Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

National Defense University

Washington, D.C. 
Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

National Defense University

Since its inception in 1994, the Center for the Study of Weapons of 

Mass Destruction (WMD Center) has been at the forefront of 

research on the implications of weapons of mass destruction for 

U.S. security. Originally focusing on threats to the military, the 

WMD Center now also applies its expertise and body of research to 

the challenges of homeland security. The center’s mandate includes 

research, education, and outreach. Research focuses on understanding the security challenges posed by WMD and on fashioning 

effective responses thereto. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff has designated the center as the focal point for WMD education in the joint professional military education system. Education 

programs, including its courses on countering WMD and consequence management, enhance awareness in the next generation 

of military and civilian leaders of the WMD threat as it relates to 

defense and homeland security policy, programs, technology, and 

operations. As a part of its broad outreach efforts, the WMD Center 

hosts annual symposia on key issues bringing together leaders and 

experts from the government and private sectors. Visit the center 

online at www.ndu.edu/WMDCenter/. 

For additional information, including publication requests, please contact the 

Center directly at WMDWebmaster@ndu.edu or (202) 685–4234 or visit the Center 

Web site at 

http://www.ndu.edu/wmdcenter/index.cfm

Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction: 

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Countering Weapons 

of Mass Destruction: 

Looking Back, 

Looking Ahead

by Paul I. Bernstein, 

John P. Caves, Jr., 

and W. Seth Carus

Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Occasional Paper 7

National Defense University Press

Washington, D.C.

October 2009
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First printing, October 2009
vii

Contents

Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Looking Back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

 The Clinton Years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

 The Bush Combating WMD Strategy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

 Why Have We Not Been Attacked with WMD?. . . . . . . . . 12

Looking Ahead. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

 Nuclear Proliferation Challenges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

 Chemical and Biological Proliferation Challenges. . . . . . . 28

 The Obama Administration: Initial Observations. . . . . . . . 37

Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

 Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

 About the Authors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

ix

Acknowledgments

This occasional paper from the Center for the Study of Weapons 

of Mass Destruction (WMD Center) at the National Defense 

University (NDU) examines the evolution of U.S. perceptions of 

the WMD threat and major responses to that threat from the Clinton 

administration to the first few months of the Obama administration. It 

also considers why our worst fears for WMD use and proliferation have 

not been realized and anticipates some of the major WMD challenges 

that lie ahead.

An important basis for the paper is the presentations and discussions conducted during the WMD Center’s eighth annual symposium, 

WMD Proliferation and Use: Have We Been Effective, Lucky, or Overly 

Concerned? held at NDU May 7–8, 2008. While all symposium sessions 

were off the record and all comments delivered on a nonattribution 

basis, the authors wish to thank the many speakers and panelists for 

their contributions to that event and, hence, to this paper. In particular, 

the WMD Center thanks the Honorable Michael Chertoff, then Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Honorable Ellen O. Tauscher, 

then U.S. Representative and Chairman, Subcommittee on Strategic 

Forces, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. House of Representatives, 

for delivering the symposium’s keynote addresses. The WMD Center 

also expresses its appreciation to the symposium’s other key participants: Colonel H. David Belote, USAF, Ambassador J.D. Crouch II, Mr. 

Robert J. Einhorn, Ms. Jane Fletcher, Mr. Brian Green, Ms. Rebecca 

K.C. Hersman, Ms. Laura S.H. Holgate, Ambassador Robert G. Joseph, 

Ambassador Donald A. Mahley, Ms. Patricia McNerney, Dr. James 

N. Miller, Dr. John Mueller, Dr. Michael Nacht, Mr. Vayl Oxford, Dr. 

James B. Petro, Dr. Barry R. Posen, Dr. Brad Roberts, Dr. James A. Tegnelia, Dr. Tara O’Toole, Mr. Robert Walpole, and Lieutenant General 

Frances C. Wilson, USMC.

The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. John F. Reichart and 

Ambassador Greg Schulte for their helpful comments on the paper.

1

Looking Back

Nearly 20 years have passed since the United States began worrying 

in earnest about the risks of regional weapons of mass destruction 

(WMD) proliferation. In the run-up to Operation Desert Storm in 

1990, the Department of Defense (DOD) had no systematic understanding 

of or approach to prosecuting a regional war against an adversary armed 

with and prepared to use nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. The 

improvisational efforts to prepare for possible Iraqi WMD use gave way 

after the war to a concerted effort during the Bill Clinton administration 

to prepare the Armed Forces to confront WMD-armed regional adversaries, while working to defuse such threats through diplomacy—coercive 

and otherwise. The George W. Bush administration brought to the WMD 

problem a different set of assumptions and beliefs that led to new areas of 

emphasis and new approaches, many of them shaped by the need, after the 

attacks of 2001, to confront more directly the threat of WMD use by violent 

nonstate actors. The following traces the general evolution of the countering WMD enterprise in the Clinton and Bush administrations.

The Clinton Years

The Clinton administration saw proliferation as a growing danger, 

and the need to make nonproliferation a higher priority was a common 

theme in both formal policy statements and the President’s public remarks. 

But proliferation was also a policy imperative to be integrated into the 

administration’s larger vision of achieving stability through economic 

expansion, globalization, and democratization. The administration’s first 

major policy statement on nonproliferation was explicit in articulating this 

linkage, offering three principles to guide policy:

■ Our national security requires us to accord higher priority to nonproliferation and to make it an integral element of our relations 

with other nations.

■ To strengthen U.S. economic growth, democratization abroad, 

and international stability, we actively seek expanded trade and 

technology exchange with nations, including former adversaries, 

that abide by global nonproliferation norms.

■ We need to build a new consensus—embracing the executive and 

legislative branches, industry and public, and friends abroad—to 
2 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

promote effective nonproliferation efforts and integrate our nonproliferation and economic goals.1

It was a core belief of the President and his advisors that security 

and economics were intertwined and that security and global influence 

were deeply dependent on continued economic vitality and accelerated engagement with the global economy. With respect to WMD, the 

continuing challenge was how to build a system of increasing pressures 

against proliferation within a world of increasingly open trade and 

technology. As an example, the need to balance economics and security 

directly influenced efforts to reshape Cold War–era export controls that 

were viewed as placing unfair burdens on legitimate commerce and being 

overly focused on former adversaries.2

Within this broad framework, Clinton administration policy demonstrated a strong commitment to traditional nonproliferation strategies as well as recognition of new WMD challenges requiring different 

approaches. With regard to the former, the Clinton team inherited from 

the administration of George H.W. Bush an agenda aimed at strengthening the international nonproliferation treaties regime. To further advance 

this agenda, the Clinton administration secured ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and an indefinite extension of the 

nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), negotiated (but failed to secure 

ratification of) a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and continued efforts to 

strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC).3

There were also new problems to which the international treaty 

regime was less responsive. These demanded attention, and in the 

Clinton years significant effort was devoted to managing three critical 

proliferation challenges that promised to create serious new dangers if 

not contained: “loose nukes” that might emanate from the former Soviet 

Union, rogue state WMD programs and capabilities, and the prospect 

of WMD terrorism. These challenges were uniquely post–Cold War in 

character and were closely related. The vast Soviet enterprise—materials, technology, expertise—that during the Cold War produced countless weapons of mass destruction to be used against the United States 

and its allies could now plausibly become a source of WMD capability 

for hostile states or even terror organizations with the necessary means. 

Implementation of the centerpiece Nunn-Lugar legislation and its various offspring in the Departments of State and Energy for cooperative 

threat reduction became a major nonproliferation focus of the Clinton administration, which argued that these programs were “defense 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 3

by other means”—as valuable as many other programs in the defense 

budget in their contribution to managing security threats.4 And in fact 

new DOD organizations and budget authorities were created to manage 

cooperative threat reduction activities.

In parallel, DOD civilian leadership sought to integrate the threat 

posed by WMD into all aspects of its planning and operations. While the 

United States and coalition forces did not confront Iraqi WMD on the 

battlefield in Operation Desert Storm, an important lesson from the war 

was that such weapons could be an important feature of future conflicts 

against motivated rogue states. The discovery in the postwar period of 

how aggressively Iraq had been pursuing WMD served to underscore this 

lesson, as did the emerging crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program. 

The administration hoped to deal decisively with these problems through 

various forms of coercive diplomacy—the Agreed Framework with North 

Korea and the containment strategy vis-à-vis Iraq—but prudent defense 

planning demanded that U.S. Armed Forces be prepared to fight these 

adversaries on a WMD battlefield.

It was a core belief of Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and his deputies 

that WMD could be a decisive obstacle to prevailing at acceptable cost in 

regional wars. If the keys to victory in such wars were U.S. political will to 

prevail and its overwhelming conventional advantage in power projection 

and warfighting, then it was essential to make sure these were not put at 

risk by a rogue state’s asymmetric WMD capability. Therefore, countering this threat needed to be a central thrust of defense planning. Thus was 

born the Defense Counterproliferation Initiative (DCI) in December 1993. 

Unveiling this initiative to a Washington, DC, audience, Aspin explicitly 

recognized the limitations of a strategy based solely or largely on nonproliferation treaties, export controls, and diplomacy, and characterized the DCI 

as “making the essential change demanded by this increased threat . . . adding the task of protection to the task of prevention.”5

The DCI motivated a number of important developments. Notable 

among these were:

■ a series of studies and analyses to gain a stronger and more detailed understanding of the WMD technical threat and the operational impact of WMD use on the execution of war plans, focused 

largely on chemical and, to a lesser extent, biological threats

■ a more systematic and better resourced approach to define requirements and acquire capabilities for both passive and active 
4 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

defense, and the means to destroy an adversary’s WMD weapons 

and infrastructure (widely referred to as counterforce)

■ consolidation of all proliferation-related policy functions in the 

Office of the Secretary of Defense under a single Assistant Secretary, and consolidation under a single Deputy Assistant Secretary 

of counterproliferation and contingency/war planning functions

■ development of a standalone counterproliferation concept plan as 

guidance to the regional commands

■ creation of cooperative counterproliferation activities with allies and 

security partners, including major initiatives in the North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization, Persian Gulf region, and East Asia.

In these dimensions, the effort to integrate the WMD threat more 

directly into defense planning gained some traction and laid the foundation for more ambitious planning and organizational developments in the 

post-Clinton period. However, the avowed goal of civilian policymakers 

to “institutionalize counterproliferation as an organizing principle in 

every facet of military activity” was perhaps never a realistic one.6

The counterproliferation initiative recognized the potential for 

WMD terrorism, but was concerned principally with preparing for conflict with a WMD-armed state. By 1995, the combined impact of the first 

attack on the World Trade Center, the bombing of the Murrah Federal 

Office Building in Oklahoma City, and the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas 

attack in Tokyo was elevating anxiety about terrorists acquiring and using 

unconventional weapons. Soon after, senior national security officials were 

speaking openly about WMD terrorism as a major concern.7 At the highest level, the Clinton administration sought to put in place a framework 

for organizing the Federal Government’s efforts to prevent and respond to 

acts of terrorism designed to create mass casualties or mass disruption. A 

Presidential Decision Directive (PDD), “U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism,” 

was issued in June 1995. It gave high priority to developing capabilities to 

counter WMD terrorism, directed a lead agency approach for responding 

to both domestic and overseas terror incidents, and called for coordination between crisis and consequence management agencies in resolving a 

WMD terrorist incident.8 This framework was updated and expanded in 

May 1998 in PDD–62 (“Combating Terrorism”) and PDD–63 (“Critical 

Infrastructure Protection”). PDD–62, according to an unclassified White 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 5

House fact sheet, clarified and strengthened the roles and responsibilities 

of key agencies and established the Office of the National Coordinator 

for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-Terrorism to oversee 

interagency efforts.9 PDD–63, which was unclassified, built on the recommendations of the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection. It established a new national-level structure to redress identified 

infrastructure vulnerabilities and set goals for enhanced protection.

In responding to an act of WMD terrorism, the Defense Department would have significant capabilities to contribute—though it was 

not clear that sufficient units, assets, and expertise existed to support a 

robust response to both a domestic terror event and an overseas warfighting contingency involving WMD. This possibility, even if it may have 

appeared remote to some, raised concerns about high demand/low density assets that continue to be heard today.

The Bush Combating WMD Strategy

George W. Bush and his national security team were, by and large, 

skeptics with respect to traditional disarmament diplomacy and bi- and 

multi-lateral arms control. They believed developments in the 1990s validated this skepticism. The NPT regime had been ineffectual in confronting 

important cases of noncompliance, allowing rogue state nuclear programs 

to advance and contributing to a growing crisis of confidence in the treaty. 

The BWC established a useful norm, but the measures being negotiated to 

strengthen it could not ensure compliance and could disadvantage both 

biodefense activities and the commercial interests of U.S. industry. In both 

the nuclear and biological cases, it was not clear that cumbersome treatybased systems could keep pace with and adapt to the increasingly dynamic 

processes by which advanced technologies were spreading around the 

globe. The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was obstructing U.S. ability to develop effective missile defenses. A new strategic relationship with 

Russia argued against negotiating another arms control agreement such as 

the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). North Korea could not be 

trusted to abide by the 1994 Agreed Framework, and the cooperative threat 

reduction (CTR) programs perhaps had outlived their usefulness.

It is difficult to say precisely what course Bush administration policy 

would have taken had the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent anthrax attacks not occurred. It seems clear, though, that the salient 

prospect of catastrophic terrorism led the President to conclude that a 

comprehensive campaign against WMD proliferation was imperative. 

The reasoning was straightforward: more proliferation only increased 
6 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

the chances that WMD would fall into the hands of terrorists bent on 

horrific violence. In particular, the state programs of hostile proliferators 

could not be allowed to become a source of WMD for terrorists. Ambiguity about these programs—something that might have been tolerable 

before 9/11—could no longer be accepted; they needed to be rolled back 

or prevented from reaching their goal. It was not enough to contain 

and deter state proliferators. Deterrence was challenging enough and a 

far from certain prospect given that rogue state leaders could be high 

risk-takers and prone to miscalculation. But even if leaders in Baghdad, 

Pyongyang, and Tehran could be deterred from using their WMD against 

the United States or its allies, how could they be dissuaded from passing 

WMD knowledge and technology—and perhaps even weapons—to terror 

groups sharing a profoundly anti-American agenda?

Faced with this set of dangers, emphasis would now be on a proactive strategy to address the gathering threat posed by those possessing 

or seeking WMD—in particular, those seemingly intent on acquiring 

nuclear weapons capability. The 2002 National Security Strategy of the 

United States of America (NSS) put it plainly: “The United States can 

no longer rely solely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. . . . 

We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and 

objectives of today’s adversaries. . . . The United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.”10 The so-called preemption strategy, rightly or 

wrongly, came to define for much of the world the whole of U.S. foreign 

and defense policy, which was widely caricatured as reckless and unilateralist. Viewed in less emotional terms, the NSS signaled an aggressive 

search for a stronger and more diverse set of tools with which to fight an 

increasingly complex problem.

