12 Replies to “The Two Models [BRD]”

1. SteveG says:

   May 14, 2007 at 4:13 pm

   Thanks.
   
   Pretty scary stuff… and like the end says: the only way to win is not to play

   I’m hoping cooler heads in Iran and Syria prevail… they do not need nukes.

2. happyfeet says:

   May 14, 2007 at 7:43 pm

   2006-04-12 (AP)

   “The Iranians are deliberately trying to hype this up,” David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said Wed.

   […]

   Albright’s group has suggested that Iran could move faster – if it wanted to produce bombs – by creating a basic small plant of 1,500 centrifuges to produce enough bomb fuel for one weapon. But the group has estimated even that would take three more years.

   2007-05-14

   In a short-notice inspection of Iran’s operations in the main nuclear facility at Natanz on Sun, conducted in advance of a report to the UN Security Council due early next week, the inspectors found that Iranian engineers were already using roughly 1,300 centrifuges and were producing fuel suitable for nuclear reactors, according to diplomats and nuclear experts here.

   Until recently, the Iranians were having difficulty keeping the delicate centrifuges spinning at the tremendous speeds necessary to make nuclear fuel and were often running them empty or not at all.

   Now, those roadblocks appear to have been surmounted.

3. OMG! says:

   May 14, 2007 at 8:40 pm

   OMG!  I’m ascared!  Academics speculating about future events have convinced me!

4. Pablo says:

   May 14, 2007 at 8:56 pm

   Academics speculating about future events have convinced me!

   But enough about Al Gore’s friends. we’ve got a war to run here!

5. happyfeet says:

   May 14, 2007 at 9:10 pm

   I read VDH’s article and then I got to Anthony Cordesmann’s, which is like 71 freaking pages. So far I’m at the part where he explains how bigger nuclear bombs make bigger splosions than little nuclear bombs. The graph definitely helped me get a handle on this.

   The Ashford-Tel Aviv-Yahoo axis?

   Not to be judgmental but I think Anthony has too much time on his hands.

6. Ric Locke says:

   May 14, 2007 at 9:21 pm

   Be kind to the congenitally verbose, happyfeet. It’s an affliction.

   Regards,
   
   Ric

7. Ric Locke says:

   May 14, 2007 at 9:35 pm

   I’m hoping cooler heads in Iran and Syria prevail… they do not need nukes.
   
   Posted by SteveG

   I feel so sorry for optimists sometimes. They never get any happy surprises.

   Regards,
   
   Ric

8. Gray says:

   May 14, 2007 at 10:23 pm

   Be kind to the congenitally verbose, happyfeet. It’s an affliction.

   He said succinctly.

9. The_Real_JeffS says:

   May 14, 2007 at 10:25 pm

   I feel so sorry for optimists sometimes. They never get any happy surprises.

   Rephrased, “If you bet on the bad side of human nature, you won’t go wrong too often.”

10. Al Maviva says:

    May 15, 2007 at 9:48 am

    You’re all pants-pissers!  There’s no war on terror!  There’s no threat from radical muslims, they just want what we all want!  It’s all Bush exaggerations and if Edwards and Obama were smart, they’d reject the premises of there being a threat as false!  The Bad Bush economy!  Halliburton!  Sixteen words!  Prescott Bush was a Nazi!  Laura Bush was replaced by a robot!

    /s
    
    DNC Talking Points Generator, v. 1.1

11. Steve says:

    May 15, 2007 at 10:02 am

    As I have said before, there are three issues here, above and beyond the ability of the US to kill its enemies: political, rhetorical, and logistical.

    Political:  maintaining the status quo and/or widening the conflict is going to be politically ruinous to any candidate or party who choses to go that route.  I predicted earlier this year that it would have to change by early 2008 before major defections, it now looks like September is the data.

    Rhetorical:  The people have never been properly sold on a long hard war.  That’s a failure of leadership.  I’m not sure how to fix this.

    logistical: As I was saying just before the Walter Reed story broke, I am skeptical of our ability to sustain casualties indefinitely.  Right now, my son’s best friend, who’s in the Air Force, is being trained with small arms for non-mission related tasks to be performed when he deploys in a couple of months.  He’s freaking mechanic!  We’re running out of people …..

12. Bravo Romeo Delta says:

    May 16, 2007 at 8:05 pm

    Cordesman isn’t a famously brief author, although he pads very little.  If you want perspective, this is a guy who meets periodically with the SecDef, and I’ve seen Kissinger stop to talk to.  So, take it with whatever grain of salt you think is appropriate.

    In any case, here’s the text that accompanied the link to the slides:

    Nuclear War in the Middle East in 2010-2020: A “Simulation” Briefing
    
    Anthony H. Cordesman

    Washington, DC, May 14, 2007– Much of the discussion of proliferation in the Middle East focuses on arms control, and on preventing states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As a result, there is little examination of the practical consequences of proliferation in terms of how it might reshape the character of war fighting in the Middle East, and the consequences for the nations involved.

    The attached briefing was developed for the NESA Center at the National Defense University and for the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). It examines the kind of nuclear forces that might develop in the Middle East in the period between 2010 and 2020 if Iran does actually deploy nuclear forces. It examines the possible level of Iranian capability, how Israel and the US might respond, the possible response of Gulf states, and the role non-state actors might play in the future.

