>> joint chiefs of staff dempsey made a stop in iraq his first visit since the coalition led air strikes against isis. the twitter account posted this photo of general dempsey speaking with deployed service members. in addition to that the washington times reports this morning that general dempsey and iraqi prime minister alabadie have met but there were no details on what the two discussed. general dempsey's trip comes just a few days after he and defense secretary chuck hagel testified at a congressional hearing about the u.s. strategy for combating isis. it was at that hearing that general dempsey said operations could potentially include a

modest number of u.s. forces fighting with iraqi troops. we'll have that hearing for you to see in its entirety at 10 deln 30 a.m. eastern tomorrow on c-span. vice president earlier this week taking part in the wreath laying. one of several events in recognition of vearnts veterans day. tonight we'll bring you another

event with veterans who served hosted usskeegie airmen by the americans veterans center. tonight at 8:00 eastern here on c-span. next, a look at nuclear proliferation and security threats facing the u.s. the speaker is former assistant secretary of state for political military affairs obert glucheie who served as chief negotiator during the north korean-nuke clear crisis. he recently was at the university for a little more than an hour-and-a-half. >> ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this the third

session. this year the series is sponsored by the johns hopkins applied physics lab. each year the rethinking eminar focuses on an aspect of national and international issues. our seminar is rethinking global security constructs, threats, and responses. specific topic areas that we will try to cover this year include potential threats, adversaries, and strategies the u.s. should consider over the next few decades. where, when, how, and should the united states engage militarily, the post world war ii international order, u.s. leadership, international organizations, and multilateralism, and finally, e economic, trade, and security relationships between the u.s., the eu, and east asia. before introducing tonight's speaker, a couple of quick announcements. first, all of our seminar talks

are videotaped and posted on our website. additionally we do post bulletized notes as well as any presentation materials that our speakers provide to us. to find our website, type three words into googles, and it will show up as the first site in google. the second anannouncement is that in order to properly videotape these events we do use wireless microphones and unfortunately your pda's cell phones or anything that uses wireless directly interferes with those microphones so i ask everybody at this time to please shut off all wireless communications devices. now for tonight's speaker. ambassador robert g.a.o. glucheie is a distinguished professor at georgetown university. previously he has served as the president of the mcarts you are foundation, the dean of the school of foreign service at georgetown university, ambassador at large, and special envoy for the u.s.

department of state. he dealt with threats posed by ballistic milssles and weapeds. he was the chief -- weamed. he 10eu6ed served as an assistant secretary of state for plitry affairs and the deputy executive chairman of the special commission overseeing the disarmment of iraq following the 1991 gulf war. for the rethinking seminar, the ambassador will discuss nuclear proliferation, iran and its nuclear program, north korea and its program, strategies to prevent proliferation, in his views on the way ahead. please join me in giving a warm welcome. [applause] >> thanks.

ladies and gentlemen, i know it's required for me to say this but it's actually true. i'm very happy to be with you tonight. understand that you all voted with your feet and you're pretty much volunteers for this, so i'm grateful you're here and i'm happy to have the opportunity to speak with you. so the truth about my remarks tonight are that they are not exactly as advertised. but they're close. as duncan said, i for the last five years have not been doing things related to international security very much. i was at the mcarthur foundation and in that in my with here i was concerned

reducing maternal mortality, improving k-12 education in the united states. biodiversity around the world. and of course we are always very busy finding those genius that is we announce every year at mcarthur. so i haven't been thinking about international security that much. so when i left mcarthur in the summer where i now am teaching a seminar in international security and i was by necessity reading in in that area, i'm teaching a graduate seminar this summertime semester. and i was struck by something. the something i was struck by was nuclear weapons. i was struck by the fact that -- and if i was titling this it would be nuclear weapons :they're back. and i was surprised by that, frankly. i dealt -- that was my area of

expertise when i was in government for all those decades, and i thought there was a progression downward. and now they are back. but in most interesting ways. so what i would like to do tonight if you all would bear with me, is to go through a little bit of where we've been. to get a better appreciation of where we are. y that, i literally mean that. i would like to take you on a little horseback ride through 70 years of our thinking on nuclear weapons. the theories of deterns, of vulnerability, of stability, and of credibility. i don't think without this, without an appreciateation for this historical context we are best able to understand where we are today given the implementties for -- complexities for the current situation.

so cut me some slack here what i'm asking for. i'm going to do it by decade to make it more packaged as a presentation. then naturally in e 1940's, this is a period marked by two of the words that i'm going to be using, vulnerability and deterrence. as you all know, this was a period in which two things came together in technological inno vasion. one was the delivery vehicle, the v-2. it became clear that a ballistic missile will get through. i know there's a phrase that goes to bombers. but the ballistic missile does get through. and one could argue it's still -- it still gets through if there are enough of them, certainly. and the second innovation was the atomic bomb.