The National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (NS–

CWMD), issued just 3 months later, offered a more detailed framework for 

developing this toolkit. The use of the term combating WMD reflected an 

effort to overcome continuing contention over the primacy to be accorded 

nonproliferation and counterproliferation as planning paradigms. The 

document outlined a comprehensive strategy in which both nonproliferation and counterproliferation were critical pillars (along with a third, consequence management). An attempt to motivate the entire U.S. Government 

to develop counter-WMD strategies and to demonstrate to a larger audience that U.S. strategy was balanced in its emphasis on both “active nonproliferation diplomacy” and military preparedness, the NS–CWMD made 

only one reference to the potential need to act preemptively and otherwise 

steered clear of the controversy that had accompanied the earlier NSS.
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 7

Through these early strategy documents, as well as contemporaneous and subsequent policy decisions, one can discern a number of core 

ideas that help to define the Bush approach to combating WMD:

■ WMD are the object of strategy. No longer simply an impediment 

to military operations, WMD represent a systemic threat to U.S. 

security and therefore are now the strategic objective itself. This 

requires attacking the problem much closer to its source—before 

it confronts us as a strategic or operational threat. The emphasis 

must be on creating opportunities and the means to prevent proliferation and attack the proliferation process itself.

■ Strengthen the international nonproliferation regime where possible, but develop a complementary framework for collaborative 

action outside the regime. Reforming and strengthening the international treaty regime are important, but are not enough. Equally if not more vital are new approaches outside the regime that are 

focused less on making and enforcing rules and more on practical 

cooperation with security partners aimed at building political will 

and operational capacity.

■ The responsible exercise of sovereignty is critical. States must act 

on their responsibilities, not simply seek to leverage their rights in 

the international system. And all states with a stake in containing 

the WMD threat have an obligation to fight proliferation on their 

own territory, in the global commons, through formal collective 

security mechanisms, and as part of “coalitions of the willing.”11

■ Deal with the “WMD world” as it is: a complex, diverse landscape. 

Combating WMD policy must be rooted in political reality and an 

objective assessment of what is possible. The United States cannot 

avoid distinguishing between friend and foe and between states 

that behave well and those that do not. States need to be treated accordingly, even if this makes it more difficult to promote universal nonproliferation principles. The character of regimes counts, 

and sometimes behavior is as important as rules. And as a global 

power, the United States cannot look at combating WMD in isolation. At times, broader regional or geopolitical goals may demand 

higher priority.12
8 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

In practice, Bush administration policy emphasized four major thrusts.

Tighten the NPT. The need to shore up the NPT regime was first 

articulated by the President in remarks at the National Defense University 

in February 2004.13 Citing the progress that states such as Iran appeared 

to be making in developing weapons-related capabilities under cover of 

ostensibly peaceful nuclear programs, the President called for a “safe, 

orderly system to field civilian nuclear power plants without adding to the 

danger of weapons proliferation.” Specifically, he proposed that in return 

for reliable, affordable access to civilian reactor fuel, states without existing full-scale enrichment and reprocessing capabilities renounce such 

capabilities, and that the rules governing nuclear trade be revised accordingly. He also called for strengthening the inspection capabilities of the 

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The proposal to limit the 

further spread of enrichment and reprocessing technology recognized 

that the NPT “loophole” had become the center of gravity of the nuclear 

proliferation problem, and that new approaches to the nuclear fuel cycle 

were required—especially given projections of significant global growth 

in nuclear power. Two years later, in February 2006, the administration 

unveiled the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), an ambitious 

initiative to advance the goal outlined by the President. The GNEP aimed, 

among other things, to create a market-driven fuel services program to 

provide civilian reactor fuel, and to develop proliferation-resistant technologies to recycle spent fuel. While GNEP has generated some interest 

at the international level, significant issues have been raised about both its 

technical and political elements.

Create an International Partnership Network. Recognizing the 

limits to institutional reform of the nonproliferation regime and looking for more flexible tools grounded in political consensus rather than 

legally binding undertakings, the administration introduced a number 

of initiatives it hoped would be responsive to the unique challenges 

posed by relatively new problems, such as sophisticated WMD black 

markets and WMD terrorism. The goal was to create a framework for 

action among likeminded states.14 The first of these, the Group of Eight 

Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass 

Destruction (2002), built on existing cooperative threat reduction programs to increase Western funding for such activities. The Proliferation 

Security Initiative (2003), which focused on interdicting illicit trafficking 

in WMD, and the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (2006) 

were often cited by administration officials as signaling a markedly new 

approach to international cooperation. By design, these initiatives were 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 9

organized not around large, standing bureaucracies or secretariats, but 

rather around a set of actionable principles, arrived at by political consensus, to enable concrete steps to reduce the WMD threat and increase the 

capacity of states to act.

Other initiatives, such as targeted measures directed at the financial 

flows that facilitate proliferation, sought to create new forms of international leverage against specific problem states. Still others, such as 

United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1540 (2004), created an obligation and provided a universal framework for all states to 

develop the means—in physical protection, materials control, criminal 

law, and export, border, and financial controls—to prevent and counter 

proliferation activities on their own territory. Weak governance and weak 

laws were too easily exploited. Discovering that many countries lack 

established legal frameworks to deal with WMD and terrorism reinforced 

administration thinking, dating to 9/11 if not earlier, that national and 

international law needed to be made more responsive to the new threats 

posed by WMD and nihilistic terrorism.15

Roll Back or Contain Rogue State Programs. This was undoubtedly 

the most contentious aspect of Bush administration policy, often exposing serious divisions among senior advisors in the search for an effective 

formula for tackling the rogue state problem. The 2002 National Strategy 

to Combat WMD had explicitly called for country-specific strategies, 

and in some cases, such as Iraq and Libya, policy consensus appears to 

have been achieved fairly easily. Consensus on the harder cases of North 

Korea and Iran proved far more elusive, pitting “purists” against “pragmatists” and “neocons” against “realists” in the battle for policy dominance. 

There were at least three approaches to rollback in the Bush years: regime 

change through preventive war, traditional coercive diplomacy, and what 

may be called “strategic cooperative disarmament.”

Preventive war to oust the Saddam Hussein regime was justified 

based on the gathering threat of Iraqi WMD and the belief at the highest 

levels of the administration that coercive diplomacy had run its course. In 

this sense, it was the first “counterproliferation war,” a faithful expression 

of the 2002 National Security Strategy, and an action that the administration hoped would signal to other rogue states the U.S. determination 

to act decisively against radical threats. As the United States became 

ensnared in Iraq, however, it seemed just as likely that these states would 

see Washington as less able to pursue strategies that implicitly or explicitly threatened military action—and would therefore be emboldened to 

resist international pressures to limit or roll back their WMD capabilities.
10 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

The case of Libya comes closest to expressing the “strategic cooperative disarmament” ideal posed by the administration in its January 2003 

document, “What Does Disarmament Look Like?”16 This White House 

paper, produced in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, described 

successful cooperative disarmament as a strategic decision made by the 

highest level leadership to voluntarily and transparently surrender WMD 

through a dedicated organizational mechanism subject to cooperative 

international verification. The animating thought behind this construct 

was that commitments made by states under duress or through coercion 

are not reliable and will not be honored. Put differently, coercive diplomacy built around an adversarial bargaining process will ultimately prove 

quixotic. Intended to set a standard for Iraqi behavior in complying with 

UN resolutions, this document more closely describes the process leading 

to Libya’s decision in December 2003 to dismantle its WMD and missile 

programs. Thereafter, this process was frequently touted by administration officials as a model for dealing with rogue state WMD programs.

Realistically, it was not a model that could be applied to the tougher 

challenges posed by a more determined North Korea and Iran. In determining how to deal with these countries, the basic choice seemed to 

be between confrontation and engagement (that is, negotiation). With 

respect to North Korea, the dominant view in the President’s first term—

that we simply could not negotiate with Pyongyang—gave way in the 

second term to a process of “carrot and stick” diplomacy that leveraged 

the influence, notably, of China, but also involved other key regional 

players (Japan, South Korea, and Russia). This process led first to the 

Six-Party Agreement of September 2005 and then, in the aftermath of 

North Korea’s nuclear test of October 2006, the Initial Actions Agreement of February 2007. At the time President Bush left office, there was 

still no follow-on agreement with North Korea regarding how to verify its 

nuclear dismantlement activities. Thus, decisive progress remained elusive—no doubt validating for some the idea that bargaining with Pyongyang will never yield a satisfactory outcome.

Similarly, policy toward Iran evolved from a largely confrontational 

stance in the early years to a more traditional form of coercive diplomacy. 

In return for suspending enrichment and reprocessing-related activities, 

Western powers offered Tehran a range of economic, political, and security benefits. The alternative was to face increasing international isolation and pressure. Unwilling to talk directly to the Iranian regime absent 

a suspension of enrichment, Washington ceded the negotiating lead to 

its European allies, but did offer high-level diplomatic engagement once 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 11

meaningful progress had been made. The coercive element of this strategy emphasized UNSC sanctions (three rounds beginning in 2006) and 

U.S. unilateral sanctions, but also included the threat of military action 

to deny Iran a nuclear weapons capability. Neither the “carrots”—increasingly attractive incentives—nor the “sticks”—increasingly watered-down 

sanctions—were successful in moving the Iranians, who seemed intent 

on playing for time while expanding their capacity to produce nuclear 

material. By the time the Bush administration left office, many experts 

had concluded that Iran had accumulated enough low-enriched uranium 

(LEU) to support fabrication of at least one nuclear weapon if the LEU 

were to be enriched to weapons grade.17

Improve Defense Preparedness. There were few radical changes in 

the Bush approach to defense planning for the WMD threat. One notable 

exception was the strong commitment to accelerate the development and 

deployment of a layered ballistic missile defense (BMD) system, especially a “national missile defense” capability to provide some degree of 

protection to the homeland from long-range missiles that could originate 

from North Korea or Iran. This commitment led to abrogation of the 

ABM Treaty, an aggressive research, development, test, and evaluation 

(RDT&E) program launched in 2001, a significant increase in funding for 

missile defense activities, and a Presidential decision in December 2002 

directing early deployment of an initial capability to defend the United 

States against limited missile attacks. This initial operational capability 

was fielded in late 2004, and while it has since improved, questions persist 

about its likely effectiveness.

In addition, since 2005 there has been a concerted effort to better conceptualize and organize combating WMD as a DOD mission. In 

January 2005, U.S. Strategic Command was designated “lead combatant commander” for combating WMD, charged with “integrating and 

synchronizing” all DOD activities in this area and being the principal 

warfighter advocate for supporting capabilities. In February 2006, the 

National Military Strategy for Combating WMD outlined major strategic 

objectives as well as eight military mission areas ranging from security 

cooperation to consequence management—including missions reflecting the growing importance of WMD interdiction and WMD elimination (the latter based on the experience of Operation Iraqi Freedom). 

In parallel, a global concept plan for combating WMD was produced 

as a common planning template for the regional commands. A series of 

capabilities-based assessments was performed to support the development and advocacy of requirements.
12 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

These and related steps were taken to create greater unity of purpose 

and effort within DOD, and some progress toward this goal was achieved—

although concerns persist that DOD combating WMD activities remain 

insufficiently integrated, and that combating WMD requirements remain 

insufficiently competitive in the resource allocation process. In particular, 

U.S. Strategic Command’s mandate to integrate and synchronize has translated into less capacity to guide and direct WMD developments within the 

department, and thus with other departments and agencies, than those 

terms suggest. This situation reflects, in part, a collective inability to achieve 

a commonly accepted understanding of what is meant by “integrate and 

synchronize,” which itself may be symptomatic of regional combatant command reluctance to cede a measure of control over operational planning to 

a functional combatant command. It may have been unrealistic to expect 

that any command, at least one lacking the dedicated forces and special 

authorities of U.S. Special Operations Command, could exercise this kind 

of leadership in a specialized area over other commands and DOD components. If U.S. Strategic Command, or another DOD component, is to 

exercise a more effective role in coordinating and enhancing U.S. military, 

and interagency, operational readiness for WMD contingencies, it will need 

a more clearly defined writ as well as active support from the Office of the 

Secretary of Defense (OSD) and Joint Staff. Otherwise, the Joint Staff may 

need to assume this role directly.

Summing up, this initial review of the Bush strategy to contain the 

spread of WMD points to a mixed picture. The effort to recast U.S. strategy to rely less overall on international institutions and traditional disarmament diplomacy and more on practical cooperation with security partners led to policy innovation and a more diverse toolkit. To some degree, 

this has altered the dynamics of global cooperation in non- and counterproliferation. The effort to roll back rogue state proliferation generated a 

variety of strategies but produced uneven results, at best.

Why Have We Not Been Attacked with WMD?

A parallel set of issues grows out of the Bush administration’s efforts 

to harden the Nation against WMD attack, whether by a state adversary 

or a terror organization—or some combination of the two. Here, an 

important question goes to the value and cost-effectiveness of the huge 

investment made since 9/11 in homeland security: Why has the United 

States not been attacked with WMD?

There are competing explanations for why the United States has not 

suffered a major WMD attack. For some, this is evidence that the threat 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 13

has been overstated: “the dog that did not bite.” For others, it is some 

combination of luck and the impact of strategies and policies put in place 

over the last several years that have been effective in containing the threat 

and thwarting attacks. Contention over these two perspectives is almost 

inevitable when confronting “low probability/high consequence” challenges, as WMD terrorism is often characterized.

Those who view WMD dangers as exaggerated see both the broader 

terrorism threat, as well as the specific risk of WMD terrorism, as overstated. Citing various specialists, they make a number of arguments:

■ The jihadist phenomenon has evolved into something inherently selflimiting and decreasingly coherent as an instrument of transnational 

violence. This is largely because the most committed and competent 

cadre has been significantly depleted and the only part of the movement that is growing is a leaderless collection of “terrorist wannabes” 

dispersed across cyberspace with limited, if any, operational capability.18 Rather than an existential threat to the American way of life, 

this is a limited and manageable problem. In addition, evidence of 

mounting criticism within the Islamic community of al Qaeda’s extreme violence (especially against fellow Muslims) could have the effect of deterring al Qaeda from using WMD so as to avoid irreparably 

alienating its key constituencies. Finally, there appear to be few, if any, 

al Qaeda operational cells in the United States.19

■ The technical obstacles to successfully planning and executing 

a mass casualty WMD attack remain formidable. Arguments to 

the contrary are the product of, as one observer suggests, sloppy 

thinking by analysts, the vested interests of bureaucracy and industry, and morbid fascination on the part of the media and popular culture.20 Moreover, the evidence that al Qaeda is capable of 

overcoming these barriers has been exaggerated. The likelihood 

of catastrophic nuclear or biological terrorism is quite low when 

one considers the full range of tasks a terrorist group must successfully complete to deliver the desired effects.21 Other threats, 

it is argued, such as natural outbreaks of infectious disease, pose a 

higher probability danger.

■ Al Qaeda’s objective is not to destroy the United States but to instill 

fear and generate an overreaction that will bleed the country psychologically and economically. Unwarranted anxiety over WMD 
14 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

has validated this al Qaeda strategy, leading the United States into a costly war and diverting massive sums into a set of protective 

policies whose overall cost-effectiveness is questionable.

■ While Americans do not appear to spend a great deal of time worrying about domestic terrorism and have made few changes in 

their lives in response to this danger, it is nonetheless the case that 

terrorism and the need to wage war against it have become “fully 

embedded in the public consciousness.”22 This prevailing consensus has fueled the growth of the homeland security enterprise, and 

is difficult to challenge.

