Conference Report Tomorrow’s Proliferation Pathways: Weak States, Rogues, and Non-State Actors 

July 17-18, 2008 Belfast, Maine  

Hosted by the School of Policy and International Affairs, University of Maine and the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA  Sponsored by the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office, Defense Threat Reduction Agency

by James A. Russell and Aaron May

Introduction

A diverse grouping of experts, including government officials, military officers, academics and analysts gathered together on July 17th and 18th in Belfast, Maine at the University of Maine’s Hutchinson Center to convene “Tomorrow’s Proliferation Pathways: Weak States, Rogues, and Non-State Actors.” Co-hosted by the School of Policy and International Affairs of the University of Maine and U.S. Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Contemporary Conflict, the conference was sponsored by The Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Advanced Systems and Concepts Office (DTRA-ASCO).

The Advanced Systems and Concepts Office supports DTRA, the Department of Defense and other U.S. agencies through projects that are designed to encourage alternative thinking, innovative strategies and crosscutting approaches to WMD threats. As such, in this time of transition, DTRA-ASCO’s main objective for this event was to reflect upon changes in the security environment and examine the programs and policies that address them.

This conference sought to help map proliferation pathways and improve our understanding of the forces that create, shape and exploit these pathways. Examining the roles weak states, non-states and rogues play in the formation of proliferation networks is part of this exploration. These networks are born, grow and either evolve or die in the process of generating and exploiting proliferation pathways. Understanding how proliferation networks succeed or fail in accomplishing their functions and how they evolve and adapt to countermeasures is of paramount interest.

The objectives of the conference were to:

• Gain greater fidelity on the nature of the near-term landscape of proliferation pathways and networks.
• Identify the paths and nodes that can be profitably identified, directly or indirectly influenced, penetrated or disrupted.
• Propose countermeasures to disrupt the networks.
• Identify implications for policy makers engaging in formulating non-proliferation and counter-proliferation policies.
• Examine potential examples of non-state WMD procurement networks.
• Examine possible quasi-governmental organizations in countries like China and Russia who may play a role in the proliferation market place without the knowledge of their governments.

Keynote Address

The Honorable Mary Alice Hayward, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy and Negotiations, Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation gave the keynote address, highlighting some of the most significant challenges in the global proliferation environment and providing an overview of many of the measures taken by the US and its allies to strengthen the nonproliferation regime and counterproliferation efforts. In 2002 President Bush unveiled both the National Security Strategy of the United States and the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction. Three strategic objectives emerged from these documents: 1) to prevent rogue states and terrorists from acquiring the materials, technologies, and expertise for weapons of mass destruction through strengthened nonproliferation efforts 2) to deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed through proactive counterproliferation efforts and 3) to respond to the effects of WMD use, whether by terrorists or hostile states through effective consequence management.

To secure potential WMD sources the administration has built on CTR through the Bratislava Initiative, which is on track to upgrade security at Russian nuclear warhead and fissile material facilities by the end of the year. This cooperation is being extended to repatriation of spent US and Russian HEU fuel and conversion of HEU research reactors around the world to LEU. With the G-8, the US has committed to fund half of the $20 billion for the Global Partnership for programs to secure fissile material, destroy chemical weapons, dismantle strategic nuclear submarines, engage and redirect former WMD scientists, technicians and engineers, increase export controls and border security, prevent nuclear smuggling, and improve biological and chemical security. Proliferators depend on variances in national standards and capabilities in export controls, regulations and enforcement. We have successfully isolated proliferators financially and commercially by denying them access to the international financial system; and we have exposed proliferators' activities publicly in an effort to comprehensively warn unwitting facilitators. UNSCR 1540 has been another important achievement, requiring all Member States to criminalize proliferation, and develop the capacity to fight proliferation. The State Department has helped some 50 states build export control and border control capacity through the Export Control and Related Border Security (EXBS) program. Harmonization of the various nonproliferation export control regimes helps build roadblocks that force proliferators to use costly acquisition networks, deception and less reliable technology. Proliferation support networks operate for financial gain and depend on the international financial system to carry out transactions, making them vulnerable to public exposure and the disruption of financing and support, as well as asset forfeiture. The U.S. has authorized targeted financial sanctions against proliferation networks just as we have against terrorist networks, including 57 entities and 17 individuals under E.O. 13382 (41 and 16 respectively are related to Iran). The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) now includes 90 states pledged to assist in interdicting WMD materials.

Ship-boarding agreements with flag countries (Belize, Croatia, Cyprus, Liberia, Malta, the Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Panama, and the Bahamas) now cover a significant portion of global shipping. The Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, established by the US and Russia, now has 75 members collaborating on nuclear forensics for attribution, information sharing and pooling of resources to prevent terrorist nuclear attacks. The NPT faces the threat of weapons proliferation by Iran and North Korea. Claims that they need to develop the capability to enrich uranium or reprocess spent reactor fuel for civil nuclear power programs are not correct. The US recently signed Memorandums of Understanding for peaceful civil nuclear energy with the UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. These governments deliberately set themselves as counter-examples to Iran by expressing their intent to rely on the market for fuel rather than create indigenous enrichment and reprocessing capabilities. The Department of Energy is down-blending 17.4 metric tons of high-enriched uranium, excess to our defense needs, into low-enriched uranium that will serve as a reserve to provide reliable access to reactor fuel should the market fail. Over the longer term, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) is pursuing advanced fuel cycle technologies that would utilize fast burner reactors and recycle spent reactor fuel without separating plutonium—to close the fuel cycle in more proliferation-resistant way to address the challenge posed by the accumulation of waste. Missile Defense is the ultimate insurance policy if the other elements of our multi-faceted strategy for combating proliferation fail.

A Ballistic Missile Defense Agreement between the US and Czech Republic was signed two weeks ago and will help protect both countries and their NATO allies from Iran and other regional ballistic missile threats. All of these measures are part of a comprehensive effort to ensure that each layer of defense against WMD proliferation is buttressed and reinforced for maximum possible effectiveness.

Proliferation Pathways: Conceptual Frameworks for the Strategic Environment

James Russell of the Naval Postgraduate School sketched a strategic landscape of proliferation pathways for states and violent non-state actors (VNSAs) covering potential implications for counterproliferation policy and intelligence. The cascade of nuclear weapons states predicted as far back as the Kennedy Administration has not happened, but we should be prepared for that to change and try to prevent it. The proliferation marketplace is dynamic. Nuclear proliferation pathways entail the set of steps and methods used by an organization to acquire nuclear weapons. Acquisition of fissile material (indigenous production, theft, purchase) and manufacture of a nuclear weapon involves:

1. Production and separation of plutonium or the enrichment of uranium
2. Technical capability can be accomplished with indigenous industries and scientific capabilities, or through theft, illicit procurement of subcomponents, and global networks offering items for sale, with terrorist groups highly dependent on the latter.