putting these two things 19 40's what the meant to us in our thinking was a unique vulnerability which this nation had never seen before. i could develop that. that's another talk. but it goes from the 19th century and all that we went through, and the early 20th century, the mid 20th century. nd at that point we recognized that we had actually no way to accomplish what the strategists would call defense by denial. we had no way to deny access to the united states of america. the ballistic missile will get rough and what we call the one bomb would mean

sortee or one launch means one city. and that was a unique vulnerability for the united states of america which had en protected by a state it could dominate to its south, a state which was friendly to its north, and oceans on either side, and a very competent navy. that setting, which made our involvement in two world wars controversial for some people, was no longer the setting in which we lived. and that's the message of the 1940's. it meant that we were without defense by denial so we are accomplishing defense by deterrence. and we had had defense by deterrence before, but it was deterrence by denial. there's a great book deterrence before her shame right but that was deterrence by denial. by having a very substantial

defense so that anybody that presumed to attack would have to overcome that defense and by a simple cost benefit analysis did not make sense. it's also the swiss theory of defense. they can't actually accomplish absolute denial but they can raise the cost. right? this was a different kind of defense -- of deterrence. this is deterrence by punishment and this is conceptually a critical difference. this meant we could not accomplish denial. there was no cost there. what we could accomplish though is punishment. it's psychological concept. and we were trading an awful lot. ships and armies and all kind of things that gave us a physical defense by denial in exchange for no ability to really deny but an ability to punish, which is supposed to act on the mind. that is to say, after we're wacked to put it in the

southern italian vernacular, the whacker can get wacked by the whackee. nd that's what the 40's meant. another element of all this of course is the impossibility of knowing when this kind of deterrence works. to deter e here from attacking me by telling him that i have a spider coknife and that if he attacks me, i will survive sufficiently to stab him and punish him, i am going to say i'm deterring duncan from this. now, i will never know whether deterrence works because i've just deterred duncan or i haven't. it's a counter factual. my proposition is that if i did

not have this knife which i claim that i have, then he would attack me. but that's not true. right? because he doesn't attack me. so i never know. i only know when deterrence fails. so if duncan gets up and wacks me i know my deterrent failed. but i never know when it succeeds. i can claim it succeeded but i can't actually prove it. all right. some elements of deterrence. we move into the 1950s, a decade you might call the dullest years in the terms we're now talking. it's marked by words credibility and stability. we move in technological terms from the figs weapon of the 40's to the thermo nuclear weapon of the 50s. and orders of magnitude here, if the nag sacki weapon was close to 20 kilotons of tnt

equivalent we're moving to thermo nuclear weapons. it is 100 times greater of two mega tons. bigger of course, too, but also smaller. 100 times greater. so if you remember those pictures of heir sheema and nag sacki everything is leveled, you see chimneys everything here and there stone thing that is survived, that's a weapon. heir sheema maybe 12 kilotons, nag sacki maybe 18. but multiply that by 20 you don't see chimneys any more, you see a crater. a different concept in terms of levels of destruction. in addition to that of course many more ballistic milssles, submarine launched ballistic milssles. we thought and hoped and the terms we've been talking that these weapons would allow us to put out a theory of deterrence, a policy, a doctrine of massive retaliation, and with that statement of massive retaliation we could deter

everything and maybe even compel some things. over a period of years, 1950s, the truth emerged that we could absolutely compel nothing. and only really be confident of deterrence when attacked on the homeland. but other things, very hard to deal with. we wished apparently to help the fretch, certainly these nuclear weapons were not going to do it. we might have wished some did to do something about the russian move on hungary in 1956. these weapons had nothing to do with this. with could claim they were a deterrent against the soviet union. but remember what i said about knowing whether a deterrent is working or not. it was a proposition that it was working. but we weren't sure.

there was also the realization as we understood sort of the texture of deterrence that are claims for extended deterrence that we could actually extend the nuclear umbrella to nato to the european states to northeast northeast asia to japan and south korea and the philippines and ausesthrailia eventually, that was the proposition. but that other word comes in here. what's the credibility of the deterrent? would we, as our allies said -- not literally but figuratively. would we trade pittsburgh for paris? that's just the lilt ration. that's all i'm going for with that. we had somebody write about tactical nuclear weapons as a bridge. that would be henry kissinger, nuclear weapons and foreign policy -- in order to reassure the allies that were worried that we would not engage in strategic nuclear war in order

to protect them from a conventional invasion in europe which we could not stop with conventional forces so is the proposition went. so the weapons also brought us to a new place not only was this the deterrent, the massive retaliation, but now we're deploying weapons for actual use, for warfighting the tactical nuclear weapons being the first for that. then there was the concept of stability that emerged. initially it was a very concept. you may have heard the metaphor two scorpions in a bottle. us and the soviet union. one scorpion bites the other scorpion, the bitee bites back and they're both dead. it doesn't pay to bite anybody in that situation so everybody is deterred. and there was this happy concept for a while. of the the truth situation was captured in a very influential piece written

called the delicate balance of terror. and then everybody began to understand that the stability -- now the third word -- the stability of the relationship begins upon the surviveability of your capacity to strike back or your second strike capability. just about when that is sinking n to our mindset, the russians orbit this basketball sized entity, sputnik, and the wonder of putting something in space is surpassed by the horror that if they could put something in space they could put something any place on the ground in the united states. so we leave the 50s with an appreciation for a limit of nuclear weapons. we leave the 50s with an understanding of the difficulty of sustaining credibility of

the fragility of stability. it was not a happy place to be at that point. urge there was something important in the election call the missile gap which was very big just before the elections and completely disooch pared after the election. it was a myth in fact. so the 1960s -- by the way, what you should be thinking about here or holding on to in this i find the history very interesting. you may or may not. the importance is the relevance to the situation we now have in northeast asia. we have north korea, south korea, japan -- south asia, india and pakistan, and the middle east with israel and iran and perhaps others. all right? be the 1960s which might called the mcle mare years, we are again dealing with conceptionly with deterrence, the credibility of deterrence,

