Yesterday, actress Naomi Watts and ex-CIA operative Valerie Plame released a video highlighting the cost of new nuclear weapons.

The clip ends by asking viewers to sign a petition released by the US-based NGO Global Zero (GZ). Based on research by GZ’s founder Bruce Blair, the petition demands world leaders spend the $1 trillion earmarked for nukes over the next decade on clean energy, welfare and deficit reduction.

GZ’s campaign echoes CND’s ‘Scrap Trident’ initiative, which features David Cameron dressed as Marie Antoinette, straddling a missile. The CND has significantly invested in this line of argument, producing in-depth research on job losses in the conventional defence industry (caused, they imply, by plans to replace Trident).

Prima facie, this tactic is smart. A split-sample survey from 2005 suggests the public are more susceptible to the disarmament message when it’s accompanied by opportunity cost arguments. However, £900 million has already been spent on Trident II, £3 billion will be spent by 2016, and whichever ‘moderate’ wins the next election is likely to continue construction.

Jim Murphy, Labour’s centrist defence spokesman, has repeatedly voiced his support for trident replacement. A tipping point will come when so much money has been spent on Trident II that scrapping it would itself be perceived as wasteful and, by that time,maintaining the system will consume only a small percentage of the defence budget.

This will be a problem for the CND, as public opinion data from a comparable period suggests the British don’t really mind nukes, they would just rather not pay.

For example, in 1987 a majority supported keeping the UK’s ageing Polaris system; however, when asked about replacing it, less than a majority favoured doing so. That a small majority now favour scrapping nukes for deficit reduction purposes (63 per cent), does not mean the UK is full of unilateral disarmers.

There are sound arguments against the UK’s nuclear status – legal, ethical and political – but what could a future (post-2020) CND ask the government to do?

The options are to demand the dismantlement of the Trident II system or to advocate including it in multilateral negotiations. The former is unlikely for reasons just implied: it would be perceived as an expensive, ridiculous u-turn from any future Conservative or Labour government.

 On the negotiation side, however, there are numerous options. Labour, Conservatives and the Lib Dems all allege a policy of multilateral disarmament: testing their claims should be an important part of arms control campaigning.

One option, as proposed in the GZ action plan, is to push for phased, proportionate reductions at the global level. This is a neat plan but does not take into account the diverse political and security needs of diverse states. The potential for European leadership is unacknowledged and the UK would not be compelled to do anything for decades.

Another option is to bring Trident II into negotiations with Russia about tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs). Russia has an estimated 3,000-5,000 ageing TNWs and incorporating UK and French nukes into talks would bring NATO and Russia closer to parity. Whilst this would involve some classificatory imagination (i.e. Trident is rarely referred to as a tactical nuke), it is politically fecund.

The Obama administration has signalled its intention to open talks on TNWs. If Obama wins in 2012, Democrats might look kindly on a UK government making things easier. There are multiple other formulations, both bilateral and multilateral, in which the UK could ‘negotiate away’ its nuclear arsenal.

To summarise, it will take a miracle to prevent Trident replacement and CND need to be realistic about the coming Trident II reality.

Legal, ethical and security arguments will be great for bashing the government but they need to be complemented with face-saving, multilateralist policies mainstream parties can embrace.

Opinion data in this article is drawn from Ipsos MORI, BPIX, Gallup and British Election Study polls; for precise references and/or more opinion data on the subject, feel free to contact the author.

Last week, armed forces minister Nick Harvey published an article suggesting the UK is developing offensive cyber war capabilities.

Commenting on the Ministry of Defence’s new Defence Cyber Operations Group, Harvey wrote:

“Cyber will be part of a continuum of tools with which to achieve military effect, both defensive and otherwise, and will be an integral part of our armoury.”

This mirrored a speech at Chatham House last November, where he announced increased government spending on cyber defence (£650 million over four years) and advocated the integration of cyber capability with the UK’s conventional forces.

Whilst acknowledging the asymmetrical benefits of this new domain for non-state actors, he argued:

“…cyber is also a powerful tool in the hands of those traditionally able to engage in conflict – states themselves… The integration of cyber and physical attack would seem to be the most likely use of cyber in the military sphere.

“We must therefore win the battle in cyber space, as well as the battle on the ground.”