State-oriented proliferation pathways have become relatively well known. Its infrastructure has a significant signature, but advances in deception and denial have made detection more difficult, as illustrated by the clandestine programs of Iran and Syria.

Non-State pathways are less developed and more dependent on theft and purchase rather than indigenous production. While there has been no known attempt by a VNSA to build a nuclear device, clarifying the role VNSAs play on the demand side of proliferation pathways is vital.

On the supply side, functions of supplier networks can be broken down into three main areas:

• Engineering: Understanding the client’s needs and able to assess and deliver the correct items to complete the client’s program
• Logistics: Ability to identify proper producers, discretely acquire items, and deliver them if necessary without alerting potential hostile parties
• Financial: Collect and distribute funds as necessary, bypassing financial restrictions and transactions that would raise red flags

This marketplace includes private firms such as Mitutoyo (a Japanese company alleged to have shipped machining tools to North Korea and Iran), hybrid organizations like Chinese Defense Conglomerate COSTIND (which are state owned but may act independently) and state elements such as the IRGC. Characteristic of these structures are:

• Legitimate trade in dual-use items
• Established subsidiaries (or front companies)
• Links into supply networks
• Informal networks (familiar and collegial contacts)
• Servicing of state demand
• Strong executive bodies that can identify demand and service it
• Familiarity and history of bypassing export controls

In meeting the proliferation challenges ahead, we must focus on the supply side, reviewing relevant industries that have the capability to produce and ship. We must also go after the network essentials such as engineering and technical knowledge, logistics and finance. Mitigating demand may require continued cultivation of international non-proliferation norms and revisiting the roles of deterrence and extended deterrence.

Deepti Choubey, Deputy Director of the Nonproliferation Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace sought to provide a conceptual context to help explain why states seek or forego nuclear weapons. The presentation highlighted the importance of theory in informing the assumptions that help shape policymakers’ responses as well the weaknesses in theorizing about proliferation. Choubey examined three broad approaches: qualitative case, quantitative analysis and historic comparative analysis.

Qualitative theoretical approaches to cases and their implications for policy included:

• Structural Power (Realism/Neo-realism) – Policymakers may look for ways to ensure security guarantees to allies and manage disarmament activities in a way that assures allies with other forms of deterrence in place of nuclear weapons. They may also attempt to persuade medium sized powers that nuclear weapons development is not an effective use of resources.
• Neoliberal Institutionalism – This approach suggests an emphasis on compliance, enforcing rules and examining whether states think that the costs of acquiring nuclear weapons have increased or decreased in light of enforcement.
• Constructivism (Identity, Beliefs, Norms) – Suggests norms have a strong influence on other states and encourages measures to reinforce them.
• Domestic/Bureaucratic Politics – This approach suggests that security threats, real or perceived, are simply opportunities exploited by domestic political or bureaucratic forces to advance their own interests by acquiring weapons. This implies few opportunities for US actors to excursive influence over such an internally driven process.
• Psychological Approach – Suggests a certain personality type, driven by fear and pride in relating to the outside world (“oppositional nationalists”) may be more inclined to go nuclear. While useful for past cases, lack of information on leaders in current cases make it difficult to employ.
• Quantitative analysis avoids mono-causal explanations and better accounts for the many states that forgo nuclear weapons. This approach has shown that proliferation is strongly associated with a country’s level of economic development, external threat environment, absence of great power security guarantees and a low level of integration with the world economy.
• The historical approach finds that proliferation is not incremental and that latent weapons potential is high and may be growing, but also that proliferation takes a good deal of time. It suggests proliferation is not inevitable but that a ripple effect does exist. That said, the historical approach shows it is possible to moderate nuclear ambitions.

Choubey closed by noting that these theories offer little in the way of consensus and that future proliferation pathways (relying on dual use facilities, hedging with infrastructure and trained personnel, developing capabilities without testing and maintaining ambiguity) will further complicate explaining or predicting proliferation.

South Asian Proliferation Pathways

Bruce Riedel, of the Brookings Institution, discussed Pakistan’s nuclear program and proliferation activities past and present. Pakistan’s nuclear program was built on pilfered information and technology from Europe as well as Chinese assistance. Pakistan became a hub for nuclear proliferation, transferring know-how and supporting infrastructure to Iran, North Korea and Libya. It is the only Muslim country with nuclear weapons and has occasionally threatened their use against India and Israel. While sanctions were imposed by the US in 1990, they had no apparent effect on the progress of the country’s nuclear weapons program. It is a program that sprung from the deep sense of national humiliation left in the wake of Pakistan’s 1971 war with India. The loss of East Pakistan and formation of Bangladesh was a blow to the notion of Pakistan as the one Muslim homeland in South Asia. It was this catastrophic conventional defeat that spurred the Pakistani leadership to task a group of prominent scientists with developing Pakistan’s bomb. The less-than-prominent AQ Khan beat them to it. While working for Urenco, a Dutch nuclear firm, Khan stole centrifuge plans and other materials that would form the foundation of Pakistan’s program. While this work was initially unsolicited, Khan quickly developed a relationship with Pakistan’s ISI—a relationship that would have global ramifications in the coming years. The ISI’s international presence allowed Khan to develop a global supplier network for nuclear materials and technologies. Meanwhile President General Zia-ul-Haq opened the door to Chinese nuclear assistance, resulting in the acquisition of bomb designs and new centrifuge technology. Rivalry between Khan and his competitors to develop the bomb was intense. Public statements suggest Pakistan had the know-how to build a nuclear device by 1986 and may have done so by 1990.