with the concepts of stability and concepts of vulnerability. mcin a marea offers the phrase flexible response. and it actually is used in two ways at least. one is in conventional forces a more flexible response. but it's also used to cover the topics we're talking about which is our nuclear weapons establishment. nd what he has said we need is strike capability which is not limited to a spazzmotic response that destroys the cities of the soviet union. that this is not credible to do that. what we need is something that will be more precise, that will be more limited. and he propounds the concept of second strike counter force. we had always had before that second strike counter city or counter value, which is

horrifying as it is to say it out loud, meant that we were planning to incinerate roughly 50 million innocent soviet civilians. i say innocent because i don't think they ever voted for the people who were conducting the policy so we make them innocent of that policy. but 50 million was a nice round number. and all we had were round numbers. and he said this is wrong. we would in fact be better off with a more ethical-moral posture of attacking their forces, their military, something of their industry though that has a lot of colateral damage wit 679 that became one of the first important insights of the mcin a marea era. the second strike counter force instead of counter city. it was supposed to be captain rd in the something that was born in the early 60s, 63 i

think, the single integrated operational plan or the sigh op which would have all the targets and match targets with our weapons system soss that when they were put before the president in a critical moment mr. president we're under attack and we have a launch under attack posture, just push this button here and we're good. well, that -- there was a problem with that. this did not match up with flexible response. it was essentially the same smazzmotic response. eventually the sigh op -- sigh op was around for a good 30 years actually 40 years. it would begin to reflect a certain flexibility. but for the first 20 years it really didn't. and it really was quite spazzmotic with enormous civilian collateral damage in the soviet union if it were ever excuted. the second thing about flexible

response second strike counter force is that it didn't take too long before the soviets came to understand that if the united states of america was expecting its forces to survive a soviet attempt to destroy them in the first strike and have residual retaliatory force which we could deploy flexible, targeting their remaining forces, their conventional forces and their industry, it was highly likely we had the capacity to do that damage to them if we struck first and that we had what strategists called a first strike capability. that is to say we could destroy their offensive forces such that they had no means to punish us to retaliate meaning they had just lost deterrence. that was a deduction of the soviets. and i would suggest to you a

correct one from the mcin a marea strategy of the 60s. we dominated overwhelmingly dominated the soviet union during this period in terms of our strategic nuclear forces. the russians in the 60's were very unhappy. the second thing that made them unhappy is something that sort of rhymes with what happens these days. it was mcin a marea and his colleagues' enthusiasm for defense. it meant that we explored the a dm. we did this with a number of what are now called ark tech turs. one was the sentinel it was called. and that evolved into the safeguard system. it was not designed to stop a full soviet attafpblgt i9 wasn't defense by denill. it was intended to stop zepts,

maybe itsdz authorized launches. it was designed because the chinese might attack us. they're so weak this might deal with the chinese threat. but the actual architecture was not appealing to everybody. it involved two missiles both of them with nuclear war heths. the first was called a spartan missile and the idea was that if we detected the lines, detected launch by the soviet union which would come over the poles and attack the united states of america, we would launch a missile that would have a 5 mega ton war head and would.nate and destroy the incoming war heads. brilliant. and the wash heads that might possibly penetrate putible five mega ton nations. there was another missile on the ground called a sprint and it would col come up and get

the remaining missiles with a-year-old war head in the kill ton range. city, city busters detonating in the atmosphere. among the people who did not think this was a good idea were the canadians. which i can you can appreciate, i think. so we left the 60s with the u.s. in a dominant position. the soviets concerned and building fast. aving had a romance with ballistic missile defense or anti-ballistic missile at the time going into the 70s. now, the decade of the 0s was decade of slessjer, decade of brown, two secretaries of defense. and these were years i would call the search for credibility. that word again. it began early in the 70s with arms control. and the first major strategic i treaty, salt, which

guess you can say aimed at shaping the competition in offenses forces and accompanied interestingly by ab abm treaty counter intuitively limiting the extent to which iter side would defend itself. people say what's wrong with defense? later -- and, the strategists were saying our vulnerability is an assurance to the other side, that they can always punish us. their vulnerability is we can always punish them, therefore, deterrence is firm. therefore, we have a stable strategic relationship. not everybody got that. the a.b.m. treaty permitted both sides to deploy and change but eventually, a system of their choice defending one area and the soviet union chose to defend moscow.

and where did we choose to defend? where? washington. o. >> new york, possibly, their hometown but they weren't thinking montana and north dakota. but that's where of course, we had i.c.b.m.'s deployed and what we were doing was making sure our capability survived. we were really thinking about strategists. unfortunately, as we were doing all this wonderful strategic thinking, designing this very complex treaty and the a.b.m. treaty, we were also working on technological innovation which was the most and the stabilizing of any technology we put on the ground and that was the targeted e-entry vehicle.