By contrast, for those who believe that the consequences of successful WMD attacks against the United States are unpredictable—and 

potentially existential—it is simply not possible to overstate the danger, probabilities notwithstanding. The stakes are so high that worstcase planning is a prudent response. However, one need not view the 

threat as existential to be gravely concerned, and one need not engage 

in worst-case planning to make the case for substantial action across 

many fronts. Enough is known about the interest of radical actors 

in WMD and the potential consequences of well-executed attacks 

to warrant a significant response at all levels of government. Factor 

in troubling trends in areas such as nuclear energy, the life sciences, 

advanced chemistry, and proliferation networks, as well as the demonstrated patience with which al Qaeda plans major operations, and 

one can argue that the United States has not overreacted to the WMD 

problem, and that its investment in homeland security has been prudent—if at times inefficient.23

That is not to say that U.S. efforts to prevent, deter, defeat, and 

respond to WMD threats are solely responsible for the absence of a 

major attack. It is possible the Nation has been more lucky than effective in avoiding WMD use. In truth, it is just not possible to know all the 

reasons certain events have not occurred. But common sense suggests 

that even if aspects of the threat may have been overstated, policies and 

actions—imperfect as they may be—have had an impact. The challenge 

for decisionmakers is to assess continually which strategies, policies, and 

capabilities can best contribute to continued success in combating WMD, 

and to apply risk-based analysis to balance needed investments against 

other essential national security (or public health) requirements in a tight 

fiscal environment.
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 15

Looking Ahead

Nuclear Proliferation Challenges

In the 40 years since the NPT was signed, the international community’s track record in managing the spread of nuclear weapons has 

been a good one overall. There have been successes and failures, but by 

controlling technology, establishing a legal-political norm against proliferation, and giving governments confidence that self-restraint is in their 

interest, the international nonproliferation regime has limited the spread 

of nuclear weapons. Today there are considerably fewer states possessing these weapons than many serious observers predicted or feared a 

few decades ago. However, the world is entering a period of heightened 

uncertainty and risk as global nuclear aspirations appear to be on the 

rise—exemplified not only by determined proliferators such as North 

Korea and Iran but also by a growing number of states that appear to be 

seeking to create a future nuclear option for themselves.

Confronting “Creeping Proliferation.” The first eight nuclear 

powers were unconstrained by the NPT.24 Newer nuclear aspirants 

are, or at least at one point were, parties to the treaty. For those determined to acquire nuclear capability, therefore, a principal challenge 

is simply to avoid getting caught. This means pursuing nuclear status in a way that minimizes the transparency of intent and actions. 

These states will either engage in treaty-compliant behavior with the 

intent to break out of the treaty at a later time, or undertake a covert 

program and hope to conceal it from international inspectors and the 

world. Either way, these states are likely to proceed incrementally, circuitously, and with a degree of caution, marrying technical activities 

that appear ambiguous to political strategies that buy time and undermine unified opposition.

Each in their own way, North Korea and Iran exemplify this model 

of “creeping proliferation.” Neither nation has been engaged in anything 

resembling a crash program to acquire nuclear weapons. North Korea 

began some time in the 1970s, Iran in the mid-1980s. Both proceeded 

under the cover of legitimate activities. Both have approached negotiating with the United States and others as a means to advance their strategic 

objectives at low cost. For Pyongyang, bargaining is a means to extract 

concessions that sustain the legitimacy of the regime while yielding as 

little as possible, thereby steadily raising the price for a satisfactory outcome. For Tehran, negotiations are a way to buy time for its program 
16 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

to make decisive progress in mastering the technology and acquiring 

the materials necessary to produce nuclear weapons, should the regime 

choose to take this step. Thus, a process of creeping proliferation has 

generated a process of “creeping diplomacy”—years of diplomatic effort 

intended to clarify these nations’ intentions, activities, and capabilities, 

and to package incentives that could lead to agreed terms of limitation or 

rollback. This process has yielded some important but inconclusive (and 

now clearly endangered) progress with North Korea, but almost none 

with Iran. One cannot today predict with confidence that the United 

States and its allies will fully achieve their nonproliferation goals in these 

crucial cases and thereby discredit this model of proliferation.

North Korea. The process of disabling North Korea’s nuclear weapons production capability derailed in late 2008 over the sequencing of 

reciprocal actions and a U.S.-proposed plan for verifying Pyongyang’s 

nuclear declarations. Since then, a series of North Korean actions and 

statements have called into question not only the prospects for a return to 

negotiations, but also whether Pyongyang any longer intends to disarm.

In April 2009, the North launched a three-stage version of its longrange Taepo Dong–2 missile. In response to a UNSC statement condemning the launch, Pyongyang announced its withdrawal from the Six-Party 

Talks, renounced all previous agreements, expelled IAEA and U.S. monitors from the Yongbyon nuclear complex, and resumed its activity there. 

On May 25, North Korea conducted a second underground nuclear test 

and soon after renounced the 1953 armistice agreement that ended hostilities during the Korean War. In response to the test, the Security Council 

passed Resolution 1874, which bans all arms exports from North Korea, 

urges member states to inspect suspect North Korean cargoes on the high 

seas or at seaports and airports, and calls on states to deny financial services that could contribute to North Korea’s weapons programs.

No one outside the inner councils of the Pyongyang regime can state 

with certainty all the factors motivating its behavior. In part, this set of 

provocations may be “more of the same”—that is, the now-familiar pattern of creating a sense of crisis through belligerent posturing, intended to 

compel the United States and its partners back to the negotiating table and 

drive up the price for resuming talks and for further concessions. In this 

sense, the North’s actions may be seen as designed to gain the attention of 

the Obama administration at a time when it has been preoccupied by other 

pressing foreign policy concerns. In part, nuclear and missile tests may be a 

means of advertising the regime’s strategic wares in the WMD marketplace. 

They could also be tied to the internal politics of the looming North Korean 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 17

succession—perhaps the price that the military and hard-line elements 

have demanded for acceding to Kim Jong Il’s plan to make his youngest son 

his heir apparent. It is also possible that these actions are part of a deliberate 

process by which the regime seeks to establish itself as a permanent nuclear 

weapons state, no longer interested in any form of negotiations leading to 

verifiable denuclearization. Pyongyang has actively encouraged this reading 

of its intentions by telling Americans visiting as private citizens that it cannot say when it will abandon its nuclear weapons and that it seeks normalization of relations with Washington not as a quid pro quo for disarming 

but only after being recognized as a nuclear-armed state.25

Early policy statements from the Obama administration declared 

a willingness to normalize bilateral relations, seek a permanent peace 

treaty, and provide additional energy and economic assistance once verifiable disarmament has been achieved.26 Thus, the issue was framed as a 

strategic choice facing North Korea: remain nuclear-armed or achieve 

normal relations with the United States—but not both. Despite Pyongyang’s provocations and its renunciation of the Six-Party Talks, the United 

States in late July 2009 continued to hold out hopes for the resumption 

of negotiations, and senior officials were suggesting that a new approach 

to the Six-Party Talks was likely—one that would replace the longstanding step-by-step or “action-for-action” process with a “comprehensive 

package” that would resolve all outstanding issues more or less at once.27

At the same time, Washington made clear that it would not offer new 

concessions simply to return to the status quo ante; Pyongyang would 

be expected to return to compliance with agreements already reached 

through the Six-Party Talks and earlier diplomatic engagements. Moreover, the Six-Party Talks remained the only acceptable forum for resuming formal discussions on denuclearization—not the bilateral dialogue 

with Washington that Pyongyang continued to push for.28

Both to press the North to return to negotiations and to hedge 

against its refusal to do so, the Obama administration in the summer of 

2009 moved to increase economic pressure on Pyongyang. In addition 

to the new sanctions embodied in UNSC Resolution 1874, the United 

States pressed for additional collective sanctions against individual North 

Korean companies, and took unilateral action against two companies 

designed to deny them access to the global financial system. In addition, 

the United States was actively considering relisting North Korea as a state 

sponsor of terrorism and seeking opportunities to enforce the interdiction provisions of Resolution 1874 so as to deny the regime its lucrative 

trade in arms, which by some estimates yields $1.5 billion in annual sales.
18 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

Whether a sharpened focus on economic pressure and interdiction 

would bring North Korea back to the negotiating table remained to be 

seen. Certainly, though, these measures also reflected serious concern 

among senior officials that the collapse of diplomacy could lead Pyongyang to more aggressively market its nuclear materials, technology, and 

know-how. U.S. National Security Advisor General James Jones, USMC 

(Ret.), voiced this concern by stating of North Korea’s nuclear capability: “The imminent threat is the proliferation of that type of technology 

to other countries and potentially terrorist organizations and nonstate 

actors.” An unnamed senior official added: “The concern is not just that 

they have a nuclear weapon, it’s what they’re going to do with the technology and where it’s going to go. It’s very difficult to have perfect knowledge 

about who they’re talking to or where they’re sending stuff.”29 The danger 

of North Korea becoming a supplier of nuclear goods is underscored by 

its suspected involvement in the construction of a nuclear reactor in Syria 

destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in September 2007. This points to the 

need to prevent and deter the regime from becoming an active supplier, 

and to ensure it understands that it will be held accountable—and pay a 

heavy price—for facilitating others’ acquisition of nuclear capability.

At the same time, even if diplomacy falters yet again, it will be 

important for the United States to reassure regional allies that it does not 

intend to pursue a strategy of containment and interdiction exclusively. 

For this reason, statements by the United States reiterating that it will 

never accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state or normalize relations without verifiable disarmament are key to expressing solidarity with 

these allies, whose principal goal remains denuclearizing North Korea, 

not simply containing its ability to transfer nuclear technologies. Until 

such time that the ultimate goal of denuclearization can be realized, U.S. 

policy must also be attentive to the proliferation pressures that could be 

generated by North Korea’s continued possession of a small stockpile of 

nuclear devices and some amount of separated plutonium that could be 

fabricated into additional devices. By moving deliberately, through words 

and actions, to reinforce extended deterrence relationships, Washington 

should be able to manage these pressures.

Iran. Before the political unrest triggered by Iran’s disputed presidential election of June 2009, U.S. policy toward the nuclear issue had 

taken shape in ways that reflected both continuity with and change 

from the approach adopted by the Bush administration. The United 

States is posing the same basic choice to Iran: cooperation and integration in exchange for demonstrably limiting its nuclear potential, or 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 19

deepening political and economic isolation. And Washington remains 

focused on a strategy of carrot and stick diplomacy to lead Tehran to 

the right choice. The terms of this diplomacy have changed, however. 

The United States now seems determined to definitively test Iran’s 

willingness to reach an accommodation that limits its fuel cycle activities through a time-limited diplomatic process. To do so, Washington 

is prepared to negotiate directly with Tehran on a bilateral basis, and 

has dropped as a condition for such talks that Iran suspend enrichment 

activities. Iran would be free to continue enriching uranium for some 

period of time as negotiations proceeded. Ultimately, however, Iran 

would be expected to suspend enrichment activities as demanded by 

several UNSC resolutions, at least until such time as confidence in the 

peaceful nature of its program is established. Initially, this could take 

the form of a “mutual freeze” whereby Iran suspends enrichment and 

additional sanctions are deferred. Presumably, this would create some 

breathing space that would allow the two sides to explore the possibilities of a more substantive accommodation.30 To further encourage Tehran, the United States is also prepared to engage more broadly on a set 

of “incentives” tabled in 2006 and 2008 that address regional security 

issues, normalization of political and economic relations, and assistance 

with civil nuclear energy.31

The post-election turmoil in Iran has cast some uncertainty over 

prospects for direct U.S.-Iranian engagement, even under these new 

terms. The regime simply may be unable to make a decision on resuming negotiations in an unsettled political environment. A complicating 

factor could be the degree to which the regime has blamed internal 

unrest on outside agitation by the United Kingdom and the United 

States, in particular. On the other hand, Tehran might see resuming 

negotiations as a means to deflect international attention from its suppression of the opposition and shore up its eroded legitimacy. In July 

2009, there were indications from the regime that it was preparing new 

negotiating proposals. For its part, the United States remained openly 

committed to direct dialogue, although President Obama did concede 

that “the prospects of bilateral engagement may have been shifted as 

a consequence of this post-election activity.”32 Still, as things stood in 

late July 2009, the United States, in parallel with the Group of Eight, 

was calling for a resumption of negotiations with the intent to take 

stock of progress within a few months. The message here seemed clear 

enough: negotiations need to begin soon, and they will not be openended. Tehran will need to demonstrate fairly quickly that meaningful 
20 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

progress toward a suspension of enrichment and the establishment of 

greater transparency can be achieved. If not, additional sanctions will 

be considered.

This strategy is premised on the belief that diplomacy focused on 

the suspension of enrichment remains the approach most likely to minimize proliferation risks and need not lead inevitably to an unconstrained 

Iranian enrichment program.33 In this view, there are still opportunities to 

constrain and delay this program through export controls, sanctions, targeted financial measures, and other means, possibly to include sabotage.34

In the end, it may not be possible to prevent Iran from acquiring 

a breakout nuclear weapons capability based on its enrichment effort, 

but the international community simply cannot legitimize Iran’s nuclear 

activities in defiance of the UNSC. The risks of doing so, it is argued, are 

simply too great.

Thus, it follows that the best—or least bad—course of action is 

to sharpen both the inducements and the penalties facing Tehran as it 

contemplates a strategic decision to seek accommodation or continue 

its defiance. Stronger inducements take the form of the aforementioned 

incentives package, which could include discussions about security 

assurances regarding Iran’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, recognition of Iran’s regional role, and more concrete economic benefits that 

could be delivered quickly with the goal of improving the economic 

plight of the Iranian people.35 Stronger penalties intended to reinforce 

the regime’s sense of risk would take the form of “tougher sanctions”—

but is this a realistic prospect? It will be a challenge indeed to convince 

Russia and China, in particular, but possibly other key players such as 

Germany and France, as well, to agree to the kinds of sanctions that 

might change the calculus of the Iranian leadership—for instance, curtailing significantly Iran’s ability to import refined oil products, which 

many consider the regime’s most serious economic vulnerability.36

Recent reports of a $40 billion Chinese investment in Iranian gasoline refining, if accurate, underscore the challenge of imposing “hard 

sanctions.”37 Others have argued that raising the stakes for Tehran and 

enhancing Western negotiating leverage also require a more determined 

effort toward the objective of regime change and/or a more salient 

threat of military action.38 Whether such tactics will lead the regime to 

reconsider its nuclear program or redouble its efforts is not clear.

Over the last 18 months, there has been growing commentary arguing that this bargaining strategy has largely run its course and requires a 

basic reassessment if the international community is to find some way to 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 21

meaningfully contain the regime’s nuclear potential. The premise here is 

that the West’s current approach is destined to fail—in part because the 

sharply differing interests of key players make hard sanctions and other 

forms of cost imposition difficult to envision, but also in recognition of 

how Iran defines its own interests. In this view, no inducement is likely 

to be significant enough to outweigh Iran’s desire for at least a breakout 

nuclear weapons capability, and “bigger sticks” only signal U.S. intent 

to pursue regime change and thus reinforce the rationale to possess a 

nuclear option. Rather, this alternative view holds that a revised strategy 

must acknowledge the progress Iran has already made on enrichment 

while negotiations have played out unproductively over several years. 