With domestic pressures on Prime Minister Sharif militating for testing and international pressures pushing against such a move, India’s 1998 nuclear tests forced his hand. Despite being offered billions by the US to forego testing, Pakistan conducted five underground tests little more than two weeks after India. The sanctions imposed by the US and others severely damaged Pakistan’s economy without any tangible effect on its nuclear program. The bomb has made the Pakistani military comfortable enough to wage asymmetric war against India, supporting militants and terrorists in Kashmir and India at large. The 1999 Kargil War was the result of this Pakistani brinkmanship. Pakistan’s leadership—military and civilian—gave Khan the latitude to make nuclear deals around the world, only to deny responsibility when called to account by the United States. Nuclear technology was thought to be the price for North Korean missiles transferred to Pakistan during this period. Iran and Libya have also been beneficiaries of Pakistan’s “rogue” Khan network— Libya acquiring what might have nearly been a turnkey weapons program that included a bomb design. Persistent reports suggest Saudi Arabia, which has long provided financial support to Pakistan and hosts Pakistani military forces to assist in its defense, might be able to acquire Pakistani nuclear weapons under certain circumstances. Khan was put under house arrest in 2004 after taking “confessing” to some of these activities. With the departure of Musharraf, he recanted and now claims he was acting with the knowledge and support of the General. Khan’s political rehabilitation has rested on his usefulness as a weapon against Musharraf and those who supported the General. Pakistan was the number one proliferator for more than a decade and, with a new civilian government, economic weakness, festering grievances and a growing insurgency, its future is less certain than ever. Addressing the civil-military relations and strategic issues of Pakistan is the only way to begin addressing the threat of further proliferation and regional stability.

Neil Joeck of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory discussed India as a proliferation case study. The country’s path to a nuclear weapon was examined and contrasted with prevailing models of proliferation. India’s proliferation pathway was broken down into five time periods: A pre-1964 “science era” when India participated in legitimate nuclear science and technology sharing programs (such as Atoms for Peace), the period between 1964-1974 with China’s entry into the nuclear club and the beginning of India’s reprocessing program opening the era and the first Indian test closing it, the period between 1974-1990 when the country had to come to terms with Pakistan as a permanent feature of the region, a period of new strategic thinking between 1990-1998 culminating in the most recent round of tests and, finally, the “military” era from 1998 to the present during which time militarization, deployment and doctrine development have been ongoing. In the model developed by Tertrais incentive for proliferation include threat perceptions, political motivations, financial means, existing nuclear installations, existing nuclear experience and know-how and current civilian nuclear projects. Disincentives include foreign protection, IAEA controls, economic openness and liberalization, regional integration and dependence on US assistance. India’s incentives were as strong across all factors as its disincentives were weak. Joeck then focused on measures to bring India into the international nuclear regime and the implications for horizontal, vertical, evolutionary and enforcement gaps in the regime. In concluding, he suggested that the US-India nuclear agreement, however compromised, is an important step in integrating India into this regime.

Proliferation Pathways and Russia

Steven Blank of the US Army War College discussed Russia’s role in WMD proliferation. Russia’s view of proliferation is instrumental. It may not feel constrained to act if proliferation is thought to enhance state security in a given situation. The country has long played a significant role in proliferating ballistic and cruise missiles, a role that continues to grow in Asia and other markets. Russia is a de facto partner in growing Iranian military capabilities as a hedge against the US. In return Iran has shown a degree of respect for Russian interests in the Caucasus. Both countries benefit from high petroleum prices, prices that are buoyed by tension between Iran and the US. Russia’s role in arming Iran has also granted it leverage in dealing with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States. Nonproliferation cooperation between Russia and the US is fundamentally limited by the Russian view that the US remains its main adversary. This helps explain Russian passivity in support of ongoing efforts such as the Global Partnership and CTR—aid is accepted so long as reciprocal commitments remain minimal. Vertical proliferation is thought of as more threatening than horizontal proliferation—a point illustrated by Russia’s response to US missile defense plans and talk of withdrawal from INF restrictions. Meanwhile, the threat of nuclear smuggling has grown. Russia continues to be a mafia state. Its closed cities are not immune to this criminality. Instances of nuclear smuggling from Russia through the CIS have not ceased. While measures like CTR remain necessary, the effectiveness of nonproliferation activities involving Russia continues to be limited by the nonchalant, instrumental, view of proliferation taken by Russia’s leadership.

Igor Khripunov from the Center for International Trade & Security at the School of Public and International Affairs of the University of Georgia presented on Russia’s security culture and WMD proliferation. Security culture focuses on a human factors-based approach to improving security through managerial, organizational and other arrangements that include not only the technical proficiency of the people entrusted with security but also their willingness and motivation to follow established procedures, comply with regulations, and take the initiative when unforeseen circumstances arise. Raising security culture standards is especially important in transitional societies, in countries whose nuclear and other sensitive programs lack transparency, in those beginning nuclear and other sensitive programs from scratch or where nuclear and other sensitive industries are undergoing reforms. Individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies and patterns of behavior determine the degree of individual and organizational commitment to security as well as the style and proficiency with which they manage security. Russian nuclear security faces significant challenges on this front. Some of the e conomic and social challenges present are, i nsufficient funding, an a ging infrastructure, high rates of a ntisocial behavior and p oor motivation. Soviet Era nuclear security benefited from an unambiguous focus on the Western threat, unlimited funding, cheap labor, a degree of ideological loyalty or patriotism, generous incentive and good career prospects as well as Party and KGB supervision and extreme isolation of the nuclear infrastructure. On top of this, effective border controls and the absence of a real market for smuggled materials along with draconian punishment for any violators as traitors made for good Soviet nuclear security. Since the end of the Soviet Union, Russian nuclear security has been reduced. The nuclear industry has suffered from c ontinuous restructuring, poor i nteragency coordination, questionable p rivatization and now must u se expensive professional guards. Major gaps exist in professional and work culture, including an a ging workforce, low q uality leadership, l ack of transparency and hostility toward w histle-blowers. Overlaid are legal and enforcement Issues, including i ncomplete legal basis for addressing violations, poorly developed R ussian legal culture, p oor investigation procedures, v ague reporting practices and l ax prosecution. Khripunov pointed out that rebuilding Russian security culture serves as a means to help integrate and focus ongoing international involvement in Russia’s nuclear field, assisting in constraining proliferation pathways.

Challenges for Intelligence

John Lauder, of Areté Associates, examined WMD intelligence challenges from the perspective of an Intelligence Community veteran. Lauder addressed why WMD intelligence is so difficult, how future WMD trends will make good intelligence harder to come by and what improvements might be made to improve WMD intelligence. He pointed out that with some fifteen states having significant WMD programs and at least that more with the technical capability to start or restart programs with little warning, the potential for proliferation surprise is always high. WMD-related technology is now more readily available thanks to secondary and tertiary proliferation, commercial entrepreneurs and networks as well as easier access to relevant information. With approximately twenty terrorist groups expressing and interest in WMD, most believe an attack is likeliest to originate from such non-state actors. Intelligence is the key enabler for defense against WMD attack—informing all measures to reduce vulnerability—but hard intelligence tends to be sparse and assessments tend to rely on judgments of intentions. Achieving a clear picture is resource intensive and not usually scalable, focusing on entities and activities rather than objects and becoming more modality specific as proliferation timelines move right.