The UK is taking the lead from states like Russia, China the US, who already have well-funded cyber warfare units. The Stuxnet attacks on Iran’s nuclear programme, DDoS bombardments of Georgian networks during the 2008 war and the theft of terabytes of information relating to the design of the F-35 fighter jet show cyber attacks are happening and impact on kinetic or ‘real’ war.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Chinese and Russian spies have left logic bombs (i.e. code that will set off a malicious function- often to delete data- when specified conditions are met) in software used by the US power grid. If true, this can help us think about how devastating a large-scale cyber conflict could be. It is unlikely that a foreign power could crash the US power grid (which is actually many different grids, connected). However, the destruction or alteration of financial data using similar techniques could fundamentally undermine global banking, which necessitates reliable data storage (and the belief that data storage is reliable). Similarly, an attack on the Domain Name System (which ‘translates’ IP addresses into user-friendly website addresses), could significantly hamper economic activity and commercial distribution.

Despite the peculiar destructiveness of cyber attacks, Nick Harvey believes that current international humanitarian law (IHL) is sophisticated enough to manage this kind of state-on-state conflict.

He wrote:

“…cyber space should be considered within a rules based system just like the physical world. Existing international frameworks can be applied to cyber space too - we don’t necessarily need to invent new laws.

“Top of the list of the UK principles on activity in cyber space is the need for governments to act proportionately and in accordance with national and international law.”

He went on to note that work is being done multilaterally to develop norms of behaviour for states.

This is sensible, as day-to-day online espionage could be mistaken for hostile preparation of the battlefield. An informal taboo on attacking bank data appears to be in place already: US officials claim that successive administrations have chosen not to hack banks and steal funds from terrorists and dictators, including Saddam Hussein.

However, the UK government are not explicit about what is acceptable in cyber space and, as of yet, have no declaratory posture.

A declaratory posture (i.e. a document explaining when we would use offensive cyber capabilities and when we would respond to cyber attacks with conventional force) would make plain the diplomatic seriousness of damaging civilian and military computer networks. An attempt by government to map out protected sites, as the EastWest Institute have done, would be a useful first step.

Wider strategic and doctrinal questions remain unanswered. Difficulty attributing cyber attacks makes this form of conflict unlike conventional and nuclear war: traditional ideas of deterrence may not apply. Furthermore, uncertainty about the enemy’s capabilities creates instability during a crisis. The internet is still fundamentally vulnerable; its creators were not security-minded. For the above reasons, some writers on cyber war, including former US National Security Council advisor Richard A. Clarke, advocate a defensive rather than offensive strategy.

Nonetheless, the UK government are taking concrete steps to stop the daily incursions into government networks. Whilst Harvey is doctrinally vague, he is right to start the debate.

This article was originally posted here-      http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/06/uk-developing-cyber-weapons-do-we-have-a-doctrine/

‘Bombs Away? Public opinion versus political positions on Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, from the 1980s to the present day.’

Introduction

The research compares public opinion (using survey data) to the positions of the Labour and Conservative parties (using documentary evidence), over a thirty year period. The central claim of the work is that, since the end of the Cold War, public opinion and aggregate party policies have been gradually diverging. During the 1980s, Britain’s nuclear status was a clear dividing line between the Labour and Conservative parties. By the end of that decade, the two had reached consensus on the need for an independent nuclear deterrent, consonant with public opinion. However, since then, public support has been replaced with apathy and relative antipathy. There has been no corresponding change in policy from either of the parties.

The work does not just deal with statistics and official policy. It describes the role of political personality, culture, intra-party cleavages and the issue’s waning salience.

Public opinion

By all measures, the public are currently less enthusiastic about Britain’s nuclear status compared to the 1980s.

• Replacement: In 1987, 37% of survey respondents opposed the replacement of the Polaris submarine system with the Trident system, when the former became obsolete. In 2009, 54% thought Britain should not replace the ageing Trident system.

• Unilateralism: In 1987, only 15.1% wanted immediate disarmament and 28.3% wanted merely reductions in the number of warheads. In 2007, 40.3% of respondents agreed that ‘Nuclear weapons are morally wrong and the UK should proceed to eliminate its arsenal whether or not other countries agree to do so’.

• Salience: Ipsos MORI conducts monthly polls asking respondents what are the most important issues facing Britain at the time. For most of the 1980s, nuclear weapons were cited as one of the top four issues. In the last decade, only around 2-3% of people cited nuclear weapons as an ‘important issue’.

Motivators of public opinion

Cost clearly influences public opinion. Split-sample surveys show that the public are more likely to oppose Trident replacement when presented with opportunity cost arguments. However, by all measures, the public are less sympathetic to Britain’s nuclear status now than in the 1980s. This suggests the changed strategic environment, in terms of the collapse of the USSR, contributes to public thinking about nuclear weapons. Indeed, the data from 2009 shows that those too young to remember the Cold War are the least inclined to support Trident replacement.