and that meant that one missile could destroy a multitude of targets and all of a sudden, what's call admissible-to-target ratio switched. used to be you needed to use hree of your missiles. once you put several warheads, that's called destabilizing. and we deployed it first and then others deployed it. others, being the soviet union. wethis was a period in which went through arms control. we went through some defense. and interestingly what's called national security two for two,

we focused very much on war fighting. we were moving away from and this is a very important concept for later in our lives in south asia and northeast asia and the middle east. instead of thinking nuclear weapons as the weapon of last resort, no. we were moving to war fighting with our weapons. and this was a function, really, of looking at these weapons as being used. in other words, thinking of what is a war going to look like? how will it end? who will win the war? and these were not concepts that we had been comfortable with before but we started to thinking that way. we started thinking that way to add credibility to our posture, the theory being that the credibility would then lead to stability. the diversity of targets, the

counterforce capability, the precision which we could decide targets was emphasized by schlesinger during his period as secretary of defense. in which the 59 countervailing strategy was ramed. we were aiming at this point, to be sure that whatever it is, the soviets valued, we could target. we had from the very first days of nuclear weapons, we had three target sets. we were imagining what it was it would take to deter the soviet union. we started getting extra insights during the carter administration because we were watching the soviets build some

very deeply buried bunkers for their leadership. and it became clear that what the soviets valued most was themselves in the leadership world. so we worked very hard at being able to target that leadership and to make sure that they know that we could. very heavily counterforced. lots of emphasizes on -- emphasis on precision and capability to do so with confidence. we move a decade. we are now into the 1980's and the reagan years. and this is really the high point in nuclear when deployment in terms of numbers and capacity. we were deploying on both sides roughly 30,000 strategic weapons probably e as was enough. there was over 16,000 targets in

1983 that we were thinking we had to deal with to deter the soviet union. the soviets, of course, were going heavy. they were moving from a big ugly missile to a bigger more uglier missile, the s.s. 18. they were increasing their accuracy. many warheads per missile. nd there was a great intensity and concern about what all this offensive capability meant for a first-strike capability on either side. first-strike capability meaning you can target the other side's forces and destroy its efficient number such that they cannot retaliate in a second strike and cause you, the striker, unacceptable damage. i know that's a little contorted, but that's how it goes. there was a surprise attack.

fear. gorbachev and reagan meet and they hit it off. last new book about those days and i recommend it to you. the atmosphere is very good for these two gentlemen eventually. and much to the horror of both staff, it looks like they are going to agree on serious reduction in nuclear weapons. but there is one enormous stumbling block. ronald reagan is deeply committed to defense. he has been bereaved on star wars. he now is aware that there are other physical principles. there are architect you ares -- architectures that he can barely imagine, but the idea that he can end nuclear weapons and instead, deploy a defense is just incredibly irresistible.

he does not understand, he claims, gorbachev's reluctance to be so enthusiastic about this. gor chaff is thinking? we do this, they will not have n ability to deter us. we will disarm them. whatever forces they have left will not be able to penetrate the impenetrable star wars defense. don't laugh. it was serious. it is laughable, though in a way . one of my colleagues, some of you may know in this room, said at the time that through the mid 1980's, the soviets were panicked over star wars, which got a lot of press. and they kept deploying ever larger icbm's in response. the united states deployed ever more colorful view grass of

ballistic missile defense which we did not have. at the end of the decade, you may know they went broke and the soviet union falls. and i'm not saying the soviet fell because we caused them to build themselves into oblivion but there is an argument that goes something like that, which is actually that trivial argument. so the decade of the 1980's ends a huge strategic competition ends with it, that kind. and we find ourselves in the 1990's in a whole new world. we have an arms control treaty and an international structure which is no longer bipolar. we have a phenomenon called global san diego that has various pieces to it but it appears to be a part of a fundamental new world order. i love that phrase. it had the imagery of military

force was still there, but not nuclear weapons. economic measures of power were going to so much more important. there was a prediction of the decline of the nation state and the concept of national sovereignty and where international commerce information technology would replace the book that captures, of course, was freed m.b.a.'s lexus and olive tree. - freedman's lexus olive tree. it was very influential and it predicted this new world that we were moving into. military power was still relevant because the decade began with iraq won the war to throw the iraqis out of kuwait. but really, there was a huge, huge unilateral reduction in nuclear forces.

nato, no longer had to quend the warsaw pact. it consumed the warsaw pact. we were not worried about the soviet union. it was gone. nd russia was our partner. thus begins the bush-obama decade. force remains relevant. immediately, it becomes relevant. on september 11, we discover a new kind of terrorism. we are involved immediately in afghanistan and then iraq, too. so military forces definitely on the table. but it is convention -- conventional military force that we emphasize and it became clear to the world that the united states of america has unique capacity to project force with incredible lethality in precision.

modernization really comes with the improvement in the delivery of that force projection. and we embrace now, an ability not only to project force with predecision, but to do it more quickly. so we have prompt global strike. in days of days or weeks in order to do this damage with cruise missiles, aircraft or whatever we want to be able to do it right away, within hour. ideally, within 24 hours. initially, we hit upon the delivery systems for nuclear weapons and more than one strategist believe that the best thing to do with these conventional weapons is to deliver them with a very reliable icbm's and it becomes clear that many people feel that this might create an ambiguity in the minds of the russians and the chinese and that maybe we shouldn't use strategic nuclear

systems to deliver conventional munitions. so we have been thinking other ways of accomplishing that objective. but it's still conventional, not nuclear. there is a doctrine to go along with this. the doctrine was one of -- actually prevent a war but masquerading as preemptive war. and we argued that we were engaging in preemption when we were not. iraq was not about to attack us. while this is going on, nuclear weapons numbers have dropped to one 10th of what they were in the 1980's. from 30,000 to a few thousand. sort the bush administration's strategic arms control. it's essentially unilateral.

