the  United
       States  500  tons  of HEU over the next 20 years, blended to
       form normal low-enriched uranium fuel for  commercial  power
       reactors.    Russian  will  receive $12,000 million for this
       material.

       Breakdown refers to the transformation of Russian society,
       the  prevalence  of  crime,  the  tiny  salaries  that  have
       resulted from the effects of inflation, and  the  consequent
       motivation and potential for theft of nuclear materials that
       would eventually (perhaps through a chain of intermediaries)
       provide  the  nuclear  weapons  materials to a government or
       non-state group that would make and threaten to use  nuclear
       weapons in a terrorist mode.

       These  concerns  are being addressed by programs oriented to
       improve  Material  Protection,   Control   and   Accountancy
       (MPC&A),  and  also  by the potential for use of the nuclear
       materials.  Germany may have considerable influence in  this
       regard.  I participated in March in a meeting in Bonn of the
       German-American  Academic  Council  project  concerned  with
       Germany's role in helping to solve this problem-- especially
       in view of German expertise in fabrication of nuclear fuel.

       Our CISAC analyses have shown that it  actually  costs  more
       money to use "free" weapon plutonium to fabricate fuel for a
       commercial  power reactor than to spend all the money to buy
       equivalent LEU fuel.  Nevertheless, however one disposes  of
       weapon  plutonium  it  will  cost  money, and burning weapon
       plutonium  in  commercial  power  reactors  seems  to  be  a
       perfectly  sensible approach that could proceed commercially
       with a government subsidy in the range  of  $1000 M  for  50
       tons of weapon plutonium.



       CONCLUSIONS.


       "Cooperative Denuclearization: From Pledges to Deeds" is the
       title  of  a 1993 volume that describes the situation of the
       U.S. and Russia now.  But what should be the agenda for  the
       future?

       I think that the following are essential:

       1.  Implement  the  agreements to which we are committed and
           demilitarize and disassemble the nuclear weapons.

       2.  Safely store and dispose of the excess weapon  plutonium
           and uranium.

       3.  Nuclear  and  non-nuclear  states  should take seriously
           their responsibility under the NPT, now  made  permanent
           by   its   indefinite   extension  May  11,  1995.    In
           particular, this means to understand  and  to  implement
           positive and negative security guarantees against attack
           by nuclear weapons.

       4.  As  committed  by  the  nuclear  powers in the documents
           accompanying the extension of the NPT,  a  comprehensive
           ban  on  nuclear  explosive  tests should be signed (and
           enter into force) no  later  than  1996,  and  this  CTB
           should  ban also those tests of tiny fission yield known
           as "hydronuclear" experiments.    Furthermore,  the  CTB
           should   make   no   provision   for  "peaceful  nuclear
           explosions" (PNE).   Perhaps ten  years  after  the  CTB
           enters  into  force,  there  could  be  an international
           conference to discuss the potential utility, costs,  and
           problems  of  PNEs,  so  that  a  separate  treaty might
           possibly be negotiated if there were a compelling reason
           to do so.

       5.  The G-7 should make the investments and do the hard work
           required  to  further  safeguard  and   secure   nuclear
           materials  in Russia and ensure that the same is true in
           the United States.

       6.  The world must then move on to a more durable system  of
           protection  against  diversion of the plutonium in spent
           commercial fuel to weapon use, since that plutonium  can
           be used to make nuclear weapons as well, contrary to the
           impression widespread for many decades.

       7.  As  the demilitarization and disposal of weapon material
           proceeds, attention should be given to a  next  rung  in
           descending  the  nuclear  ladder  in  which the U.S. and
           Russia could maintain a force of 1000  nuclear  warheads
           each,  but  without "reserve warheads".   This should be
           accompanied by a limit or reduction (as the case may be)
           to 300 nuclear warheads each in the armories of Britain,
           China, and France.

       8.  The  threat  of  missile  attack  should  be   addressed
           primarily  by  arms control means.   A ban on weapons in
           space should be negotiated, which should include also  a
           ban on antisatellite (ASAT) tests and ASAT use.




       U158PPNW             060795PPNW DRAFT 1             06/07/95