Looking at the numerous studies examining intelligence failures, Lauder focused on these causes:

• Lack of Horizontal Integration and Operational Art
• Excessive Focus on Current Intelligence
• Inadequate Use of Available Collection and Analytical Tools
• Insufficient Accountability
• Failure to Implement Systematically Prior Recommendations on Improving Collection and Analysis

He similarly focused on culling the most useful recommendations from the literature in these categories:

Collection and Exploitation

• Create Integrated Multi-INT Collection and Target Development Enterprises
• Better Exploit Open Source Information
• Develop Innovative Human Intelligence Techniques and Integrative Structures
• Move from Reconnaissance to Surveillance

Organization & Analytical Focus

• WMD Intelligence Needs a Conductor and Score
• Organize Around Missions; Use Task-Force Models that Work
• Strengthen Long-Term, Strategic, and Alternative Analysis
• Improve the Rigor and Tradecraft of Intelligence

Strategy

• Develop a WMD Intelligence Campaign Plan and Implement with Sense of Urgency
• Better Integrate Domestic and Foreign Intelligence and Non-Federal Entities
• Focus collection and analysis on key people, money flows, transportation means and nodes forming proliferation pathways

James Wirtz, Dean of the School of International Graduate Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School, presented on deterrence, intelligence and proliferation. He examined the proliferation-intelligence nexus, focusing on how proliferators minimize their “window of vulnerability” while developing a usable weapons capability. This is broken down into a “pre-discovery” period, before opponents are aware of such a program and a “post-discovery” period once opponents become aware of it. Pre-discovery incentives suggest states will seek to maximize secrecy to protect their research and development while employing denial and deception to minimize threat perception. Post-discovery incentives are quite different, suggesting states will use denial and deception to maximize apparent threat and generate perception of a fait accompli in adversaries’ minds.

Whether non-state actors would behave the same way is not completely clear. Pre-discovery incentives would likely generate the same behavior, employing secrecy and denial and deception to protect R&D and minimize threat perception. Post-discovery might see a continuation of this behavior to avoid attracting and attention or risk countermeasures. Non-state groups may also lack resources to dedicate to generating a credible false threat.

Preventative war is a hard sell politically, suggesting denial and deception and cover operations are likely to succeed. Belief in diplomacy, safeguards, regimes, collective actor mobilization all militate against preventative war. Policymakers must act before the threat is fully realized; yet preventative action runs the risk of political problems even when successful precisely because the threat has not materialized yet—hence there is a “preventative war paradox”. The incentives proliferators respond to drive the proliferation intelligence problem while international and domestic political issues drive the response problem that puts policymakers on the horns of a dilemma in choosing preventative action or inaction.

Proliferation Pathways for Rogues: The Iran Program

Bahman Baktiari of the University of Maine’s School of Policy and International Affairs discussed Iranian self-perception and how Iranians see their role in the region and world, as well as relations with the US in light of the nuclear issue. Iran’s population has increased from 28 million in 1979 to 71 million today. It is a young and urbanized country, most of the population having been born after the revolution (60% under 25 years old). Yet Iran has changed less than one imagines since 1979. The world is captivated by regime behavior and image but, just like the Shah, the theocracy pushes an image of Iran as powerful and ancient nation while also trumpeting scientific and technological achievement.

Scientific achievement is one of the few things Iran’s youth can take pride in. However pro-American young Iranians are, they see a double standard in how their nuclear ambitions are treated when they look at Israel or Pakistan. They talk about the bomb as only a means to protect the national interest, not an “Islamic Bomb” as Pakistani’s do of theirs. They look at North Korea and see that the bomb commands American respect.

These national ambitions predate the Islamic Republic and will likely to outlast clerics. It is driven by national interest and self-image. Persian pride is real—just look at the popularity of pre-Islamic names among children. Iranians want respect based on their history, but this self-image is fantasy given the dire conditions of the country. Iran is a developing country with outsized ambitions. Mohamed El-Baradei once said that psychological factors are half of the problems in dealing with Iran.

The behavior of the country’s leadership reflects a struggle between Persian, Islamic, and other identities present in Iranian society. President Ahmadinejad received a plurality of less than one-third of all votes cast in his election. His economic promises are in shambles but his behavior reflects the country’s struggle with identity: he uses a more nationalistic vocabulary regarding the nuclear issue than any other Iranian politician. His presidency also reflects the continuing decline in clerical influence. He is 48 and not a cleric. Indeed, the clergy is slowly moving away from public and elected political positions. His senior advisors and the speaker of parliament are not clerics. Technocrats are ascendant with nationalism as a source of legitimacy in lieu of clerical authority. In 1980 the 140 out of 270 members of Parliament were clerics. Today that number is 32 of 290 members. These members may be conservative, but they are not clerics—they are nationalists. It is reasonable to ask whether secularism can rise from bottom to push the clerics out. The US must be careful about Iran—just as in 1979, we simply do not know enough. Our threats allow Iran’s leaders to foment nationalist sentiment and justify repression. That said, Iran is likely the most stable country in the region. Debate and expression are freer than in the Shah’s time. The clerics have become adept at managing a state of organized chaos. Our attempts to use the country’s youth as a political lever have gotten little traction. They are not interested, do not vote, and are more involved in educational, economic and civil society-related pursuits than politics. The nuclear program is popular among them (school field trips to nuclear facilities are not uncommon).

Iran’s leadership, having given the nuclear issue such stature, is in something of a bind. A 2007 poll shows 65% of Iranians approve of pursuing nuclear weapons and do not see their acquisition as destabilizing the region. Unless the country’s interests can be confined to a power generation program, Iran is likely to become a stable nuclear-armed state that will project power into the Gulf, a prospect making its neighbors nervous. Iranian’s do not take the prospect of Israeli attack seriously. The government is confident the US will not let that happen or attack themselves because of what Iran could do to US forces in Iraq and US and Israeli interests around the world via Hezbollah. An attack on Iran could give the clerics a new mission and new vitality. We should remember that the pro-American outlook of Iran’s citizenry is primarily due to their disaffection with the behavior of their own government. A US or Israeli attack would change that outlook dramatically.