Insisting on “zero enrichment” on Iranian soil, it is argued, is an increasingly unrealistic position, and the principal concern now must be to 

gain some degree of transparency into and control over Iranian enrichment activities to ensure that diversion of these activities to manufacture 

nuclear weapons does not take place. Given that Iran’s program is progressing, time is not on the West’s side.

Proposals to move policy in this direction would allow Iran to produce its own nuclear fuel, but under highly controlled conditions.

39 One 

possibility is to impose limitations on the scope of enrichment designed 

to keep or delay it from reaching industrial scale, while imposing a comprehensive verification and inspection regime that includes IAEA safeguards, Additional Protocol measures, and continuous environmental 

sampling. Another approach is to multilateralize the enrichment enterprise in Iran so that the regime does not exercise full control over fuel 

cycle activities. Any number of multilateral arrangements is possible, but 

the basic concept is management and operation of Iranian enrichment 

facilities through an international consortium. The Additional Protocol 

and other monitoring, transparency, and confidence-building measures 

would be adopted. The production of highly enriched uranium and the 

reprocessing of plutonium would be prohibited, as would any participation by members of the Iranian military. Iran would commit itself to a 

program of light water reactors only.40

Approaches along these lines would effectively shift the focus of 

Western concern from zero enrichment to “no weaponization.” The idea 

is to create a barrier between a latent nuclear weapons capability and an 

actual one. In essence, this would redraw the redline of unacceptable 

Iranian behavior at the production of nuclear weapons and withdrawal 

from the NPT. With its “right” to enrich uranium on its soil de facto 

secured, the new test for Iran would become its willingness to accept 
22 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

meaningful controls on its nuclear infrastructure and constraints on its 

ability to manufacture weapons. The penalty for crossing this redefined 

redline would need to be clearly understood by the Iranian leadership: 

severe economic sanctions—if not via the Security Council, then certainly through the coordinated policies of the United States, European 

Union, and potentially other members of the Organisation for Economic 

Co-operation and Development—and possibly the use of military force.41

Realistically, the United States and its allies would in parallel begin to 

develop a tailored deterrence strategy to hedge against Iran crossing the 

line and achieving an operational nuclear capability.

In contemplating the basic alternatives outlined above—suspending enrichment or trading enrichment for transparency and controls to 

prevent weaponization—the relative risks seem clear enough.42 Those 

arguing for maintaining current policy or some variant of it see a high 

degree of risk in schemes that legitimize Iranian enrichment in return for 

safeguards that are likely to prove ineffective in denying Iran a breakout 

nuclear capability. The primary risk is, in fact, increased potential for 

breakout resulting from greater access to technology and the accumulation of knowledge and experience, which could be applied, as well, to 

covert activities in unsafeguarded facilities unknown to the West. Iran 

is believed to have conducted work on weaponization in the past and 

continues to pursue technologies relevant to weaponization, even as the 

regime persists in denying such work and refuses to cooperate with the 

IAEA’s investigation of the possible military dimensions of the nuclear 

program. Iran could resume work on weaponization at any time, and it is 

possible that this work could go undetected. Thus, a redline focused on 

weaponization could be difficult to enforce. Additional risk stems from 

the possibility that accepting Iranian enrichment in defiance of the UNSC 

would weaken any disincentives that now exist among other nations in 

the region to pursue indigenous fuel cycle capabilities, and more generally would undermine faith in the international nonproliferation regime.

Those arguing for acknowledging Iran’s progress in enrichment and 

focusing on weaponization pose a different risk calculus. They believe 

that the key danger of continuing with the zero enrichment strategy is 

that Iran will make significant additional progress in enrichment through 

a program that faces few meaningful technical constraints and whose 

activities cannot effectively be verified as entirely peaceful. We will then 

face a long period of uncertainty about Iran’s capabilities and intentions. And the longer the West waits to propose alternative or fallback 

approaches, the less likely the regime will be to consider them seriously 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 23

and the less effective they likely will be if adopted. Furthermore, it is 

argued, while there are certainly risks associated with fallback options, 

they are not as significant as portrayed. Moreover, the regime may conclude on its own that there is too much risk in breaking fully with the 

NPT by producing (and possibly testing) one or more nuclear weapons, 

and that Iran’s requirements for security and prestige are met by achieving 

a breakout capability. On balance, then, this argument concludes, it is better to press the test on no weaponization. To do so may legitimize Iranian 

enrichment and vindicate the regime’s hard-line posture and defiance of 

the Security Council, but failing to make an effort to impose practical 

constraints on Iran’s potential to produce nuclear bombs will do far more 

damage to the nonproliferation regime and create a much sharper stimulus to regional proliferation.

Is a “Proliferation Cascade” Inevitable—or Even Likely? All sides 

of this debate express serious concerns about the implications of North 

Korea and Iran as de facto nuclear powers. If these states succeed in demonstrating that a nuclear aspirant can violate its obligations with impunity 

or use the NPT as an effective cover for a weapons program, new strains 

on the nonproliferation regime are certain to result. But it is difficult to 

predict with high confidence precisely how these strains would manifest 

themselves. In the worst case, there could be a broad-based loss of faith in 

the treaty regime and its effectiveness as a security alternative to possessing nuclear weapons, resulting in greatly heightened proliferation pressures in East Asia and the greater Middle East, and possibly even a “cascade” of nuclear proliferation. In the best case, determined, creative, and 

timely efforts to put in place proliferation “firebreaks” could well serve to 

contain these pressures.

One concern is that successful challenges by rogue states to the 

normative system represented by the NPT will lead important nations 

that years ago made a strategic choice to remain nonnuclear—on the 

premise that additional nuclear states would not emerge—to reconsider 

that choice, with dramatic impact on the thinking of other nuclear 

abstainers. Japan is often cited as an exemplar of such a nation, one 

whose expectations about the effectiveness of nonproliferation norms 

have not fully been met (as reflected in the way India and Pakistan have 

been accepted as de facto nuclear powers, and in the failure to date to 

put in place a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty) and possibly would 

be shattered by the failure to roll back or eliminate North Korea’s nuclear 

capability. The possibility exists that such an outcome would be taken in 

Tokyo as a clear demonstration of the inability of the five permanent UN 
24 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

Security Council members to act collectively to meet their responsibility 

to defend and enforce compliance with nonproliferation norms. Were 

Tokyo to make the choice to move away from nonnuclear status, it would 

also reflect a fundamental loss of confidence in U.S. nuclear security 

guarantees and the will or ability of Washington to use hard power to 

stand up to regional nuclear challengers.

In this scenario, Tokyo’s choice could reverberate in at least two 

ways. It could lead other pivotal nuclear abstainers who wield significant influence in the nonproliferation community to take another look 

at their nonnuclear status. Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, and South Africa 

are states that come to mind. Within East Asia, the danger is that Japan’s 

action would be taken as signaling the collapse of the NPT regime and 

the failure of a central pillar of U.S. security policy. It could then generate 

pressure among states in the region (Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, and 

others) to pursue independent nuclear capabilities and, contrary to what 

some strategists in the United States might hope, these pressures would 

reflect loss of confidence in Washington more than a desire to abet a U.S. 

strategy of containing China.

Thus might a process of region-wide nuclear proliferation in East 

Asia unfold. Yet this scenario is far from inevitable. As noted earlier, the 

prospects of such a development would be shaped importantly by the 

nature of the residual North Korean nuclear capability, assessments of the 

overall strength of the regime, and actions by the United States to reassure 

regional allies and strengthen extended deterrence relationships. This was 

a principal focus of concern in Tokyo and Seoul following North Korea’s 

nuclear test in October 2006. Both governments pressed the United States 

to reaffirm, clarify, and strengthen nuclear security guarantees. These dialogues continue today, and this is a particularly salient issue in U.S.-Japan 

security discussions, reflecting Tokyo’s reported interest in a more formal 

and substantive consultative relationship with Washington concerning 

the nuclear umbrella.

Nor is it clear how quickly Japan could become a nuclear weapons 

state if a decision was made to do so. Based on its large stocks of fissile material and advanced science and industrial infrastructure, Japan 

unquestionably possesses the technical prerequisites for a nuclear breakout capability. Less evident is whether Japan has the political or bureaucratic-administrative structures to quickly develop a weapons capability.43

Japan also risks a rupture in relations with Washington should its pursuit 

of a weapons capability be detected—a likely prospect. Should the United 

States withdraw its nuclear security guarantee in response, Japan would 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 25

then be faced with a potentially hostile response from China, including possibly a heightened nuclear threat from Beijing. Faced with such 

a threat, Tokyo would then have to consider not simply a rudimentary 

nuclear deterrent, but a more expansive and sophisticated force designed 

to achieve a secure retaliatory capability against China. Would Tokyo be 

prepared for such a daunting undertaking? South Korea would face a different set of constraints given its current lack of enrichment or reprocessing facilities. Taiwan also lacks such facilities. Moreover, Taiwan’s effort 

to develop reprocessing capabilities likely would be detected well before 

completion by the United States and possibly China as well, and could 

provoke a military response from Beijing.44 This is not to minimize the 

breakout potential of any of these states, but rather to suggest that rapid, 

unchecked proliferation in the region may not be in the offing.

Concerns about accelerated proliferation of nuclear weapons capabilities in the Middle East are, if anything, more pronounced given widespread fears that a nuclear-capable Iran would be reinforced in its aggressive, hegemonic posture. It is not a coincidence that in the last 2 years, 

more than a dozen regional states have expressed interest in or intent 

to initiate or expand nuclear energy activities as Iran has demonstrated 

progress in its nuclear program. Energy security is undoubtedly a driver 

in this phenomenon, as is the association of nuclear with modernity and 

scientific accomplishment—but so too is a perceived need to hedge security bets as Iran gets closer to the bomb. Countries such as Algeria, Egypt, 

Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey are often mentioned as states likely to 

initiate or join a regional move toward nuclear weapons capabilities, and 

only Turkey has stated publicly that it will not seek indigenous enrichment or reprocessing capabilities.45 In each case, though, constraints and 

countervailing factors exist, and one could expect decisions about pursuing the nuclear option to reflect a complex cost-benefit calculus.46

Here too, then, it is important to avoid a self-fulfilling prophecy 

by equating the legitimate risks of a cascade with the inevitability of one 

occurring. It is worth noting that important Arab states have learned to 

live with a nuclear-armed Israel and did not react in kind to Iraq’s pursuit 

of nuclear weapons under the Saddam Hussein regime. The Iranian threat 

may be fundamentally different to these countries, but they may also find 

that options exist to respond short of initiating their own nuclear weapons programs. Much will depend, of course, on how a nuclear-armed Iran 

behaves. But opportunities should exist to strengthen collective security 

and deterrence relationships as nations act to balance growing Iranian 

power through formal or informal coalitions. The Western powers have 
26 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

a supporting role to play here. The challenge of deterring a nuclear Iran 

should not be underestimated, but neither should it be overestimated. 

Iran may feel regional or geopolitical trends are moving in its favor, 

but its power and influence are not unlimited, and its leadership is not 

entirely averse to risk.

The Nuclear Latency Challenge. To a degree, the evident anxiety 

concerning nuclear cascades is healthy if it serves as a wake-up call 

and motivates serious thinking and wise actions to mobilize political 

will in the international community to strengthen the NPT, reaffirm 

extended deterrence relationships, and develop the means to manage 

the longer term proliferation risks associated with growing interest in 

civilian nuclear power. Steps can be taken now to counter whatever 

pressures may exist or may be building for accelerated nuclear proliferation in key regions. That said, there is no compelling evidence 

that the world is on the cusp of runaway proliferation leading in the 

near- or mid-term to several or many more nuclear powers. A cascade 

requires that strategic intent and an advanced technical capability, 

supported by rapid decisionmaking at the highest levels, converge 

at an accelerated pace in a number of countries at roughly the same 

time. Nuclear aspirations may indeed be rising, but what we are witnessing is less an imminent cascade and more a case of “nuclear hedging” as some states decide to keep open the nuclear option through 

the pursuit of civilian nuclear power.

As more states go down this path, the principal risk is one of 

increased nuclear latency over time—a growing number of states with 

increasing nuclear capacity and potential (in the form of knowledge, technology, and materials). By some accounts, based on projected growth in 

nuclear power in the Middle East (perhaps a dozen or more new power 

reactors), large civilian plutonium stocks are set to accumulate over the 

next 20 years.47 Even if the full scope of current planning for nuclear power 

in this and other regions does not materialize, it is not too early to begin 

developing ways to minimize the proliferation risks inherent in the slow 

but steady accretion of nuclear materials and know-how. The focus should 

be on impeding the acquisition of the most sensitive fuel cycle technologies by states that do not already possess them (as proposed by President 

Bush in 2004) and significantly raising the political costs of turning a latent 

nuclear program into a bomb-making program (in hopes of deterring such 

a move).

A 2006 report by the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction at the National Defense University summarized the latency challenge:
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 27

In a world characterized by high nuclear latency, a number 

of risks stand out. One is simply that there may be multiple 

ways for states to be considered nuclear-capable. While 

robust nuclear weapons programs remain the most serious 

proliferation danger, a range of possibilities below this 

threshold or level of capability must be of concern as well. 

So must be models of weapon development enabled by 

technologies and processes that might be easier to conceal and 

harder to detect (for example, laser enrichment). A nuclearlatent world also challenges our thinking about warning, 

suggesting the possibility of a significant mismatch between 

lead times and reaction times. Finally, careful attention must 

be paid to the catalytic or transformative events that could 

push a latent nuclear actor toward a more active or accelerated 

posture. Japan often is cited as a possibility in this regard, but 

also of concern are so-called rollback states that could, with 

varying degrees of ease, reconstitute their nuclear weapons 

programs in response to changed conditions.

These considerations have significant implications for 

political and technical intelligence, not least of which is the 

need for a sharper focus on intentions. More broadly, there 

needs to be a way to measure latency that is meaningful to 

decisionmakers and planners. Metrics may be qualitative and/

or quantitative, and should strive to enable policies that can 

influence both intentions (for example, through incentives) 

and capabilities (for example, through barriers).48

Of greatest proliferation concern would be those nuclear-latent states 

capable of maintaining a robust civilian nuclear infrastructure and access to 

material that could be used to fabricate nuclear weapons. These states, if sufficiently motivated, would have greater means to transition relatively quickly 

from latent to actual capability. They may be characterized as “high capability 

hedgers.”49 Managing the security challenge posed by a number of such states 

will require a diverse strategy that includes maintaining strong nonproliferation norms, strengthening NPT compliance rules, developing country-specific security strategies, improving capabilities for early intelligence warning 

of proliferation intent, tailoring export control and interdiction strategies as 

needed, and sustaining extended deterrence relationships to ensure that allies 

feel sufficiently secure to remain nonnuclear.

As we enter a period where nuclear latency and a greater overall 

degree of ambiguity in capabilities and intentions become the norm, it 

may be more difficult to define nonproliferation success and failure and 

to determine if the international community is winning, losing, or just 
28 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

treading water. Despite our cultural inclination to declare either victories 

or losses, the emerging nuclear landscape will be one in which “draws” are 

a distinct possibility.