    The briefing then provides summary assessments of what the impact might be on the nations involved. One key conclusion is that states will quickly be forced into an arms race where they would disperse or shelter their forces, and posture them to either launch on warning or launch under attack. It is also that nations like Iran and Israel would have little capability to launch demonstrative or limited strikes, because they would warn the nation under attack, be technically difficult, and use scarce assets.

    There are possible exceptions, but the forces involved encourage large-scale sudden or surprise attacks. They also are sufficiently limited in size and capability so that they would probably target the population centers on both sides, and be designed to produce the largest possible number of casualties.

    Unlike the counterforce and countervalue targeting that the US and USSR (and NATO and Warsaw Pact) examined and included in their targeting plans during the Cold War, any major use of nuclear forces would probably be “existential” in the sense it attempted to destroy the nation under attack and the capability of its people to ever recover from a nuclear exchange. This is a key examination, and one where excursions to other types of war are examined in the briefing and “simulated” interactively when it is given.

    One key conclusion in the examination of a nuclear exchange is that while Israel would be very vulnerable to such attacks, so would any Iranian or Arab attacker at least through 2020. In fact, a nation like Iran – with so much of its economy, culture, and government concentrated in Tehran and a few other cities might well prove to be far more vulnerable to the forces Israel could develop than Israel would be to the forces Iran could hope to deploy until the end of the 2010- 2020 period. With proper targeting, Israel could destroy Persian society as a functioning cultural, economic and political entity.

    The same would be true of any combination of major Arab states that could acquire weapons of mass destruction during this period, although in broader terms Arab culture and the majority of the Arab population would survive. It should be noted in this regard that the actual briefing covers the use of ground bursts, fallout, longer-term death rates, and population-killing strikes in more detail than the attached briefing slides indicate.

    The briefing illustrates the value of missile and air defense in broad terms. The value of civil defense and passive defense is not examined in the slides, but is a key issue in any discussion or “simulation” of possible options. Such defenses could have a major impact in reducing the damage done by a relatively crude force of the kind Iran might deploy during the next decade. They would probably have only limited impact in dealing with the kind of strike Israel could launch, and virtually no impact on the very different kind of retaliatory options the US might use if it provided friendly states in the region with extended deterrence.

    This potential combination of active and passive defenses, and US extended deterrence, could provide non-nuclear states such as the Southern Gulf states with a mix of capabilities that would checkmate any advantages Iran could hope to gain from a nuclear force. Moreover, if Iran attempted a demonstrative or limited strike on another Gulf state, or friendly Arab state, its economy and critical facilities would be so vulnerable to precision conventional and stealth strikes by the US that the US could provide extended deterrence without necessarily having to use nuclear means. If the US chose to use nuclear weapons, it could exercise massive capability to destroy Iran’s forces and economy without necessarily focusing on population targets.

    The briefing slides do not examine the role non-state actors or covert attacks might play in depth. They do suggest, however, that biological weapons could provide a serious threat with nuclear lethalities to a sophisticated non-state actor. A brief examination of the technologies and equipment involved also indicate that they are not controllable in any practical sense, and that major state actors in the region will have the ability to use advanced biotechnology and some aspects of genetic engineering during the period under examination. As a result, any examination of war fighting must look beyond nuclear options and examine biological options as well.

    Two other issues are of note. One is that a number of states are becoming so dependent on critical infrastructure plants and facilities that precision- guided, conventional, strikes can be “weapons of mass effectiveness” under certain conditions. These include oil and gas distribution and loading facilities, but also much more sensitive targets to the populations involved; specifically desalination and water purification plants, electric power plants and in some cases refineries. The availability of high resolution satellite imagery, precise GPS data, economies of scale that greatly increase the impact of a strike, and a failure to provide effective point defense are critical issues, particularly in the Gulf.

    The second is religious. There is no way to be certain how states involved in existential strikes would deal with key targets like Jerusalem, Mecca, Medina, and the Shi’ite holy shrines. The mixed population and Jewish-Christian-Islamic character of Jerusalem might or might not discourage Iran from targeting the city – which is the most populated urban area in Israel. An Israel under existential nuclear attack might or might note hold Mecca and Medina as hostages regardless of the identity of its attacker, confronting Iran with a further problem, or strike against them in response to the nuclear destruction of Jerusalem. The extent to which Israel or a Sunni state with nuclear weapons would or would not target Shi’ite shrines is another major uncertainty.

    This briefing, and ongoing efforts to “game” its conclusions interactively, strongly suggest that the only way to win the proliferation “game” is not to play. In a world where all states behaved purely as rational actors, a Middle East in which Iran, Israel, and possibly Arab states had nuclear and possibly highly lethal biological weapons would be one in which no actor would use such weapons as more than a symbol of power and prestige or in “wars” of threats and intimidation.

    The problem is that all of human history warns that any high-risk strategy based on rational actors sharing common values and perceptions, and acting accordingly in a crisis, is inherently absurd. No one can predict the values and behavior of state and non- state actors in a Middle East armed with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Even if one could ignore the issue of religious and political extremism, and the wild card posed by non-state actors, the force posture issues alone in this briefing strongly indicate that proliferation will involve a series of highly unstable arms races with forces posture to either launch on warning or launch under attack. The risk of misunderstanding, misperceptions, and decisions based on ideological extremes could easily transform what begins as a limited threat into a crisis of truly unmanageable proportions.

    For my money, it is actually newsworthy.  But then again, newsworthy to me doesn’t necessarily mean newsworthy to anyone else.

    BRD

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