Frank Pabian of Los Alamos National Laboratory presented a detailed overview of nuclear programs in Iran and Syria using commercial imagery and geospatial tools. Pabian walked through the process of how Iran’s fuel cycle programs became publicly known, details emanating from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) beginning in 2002 and corroborated by commercial imagery, helped lead the IAEA to uncover eighteen years of NPT safeguards violations. He outlined the extensive denial and deception measures used to maintain covert and clandestine facilities, mislead and obstruct inspections as well as sanitize compromised facilities prior to inspection. Sanctions appear not to have significantly slowed Iranian programs. Iran is speeding installation of centrifuges in underground halls and upgrading to “IR-2” designs despite UNSC insistence that it suspend enrichment activities. Iran is rushing to complete the reactor at Arak, which is ideal for production of weapons grade plutonium using indigenously sourced heavy water. Work on the Esfahan Fuel Manufacturing Plant is also moving at speed. There appears to be no hurry to complete mining and conversion capability at Saghand, despite the mine having been touted as the basis for an indigenous fuel cycle. Meanwhile, Iran is producing yellow cake at the formerly clandestine Gachin site. Tunneling continues near two nuclear sites and Iran continues to refuse accession to the Additional Protocol and further inspections.

Pabian pointed out the many factors that cast doubt on Iran’s avowedly peaceful intentions—the fact that a dissident group rather than the government revealed the existence of key facilities, that concealment and deception has been corroborated through commercial imagery and IAEA inspections, that it was the IAEA that detected enriched uranium through environmental sampling exposing previous Iranian declarations as false and that Iran has been forced to admit to eighteen years of safeguards violations. In the meantime Iranian cover-up tactics have improved, extending to razing entire facilities and removing soil and vegetation to frustrate inspections. The country has admitted to dealing with AQ Khan from 1987, refuses to freeze enrichment, will not abandon a reactor project useful for production of weapons grade plutonium and fanes interest in negotiation while maintaining a belligerent disposition.

Using commercial imagery and digital models, Pabian walked through the construction, concealment measures and destruction of Syria’s al Kibar reactor. Apparently similar in design to the DPRK’s reactor at Yongbyon—itself modeled on the British Magnox Reactor—al Kibar employed extensive concealment and signature suppression measures. This extended to housing the reactor facility behind a façade apparently intended to mimic a Byzantine fortress. The facility was destroyed by an Israeli air strike on September 6, 2007. Before the ruins were quickly razed and a new building constructed on the site, overhead imagery revealed an internal configuration consistent with reactor models.

Overall it is clear that Syria has been operating a two-track nuclear program—one under IAEA safeguards and another covert with DPRK assistance. Israel preempted completion of a plutonium production reactor with few repercussions. Syria has attempted to erase all evidence and continues to deceive IAEA investigations. What is not known, according to Pabian, is the source of the reactor’s fuel and whether the irradiated fuel was to be reprocessed and the plutonium weaponized. Whether any state other than the DPRK was involved is another question that has not yet been answered.

Proliferation Pathways and Non-State Actors

Anne Clunan of the National Security Affairs Department at the School of International Studies of the Naval Postgraduate School discussed so-called ungoverned spaces as they relate to non-state actors and WMD proliferation. She offered the concept of softened sovereignty as a paradigm to help focus on proliferation pathways. With multiple spheres of authority existing beyond both weak and strong states, Clunan looked at “dangerous spaces” and governance gaps in those states. Governance gaps can generate no-go zones in cities, rural insurgencies, virtual diasporas, radicalized immigrant pockets, refugees and “uncaptured urbanites”. Weak states with capacity gaps or functional holes may turn to surrogates (such as organized crime in the FSU) or may only be in nominal control of tribal or border regions (such as Afghanistan/Pakistan, Yemen/Saudi Arabia and Central Asia). Alternatively governed spaces might be controlled by warlords, insurgents, tribes, clans or could be hybrid areas where state and non-state elements have a cooperative relationship (such as favelas). Loosely regulated border trading zones and areas used as export processing zones (such as the UAE) are magnets for illegal flows and can act as proliferation hubs.

Dangerous spaces host dangerous flows—digital flows, dirty money and illicit economic activities. Proliferation pathways may be drawn to spaces where these flows overlap. Not all states are equally prone to nuclear or radiological proliferation problems. Most activities have taken place in areas that have their own NRM, areas geographically located between potential supplier and end-user states and places where dangerous spaces overlap. Many of these areas are within the former-Soviet Union. Chechnya is the most extreme example, having seen numerous thefts of radioactive material and allegedly serving as a transshipment point. Chechen groups have also built crude radiological dispersal devices. Abkhazia, a breakaway region of the Republic of Georgia has no known record of NRM transshipment, but is a safe haven for smugglers of all kinds. The region has the distinction of being the site of the only known theft of weapons grade NRM. Other thefts have also taken place, suggesting the region has lost control of its NRM. South Ossetia, another breakaway region of Georgia, was the site of a sting operation that recovered weapons usable material from a perpetrator thought to be a drug dealer. Nagorno-Karabakh, on the territory of Azerbaijan, sits between Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Iran, making it an ideal transshipment location. Moldova, including the breakaway Transdniestria region bordering Ukraine, has seen numerous smuggling and seizure events internally and at its borders. Moldovan-sourced NRM has also been seized abroad. Outside of the FSU, some reports suggest that Al Qaeda sought to purchase uranium from the FARC in Colombia. The number of NRM smuggling or theft incidents appears relatively low (IAEA puts it at 1079 government confirmed cases between 1993-2006 and the Database on Nuclear Smuggling, Theft and Orphan Radiation Sources [DSTO] puts the number at 1704). These are likely underreported due to limited participation and lack of access to dangerous areas (only 95 of 192 countries participate in the IAEA Illicit Trafficking Database). Clunan concludes that these areas have primarily been used for radiological smuggling and not other WMD materials. Overall there has been little impact from these activities, conventional weapons remaining effective, easier to acquire and more legitimate. Looking forward, Clunan suggests continuing with current countermeasures while realizing the limits of state-building strategies and urges a focus on those who govern these dangerous spaces in a world of softened sovereignty.

Doug Porch of the US Naval Postgraduate School presented an examination of the FARC’s intentions and capabilities regarding weapons of mass destruction. FARC is actively seeking to purchase enriched uranium, so far without success. The contemporary wisdom is that they want to sell it to a rogue state actor, rather than use it to make a “dirty bomb.” But the situation in Colombia is rapidly evolving with new FARC leadership coming to power in the wake of Colombian success in capturing or killing high-ranking members. FARC strategy is evolving, as is drug trafficking technology, in ways that may generate a more substantial WMD threat in coming years.

The recent recovery of two computers revealed negotiations to purchase enriched uranium. Colombian authorities believe the FARC is seeking enriched uranium for profit rather than use. FARC is a globalizing criminal enterprise and officials fear it will use drug smuggling routes to the US and Europe to transport WMD materials.