Chemical and Biological Proliferation Challenges

Uncertain Activity and Intent.50 In contrast to the nuclear efforts 

of North Korea, Iran, and perhaps Syria, no states are newly pursuing, or 

suspected of pursuing, in an overt or exposed manner, chemical or biological weapons. Unlike nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons are 

comprehensively prohibited by international conventions.51 Comprehensive 

prohibition reflects and reinforces a strong international norm against possession as well as use. Chemical and biological weapons also are not associated with great power status or technological prowess as nuclear weapons 

are. There is little upside and much downside politically for a state, even 

one that is not a party to the chemical and/or biological weapons conventions, to openly possess or pursue such weapons, at least any that the state 

has not declared, disavowed, and committed to eliminate. Offensive programs are pursued covertly.

Some states nonetheless appear to find it useful for deterrence 

purposes that others assess that they possess chemical or even biological weapons. Syria probably is the least circumspect in concealing what 

is widely assessed as an active chemical weapons program intended 

primarily to counter Israeli military superiority, including Israel’s suspected nuclear arsenal. Saddam evidently thought it useful to perpetuate others’ suspicions that he had retained or reconstituted elements of 

his pre–Persian Gulf War chemical and biological weapons programs, 

even though those suspicions ultimately led to the deposal of his regime 

and his own death.

While Syria is not among the states parties to the CWC (Iraq 

recently acceded), being a party or signatory to the CWC or its biological counterpart, the BWC, does not necessarily constitute compliance. 

The United States has expressed concerns about a number of states parties’ compliance with these conventions, among them Iran, Russia, and 

China.52 Noncompliance, however, is hard to detect and harder to prove. 

Chemical and biological weapons programs can be concealed within 

dual-use facilities and activities. Just-in-time mobilization capabilities 

concealed within such facilities can substitute for the more conspicuous 

large weapons stockpiles of earlier years. The BWC has no enforcement 

mechanism, and no challenge inspection has ever been requested under 

the CWC enforcement mechanism.
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 29

Various nonstate entities have expressed interest in and/or have 

been found to be actively pursuing chemical and biological weapons. 

Osama bin Laden has on more than one occasion justified the acquisition 

and employment of such weapons. U.S. forces discovered in Afghanistan 

a more robust al Qaeda biological weapons development effort than 

expected as well as a video of suspected al Qaeda testing of a chemical agent on a dog. The only confirmed uses of chemical or biological 

weapons since the Iran-Iraq War also have been perpetrated, or believed 

to have been perpetrated, by nonstate actors, including most famously 

the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin attack on the Tokyo subway and the 2001 

anthrax letters in the United States. 

Chemical and biological weapons activities always have been difficult intelligence targets, and that will not change in the foreseeable future. 

While the interest of some terrorist entities in acquiring these types of 

weapons is well known, we know less about what chemical and biological weapons capabilities terrorists actually may possess than we do about 

what states possess. If anything, scientific/technological and industrial 

trends will make the collection and analysis challenges more difficult. 

Enabling knowledge will become more widely available, proliferation 

harder to detect, and use perhaps more likely.

Chemical and Biological Latency Challenges. In the chemical 

arena, manufacturing has globalized. Production no longer is dominated by a few, mainly Western, multinational companies, but now 

occurs in many more facilities spread over many more countries. 

Growth has been particularly pronounced in Asia. Production facilities 

also are getting smaller and using new technologies. Individual plants 

used to focus on the bulk production of just a few chemicals; modern 

plants can economically produce a wide range. As more people in more 

countries are involved with chemical technology and manufacture, 

there will emerge inherently more scope for chemical weapons activity. It also may be harder to detect illicit activity, particularly in smaller 

chemical plants using new technology, at least with the means currently used by inspectors for the Organization for the Prohibition of 

Chemical Weapons.53

New tools, including robotics, microreactors, and ever more powerful computing capabilities, have dramatically increased the number of new 

chemical compounds that can be synthesized and the rate at which they 

can be synthesized and screened. Commercial entities are creating large 

libraries of new chemical compounds, some of which may be highly toxic 

and useful for weapons.54 Nanotechnology is another rapidly developing 
30 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

area that could have important implications for chemical warfare, particularly for the identification and development of new or improved dissemination techniques, building on ongoing work to use nanotechnology 

to improve the delivery of drugs for therapeutic purposes.55 There is an 

increasing convergence of chemistry and biology as scientific disciplines 

are increasingly being applied to the search for new chemical compounds 

with particular effects on biological systems.56

The rapid pace of development in the biological sciences and biotechnology is making more accessible the expertise and technology to 

produce biological weapons and also may be enabling new types of such 

weapons. Organisms are available throughout the world—in nature, laboratories, and type collections. Most of the requisite expertise and equipment for biological weapons are dual-use, and much dual-use equipment 

is available for production, processing, and dissemination of biological 

agents. The commercialization of bioreactors has made it easier to produce agents. Commercial technologies, such as agricultural sprayers, dry 

agent production techniques, and, more recently, microencapsulation, 

facilitate agent dissemination.

Revolutionary insights in biology are lowering the educational 

threshold needed to produce a pathogen. What was once difficult is now 

often relatively simple. The diffusion of advanced techniques in biological sciences has made routine what was once advanced science, just as the 

commercialization of advanced biotechnology has made common what 

were once sophisticated capabilities. The number of recorded genetic 

sequences has increased dramatically. New classes of infectious agents 

have emerged, including prions, viroids, and satellite viruses/nucleic 

acids. The relatively new fields of synthetic biology and bioengineering 

already have enabled scientists to create the polio virus from scratch, and 

perhaps in the not so distant future will enable creation of more pathogenic viruses, such as smallpox (which no longer exists in nature), as well 

as the engineering of new organisms, some of which may prove conducive to weaponization.

We still do not fully understand how the rapid advances in science 

and technology will change the landscape for biological and chemical 

weapons. These emerging developments are commercially driven and 

promise to yield many beneficial products for mankind. Like almost all 

scientific and technological progress, however, the potential to do good 

comes with the potential to do evil, and where such potential exists, 

bad actors will endeavor to exploit it. The bad actors able to exploit the 

most technologically sophisticated developments first most likely will be 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 31

states with offensive biological and/or chemical weapons programs, but 

commercialization and globalization already have made the catastrophic 

use of biological and chemical weapons accessible to terrorists. Rapid 

advances in science and technology likely will accord a continuing advantage to offense over defense, as defensive responses lag the development 

of new forms of attack. As technical barriers decline, adversary intent 

will become an ever more important part of the biological and chemical 

threat equation. Intentions, though, traditionally have been an underserved focus area for the U.S. Intelligence Community, which historically 

has devoted most of its resources and time to locating and characterizing 

capabilities rather than the admittedly more difficult task of discerning 

intentions separate from or beyond what can be inferred just from an 

assessment of an actor’s capabilities.

Response Challenges. These trends pose many response challenges 

for the United States. How does the Nation prevent chemical and biological weapons proliferation when detecting and tracking illicit programs are 

already hard and likely to get harder? How do we prevent such proliferation when the basic enabling capabilities are becoming accessible to more 

and more actors as part of the benign expansion of chemical and biological knowledge and facilities? How does the Nation prepare to defend 

against the possible emergence of new and unknown types of weapons 

agents and forms of dissemination?

Intelligence. Clearly, more and better intelligence about others’ 

chemical and biological weapons–related activities would be valuable. 

The Intelligence Community should examine whether it is devoting 

the requisite effort and resources to this problem. With the policy priority currently accorded to nuclear proliferation challenges, particularly in Iran and North Korea, and the intelligence demands associated 

with prosecuting the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular and the struggle against terrorism more generally, it is worth asking whether the relative paucity of recent intelligence about chemical 

and biological weapons activity by states and other actors is indicative 

of an actual decline in such activity or of our failure to penetrate the 

measures such actors have taken to hide such activity. Human sources 

have played a critical role in earlier major revelations of foreign chemical and biological weapons activities, dramatically impacting preceding 

intelligence assessments. Are our current human intelligence efforts in 

this area adequate?

Technical Insights. A broader understanding of weapons-relevant 

scientific and technological developments in the fields of biology and 
32 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

chemistry also is important. This is needed to anticipate how cutting-edge 

scientific and technological developments might be exploited for weapons 

purposes and to make sense of intelligence that may be acquired on others’ 

weapons-related activities. The United States can best possess this broader 

understanding if it remains on the forefront of chemical and biological science and technology. U.S. competitiveness in these fields depends increasingly upon the level and quality of its basic and applied research. Since the 

private sector drives progress in these fields today, the U.S. Government 

should consider how to partner with the private sector to help it remain 

highly competitive and cutting edge and to gain knowledge and insights 

needed to support robust chemical and biological defense efforts. The 

government can stimulate and support research through direct funding, 

particularly for basic research, and by shaping a business and regulatory 

environment conducive to industry investment, particularly in applied 

research. The U.S. Government should also continue its own institutes’ 

research specifically directed at understanding how adversaries might 

exploit emerging chemical and biological developments for malign purposes and how to counter such dangers. The work of the Department of 

Homeland Security’s National Biological Analysis and Countermeasures 

Center (NBACC) is particularly valuable in this regard; greater effort 

should be devoted to a counterpart effort on chemical threats.

Compliance. One of the challenges for conducting research intended 

to characterize and determine how to counter emerging or potential 

biological or chemical threat agents is ensuring that such classified work 

does not violate, and is not perceived as violating, the Nation’s obligations 

under the BWC and CWC not to develop, produce, or possess biological 

or chemical weapons. Defensive research is permitted under those treaties, and that has been interpreted to permit the production, possession, and manipulation of minute quantities of agent for such purposes. 

Ensuring such violations do not occur is the result of a concerted series 

of national safeguards, including guidelines on what types of activities are 

allowed and prohibited; a deliberate and documented process by which 

scientists assess and ascertain the compliance of their proposed activities 

before they are undertaken; and a mechanism by which experts on the 

science and treaty obligations can review and authorize or prohibit any 

specific proposed “gray area” activities. Additionally, under the CWC, 

chemical facilities are subject to international inspections (there is no 

such provision under the BWC for biological facilities).

But such safeguards have not and will not satisfy all outside observers, some of whom have self-interested reasons for voicing suspicions. 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 33

Unrestricted access to such defensive research cannot be permitted for 

security reasons; for example, outsiders seeking access may do so precisely to gain insights that they can use to develop offensive capabilities 

and defeat the Nation’s defensive countermeasures. Some therefore have 

argued that the Nation should not pursue defensive research because 

others will construe it as a cover for prohibited offensive work and will 

seize upon it as an excuse to pursue their own offensive programs. There 

will always be tension between the goals of anticipating and preparing 

to defend against emerging biological and chemical threats and unambiguously demonstrating full compliance with the BWC and CWC, but 

it would be irresponsible for the Nation not to continue its defensive 

programs under strict national safeguards given that the consequences of 

failing to prepare are potentially horrific.

Deterrence. Robust deterrence of chemical and biological threats is 

invaluable, but its cause and effect are hard to gauge. If an attack does not 

occur, was it because the adversary was deterred or never intended such 

an attack? If the adversary was deterred, was it by a threat of retaliation, 

by the influence of norms against the use of these types of weapons, by an 

expectation that it could not successfully prosecute the attack in the face 

of the target’s defensive measures, or by some combination thereof? The 

United States attempts to effect deterrence by all three means.

The United States has communicated, at first implicitly but explicitly since at least 2002, that it might resort to nuclear weapons in response 

to any WMD use, including chemical and biological, against its territory, 

people, forces, or allies. Some have questioned the credibility of a nuclear 

response to any nonnuclear attack from the most likely foes in the post–

Cold War era—rogue states and terrorists—but it must give some pause 

to any state adversaries that would contemplate use. Some believe that 

then–Secretary of State James Baker’s implicit threat of a nuclear response 

contributed to Saddam Hussein’s decision not to employ the chemical and 

biological weapons that he certainly did possess during the first Persian 

Gulf War.

Attribution capabilities are central to the credibility of such deterrence by threat of retaliation. The adversary must not believe that it can 

perpetrate WMD attacks anonymously. In recent years, the U.S. Government has accorded new emphasis to WMD attribution, most visibly 

through the establishment of the National Bioforensic Analysis Center, 

part of the NBACC, and the National Technical Nuclear Forensics Center, part of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office at the Department of 

Homeland Security. The government also has issued classified guidance 
34 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

on policy and organizational aspects of WMD attribution. As in other 

areas, the level of effort in attribution devoted to chemical threats lags 

that devoted to biological and nuclear ones. Attribution’s contribution to 

the deterrence of chemical and biological use could be enhanced through 

greater efforts on chemical attribution; increased resources for modernizing and expanding technical forensics capabilities generally; and a strategic communications strategy that helps ensure adversaries understand 

our commitment and capacity to attribute WMD attacks.

Norms also likely play an important role in deterring or dissuading 

chemical and biological weapons use, as the “nuclear taboo” clearly does 

with regard to nuclear weapons use. The United States and other countries have been criticized for failing to uphold the norm against chemical 

weapons use that had been established by the 1925 Geneva Convention 

by tolerating, or at least expressing insufficient outrage at, Saddam’s initiation of chemical weapons use during the Iran-Iraq War and his subsequent use of chemicals against elements of his own population. Those 

nations’ response has been attributed largely to their stronger interest 

in maintaining Iraq as a regional bulwark against a revolutionary Iran. 

It certainly did not help, though, that the 1925 norm against chemical 

weapons use had been violated earlier by a number of other states, including by Italy against Abyssinia in 1938 and Egypt against Yemeni rebels in 

the 1960s. Iraq’s chemical weapons use during the 1980s did, however, 

help spur the creation of the CWC, which renewed and strengthened the 

norm, especially by outlawing the possession as well as the use of such 

weapons. The BWC did the same for the norm against biological weapons use. There has been no confirmed state use of biological or chemical weapons since the BWC and CWC opened for signature in 1972 and 

1993, respectively. The United States clearly has a strong interest in maintaining and strengthening these norms and the international conventions 

that underlie them.

The only known incidents of chemical and biological weapons use 

since the establishment of the BWC and CWC have been small-scale 

attacks perpetrated by nonstate actors, and these have been few. Only one 

series of small-scale attacks has been attributed to al Qaeda or its affiliates: al Qaeda in Iraq’s joining of chlorine canisters to improvised explosive devices employed in Iraq in 2007. The impacts from the chlorine 

appear to have been minimal. Since some chemical and biological agents 

are considered readily accessible to terrorist organizations for malign purposes, it is hard to explain the paucity of chemical and biological attacks 

by such actors without some reference to the influence of norms.
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 35

Even terrorist organizations as ideologically inspired and ruthless as al Qaeda and its fellow travelers have political agendas and 

constituencies upon whom they depend for support and seek to influence. They need to be sensitive to how those constituencies will react 

to the nature of their attacks lest they put that support or influence at 

risk. Al Qaeda’s deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, cautioned then–al 

Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi against the negative impact 

that the latter’s brutal attacks against Sunni Muslims was having on 

the group’s support within Iraq. There have been reports of criticism 

directed against al Qaeda on jihadist Web sites for the violence it has 

perpetrated against coreligionists. Al Qaeda’s leadership also has on 

several occasions undertaken to justify publicly its pursuit and potential 

use of weapons of mass destruction, including through the issuance of 

a fatwa to that effect. To the extent that the United States and its partners, particularly Muslim states such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, can 

strengthen the norm against WMD use among Islamic populations, the 

more likely it will be that jihadist terrorist entities such as al Qaeda will 

be self-deterred from perpetrating such attacks.

