Nuclear arms control is dead, long live real-time transparency

COLUMN: "The New Atomic Age Requires New Nonproliferation Strategy," by Frederick Kempe, Wall Street Journal, 18 July 2006, p. A6.

ARTICLE: U.S. and Russia Will Police Potential Nuclear Terrorists: Bush and Putin to Release Details Today, by David E. Sanger, New York Times, 15 July 2006, p. A5.

Arms control has never really worked. When treaties are signed, they pretty much represent the world moving on from whatever's being banned at that moment. So you get a chem treaty at a point in history when no one's interested in using chem anymore. You get a no-atmospheric test of nukes agreement when basically no one (except the French) are still interested in that. All these agreements, both formal and tacit, happen when the collective consensus emerges.

Or you have the bilateral stuff we did with the Sovs, which was mislabeled arms control because it only moderately slowed the growth of both arsenals . . . until, both sides wanted to reduce them, and then you got an agreement on that.

Arms control operates in the real world out there like the passage of laws often do here in the States: pre-emptively emerge they do not. Instead, they arise when a general consensus is reached on something--here, the disutility of still doing or having something.

And the countries not part of that consensus? They simply opt out.

Let me tell you what's really worked to stop the spread of nukes: the U.S. says, "Accept our security guarantee on nukes and our economic activity or... go it alone on nukes." As the Kempe piece argues, that basic transaction has talked a lot of countries out of pursuing nukes in the last 25 years. Or as Ash Carter is quoted: "We told them it's either the bomb or us, pick who you want to protect you."

Now, that works for states we're willing to defend. But what about states that aren't part of any alliances or security schemes that we promote--the isolated ones? For them, the choice offered is, "Be scared of a U.S. invasion without nukes or push for one if you reach for nukes."

And guess what? That offer doesn't work so well.

So the danger of proliferation is more existential than realized: either it's already in the cards or it ain't, because either a state is already a friend of the U.S. and our sheer existence as the world's sole military superpower does it for them, security-wise, or it doesn't. If it does, then no need for nukes. If it doesn't, then they'll be looking for nukes--by definition.

Tell me where arms control gets in between any of that logic. Tell me where the great treaty makes any of that happen or not happen--that which would happen anyway.

So we now have all the usual suggestions for even "tighter regimes" of control and embargo and whatnot to stop proliferation, even as the world is clearly headed to a major plus-up of nuclear power usage that will make most of these schemes highly unlikely to be effective.

Why do we keep coming up with these firewall schemes in a connected world? Just habit, I guess.

One of the things Steve DeAngelis and I push in our Enterra work is that we now have it within our means to move beyond that mindset and embrace the notion that you want to be in the business of tracking things real-time more than trying (often futilely) to stop their movement whatsoever. The computing power is there, and so are the sensors, with the key missing link being our forte: the automation of rule sets that allows rapid-fire sense, think and respond capacities.

So the argument here is, it's not the treaties that will keep us resilient but the technology and our willingness to embed that technology throughout our environment, something the average American is most willing to do. If we make that connectivity and transparency our essential offering, then we're doing far more than just offering to come to somebody's rescue. Instead, we're opening our nets to their participation. By adding them we expand our networks of transparency, and by joining us they gain access to those networks of transparency. Som