The FARC’s evolution as an organization will play a dominant role in determining whether any WMD threat is realized. The three possible scenarios described are an end of violent activities and/or disbanding by way of negotiation, accelerated urbanization and globalization, or atomization into small groups (or absorption into other groups). Negotiation is thought to be likely by many thanks to recent military successes against the group, but this scenario may ignore the FARC’s financial and political networks as well as ambitions to acquire more advanced military capabilities such as man-portable air-defense systems that could alter the military balance.

Urbanization and globalization would mean a shift of the FARC’s strategy from the rural areas to cities, with their inherent vulnerability to terrorist activities. Such a move would reflect the thinking of a new leadership raised and educated in urban areas - leaders capable of building networks in universities and shantytowns hosting increasingly leftist views. Such a course would also capitalize on growing leftist views throughout Latin America, allowing for strengthened transnational ties with political and operational benefits.

Atomization is already occurring in a limited way and continuation down this path would mean ever-increasing demobilization, defection to narco-traffickers and fragmentation into smaller groups. This is the historic pattern of violent groups in Colombia. Whether the threat to Colombia and the US is reduced or enhanced is uncertain and dependent on whatever new forms evolve from the FARC.

Slightly more certain is that the technologies and skills developed to smuggle illicit drugs is evolving in a direction that could offer a useful delivery system for a WMD. Of particular interest are the self-propelled semi-submersibles discovered in growing numbers shipping large loads of drugs. Their evolution suggests growing skills are being applied to design and construction. Use of increasingly sophisticated signature reduction techniques makes is cause for concern that they may be repurposed as a WMD delivery system for the right price.

Margaret Kosal of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology presented on Al Qaeda and unconventional weapons. She broadly examined intent, capability and vulnerability. Al Qaeda’s statements are a window into their intent. Usama bin Laden and others have made clear the group’s interest in acquiring WMD. Numerous unsuccessful plots also reveal intent to acquire or use radiological (Padilla in the US and Dhiran Barot, Nadeem Tarmohammed and Qaisar Shaffi in the UK) chemical (the “Mubtakkar” and 2004 London choking agent plots) biological (the 2003 UK ricin plot) and nuclear weapons (Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood and Pakistani nuclear scientists in 1998 and 2001). Capability can also be seen in theoretical and tacit knowledge described in AQ training manuals and communications. For instance, a series of letters recovered in late 2001 in Afghanistan reveal the activities of a scientist—thought to be a Pakistani microbiologist—setting up a small laboratory with biological samples and attempting to acquire anthrax and anthrax vaccines. Other reports indicate separate incidents of small-scale chemical agent testing on animals. In late 2006 to mid 2007 AQI was linked to 15 incidents using IEDs to disburse chlorine mainly in Al Anbar province. While the explosive component was responsible for most fatalities, many civilians and some 300 US soldiers were sickened by chlorine exposure. Worst-case US estimates of injuries and fatalities in an attack on any one of some 600 chemical facilities are in the hundreds-of-thousands or even low millions. Attacks on any of 2000 other facilities could produce between ten thousand and one hundred thousand casualties. While US vulnerability seems significant, Kosal suggests a number of reasons why AQ has not used CBRN weapons. Norms, sometimes expressed in the form of challenges within the Islamist community, are one factor. Disruption and success in the war on terror as well as a perception that targets have been hardened and are less vulnerable may be another. A track record of success with conventional weapons and the difficulty of weaponizing agents might also explain the lack of CBRN attacks. A more ominous explanation is that they are patient and awaiting an opportunity. Improvised chemical weapons have been used with marginal results while catastrophic chemical attacks may not have occurred due to their difficulty. Interest remains high in improvised chemical weapons and few constraints limit development of the needed capabilities. Outside of hoaxes, biological attacks are also less likely due to difficulty. The absence of radiological attacks is something of a puzzle given the potential return as a terror weapon on audiences. Nuclear weapons offer high consequence but are proportionally challenging to build or acquire.

Detecting, Disrupting and Closing Proliferation Pathways

Leonard Spector, Deputy Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies presented a sector-by-sector assessment of nonproliferation activities, providing an overview of current measures to combat WMD and missile trafficking, identifying gaps and suggesting measures to close them. His model for WMD materiel trafficking transactions includes:

• Organizers (including individuals, firms and terrorists groups)
• End-users (a limited pool of states and, potentially, terrorist groups)
• States of origin (advanced or emerging industrial states with the technology base necessary to supply the commodity)
• Transit states (having weak export controls)
• Finance (arrangements typically originate in end-user state or where organizer is situated then to country of origin and transit states and often include letters of credit from established banks)
• Transport

Intelligence is crucial in supporting every aspect of WMD trafficking by identifying and tracking actors, programs and transactions. Deterring organizers through criminal prosecutions and civil proceedings is important, but limited by the inadmissibility of intelligence information, inability to gain access to witnesses or documents in foreign jurisdictions, statutes of limitation and weak laws criminalizing WMD and missile trafficking. Efforts aimed at end-users are extensive and include treaties, inspections, sanctions, embargoes on sensitive goods, diplomacy, threats of and use of force and covert or overt regime change efforts. Efforts focusing on states of origin seek to establish and enforce strict export and domestic controls on WMD and missile components. UNSCR 1540 and resolutions aimed at Iran and North Korea are examples of such measures. Other measures include programs such as EXBS, Global Initiative against Nuclear Terrorism, Cooperative Threat Reduction, DOE MPC&A and GTRI, G-8 Partnership Against Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction. Deterring private entities through prosecutions and other measures is also used. Measures focusing on transit states seek to improve monitoring of transiting cargo and establishment of effective export controls by way of diplomacy and technical assistance. These measures are challenging because they often impede port operations and states-of-origin provide very little post-export tracking or inspections. Finance countermeasures are numerous and include freezing of state, firm, or individual assets, denial of access to the US banking system (putting pressure on EU and other global banking centers to act as well) and denial of public financing of exports and banning loan commitments. Measures against transport include interdiction (including coordinated programs such as the Proliferation Security Initiative) and UNSC resolutions banning transit or use of member state vessels or aircraft transporting WMD cargo to end-users and calling for cargo inspections (measures used or suggested against Iran and North Korea). Despite all of these efforts gaps can be seen in intelligence (Syria’s al-Kibar project may have been missed for six years), faltering prosecutions against organizers, the failure of UN actions to slow end-users (Iran), weak export control enforcement in countries of origin, lack of progress in transit states, lack of cooperation - particularly in Europe—hurting financial countermeasures and a questionable success rate for interdiction. Spector emphasized the need for better coordination with respect to implementation and the benefits of viewing disparate anti-proliferation measures as part of a larger “enterprise” while outlining steps to improve measures across all dimensions of WMD and missile trafficking.