Deterrence by denial figured prominently in the Bush administration’s approach to countering WMD threats of all types. Indeed, measures 

to defeat an attempted or actual attack have constituted the main thrust 

of U.S. efforts to counter biological and chemical threats since 9/11. This 

primarily has taken the form of passive defense and consequence management since biological and chemical agents/weapons are less susceptible to in-transit detection and interdiction than are nuclear/radiological 

materials/weapons with their radioactive emanations. Enhanced defeat 

capabilities lessen the impact of any actual biological or chemical attack 

and, thereby, may dissuade or deter adversaries from attempting such 

attacks by undermining their confidence that they could achieve their 

objective(s). This should pertain to terrorists as well as to state actors, as 

terrorists presumably do not want to be perceived by their constituencies 

as ineffective.

In the early 1990s, the only programs to address biological weapons threats were directed by DOD and focused on protection of military 

forces operating on the battlefield. In the late 1990s, however, DOD came 

to recognize that the chemical and biological weapons threat extended to 

rear areas, including facilities in the United States from which military 

forces were deployed. Equally important, the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo use 

of chemical agents in the Tokyo subway prompted efforts led by other 

parts of the government to protect civilian populations from chemical 
36 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

and biological terrorism. These efforts accelerated after 9/11. Under the 

Department of Homeland Security’s BioWatch program, environmental 

sampling capabilities have been put in place in more than 20 major U.S. 

cities to detect a biological attack as soon as possible after it has occurred 

so as to maximize the time available for treatment. It supplements disease 

surveillance programs supported by the Centers for Disease Control and 

Prevention intended to detect biological attacks through monitoring of 

disease outbreaks.

The Nation’s preparedness to respond to biological attacks also has 

benefitted from making its Strategic National Stockpile more robust. 

Under a program managed by the Department of Health and Human 

Services (DHHS), medical countermeasures suitable for responding to 

WMD attacks and natural disasters are prepositioned around the country. There are, however, significant gaps in the availability of medical 

countermeasures to address many threat agents. As a result, development of new medical countermeasures has received considerable attention since 9/11.

Under the DHHS BioShield program, the Federal Government has 

acquired medical countermeasures and made funding available to pharmaceutical firms for advanced development and production of promising 

new WMD medical countermeasures that the commercial market would 

not be expected to finance on its own. While BioShield can and has made 

funding available for medical countermeasures against chemical and 

radiological as well as biological threats, the bulk of the funding to date 

has been provided for countermeasures against biological agents, such 

as a new anthrax vaccine. When BioShield was created, officials assumed 

that large pharmaceutical companies would respond to the government’s 

requirements for medical countermeasures. This expectation proved false 

because the market was too small to attract serious interest by big pharmaceutical companies. The small firms that were responsive, however, 

often lacked both the financial resources needed to complete development of medical products and the experience in navigating the long and 

complicated drug approval process. In response to these problems, in 

2007 a new Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority 

was created in DHHS and tasked with supporting new medical countermeasures through the full development process.

Less funding has been devoted to defeating chemical terrorism, 

consistent with the government’s assessment that chemical attacks generally can be expected to be less consequential than biological ones (though 

it depends on the agent and scenario). The main thrust of post-9/11 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 37

counter-chemical efforts has been on enhancing the physical security of 

chemical plants, transportation modes, and storage sites. Terrorists are 

considered more likely to attempt to employ toxic industrial chemicals 

(TICs) in their planned chemical attacks than chemical warfare agents 

because TICs, though less potent, are far more accessible. The Strategic National Stockpile also is less likely to be effective in responding to 

chemical attacks than to biological ones in that the treatment window is 

far narrower for the former than the latter.

The military continues to invest in capabilities to defeat chemical 

and biological weapons use against U.S. forces, including in the areas of 

counterforce, detection, protection (including medical countermeasures), 

decontamination, and consequence management. The military also has 

established the nucleus of an enduring WMD elimination capability—

that is, “actions taken in a hostile or uncertain environment to systematically locate, characterize, secure and disable, or destroy WMD programs 

and related capabilities.”57 It has done this through the establishment of 

a Joint Elimination Coordination Element at the U.S. Army’s 20th Support Command–Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosives, 

which would form the core of a Joint Task Force–Elimination if an operational requirement to stand up a task force emerged.58 This represents 

important progress in military counter-WMD capabilities, but the military, like the homeland security community, still lacks sufficient numbers 

of specialized WMD capabilities to handle the complex global demands 

of any large-scale WMD contingency that might unfold as the result of 

the sudden collapse or radicalization of a WMD-armed state.

Whether these defeat measures at home and for the battlefield make 

a significant contribution to deterrence, which is almost impossible to 

ascertain, their sustainment and extension clearly are important in a 

world where chemical and biological weapons capabilities are expected to 

become more accessible to a wider range of actors. If deterrence fails, the 

Nation will depend on these capabilities to save lives, reduce damage, and 

restore functionality.

The Obama Administration: Initial Observations

Like its predecessor, the Obama administration has identified 

WMD proliferation and potential employment, and especially nuclear 

terrorism, as one of the most serious threats to U.S. and international 

security and expressed its determination to counter that threat. It is continuing and building upon many of the “combating WMD” concepts, initiatives, and programs inherited from its predecessor, particularly in the 
38 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

areas of protection and response. Beyond its previously discussed reevaluation of strategies toward Iran and North Korea, the Obama administration’s principal departures from the Bush administration’s approach to 

WMD issues are its greater emphasis on traditional, treaty-based disarmament and nonproliferation, its reorientation of BMD programs, and, 

potentially, how it will ensure the reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent 

for as long as it is needed.59 It also has made significant changes to its predecessor’s organization for countering WMD, primarily in the Executive 

Office of the President and OSD, in an effort to improve the development 

and coordination of countering WMD policy.

Nonproliferation and Disarmament. President Obama has embraced 

the vision of the global elimination of nuclear weapons and the Nation’s 

special responsibility to lead the world in that direction that was articulated most famously by William Perry, George Schultz, Sam Nunn, and 

Henry Kissinger in January 2007.60 Like these former senior government 

officials, the President concedes that achieving the actual elimination of all 

nuclear weapons is a difficult and long-term task, something that may not 

be attained in his lifetime, but contends that articulating the vision and taking practical steps toward its achievement are essential to containing and 

reversing the ongoing proliferation of nuclear weapons capabilities and to 

reducing the likelihood that such weapons will be used.

When the United States ratified the NPT in 1970, it formally 

undertook the obligation “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to . . . nuclear disarmament” as well as to the “cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date” and on a “treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international 

control.”61 All U.S. administrations since have affirmed that obligation, 

so the Obama administration’s stated commitment to the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons does not actually constitute a new policy. 

But no U.S. administration has embraced that obligation and promised 

to put it at the center of U.S. nuclear weapons policy in the way that this 

administration has done (and without emphasizing its linkage to the 

accomplishment of “general and complete disarmament”). The Bush 

administration, in contrast, did not accept that there was a meaningful 

connection between managing the nuclear proliferation problem and 

advocating for the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. It argued 

that actions to advance disarmament would not have any constraining 

effect on rogue states and terrorists, who present the most serious proliferation threat, and indeed would encourage these and other actors to 

advance their nuclear capabilities.
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 39

Advocates of the global zero vision, including the Obama administration, agree on the urgency of the nuclear proliferation problem 

but contend that the United States must mobilize broader and stronger 

international support to stop and reverse proliferation—and cannot do 

so unless it is seen to be committed to the goal of eliminating all existing nuclear weapons, including its own. They generally believe that the 

Bush administration, despite presiding over major reductions in the 

U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, not only failed to convey a commitment 

to disarmament but also actually fostered a perception that it sought to 

expand the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. security policy. This largely 

was a result of first term proposals to develop new nuclear weapons capabilities, interpretations of major guidance documents (2001 Nuclear Posture Review, 2002 National Security Strategy), and some administration 

rhetoric. Although the Bush administration actually worked to reduce 

U.S. reliance upon nuclear weapons by integrating nonnuclear strategic capabilities (missile defenses, long-range conventional strike), and 

a number of administration officials eventually did endorse the global 

elimination vision, it never overcame the perception held by an influential segment of U.S. and international thought leaders that it lacked sufficient zeal for nuclear disarmament to be effective in defusing the world’s 

growing nuclear dangers. The Obama administration is determined to 

be seen as leading the world toward the eventual elimination of nuclear 

weapons. Whether this will lead to more successful nonproliferation outcomes in the near term than the Bush administration was able to achieve 

remains to be seen.

President Obama has outlined a number of specific initiatives, some 

of which already are in train, to reduce nuclear dangers in the near term 

and establish the “building blocks” for eventual abolition. Many of these 

initiatives continue or build upon existing efforts, including securing vulnerable nuclear weapons–usable materials around the world, limiting the 

diffusion of enrichment and reprocessing capabilities by offering reliable 

international sources of reactor fuel, strengthening WMD interdiction 

capabilities, and making “durable international institutions” of existing 

activities such as the Proliferation Security Initiative and the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. The President has committed to 

hosting in 2010 the first Global Summit on Nuclear Security to lend more 

international weight and urgency to these efforts. President Obama and 

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also have committed to reach agreement to a successor to the START treaty that will further reduce both 

nations’ nuclear weapons and delivery systems.62
40 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

Some administration nuclear initiatives depart markedly from 

recent policy. President Obama stated in Prague that he would immediately and aggressively seek U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test 

Ban Treaty (CTBT), which the Senate rejected in 1999 and which the 

Bush administration did not revisit during its tenure. The President also 

committed to negotiate a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty; his 

predecessor had opposed as unworkable the inclusion of verification 

measures in such a treaty. The President further announced his intention to pursue additional nuclear weapons reductions beyond the START 

follow-on agreement and to engage all nuclear weapons states to that end. 

The Bush administration, which generally considered the negotiation 

of new, legally binding nuclear arms reduction agreements as unhelpful 

and initiated START follow-on discussions with Russia with some reluctance, did not address the possibility of negotiating deep reductions with 

nuclear weapons states other than Russia.

Programs and Initiatives. Beyond an increased emphasis on 

more traditional approaches to nonproliferation, the Obama administration’s emerging strategy to counter WMD threats is not so much different from its predecessor’s than it is a promise to do more of it better. 

It has embraced the need for a robust, layered defense against WMD 

threats that can identify and dispose of such dangers as early and as 

far away from the United States as possible while also preparing for the 

possibility that WMD attacks nonetheless may be perpetrated. President Obama spoke in Prague of the need to break up black markets 

in nuclear materials and know-how, to detect and interdict materials 

in transit, and to use financial tools to disrupt WMD trade—all hallmarks of his predecessor’s approach. As previously mentioned, he also 

emphasized the need to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials around 

the world and endorsed the Proliferation Security Initiative and Global 

Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. There has been no indication 

yet of intent to develop a replacement for the 2002 National Strategy to 

Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction and its framework of nonproliferation (prevention), counterproliferation (protection), and consequence management (response).

In remarks at the National Defense University on May 7, 2009, 

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy characterized 

WMD as one of the most critical threats facing both the United States and 

the world. She observed that any WMD crisis could quickly “go global” 

and pledged an “absolute commitment” to make up for “lost time” in 

preparing DOD for responding to large and complex WMD events. She 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 41

identified WMD as one of the five specific security challenges for the 

forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, and delineated four strategic 

priorities for responding to it: increase barriers to WMD proliferation and 

use, develop layered and integrated WMD defenses, improve our ability to 

identify and mitigate emergent WMD threats, and manage WMD threats 

stemming from failing or failed states. Among DOD’s WMD objectives 

are expanding cooperative threat reduction programs, strengthening legal 

authorities for interdiction, improving forensics and attribution capabilities, developing more effective detection, monitoring, and response 

networks to prepare Federal, state, and local communities for WMD 

crises, and forging stronger regional and global partnerships to counter 

WMD threats. None of this is inconsistent with the prior administration’s 

approach, although the new team clearly feels much was left undone.

In the counterproliferation arena, the Obama administration has 

adopted a different approach to ballistic missile defense. Whereas the 

Bush administration conferred preferential status on BMD and pursued 

a “spiral approach” that allowed limited capabilities not yet fully proven 

to be deployed and then improved over time, the Obama administration seems committed to spending less overall on BMD and pursuing a 

more traditional approach to RDT&E. The President has stated that he 

will support missile defense systems that are “proven and cost-effective,” 

and in his 2010 budget has redirected some resources from the Missile 

Defense Agency’s budget to other defense needs and reoriented the program to emphasize more technologically mature systems. The budget 

caps further growth in the Ground Based Interceptor (GBI) program 

designed to defend against long-range missile threats and increases funding for more mature systems such as Aegis and Terminal High Altitude 

Area Defense designed for forward deployment to protect U.S. and coalition expeditionary forces and, where possible, allied populations. Other 

programs exploring more ambitious—and presumably riskier—technologies are either scaled back or terminated (such as Airborne Laser, Multiple Kill Vehicle, and Kinetic Energy Interceptor).

Additionally, funding is delayed for preparing interceptor and radar 

sites in Poland and the Czech Republic in support of the so-called BMD 

Third Site, designed to defend against long-range missile threats from 

Iran.63 This has both technical and political dimensions. Technically, 

the interceptors in question are a two-stage variant of the GBI based in 

Alaska and California, and will require flight testing at least through 

2010 before they may be ready for deployment. By not committing 

funding to site preparation while testing proceeds, the administration is 
42 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

also sending a political signal that, while not renouncing the Third Site 

program, it is willing to explore alternative missile defense schemes that 

may be less objectionable to Russia, which sees the Third Site as a threat 

to its strategic interests despite U.S. assurances to the contrary. Among 

these alternatives is U.S.-Russian collaboration on a joint capability to 

defend Europe from Iranian missile threats—a capability that could 

build on the Third Site systems already identified or be based on other 

configurations. Meeting in Moscow on July 6, 2009, Presidents Obama 

and Medvedev issued a joint statement on missile defense issues pledging continued efforts to establish cooperation.64

It remains to be seen what program the Obama administration will 

adopt to ensure the continued reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal until 

such time as all nuclear weapons might be abolished. Though having 

committed to the vision of global zero, President Obama has pledged to 

maintain a safe, secure, and credible nuclear arsenal to deter adversaries and to guarantee the defense of our allies as long as others possess 

nuclear weapons. But he also has disavowed the development of new 

nuclear weapons.

In its second term, the Bush administration proposed to ensure 

the long-term reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons without resuming nuclear testing by building replacement nuclear warheads based 

on existing weapons designs but utilizing new materials and parts. 

Although this proposed Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program explicitly disavowed giving new warheads greater military capabilities than the ones they would replace, Congress refused to fund the 

program. Instead, Congress deferred any major decisions regarding 

the future nuclear stockpile to the next administration. It established 

the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United 

States to provide outside advice on these matters and to inform the next 

Nuclear Posture Review, to be submitted by early 2010 in conjunction 

with the 2011 budget. In March 2009, the Obama administration formally terminated the RRW program.65

The Strategic Posture Commission’s report, delivered in May 2009, 

did not seek to resurrect RRW but made it clear that the current reliance 

on stockpile stewardship and life extension programs will not suffice over 

the long term. It explained that a spectrum of options exists for ensuring 

the arsenal’s long-term reliability that ranges from the pure remanufacturing of existing warheads with existing components at one end to complete redesign and new production of all system components at the other. 