Political Parties

Conservative Party: The Conservative Party have consistently supported Britain’s nuclear status. In the 1980s, the Conservative government promised to maintain Britain’s independent deterrent (consonant with public opinion) and to allow the stationing of American-owned cruise missiles in the country (dissonant with public opinion). Every post-Thatcher Conservative Leader has maintained a similar line. In the 2007 Commons vote on Trident replacement, only two Conservative MPs voted against the government motion and their own party whip.

Labour Party: For most of the 1980s, the Labour Party officially opposed Britain’s nuclear status. Following their 1987 general election defeat, Labour dropped the unilateralist element of their defence policy as part of a comprehensive policy review.

Whilst this was a conscious bid for electability, internal party reforms meant the party were unresponsive to later changes in public mood. The 2007 Commons vote on Trident replacement saw the second largest backbench rebellion in New Labour history, after the Iraq War. 89 Labour MPs voted against the proposal to support the Government’s plans on replacement.

Relatively bipartisan issue amongst voters

In 2009, Labour and Liberal Democrat voters were more likely to oppose Trident replacement (59% each) than Conservative voters (41%). Nevertheless, the data implies Conservative MPs are more committed to nuclear defence than party sympathisers. Defence, as a whole, appears to have little influence on how people vote. For example, between 1995 to 2007, defence was less likely to influence voting as economic management, the environment, tax and sundry other issues.

Concluding remarks

• Due to limited public interest in the subject, politicians have relative autonomy over nuclear defence policy.

• There is no need to fear public opinion, should political leaders choose unilateral nuclear disarmament as a policy.

• There is wide scope for political leadership on this issue. Split-sample surveys suggest the public are susceptible to argument.

During a surprise visit to Afghanistan this week, the prime minister announced the UK will double its number of Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs) by 2013. He described a £135 million plan to increase the number of Reaper UAVs operated from Kandahar airbase to approximately ten. The new vehicles will be complemented by 54 UK Watchkeeper UAVs, being built in Leicester, which will begin to enter service in late 2011.

The new deal, according to Mr Cameron represents:

“…our decision to concentrate on the forces and equipment we are going to need for the future… The Reaper is a classic example of the weaponry that is necessary for today’s war.”

This language, alongside his claims that UK troops may be able to start leaving Afghanistan as early as next year, imply Mr Cameron sees drones as a long-term part of the UK’s defence arrangements in the post-crash, post-Afghanistan strategic environment.

His twin announcements (potential early withdrawal, increase in drone use) mirrored news earlier in the year that, whilst US troops have largely pulled out of Iraq, the number of drone flights over the country has remained constant. Indeed, Col. Robert Sova, who manages UAV capability at the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, predicts an increase in flight hours:

“What we’re seeing is a significant increase in the use of communications relay and communications extension. The need to cover a geographical area is still the same, but now we have less troops.”

A more tempting analogy is Churchill’s 1921 decision to use the new RAF to put down rebellions in the British Mandate of Mesopotamia (maintaining large troop numbers was not considered fiscally responsible). In fact, Churchill saw early Iraq as an ideal training ground for Britain’s future military. As he put it, the country offered an opportunity to carry out a:

“… far-sighted policy of Imperial aerial development.”

Obversely, the pressures driving British UAV procurement in the present are being felt throughout the Middle East, making regional proliferation likely. The latest WikiLeaks cables show several non-NATO states also trying to buy export-restricted US drones. For example, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Princetried to woo CentCom Commander General John Abizaid into selling UAE the Predator B, purportedly to match Iranian domestic UAV production.

Turkish officials have been lobbying Defence Secretary Robert Gates for Predators, to make up for the decreasing US presence in Iraq. US drones have been providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in northern Iraq for Turkish raids on PKK fighters over the border. Turkey, it appears, is hooked.

These requests come to light just a month after it transpired the CIA may be using faulty software in its own Predator programme. That was the accusation of software-maker IISi against computer firm Netezza (who have been providing hardware and software to the CIA), with the two reaching an out-of-court settlement last month. After these potentially deadly shenanigans, detailed here, let’s hope the MoD read their contracts for the Reapers (which are upgraded Predators) carefully.

Wednesday’s announcement of more UK drones realise plans to expand the technology in theStrategic Defence and Security Review. It also revisits a century-old dream: pacifying the East, on the cheap, from above.

On Saturday, Barack Obama used his weekly video address to pressure moderate Republican Senators into voting for the new START treaty before the year’s end. Staring into the camera with tired eyes, he told viewers:

“There is enough gridlock, enough bickering. If there is one issue that should unite us – as Republicans and Democrats – it should be our national security.”

Unfortunately for the President, he does not get to decide how much gridlock is enough. The new START treaty, signed by Mr Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April, was having a good year. The bilateral agreement had been passed by a bipartisan 14-4 on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has the backing of the entire uniformed military.