Sharon Squassoni of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace spoke on managing proliferation in an expanded nuclear world. She looked at how the global expansion of nuclear power may feed proliferation. More reactors will mean more expertise, more materials in flow and more enrichment - bringing new vendors (such as China, India and South Korea) with uncertain nonproliferation commitments to the market. Countries new to nuclear will take time developing their safety and security culture. Whether to restrict enrichment and reprocessing has become a contentious issue while new breeder and burner reactors create additional stresses. The Nuclear Suppliers Group must decide on enrichment and reprocessing restrictions while the US must decide on or renegotiate nuclear cooperation agreements with India, Turkey, Russia and possibly Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. With some 25 states announcing new nuclear power plans in the last three years, the possibility of diversion or creation of a latent capability (especially in states with reprocessing or enrichment capability) must be considered in shaping this global expansion. More reactors mean more spent fuel, and decisions must be made on what to do with it. Where it will be stored, whether it will be reprocessed, or if new fuel cycle approaches will be used are open questions with proliferation implications. Whether the expansion will be as large as some predict will be unclear for many years, but the scale of sensitive material flows, the burden on inspection resources and the growing number of suppliers suggested by high growth scenarios is daunting. Even limited expansion would see many new reactors in the Middle East and Asia, creating dual-use infrastructure and expertise. Whatever the scenario, enrichment and reprocessing will be a challenge that must be addressed. A number of policy options are available, including vendor engagement to spread best practices, “multinationalizing” sensitive nuclear facilities, and adding restrictions to a fissile material cut-off treaty.

Proliferation Pathways for Middle Eastern States

Daniel Moran of the National Security Affairs Department at the School of International Studies of the Naval Postgraduate School discussed the history of Israel’s nuclear program. Beginning before the founding of the Israeli state, HEMED, the scientific arm of Haganah, recognized the need to develop skilled scientists in the nuclear field. Informal Franco-Israeli collaboration began as early as 1949 and would grow to become vital in developing atomic weapons. Both countries had initially tried and failed to gain access to American nuclear technology. In 1952 the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission was secretly stood up with the MoD. With the advent of the Atoms for Peace program in 1953, some 56 Israeli scientists would eventually train at US labs. As Israel tried and failed to obtain security guarantees from the US through the 1950s and early 1960s, its relationship with France grew more extensive. Some $600 million in weapons were purchased from France between 1955 and 1967, including $75 million in components that would help create the Dimona reactor—indeed a nuclear cooperation agreement including a thermal reactor was reached as part of planning for the 1956 Suez operation. Work on Dimona began in 1957, with the US becoming aware of it the following year by way of overhead imagery from U-2 flights and other means. France and Israel claimed the facility was purely for scientific research. In 1959 Israel obtained 20 tons of heavy water from Norway via the UK on condition of a 30-year inspection regime—the enforcement of which would prove less than comprehensive. February of 1960 saw the first French nuclear test, a test in which Israel was a silent partner. In the fall of that year, France would pressure Israel to disclose its program in exchange for continued assistance. That December, the US State Department revealed the existence of a secret Israeli nuclear program, sparking concerned discussions between both countries. Ben Gurion admits to the Knesset that Dimona is not a textile plant the next month and in April of 1961 Shimon Peres tells President Kennedy that Israel “will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region”, the ambiguous formulation that would serve as foundation for opacity as policy. Kennedy and Ben Gurion met the next month and establish a US inspection regime that would last until 1969 (Israel obtaining an agreement for US Hawk SAMS in the process). Dimona became operational in December of 1963 and an underground plutonium reprocessing facility was completed with French assistance sometime in the following year or in 1965. Israel refuses IAEA safeguards that year and negotiates an MOU with the US affirming the Peres formulation. A sub-critical underground test was detected in the Negev in October of 1966 and French sources claim that Israel possessed enough plutonium for one bomb by early 1967.

When France ended the supply of uranium to Israel that year, an elaborate Israeli covert operation (Operation PLUMBAT) that would end with a freighter delivering tons of yellowcake obtained from Dutch sources by a West German front company into Israeli hands commenced. Israel would later turn to South Africa for uranium, a relationship that would become much more extensive in the late 1970s. Egyptian overflights of the Dimona area in the weeks before the Six-Day War were cited among Israel’s casus belli. By early 1968 the CIA reported that Israel had produced four bombs. US inspections end the next year and the US quietly delivered nuclear-capable Phantom jets. Nuclear matters would come to a head in the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict when, in the wake of Syria’s breakthrough, Golda Meir ordered preliminary assembly of thirteen atomic bombs before the Arab advance was turned. As the US and Soviet Union escalated their involvement and rhetoric, a Soviet ship allegedly carrying nuclear weapons docked in Alexandria and Soviet airborne divisions prepared to intervene, prompting the US to set its forces to DEFCON III before the crisis was resolved. By 1974 US estimates placed the Israeli arsenal at 10-20 weapons. The following ten years would see a move from an “existential deterrence” to an operational mix of nuclear weapons whose characteristics are still not known. The alleged 1979 joint South African-Israeli test in the Southern Indian Ocean may have been part of this development path. By 1986 the Israeli arsenal was - according to whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu—more than 200 weapons. After a period of modernization and diminishing opacity, Israel had truly become a nuclear weapons state by the 1990s. The country’s nuclear program was publicly debated in the Knesset for the first time in 2000, with Shimon Peres and other prominent members defending their policy of nuclear ambiguity. That year Israel was also reported to be developing a submarine-based nuclear missile capability. A curiously timed Israeli documentary on the country’s nuclear program aired on Al-Jazeera in December of 2001. 2004 saw Iran’s foreign minister threaten retaliation against Dimona in response to any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facility. In the wake of calls by Arab governments for a “nuclear free Middle East”, Israel’s nuclear program has been put in the peculiar position of acting as something of an Arab bargaining chip in the regional campaign to restrain Iran’s nuclear development.