gives way to new start at the middle of the obama administration, first dministration of 2010. much diminished nuclear weapons. it's almost so at the emphasis in the particular -- popular press, the four horsemen article. if you rec this, henry kissinger they wrote a piece about zero nuclear weapons and they said we're not kidding. this is not just at the m.p.t. requires us to commit to this goal. they meant it. they said that's where we ought to be going. that's the only safe future for

the world. now, that's what they said as a group. speecht progress makes a in -- prague makes a speech about zero nuclear weapons and he said this is not just rhetoric. he meant it. he said we were going after the comprehensive test ban treaty. he said we were going after the material cut-off treaty to stop production of the materials he said we were going to deal the nuclear fuel cycle problems which impacted the proliferation problems who will establish international fuel banks so we won't have to have the problem of uranium enrichment and there will be more reduction that we will accomplish funerally in necessary. that was the first decade of the 1st century.

the big thing that happens now, the best i can tell us is i go back to georgetown. that's clearly -- [laughter] hat's clearly the news here. north korea. we've been dealing with north korea for decades. but if we look at north korea now, halfway through this decade , north korea has not been dealt with. north korea is following the classic pattern of pollute yum uraniumorm for their -- for their nuclear weapons. they are delivering a variety of vehicles including a weapon which might actually reach continental united states with one of those nuclear weapons pretty soon. now, it'll have an air probability the size of ohio but

we will not be happy about this development with north korea. plus, north korea has been engaging in transfers. they're transferring ballistic missiles to other countries. the pakistanis, their main line is the gar sexirks it sounds very pakistani but it's actually a north korean missile. and the main line, medium range ballistic missile that iran has in its deployed is a north korean missile. and you may have heard that in 2007, the north koreans were discovered to have built in syria. you remember syria. used to be a couldn't they have built in syria, a plutonium production reactor identical to their plutonium reactor in north

korea. i used to be concerned about the transfer of materials from one country to another and my critics would say that you've been reading so many spy novels, watching too many movies. that's not going to happen. we would catch him. insane that we would catch the transfer on the amount of material that would fit in that coffee cup if it were plutonium for nominal nuclear vision weapon. insane that we would catch that. we did not catch the transfer of that plutonium production reactor to syria. the israelis did. they live closer. they did. and they told us. and the israelis pursued their version of a non-proliferation and flattened it.

otherwise, there would be a plutonium reactor there. so this is a situation, the nuclear when -- nuclear weapon situation that's evolved today. it's quite different. this is a country that is threatening our extended deterrence its credibility. we have a country that is transferring the material in a production capability to make nuclear weapons and we have a country that within a matter of months to years, can put a nuclear weapon on the continental united states of america. this is new. and it is with us now. and that's north korea. take iran. please. iran also is following the classic route of both plutonium

and uranium. the uranium has gotten a lot more recognition. but you've heard about the air duckett reactor also. -- duct reactor also. they have a heavy water facility. that would produce, if run up in normal conditions and normal power range, that would produce plutonium e yum -- reactor go with the uranium program. they have completed the work necessary to design and manufacture. it's a triggering package for the fist style -- fist sill aterial.

they could fail. or they could succeed. either way, iran is going to have a nuclear reactor and it's going to have some enrichment capability. exactly how much, i don't know. either way, if the negotiation fail or if they succeed, israel will not be happy. israel has not been happy with other countries with their nuclear fifths before and you've watched what has happened in iraq and in syria. i'm not now predicting anything. i'm merely making an observation. this is not a good situation. this could be another nuclear weapon state in the middle east. and we could have a very complicated situation. the saudis, the egyptians and others have just about promised us if the iranians proceed with a genuine program, they will not stand idly by. this could get very come lated

and very quickly. pakistan. pakistan for about 20 years had a sort of what i would sometimes call a recessed nuclear weapons capability. in other words, it had the capability in the late 1980's to manufacture nuclear weapons. it didn't. we don't think at that point it did. certainly in the late 1990's when they tested a series of test after the indian series of tests. but things have changed. it is no longer a possibility for the pakistanis to have a minimum deterrent capability to deter the indians. nonsense. that's not where they are now. they have adopted american policies from the 1950's. they have built and are deploying tactical nuclear weapons for war fighting purposes. they have a very, varied set of delivery vehicles that includes aircraft fighter bombers that

includes various change ballistic missiles and will eventually include a naval platform after triad, if you will. they right now have the fastest growing fissile material in nuclear weapons program in the whole world. they're probably someplace in terms of stockpile nuclear weapons in the 100 to 150. our best guess in terms of fissile material production is they're aiming for 200 to 300 nuclear weapons which puts them in the range of france and china. pakistan, you all knew what pakistan is like, don't you? you've watched homeland or something if you've noticed this and you've been watching that the situation in pakistan, which is at times, not as stable as we would like.

including the continental united states. if you did not that, there would be circumstances in which the russians would believe they could de-escalate by attacking damaget, trying to limit . they would be tactical and concerned about collateral damage, but this is new and massively troubling. then there is us.

enemy and they are us. we are modernizing our strategic nuclear forces. upgrades in b-52s. we plan refurbishment of our warheads. all this would be consistent with production. there is a new need, we have felt, to reassure our allies of the credibility to extended deterrence. and we have been doing that.