Rather than apply a single solution to the entire arsenal, it advocated 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 43

applying whatever technical option along this spectrum is most appropriate for each type of warhead and consistent with broader U.S. nuclear 

weapons policy:

So long as it continues to rely on nuclear deterrence, the United 

States requires a stockpile of nuclear weapons that are safe, 

secure, and reliable, and whose threatened used in military 

conflict would be credible. The Stockpile Stewardship Program 

and the Life Extension Program have been remarkably successful 

in refurbishing and modernizing the stockpile to meet these 

criteria, but cannot be counted on for the indefinite future. 

The Commission observes that the debate over the proposed 

Reliable Replacement Warhead revealed a lot of confusion 

about what was intended, what is needed, and what constitutes 

“new” and believes that, as the nation moves forward, it must 

be clear about what is being initiated (and what is not) as well 

as what makes a weapon “new” and what does not. Alternatives 

to stockpile stewardship and life extension involve to varying 

degrees the reuse and/or redesign of components and different 

engineering solutions. . . . As a matter of U.S. policy, the 

United States does not produce fissile materials and does not 

conduct nuclear explosive tests. Also the United States does not 

currently seek new weapons with new military characteristics. 

Within this framework, it should seek the possible benefits of 

improved safety, security, and reliability available to it.66

The commission’s report may provide the Obama administration 

with the bipartisan, expert justification that it would need to put forward 

a refurbishment and modernization strategy that could include the development of one or more new warheads albeit without new or additional 

military capabilities. This could both address concerns about the longterm reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and help ensure sufficient political support for other, potentially more contentious parts of its nuclear 

agenda, particularly ratification of the CTBT (the only issue on which 

commission members could not reach consensus).

Organization. The Obama administration also has made some 

notable changes to the government’s organization for WMD matters. 

Within the Executive Office of the President, it established the position of 

WMD Coordinator. The President folded the Homeland Security Council 

(HSC) staff into the National Security Council (NSC) staff (renamed the 

National Security Staff) while maintaining both councils and the position of the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. In 2007, Congress directed through Public Law 110–53 the 
44 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

creation of the U.S. Coordinator for the Prevention of Weapons of Mass 

Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism to serve as the President’s principal advisor on those threats, but the Bush administration chose not to 

implement the legislation. In December 2008, the Commission on the 

Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism 

reiterated the call to establish a WMD coordinator and also called for the 

restructuring of the NSC and HSC. It held that nonproliferation interests 

were being given insufficient weight in the policymaking process when 

they conflicted with other interests, a problem it saw as compounded by 

having WMD proliferation and terrorism matters overseen by two parallel staffs—those of the NSC and HSC.67

It is not self-evident that the White House’s new structure will be 

more efficient or effective than its predecessor’s, at least as a result of 

the establishment of the WMD Coordinator position. Like the previous 

administration’s NSC Senior Director for Counterproliferation Strategy, 

the new WMD Coordinator does not report directly to the President 

but through the National Security Advisor and his principal deputy. The 

WMD Coordinator also reports through the Assistant to the President for 

Homeland Security and Counterterrorism for matters under that official’s 

purview (organizationally defined as those of the WMD Coordinator’s 

subordinate directorate for WMD Terrorism and Threat Reduction). The 

Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism 

organizationally reports to the National Security Advisor but also is the 

President’s principal advisor, with direct and immediate access to the 

President, on his issues.68 The consolidation of the HSC and NSC staffs 

may have more impact on the interagency policy development and coordination process.

Within the Defense Department, the Under Secretary of Defense 

for Policy has reconnected key WMD policy domains at the assistant secretary and deputy assistant secretary levels. WMD policy portfolios have 

been consolidated under the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global 

Strategic Affairs (GSA), with the exception of those pertaining directly to 

homeland security, which are statutorily reserved to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense. Within GSA, U.S. strategic forces 

and missile defense policy matters now fall under the Deputy Assistant 

Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy, and all other 

counter-WMD policy matters (to include cooperative threat reduction) 

under the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Countering WMD. 

In the previous administration, WMD responsibilities were divided 

between three assistant secretaries and a larger number of deputy assis-
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 45

tant secretaries. Those responsibilities also were joined with unrelated 

ones, such as in the case of one deputy assistant secretary with responsibility for both counternarcotics and counterproliferation. Thus, a stronger 

organizational foundation may now exist to promote improved unity of 

effort within OSD and, thereby, in DOD as a whole. Realizing this payoff, 

though, may require reversing reductions made in the last administration 

in the number of staff, especially those with WMD expertise, assigned to 

WMD policy issues, particularly within OSD and the Joint Staff. It also 

will require the new administration’s defense team to resolve the earlier 

discussed issues associated with the 2005 assignment to U.S. Strategic 

Command of the mission to integrate and synchronize the department’s 

combating WMD activities.

Conclusion

During the National Defense University Center for the Study of 

Weapons of Mass Destruction’s May 2008 symposium, one panel endeavored to forecast the saliency of WMD issues for the new administration 

that would assume office the following January. It anticipated that WMD 

issues would be less salient than for the Bush administration. Iraq and 

Afghanistan would preoccupy the new administration. Iran would remain a 

major challenge but for much more than its nuclear program and would be 

the subject of a more holistic, and less nuclear-centric, approach. The North 

Korean nuclear program hopefully would remain off the front burner with 

continuing, if painful, progress in implementing the agreed denuclearization “action plan.” Counter-WMD programs would lose ground in an 

intensified competition for resources in a deficit-constrained Federal budget. And this was well before the trough of the financial crisis.

Yet the Obama administration, like its post–Cold War predecessors, 

has placed WMD among its top national security priorities. North Korea 

and Iran remain front and center in U.S. strategic and regional security 

policy. The President’s defense policy team has pledged to make up for 

lost time in developing the capacity to prevent and manage large-scale 

WMD crises. Significant organizational changes have been made to facilitate the achievement of the administration’s counter-WMD goals. Perhaps 

most prominently, President Obama’s ambitious nuclear agenda—to 

include his embrace of global zero—is explicitly an effort to strengthen 

international efforts to limit the further proliferation of nuclear weapons.

It is somewhat remarkable that WMD has remained so prominent 

among U.S. threats when no WMD have been used (or are known to have 
46 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

been used) against U.S. forces since 1918, and the few known cases of 

nonstate actor WMD employment within or against the United States in 

modern history resulted in only a handful of fatalities. Just the prospect 

of their strange and horrific consequences and the worrisome nature of 

some of the actors who possess or seek them is enough to hold the attention of the Nation’s leadership. Never have weapons so seldom used commanded such attention for so long. It is one of the more notable continuities across the post–Cold War administrations.

The balance of concern among the various types of WMD threats 

has shifted over time, though. “Loose nukes” emanating from the former 

Soviet Union predominated in the immediate post–Cold War period. 

With the rise of the perceived military threat from rogue states such 

as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea in the 1990s, chemical weapons threats 

moved to the forefront of U.S. military planning for WMD, with increasing attention later that decade and early the next to the biological threat 

that such states might also pose. By 2004, though, nuclear had overshadowed chemical and biological among perceived rogue state WMD 

threats as it became apparent that the Agreed Framework had not reined 

in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and that Iran’s nuclear program 

extended far beyond the Bushehr reactor; both these programs continue 

to advance. But the prospect of WMD terrorism, possibly abetted by 

WMD-capable rogue states, became and remains the greatest perceived 

WMD threat to the Nation after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks 

and subsequent anthrax letters. Nuclear and biological terrorism are the 

principal focus of that concern today because their assessed worst-case 

consequences exceed those of chemical or radiological terrorism, but the 

balance could shift toward chemical or radiological threats if a major terrorist incident involving one or both of those types of weapons, which 

tend to be more accessible, occurred.

Over the past two decades, the priority accorded to the WMD 

threat, in its varying forms, has resulted in greater U.S. capacity to 

prevent WMD proliferation and to protect and respond to potential 

WMD employment. CTR programs were established, expanded, and 

refined to stabilize and reduce the danger of WMD capabilities emanating from the former Soviet Union. Beginning in the 1990s, the 

U.S. military rationalized and expanded its chemical and biological 

defense efforts to defeat traditional threats of these types posed by 

rogue states. Increasingly, it is investing in understanding and mitigating nontraditional chemical and biological threats that already 

exist and could become more salient. The Nation responded to the 
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 47

post-9/11 WMD terrorism threat with new concepts, institutions, 

and infrastructure for homeland security and whole-of-government 

cooperation. Large sums have been invested in WMD terrorism prevention and response, primarily for nuclear and biological terrorism, 

as manifested in programs such as the global nuclear detection architecture, BioWatch, and BioShield. New mechanisms for international 

cooperation against WMD were established through agreements, resolutions, initiatives, and programs such as the CWC, UNSC Resolution 

1540, Proliferation Security Initiative, Global Partnership against the 

Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, and creative 

use of financial sanctions. This is an important legacy upon which the 

Obama administration can build.

These investments and other efforts likely have been effective, at 

least to some extent, in preventing our worst WMD fears from being realized. But it is not possible to determine to what extent this has been the 

result of luck—that we have avoided worse outcomes despite ourselves—

or even to what extent we may have been overly concerned about this 

threat and devoted more time and treasure to it than was required. Given 

the potential consequences of underestimating and thereby leaving the 

door unnecessarily open to the use of WMD, the prudent thing is to continue to accord high priority to countering such an inherently dangerous 

constellation of weapons.

Much remains to be done to counter the WMD threat as it exists 

today and as it is likely to evolve in the future, despite the progress made 

to date. One major task is to enhance the Nation’s capacity to prevent and 

manage large-scale WMD crises, which could emerge at any time. That 

should be achievable with sufficient political will and resources. A less 

tractable but no less important task will be resolving the proliferation 

challenges posed by Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear programs, which 

include not only the direct dangers associated with those nations’ possession of nuclear weapons capabilities but also the impact that could 

have on the larger nonproliferation regime. The Obama administration 

will test whether a new U.S. President unburdened with his predecessor’s 

image problems and demonstrating leadership toward the long-term goal 

of global nuclear disarmament can sufficiently change the international 

context for proliferation to resolve these challenges and strengthen the 

nonproliferation regime.

Finally, the Nation must prepare for the evolving WMD threats 

of tomorrow. The continuing progress of science and technology can 

be expected to present opportunities to develop new and even more 
48 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

troublesome means of perpetrating mass destruction. The Nation will 

need to invest in anticipating and preparing to preempt or counter such 

developments as it strives to ensure that our worst fears about the proliferation and use of WMD remain unfulfilled.
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 49

Notes

1

 The White House, “Fact Sheet: Nonproliferation and Export Control Policy,” September 27, 

1993. In addition to stating these principles, this document outlines policy objectives regarding the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, missile proliferation, fissile material, export controls, 

regional nonproliferation initiatives, military planning and doctrine, and conventional arms transfers. 2

 In 1996, the Coordinating Committee on Export Control was replaced with the Wassenaar 

Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies. 3

 See Bradley H. Roberts, “Nonproliferation Challenges Old and New,” The Counterproliferation Papers, Future Warfare Series No. 24, U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center, August 2004. 4

 The Nunn-Lugar legislation is officially known as the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act. 

It was enacted in November 1991. The Department of Defense (DOD) was designated executive 

agent for the cooperative threat reduction program created by the act. 5

 Remarks by the Honorable Les Aspin, Secretary of Defense, National Academy of Sciences 

Committee on International Security and Arms Control, December 7, 1993. The Defense Counterproliferation Initiative grew out of the Bottom-Up Review (September 1993), a comprehensive review 

of strategy and forces that reoriented defense planning away from Cold War assumptions toward a 

focus on major regional contingencies. The Bottom-Up Review cited the proliferation of nuclear and 

other WMD as the most urgent of the new dangers facing the Nation after the Cold War. 6

 This objective was articulated in Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), “Proliferation: 

Threat and Response,” November 1997, 61. 7

 See, for example, Ashton B. Carter, “Counterproliferation Initiative: Managing Three Crises,” 

prepared remarks to the Conference on Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons Proliferation, 

May 23, 1996. The two other crises referred to are war and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. 8

 OSD, “Proliferation: Threat and Response,” 74.

9

 The White House, “Fact Sheet: Combating Terrorism—Presidential Decision Directive 62,” 

May 22, 1998. 10 The White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: The White House, September 2002), 15. 11 For an elaboration of this idea, see Jofi Joseph, “The Exercise of National Sovereignty: The 

Bush Administration’s Approach to Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Nonproliferation 

Review 12, no. 2 (July 2005), 373–387.

12 In her remarks on “Transformational Diplomacy” at Georgetown University on January 

18, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated that “the fundamental character of regimes now 

matters more than the international distribution of power.” 13 Remarks by President George W. Bush on Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation, 

National Defense University, February 11, 2004. 14 In May 2008, National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley outlined six proliferation challenges, several of which are a principal focus of the international partnership strategy discussed here. 

Offered late in the administration’s term in office, this may be viewed as an effort retrospectively to 

articulate a framework or organizing construct for the various elements of administration policy. Stephen J. Hadley, remarks at the Proliferation Security Initiative Fifth Anniversary Senior Level Meeting, May 28, 2008. 15 For a detailed treatment of these and other initiatives, see Paul I. Bernstein, International 

Partnerships to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass 

Destruction Occasional Paper 6 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, May 2008). For 

a recent discussion of the international law dimension, see Michael Chertoff, “The Responsibility to 

Contain,” Foreign Affairs (January-February 2009), 130–147. 16 The White House, “What Does Disarmament Look Like?” January 2003.