Chaim Braun of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University presented on possible proliferation pathways from the nuclear programs of GCC member states. He outlined the nuclear proliferation concerns that hang over the Middle East. Sudden interest in nuclear power programs seem to be partially in response to developments in Iran, but the larger dynamic at work is the potential for rich oil exporting countries under security threat to turn to poor states with WMD technologies to meet their needs. Nuclear power will not meet these countries’ energy needs over the next two decades making their sudden interest concerning. The potential for latent nuclear weapons capabilities might be realized should independent nuclear fuel supplies and enrichment capabilities be developed. Developing nuclear power programs will be a long-term process requiring at least fifteen years. Without overt or covert fuel cycle facilities NPP programs are of little proliferation value. Whether countries will practice self-denial as Naps grow in number is an open question. Reliance on western powers for security guarantees will help maintain adherence to nonproliferation regimes as long as it continues. Looking at programs in the region, Braun believes that those in the UAE seem safe in the in the mid-term. Saudi programs are of more concern given the size and wealth of the country, possession of potential delivery systems (Chinese CSS-2 IRBMs), closeness to Pakistan and view of itself as a leader of the Arab world. Yemen’s interest in nuclear power, with its questionable policies and dubious stability is concerning—as is the willingness of western consultants to oblige it. Countries outside of the GCC must also be considered when assessing proliferation risks. Development of nuclear fuel cycle capabilities in other Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt or Algeria might pose long-term concerns of joint breakout in concert with GCC countries with NPPs. Out-of-region states might also support joint breakout attempts (as has been seen recently in Syria). Braun emphasized that proliferation threats from these programs would only be realized in the long-term and that steps can be taken to influence them along that timeline. He suggested the possibility of supporting conventional, renewable energy programs and construction of a regional high-voltage transmission network to alleviate any actual energy concerns. Supplies might be made contingent on all countries interested in NPPs to join in Comprehensive Safeguard Agreements with the IAEA and ratify the Additional Protocol. Supporting the IAEA and developing international nuclear infrastructure over the long-term would help better prepare for a cooperative relationship with regional nuclear programs. Supporting out-of-region GCC enrichment plant proposals would be another potential step - as would support for a regional mutual inspection regime and partial regional WMD free zone proposals. Such a system might eventually bring Israel and Iran into a WMDFZ and mutual inspection system.

Agenda 

Tomorrow’s Proliferation Pathways: Weak States, Rogues, and Non-States

July 17-18, 2008, Belfast, Maine

Hosted by the School of Policy and International Affairs, University of Maine and theNaval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA

Sponsored by the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office, Defense Threat Reduction Agency

Project Directors:

Professor James A. Russell
Co-Director, Center for Contemporary Conflict; Senior Lecturer,
Department of National Security Affairs,
Naval Postgraduate School
jarussel@nps.edu

Professor Bahman Baktiari
Director, Research & Academic Programming,
School of Policy and International Affairs
University of Maine
bahman.baktiari@umit.maine.edu

Wednesday,  16 July

1700 – 1830 Conference Registration:  Comfort Inn Ocean 's Edge, 159 Searsport Avenue, Belfast, Maine 04915, Phone: (207) 338-2090, Fax: (207) 338-2528, E-mail: comfortinnbelfast@adelphia.net, Web Site: http://www.comfortinnbelfast.com/home.html

Thursday, 17  July

0800 – 0845 Introductions

Bahman Baktiari, School of Policy and International Affairs, UMaine

David Hamon, Deputy Director, Advanced Systems and Concepts Office (ASCO), Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)

James Russell, Naval Postgraduate School

0845 – 0930 Opening Address

HonorableMary Alice Hayward, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy and Negotiations, Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation

0930 – 1045 Proliferation Pathways: Conceptual Frameworks for the Strategic Environment

Panel Chair: Bahman Baktiari, School of Policy and International Affairs, UMaine

James Russell, Naval Postgraduate School, “Globalization, Non-State Actors, and Proliferation Pathways”

Deepti Choubey, Nonproliferation Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “(Rethinking) Proliferation Pathways”

1045 – 1100 Break

1100-1230 South Asian Proliferation Pathways

P anel Chair: Jim Wirtz,  Naval Postgraduate School

Bruce Riedel, Saban Center, Brookings Institution, “Pakistan’s Proliferation Pathways”

Neil Joeck, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, “Proliferation Pathways and India’s Nuclear Program”

1 230 – 1330  Lunch, Hutchinson Center Atrium

1330 – 1530  Proliferation Pathways and Russia

Panel Chair: Capt. James Settele, USN, University of Maine

Steven Blank, US Army War College, “Russia’s Evolving Role in WMD Proliferation”

Igor Khripunov, Center for International Trade and Security, University of Georgia, “Russia’s Security Culture and WMD Proliferation”

Break

1545 – 1700 Challenges for Intelligence

Panel Chair: Paul Holman, School of Policy and International Affairs, UMaine

John Lauder, “Collection and Analysis: The Problem of Warning”

Jim Wirtz, Naval Postgraduate School, “Deterrence, Intelligence and Proliferation in an Age of Uncertainty”

1800 Reception hosted by Bangor Foreign Policy Forum

Hutchinson Center Atrium

Friday, 18 July

0800 – 0930 Proliferation Pathways for Rogues: The Iran Program

Panel Chair: Kaveh Haghkerdar, Maine Maritime Academy

Bahman Baktiari, School of Policy and International Affairs, UMaine, “The Nuclear Enigma: The Ambiguities of Iranian Politics”

Frank Pabian, Senior Nonproliferation Infrastructure Analyst at Los Alamos National Laboratory, “Evidence from Imagery: An Open and Shut Case? – the Iran and Syrian Nuclear Programs”

0930 -0945 Break

0945 – 1115 Proliferation Pathways and Non-State Actors

Panel Chair: Leonard Spector, Non-Proliferation Center, Monterey Institute for International Studies

Anne Clunan, Naval Postgraduate School, “Ungoverned Spaces, Non-State Actors, and WMD Proliferation”

Douglas Porch, Naval Postgraduate School, “FARC WMD, the Future of the Colombia Connection”

Margaret Kosal,  Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology, “Al Qaeda and Unconventional Weapons”

1115 – 1230  Detecting, Disrupting and Closing Proliferation Pathways

Panel Chair: Kenneth Hillas, Deputy Chief of Mission, Warsaw, Poland

Leonard Spector, Non-Proliferation Center, Monterey Institute for International Studies, “Export Controls and Proliferation Networks”

Sharon Squassoni, Nonproliferation Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “Managing Proliferation in an Expanded Nuclear World”

1230-1330 Lunch, Hutchinson Center Atrium

1330-1445  Proliferation Pathways for Middle Eastern States

Panel Chair: James Russell, Naval Postgraduate School

Daniel Moran, Naval Postgraduate School, “Israel’s Nuclear Program”

Chaim Braun, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, “The GCC’s Nuclear Programs”

1445 - 1500 Break

1500 – 1700 Concluding Speech and Discussion

Discussants:

David Hamon, Deputy Director, Advanced Systems and Concepts Office (ASCO), Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)

Bahman Baktiari, School of Policy and International Affairs, UMaine

James Russell, Naval Postgraduate School