we have had to do that in europe, northeast asia. we are continuing our pursuit of ballistic missile defense. notwithstanding what the there willad said, be no fuel bank and no unilateral reductions by the united states at its forces. issues of credibility, deterrence, stability, are all back with us. for the u.s. and russia, it also for northeast asia, south asia, and the middle east. those relationships are marked by a new complexity greater than

what we were familiar with in my horseback ride through history. we have multiple actors in these cases. it raises all kinds of problems. there are new theaters to worry about. cyber,space -- space. we need new concepts. we still need to worry about unauthorizeduse, launch. we need to worry about terrorism and the use of nuclear weapons and terrorism. the improvised nuclear device. continue to have to worry about nuclear energy ambiguities. nurturant, and is -- for enrichment, enthusiasm

for the use of plutonium as fuel. you will hear about that very soon. all of this says to me that nuclear weapons are back. discussions about our security, the security of other countries, and something for all of us to worry about. i hope you all will have a very nice day. thank you. [laughter] [applause] >> as we do the q&a, first, lose weight for the microphone -- please wait for the microphone. we are recording this. stand when the microphone is brought to you. state your name and tell us where you're from. if you could keep the context short and actually ask a

question, that would be great. hopefully, your question should relate to tonight's talk. i just wanted to comment that -- first of all, mcnamara lasted a year on counterattack. -- working 13 years on nato nuclear weapons, i never term extended deterrence. it was a bit cartoonish. would you cite a good source of history that goes through all of these things that go flexible response -- of all these things? deterrence. it was -- i got deeply involved

in the subject. what is a very good source for all of these histories? when you do things by decade, it is not precise. >> [inaudible] >> thank you. not precise. however, i want to push back on the flexible response. when maxwell taylor talks about flex will response, and appeal to kennedy. that is a part of what green berets were all about. conventional forces were the focus. i will assert to you and i will

help if you go to the book whose t, who has done a revision of the basic book on nuclear strategy, i think you will find that one could even say flexible response properly goes to the conventional, it was used by many to cover the development of counterforce capability as opposed to the response understood to be counter value. i do not have text in front of me, but i believe that to be true. >> [inaudible] >> ok. we will have to stay on unclassified sources. he is about as good as it gets. offline, we can maybe talk about that. >> [inaudible]

>> my name is peter. i am a retired engineer. counterforceout and counter population and likesry, but russia deception. attackedother players by high-altitude, are particularly attractive attack if you can bring a ship in close and launch a missile or two, that could be pretty effective. you have no residue to find the source. what is the answer to that yet go >> -- what is the answer to that ye?

>> i am aware of work that has been done to shield against the consequences, but i have no expertise to be able to tell you where we are. you are absolutely correct. ofis one of the results nuclear detonation and one can imagine a situation in which you have a combined attack as well as looking for a kinetic impact. i am sure people are thinking about that, but i cannot characterize the threat. sorry. i am steve garber. i appreciate your horseback ride through the decades of history. what specific aspects of that history would you draw upon to

think about what your policy prescriptions would dealing with iran right now? think -- the question was, good on you for doing history. how do you make history relevant to a prescription with iran? we have experience with countries that pursue nuclear weapons for more than one kind of reason. generally, people start with it is for security and for most countries, that have acquired nuclear weapons, that seems to be a good answer. the point is, that is just the beginning of the answer of

dealing with this case because after you deal with security issues and you provide reassurances, why do we have nine nuclear weapon states in the world today and not 90? is for a variety of reasons countries have decided their security needs are best met without nuclear weapons. when you are dealing with north toea or will we were trying sway pakistan, now trying to sway iran, can you persuade them that they do not have a security need or their security needs are best met by other means? not all thatis this is about. this is about self perception of one's position in the region where there is perceived to be

an israeli nuclear weapons program. there is a western nuclear weapons capability sometimes projected into the region. -- how wouldsire that be addressed to the extent that is the driver? and then there are domestic considerations. you will see that when we look at whatever it is offered up to us from negotiators from iran and united states. it will not have a lot to do with iran security needs. we get that from other countries we have dealt with. it was a time in south korea had a secret nuclear weapons

program. a time when taiwan had a secret nuclear weapons program. there was a time when south africa had a secret nuclear weapons program. there was a time when believed there were nuclear weapons program in brazil and argentina. we have been around and history informs us an easy thing for me to say is that one of the things we learn from this is that simply addressing what looks to us like their security needs is a great start, but very often, the motivation is much more complex and even goes down to domestic politics. thank you, ambassador. i really enjoyed your talk. a couple of days, i read a report that one of the jihad he sunni groups in serious -- and

syria killed for nuclear scientists and and iranian nuclear scientist. what do you think they were doing? not the jihadi group. >> you just told me something i did not know. i probably could make something up, but it would drive to heavily on my spy novels -- draw too heavily on my spy novels. it is the kind of thing we do, try to see who is talking to whom and try to understand what national interests are and what countries may be trying to do. this is a very tough target. thank you, ambassador.