17 William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, “Iran Said to Have Nuclear Fuel for One Weapon,” 

The New York Times, November 20, 2008. 18 See David Ignatius, “The Fading Jihadists,” The Washington Post, February 28, 2008, A17. Ignatius summarizes the recent work of Marc Sageman, a major proponent of the “leaderless jihad” hypothesis. 19 This hypothesis is explored in John Mueller, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism

Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them (New York: Free Press, 2006), 

179–182.
50 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

20 See Ehud Sprinzak, “On Not Overstating the Problem,” in Hype or Reality?—The “New Terrorism” and Mass Casualty Attacks, ed. Bradley H. Roberts (Alexandria, VA: The Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, 2000), 3–16. 21 For an attempt to catalogue the technical and operational challenges to a successful act of 

nuclear terrorism and calculate the probability of success, see John Mueller, “The Atomic Terrorist: Assessing the Likelihood,” prepared for presentation at the Program on International Security 

Policy, University of Chicago, January 15, 2008, available at <http://psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/

jmueller/overblown.html>. In this paper, Mueller suggests 20 specific tasks that an “atomic terrorist” 

must successfully complete in what he labels the most likely scenario: construction of a weapon using 

stolen fissile material. 22 John Mueller, “Terrorphobia: Our False Sense of Insecurity,” The American Interest 3, no. 5 

(May-June 2008), 7. 23 By one account, the United States spends roughly one-half of one percent of gross domestic 

product on homeland security. See James J. Carafano, “Securing the Home Front,” The Journal of 

International Security Affairs, no. 12 (Spring 2007), 54. 24 The United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, and China are recognized by the 

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as nuclear weapons states. Israel, India, and Pakistan are not 

party to the NPT and are often referred to as de facto nuclear weapons states. 25 See “North Korea’s Dangerous Game,” International Institute for Strategic Studies Strategic 

Comments 15, issue 5 (June 2009). 26 Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, “U.S.-Asia Relations: Indispensable to our 

Future,” remarks at The Asia Society, February 13, 2009. 27 See “Washington, Seoul Seek New Way to Disarm North,” The Japan Times, July 22, 2009, 4. 28 See Choe Sang-Hun, “N. Korea Says It’s Open to Dialogue,” The New York Times, July 28, 2009. 29 “U.S. Officials Worry About North Korean Proliferation,” Global Security Newswire, May 

28, 2009. 30 See “The President’s Inbox: The Greater Middle East,” transcript of panel discussion hosted 

by the Council on Foreign Relations, January 23, 2009, available at <www.cfr.org/publication/18382/

presidents_inbox.html>. This is a variant on the earlier “freeze for freeze” proposal offered by European Union negotiators in June 2008, whereby Iran would refrain from installing new centrifuges and 

the Western powers would refrain from taking any new action in the United Nations Security Council. This proposal never gained traction due to Iranian objections. 31 See “What Now for Obama’s Iran Policy?” International Institute for Strategic Studies Strategic Comments 15, issue 5 (June 2009). 32 “Time Running Out for Iran to Join Nuclear Talks, Clinton Warns,” Global Security Newswire, July 15, 2009. 33 For a notable articulation of this perspective, see Mark Fitzpatrick, The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Avoiding Worst Case Outcomes, Adelphi Paper 398 (London: International Institute for Strategic 

Studies, 2008). 34 There are media reports of covert operations intended to sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. See David E. Sanger, “U.S. Rejected Aid for Israeli Raid on Iranian Nuclear Site,” The New York 

Times, January 11, 2009.

35 See Kelly Campbell, “Analyzing Iran’s Domestic Political Landscape,” United States Institute 

for Peace Briefing, May 2008; and David Albright and Jacqueline Shire, “Better Carrots, Not Centrifuges: Why Iran Must Halt Enrichment and How the U.S. Can Make it Happen,” Institute for Science 

and International Security, July 10, 2006. In the revised incentives package tabled in June 2008, the 

United States took a step in this direction by expressing its willingness to reaffirm its obligations 

under the United Nations Charter to refrain from the threat or use of force. 36 See “Iranian Nuclear Work Threatens Region, Says Israeli Official,” Global Security Newswire, January 6, 2009. 37 “Iranian Election Seen Undermining U.S. Attempts at Outreach,” Global Security Newswire, 

July 16, 2009. 38 See Daniel R. Coats and Charles S. Robb, “Stopping a Nuclear Tehran,” The Washington 

Post, October 23, 2008; and John R. Bolton, “Obama Promises Bush III on Iran,” The Wall Street Journal, January 2, 2009. 39 See, for example, Geoffrey Forden and John Thomson, “Iran as a Pioneer Case for Multilateral Nuclear Arrangements,” Science, Technology and Global Security Working Group, Massachu-
COUNTERING WMD: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD 51

setts Institute of Technology, 2007; Matthew Bunn, “Constraining Iran’s Nuclear Program: Assessing 

Options and Risks,” briefing dated November 15, 2007; William Luers, Thomas R. Pickering, and Jim 

Walsh, “A Solution for the U.S.-Iran Nuclear Standoff,” New York Review of Books 55, no. 4 (March 20, 

2008); James Miller, Christine Parthemore, and Kurt M. Campbell, “The Case for Game-Changing 

Diplomacy with Iran,” Center for a New American Security Policy Brief, September 2008. 40 In late July, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to rule out the possibility 

of Iran producing its own nuclear fuel through a closed nuclear fuel cycle, even under strict international controls and inspection regimes. She suggested that options short of this were possible, but was 

not specific. See transcript, Meet the Press, NBC News, July 26, 2009. 41 Fitzpatrick, 84. See also Jean-Louis Gergorin, “Iran: Breaking the Deadlock,” Survival 51, no. 

3 (June-July 2009), 23. 42 Risk criteria are suggested in Fitzpatrick: risk of diversion of nuclear materials and knowledge, 

risk of clandestine development, risk of NPT breakout, and risk of stimulating regional proliferation. 43 International Security Advisory Board, 11.

44 Ibid., 11–12. See also Rebecca K.C. Hersman and Robert Peters, “Nuclear U-Turns: Learning from South Korean and Taiwanese Rollback,” Nonproliferation Review 13, no. 3 (November 2006). 45 Fitzpatrick, 72.

46 International Security Advisory Board, 12–13.

47 David Albright and Andrea Scheel, “Unprecedented Projected Nuclear Growth in the 

Middle East: Now Is the Time to Create Effective Barriers to Proliferation,” Institute for Science and 

International Security, November 12, 2008. This report estimates that regional civil nuclear plutonium production could total more than 13,000 kilograms, or 13 tons, by 2020, and nearly 45 tons by 

2030. Manufacturing a nuclear weapon requires only about 8 kilograms of plutonium, so these quantities are significant. Plutonium for weapons would have to be separated from irradiated reactor fuel. 48 Paul. I. Bernstein, John P. Caves, and John F. Reichart, The Future Nuclear Landscape, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction Occasional Paper 5 (Washington, DC: National 

Defense University Press, April 2007), 1–2. 49 This is term used in ongoing research on this topic by the Center for the Study of Weapons 

of Mass Destruction. This work has identified Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Africa, 

and South Korea as high-capability hedgers. 50 Much of this subsection and the following one on Proliferating Capabilities originally was 

published in Global Strategic Assessment 2009: America’s Security Role in a Changing World, ed. Patrick M. Cronin (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2009). 51 Most states are members of the CWC and BWC. Only seven states have not acceded to the 

CWC (though two are signatories), while 35 have not acceded to the BWC (of which 15 are signatories). Most of those that have not even signed the BWC are small African or Pacific island states. 52 For example, see Department of State, “Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, 

Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments,” August 2005, available at 

<www.state.gov/documents/organization/52113.pdf>. 53 As the Director General, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, noted 

in his Opening Statement to the Second Special Session of the Conference of the States Parties to 

Review the Operation of the Chemical Weapons Convention:

important changes are taking place. The layout, design, and characteristics 

of plant sites are under continued review by industry. Very importantly, 

globalization is bringing about a massive redistribution and regional migration 

of chemical production and trade in the world. In parallel with these movements, 

there has been an exponential growth in the number of declared Other 

Chemical Production Facilities (OCPFs). . . . Due to their technological features 

. . . a number of [these facilities] could easily and quickly be reconfigured for 

the production of chemical weapons. . . . This is all the more pertinent in view 

of the evolving threat posed by terrorism.

See <www.opcw.org/docs/csp/rc2/en/rc2dg02(e).pdf>.

54 As noted in the February 2008 Report of the Scientific Advisory Board on Developments 

in Science and Technology for the Second Special Session of the Conference of the States Parties to 
52 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

Review the Operation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (Second Review Conference), “New 

biologically active molecules are being discovered at an unprecedented rate. The tools for such techniques are becoming widely available and could be selectively targeted at toxic materials.” See <www.

opcw.org/documents-reports/conference-of-the-states-parties/second-review-conference/?tx_damfrontend_pi1%5Bpointer%5D=1>. 55 Ibid., 11.

56 Alexander Kelle noted in his introduction to a 2006 report on preventing the misuse of 

21st-century chemistry, “The chemistry of the 21st Century is a far cry from the one of the 1980s. . . . 

The new chemistry is utilizing other scientific disciplines and technologies to a much higher degree 

in its quest for new chemical compounds. Alexander Kelle, “Introduction,” The Changing Scientific 

and Technological Basis of the CBW Proliferation Problem, report (edited by Alexander Kelle) of the 

workshop on “Preventing the Misuse of 21st-Century Chemistry: State of the Art of Drug Development and Delivery, and Selected Enabling Technologies,” Belfast, Ireland, January 13–14, 2006, available at <www.opcw.org/docs/csp/rc2/en/rc2dg01(e).pdf>. 57 Joint Staff, Joint Publication 3–40, Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, 

DC: The Joint Staff, June 10, 2009), xv. 58 For a more in depth discussion of WMD elimination capabilities and challenges, see Center 

for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Are We Prepared? Four WMD Crises that Could Transform U.S. Security (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2009), appendix A. 59 This section’s description of the Obama administration’s approach to WMD issues is drawn 

primarily from President Obama’s speech in Prague on April 5, 2009, available at <www.whitehouse.

gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered>, and from 

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy’s remarks at National Defense University on 

May 7, 2009 (unpublished). 60 George Schultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear 

Weapons,” The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, A15. 61 The full text of Article VI of the NPT reads, “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to 

pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race 

at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament 

under strict and effective international control.” 62 The White House, “Fact Sheet: The Joint Understanding for the START Follow-on Treaty,” 

July 6, 2009. 63 Jim Talent and Mackenzie Eaglen, “Obama’s 2010 Defense Budget: Top Five Worst Choices 

for National Security,” June 15, 2009, Heritage Foundation Web Memo no. 2486, available at <www.

heritage.org/research/nationalsecurity/wm2486.cfm>. 64 Joint Statement by Dmitry A. Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation, and Barack 

Obama, President of the United States of America, on Missile Defense Issues, July 6, 2009. 65 America’s Strategic Posture: The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2009), 41. 66 Ibid., xvii–xviii. 

67 World at Risk, The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and 

Terrorism (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, December 2008), xxiv–xxv. The commission recommended that the “President . . . create a more efficient and effective policy coordination structure 

by designating a White House principal advisor for WMD proliferation and terrorism and restructuring the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council.” 68 Memorandum from Mark W. Lippert, Deputy Assistant to the President, Deputy National 

Security Advisor, National Security Council Chief of Staff, and Acting Executive Secretary, Subject: 

Integrated National Security Staff (NSS), June 24, 2009.
53

About the Authors

Paul I. Bernstein is a Vice President with Science Applications 

International Corporation (SAIC) in McLean, Virginia. He specializes 

in analysis and project management in the areas of weapons proliferation, 

strategic forces policy, and regional security, and works with the Office of 

the Secretary of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, U.S. Strategic 

Command, National Defense University, and the Department of State on 

a range of policy, planning, and professional military education activities. 

Mr. Bernstein is a member of the Combating WMD Panel of the Department of Defense Threat Reduction Advisory Committee, has supported 

development of key DOD combating WMD strategy and concept documents, and is a regular guest lecturer on WMD issues at senior Service 

war colleges. He developed the programs of instruction for the Proliferation, Terrorism, and Response Course at the Defense Nuclear Weapons 

School and the WMD elective taught at the Army War College Center for 

Strategic Leadership. In the strategic forces area, Mr. Bernstein is engaged 

in a number of efforts to examine the future nuclear landscape and future 

directions for U.S. nuclear policy, deterrence strategy, and missile defense. 

He is author most recently of “Combating WMD Collaboratively,” Joint 

Force Quarterly (Issue 51, 4th Quarter 2008); International Partnerships 

to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction Occasional Paper 6 (Washington, DC: National 

Defense University Press, May 2008); “Shaping the Nuclear Landscape,” 

Joint Force Quarterly (Issue 46, 3d Quarter 2007); The Future Nuclear 

Landscape, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction Occasional Paper 5 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, April 

2007); and “Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Primer,” prepared for the 

Comparative Strategic Cultures Curriculum Assessing Strategic Culture as 

a Methodological Approach to Understanding WMD Decision Making by 

States and Non-State Actors, October 2006. Mr. Bernstein is a member of 

the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

John P. Caves, Jr., is a Senior Research Fellow in the Center for the 

Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD Center) at the National 

Defense University (NDU), where his work has focused on nuclear and 

chemical threats. Prior to joining the WMD Center in October 2003, he 

served as Deputy Director for Counterproliferation Policy in the Office 

of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). In that capacity, he played an active 

role in preparing U.S. forces for biological and chemical weapons threats 
54 CSWMD OCCASIONAL PAPER 7

in the Persian Gulf region and Korea. Among his other assignments during 17 years with OSD were Country Director, Office of European Policy, 

and Deputy Director for Plans, Defense Security Assistance Agency. Mr. 

Caves holds a Master of Public Affairs degree from Princeton University, 

a Master of Science degree from the National War College, and a Bachelor 

of Arts degree from Boston College. He received the Secretary of Defense 

Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service and the Bronze Palm thereto; he 

also received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian 

Service. Mr. Caves is the author of “Globalization and WMD Proliferation 

Networks: The Policy Landscape,” Globalization and WMD Proliferation: 

Terrorism, Transnational Networks and International Security, ed. James 

A. Russell and James J. Wirtz (New York: Routledge, 2008); co-author of 

“Russia’s Cold War Perspective on Missile Defense in Europe” (Paris: Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, May 2007); and co-author of The 

Future Nuclear Landscape (Washington, DC: National Defense University 

Press, April 2007).

W. Seth Carus is a Distinguished Research Professor at NDU and 

the Deputy Director of the WMD Center. He has been at NDU since 

1997. From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Carus was detailed to the Office of the 

Vice President as the senior advisor to the Vice President for biodefense. 

During that period he also served on the staff of the National Preparedness Review and worked with the Office of Homeland Security while it 

was being established after 9/11. Before joining NDU, Dr. Carus was a 

research analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses. From 1991 to 1994, 

he was a member of the policy planning staff in the Under Secretary 

of Defense for Policy at OSD. Before joining the government, he was a 

research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has 

a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University. He is author of Defining 

“Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass 

Destruction Occasional Paper 4 (Washington, DC: National Defense 

University Press, 2006), and co-authored with James B. Petro, “Biological Threat Characterization Research: A Critical Component of National 

Biodefense,” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, 

and Science 3, no. 4 (2005), 295–308.
Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

National Defense University

Since its inception in 1994, the Center for the Study of Weapons of 

Mass Destruction (WMD Center) has been at the forefront of 

research on the implications of weapons of mass destruction for 

U.S. security. Originally focusing on threats to the military, the 

WMD Center now also applies its expertise and body of research to 

the challenges of homeland security. The center’s mandate includes 

research, education, and outreach. Research focuses on understanding the security challenges posed by WMD and on fashioning 

effective responses thereto. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff has designated the center as the focal point for WMD education in the joint professional military education system. Education 

programs, including its courses on countering WMD and consequence management, enhance awareness in the next generation 

of military and civilian leaders of the WMD threat as it relates to 

defense and homeland security policy, programs, technology, and 

operations. As a part of its broad outreach efforts, the WMD Center 

hosts annual symposia on key issues bringing together leaders and 

experts from the government and private sectors. Visit the center 

online at www.ndu.edu/WMDCenter/. 

For additional information, including publication requests, please contact the 

Center directly at WMDWebmaster@ndu.edu or (202) 685–4234 or visit the Center 

Web site at 

http://www.ndu.edu/wmdcenter/index.cfm
Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

National Defense University

Washington, D.C.