i was wondering if you could elaborate what you think a response from saudi arabia and egypt would look like. the proposition that is out there now is that if negotiations fail and there is a ,uclear weapons program in iran notwithstanding iran's , if this turns out not to be true, among the countries that will not be surprised would be saudi arabia

and egypt. have special relationship with pakistan. it is clear. relationshipe that would facilitate the transfer of technology from pakistan to saudi arabia on sort of a turnkey basis. the saudis might have instant nuclear weapons. that is one scenario. detail aboutg in the relationship and i cannot give any texture to that. egyptian case is tougher, i think. both because of the clinical situation, -- the political situation, the egyptians are becausey experiencing they have not moved down the

fuel cycle route yet to develop their own capabilities. be some years away, a decade is a nice round number. the questionable to me as to why egypt would do this. egypt has one of those one thinks of as the leader of the arab world when one in the arab a persian iran as entity in the region. the saudi's are a lot closer. they have no indigenous capability to do this. they have some delivery capability. that would be a concern right away. i would say also we would be

dominoeslooking at that my fault. -- that might fall. the turks would be a country to be concerned about. and perhaps others. >> right here. >> edward levine, retired from the staff of senate foreign relations committee. 20 years ago, you briefed senate committees on the agreed framework with north korea. you did it masterfully, but the agreement came under a lot of fire. if there is an agreement with iran, what would you recommend to the obama administration with regard to handling congress? kevlar.

[laughter] as you have observed undoubtedly, the agreement is , under attacknt by those who believe they are friends of israel and the israeli position is one that does not tolerate any enrichment capability operating in iran. that is a tough thing to negotiate. that theseagine negotiations will end with zero enrichment capabilities. i can for see there will be critics -- foresee there will be critics about that. or will be critics on the hill that will go after whatever the

provisions are. i do not know what the deal will be in that area, there'll be those who will be unhappy with the verification, which will be very important as to whether there are secret enrichment facilities or stockpiles anywhere else. lots of room here for a critic to point out about the deal, if there is one, that a similar to the agreed framework 20 years ago. it was 20 years ago just three years ago. any deal will be open to criticism because it will not be perfect. when i was testifying before your committee, what would be your plan? when i heard their plan, it was essentially that we would get everything we wanted and they

would get nothing they wanted. my by a car, i would ask you -- my by a car, i will ask you to do the deal for me. this will not be easy and this will not be found. the election, what they did at the midterm in the clinton administration, 20 years ago was right before the midterms in 1994. the democrats lost both houses. and all of those friendly committee chairs were gone. a whole bunch of new committee chairs could not wait to meet me. it is going to be hard. >> i am from the university of maryland. thank you for the presentation. countries that have nuclear weapons or suspected of having

nuclear weapons program, except israel. you did not talk about israel and the history of how israel got nuclear weapons. i was wondering why. secondly, would you elaborate on the role israel could play or auld have to play to make nuclear weapon free zone in the middle east? israel.ally talk about right now, i find -- i invite you to come back. the chinese program as related to the soviet and american and the french and .ritish related to the soviet

relateda and brazil as to each other. south africa was always a mystery to me. mysterious. be that as it may, and israeli program was not a mystery to me given the attitude of its neighboring states. the possibility that the soviet union would turn out to be a protector of those that will be hostile to israel. israel fought a series of wars in which the soviet union had the potential toprotector of the be an actor and the israelis wanted a deterrent. look at the rangers -- look at the range is for the jericho's.

i do not believe the rain program is driven -- the iranian program is driven by the israeli program. i've spent a lot of my career in the middle east and i talked about the israeli program a lot. israelt believe that if tried to reduce the number of negatives -- if israel did not have nuclear weapons, it is not clear to me that that would have any impact on what is happening right now with iran. except the rhetoric would not be there. the rhetorical point could not be made. i don't believe the irradiance are driven -- the a rainy and -- iranians are driven to have nuclear weapons. it does not mean they're going to build nuclear weapons. they want to have a

nuclear weapons option. takeaway the israeli program and it would not have an impact on what has happened with iran. i do not believe iran fears for its security. i just don't. we can argue about that off-line. the israeli program, has to do with its security. it is willing to accept simple extended deterrence. its relationship with the united states is a security relationship. program, i don't know the

exact size, but the open literature characterizes it as being substantial. asivery systems as well aircraft and ballistic missiles. it is a substantial program. rick and i guess you would be a follower of the professor who says that nuclear related issues are more regional than they are simply a bipolar world. as the technology has spread, so has the weapons behind it. my question is with iran, she has neighbors both to the east and the west.

pakistan's nuclear program was primarily funded through saudi arabia. -- a lot ofculation speculation in the open source literature that they arty have them. -- they already have them. -- saudi's arty have nuclear already have nuclear weapons from pakistan. they have cannons to the left of right,d cannons to the it would make sense for iran to go after nuclear weapons to seize up security. the question boils down to, considering what is going on in the middle east, do you really think the network in pakistan was taken down? it seems to be popping back all over again.

>> i assume everybody knows what the network was or maybe still is. i do not even know if it is still under house arrest. of pakistanither nuclear weapons program. initially, just the enrichment part of the program. .e worked in the dutch program he took with him the designs to centrifuge and was the project manager for uranium enrichment secretly in pakistan. the network part comes because he was responsible for lots of transfers to other countries. nuclear weapons we are certain

of as well. korea, toto north libya, and perhaps elsewhere. it sounds -- i know less about the connection than you do. i cannot say you are wrong. his comment is it is in the open source which means it might well be true. know whether that network still lives on and is still active. it is one of the scarier things to all of us because we are so worried about pakistan. pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world for us, not that the government is out to get the united states, but the

.ituation overall in pakistan those of the most radical interpreters of islam. there've been attacks on facilities that are government facilities. exactly is still going on with pakistan with respect to transfer, i would like to make a distinction between transfer and leakage. the network is real transfer, they intended that. leakage is what can happen out of russia. complexesmplex -- the are so large and so much material relative to other places. going back to egypt, saudi

, can you foresee israel sharing technology with neighboring countries in case iran gets nuclear weapons? >> the question as i understand it, if iran acquires nuclear weapons, would israel share its nuclear weapons technology with its arab neighbors? i find that extremely unlikely. no, i don't think it would. there were good stories and i cannot go much beyond that about israel and south africa a time ago when there was a famous

flash in the south atlantic, the possibility that the south africans and the israelis colluded so that israel could test a nuclear weapon or a component of a nuclear weapon in the atmosphere. that is the only sharing that i know of and i don't know if it actually happened in the literature. therefore qualifies as something that may be true. but i find the idea was felt to -- the idea that israel would help their neighbors would be hard to imagine, for me. >> thank you for being here. thetalked earlier about soviets having this idea that they could limit the nuclear

threat from america by lee -- by making a counterterrorism force on us. >> not exactly. the theory is the russians believe they could get into a situation in which the would leavedvantage them in a situation not being able to defend either their territory or their forces in a circumstance that would put them in dire straits. seeing that situation escalate to have that loss or have it escalate, they would use tactical nuclear weapons in a mode designed to limit collateral damage and the escalate the crisis by demonstrating their seriousness.

friend your close personal never accepted the idea that their empty silos would be attacked by us. i only addressed this in the sense of iran and israel. israel has a suspect capability to do any damage to the radiance. but israel has a genuine possibility to be a deterrent threat. c eterrent threat of counter value. it would be sweet for them to publish that and identify which downtown shopping areas are going to be destroyed.

which any attack on israel would be counter value. >> you have unintentionally yetused -- don't sit down come up please. all, i have reserved the phrase counterforce for a strategic strike. i have not been talking about a russian counterforce attack on america. i have been talking about perhaps the demonstration and detonation or limited attack on u.s. forces where they are not going to have an impact on israeli territory or population. maybe something -- this is very scary stuff. mostly for me because it completely misreads the likely

american response to any use of , ourar weapons against us allies, our territory, our forces come anything. believe theytly can do you escalate a crisis by attacking us with nuclear weapons, we are in a lot of trouble. we have been misread before by countries about our result. right? this would be a big, horrible mistake on their part. counterforcelking -- what would have been in a counterforce against attacking the united states, i hope and pray that does not happen. if it happens, i retaliation would go completely counterforce and completely aimed at shutting down the conflict. one of the things about nuclear

weapons being back -- i am teaching now it georgetown -- at georgetown. knowthing that many of us about what nuclear weapons do has been lost . these kids have not done under their desks in grammar school. i did. i worry a great deal that we have -- a lot of people don't understand this magnitude. the idea of doing anything other than counterforce come anything other than striking back in a way that aims at disabling and ending the conflict is so reprehensible to me, i can't begin to express it. >> unfortunately, we have the same idea.

one of the concepts was that we needed to let them know what cheap our conventional forces were in so they understood that our only viable response to the soviets might very well, very quickly be a nuclear tactical weapon. we had a series of step downs. the influenceout he has across the world. if i was a soviet reading his it isents, his comments, h not sufficient. he would never step off that and they have every right to believe a counterforce attack anywhere would be responded to tit-for-tat. that got us into war fighting. something i should throw into -- my thesistion

advisor and professor when i was a graduate student, one of the great theorists of international relations. he wrote a number of pieces on topics we are talking about. the one that was best known was better."ore may be imagine how uncomfortable it was for me to debate him. he said it slow spread of nuclear weapons was good for international stability. tolear weapons are chilling everybody, even crazy people who run countries understand nuclear weapons, you can't win if they start being used. --actually will stabilize the last thing he wrote before he died was a piece in foreign affairs about why iran getting

nuclear weapons would be a good thing for the middle east. there are other views. views i don't have any sympathy for. nucleare views that weapons could be stabilizing and i should probably say that. i have no sympathy for that position. guest: thank you for your remarks. if you exclude the declared nuclear weapons state, is the distinction between thermonuclear weapons and nuclear weapons of any consequence for how deterrence works going forward in the future? >> the first part i did not understand. >> if you exclude declared --lear weapons states >> the five.

the five. is the distinction between thermonuclear weapons and goingr weapons important forward into the future for how deterrence is going to work? , but not thetant way deterrence is going to work. when iportant because said a while ago that you have to think into orders of one hundred times more damaging and could be even more depending on the size of the nuclear weapon. the amount of death and destruction is massively different. when we say tactical nuclear weapons, what we usually mean is the range of the delivery system and the yield of the weapon.

it does not mean it can't be thermonuclear weapon. fission weapon. it could be one of these things and still be tactical. you don't have to design the thermonuclear weapon so that it produces negative -- megaton yield. this whole make it lost. think it's an important thing for you to focus on when you think about deterrence and where you are talking about it. important for security of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons technology. there was a time, 1979, when i was minding my own business working in the department of the state and i was approached by the mayors council and somebod others about an article that was going to be publish