The treaty would limit the number of deployed strategic warheads of each state to 1,550 and would replace the lapsed verification regime of the old START 1 treaty, signed by Reagan and Gorbachev, which ended last December. A whole year has passed since Russian and US scientists inspected each country’s strategic sites and failure to ratify would be a major set-back in the ‘reset‘ of relations between the two superpowers.

Russia has gone a long way to meet US asks on nuclear defence recently: from announcing co-operation on European missile defence at last week’s Lisbon Summit to cancelling a sale of the S-300 air defence system to Iran. However, that attitude is not being reciprocated on the American side.

After 900 questions in 17 public and 3 classified hearings, Senate consensus on START has cracked. A number of pivotal Republicans are calling for any vote on the floor to be postponed or abandoned. Mr Obama’s dream of a ‘world without nuclear weapons’, announced in Prague last April, is facing a rude awakening.

Over the last fortnight, all eyes have been on Senator Jon Kyl. Kyl, the minority whip in the Senate and leading Republican voice on the new START, had previously stated his support was contingent on increased funding for ‘modernisation’ of US nuclear forces.

Whilst Mr Obama met these demands by announcing a multibillion dollar package of spending on the  nuclear laboratories (as well as $10.4 billion for missile defence next year), Kyl dampened the administrations hopes of ratification last Tuesday by calling for the vote to be held after the ‘lame duck’ session. The lame duck session is the period between now and January, before the handful of new Senators from this month’s mid-term elections assume office.

If the vote on New START was held in December, the Democrats would need the support of at least 8 Republicans for treaty to pass. If it was held after January, now highly likely, the charity of 14 Republicans will be needed.

Kyl’s announcement has sent the Obama administration, who fear new, less moderate Senators are planning to derail the treaty, into lobbying overdrive. Last week, Obama promised an additional $4.1 billion for the nuclear weapons complex and sent a delegation, included Gen. Kevin P Chilton (head of US nuclear forces), to win Kyl’s support.

Mr Obama also used Saturday’s video address to dismiss claims that more time was needed to scrutinise the document. He stated that, ‘Over the last several months, questions have been asked about the new START, and we have answered every single one… It has already been 11 months since we’ve had inspectors in Russia, and every day that goes by without ratification is a day that we lose confidence in our understanding of Russia’s nuclear weapons.’

Whatever Kyl decides, other Republicans appear intent on denying Obama any kind of foreign policy success. Mitt Romney, hotly tipped to be the next Republican Presidential candidate, outlined his objections to the new START back in July and has been repeating his claims very loudly of late.

Some of the worst figures of the Bush administration, John Bolton (Bush’s Under Secretary of State for Arms Control) and John Yoo (famed for legal advice on ‘advanced interrogation techniques’), have waded in with Op-Eds accusing the new START of being a victory for Russia on missile defence. Whilst Bolton and Yoo’s objections are too spurious to be explored here, the pair reflect a constituency within the party who see any failure for Obama as their gain. Indeed, Liberty Central, a Tea-Party affiliated grassroots group have made derailing New START a central objective.

The organisation, founded by Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas (the wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas) have started a nation-wide letter writing campaign entitled, “TAKE ACTION: Tell Your Senators to Oppose START Treaty.” On the more moderate side, Senator Bob Corker, a formerly supportive Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has called for the vote to be postponed. He cites a lack of time to debate the issue properly.

However, as Karen Camper has pointed out, the new START has been debated to exhaustion in Senate committee meetings and the objections appear politically motivated. Certainly, Romney, Bolton and Yoo’s claims about threats to missile defence are not only false but mischaracterise the purpose of the treaty.

For an analysis of the factual errors in their pieces, see Fred Kaplan’s articles on Romney here and Bolton/Yoo here. Most importantly, the new Republican posture could result in serious security implications for the USA: there would be far less intelligence on the structure of Russian forces and a breakdown of trust. As The New York Times has argued, Republican obstinacy on the new START shows the lie in their claim of being the party of defence.

To conclude, the new START is beginning to look like the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty: a good idea, signed but never ratified. Obama’s flagship foreign policy initiative, the result of a year’s frenzied nuclear diplomacy, is at the mercy of his domestic opponents.

Originally published here- http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/11/barack-obama-dmitry-medvedev-us-russia-nuclear-arms-treaty-troubles/

South Korea has done a rhetorical U-turn on whether it will deploy fully autonomous robots along the border with North Korea. SGR-A1 sentry robots, which use infra-red cameras, motion detection, communication equipment for the exchange of army codes and are armed with a swivel-mounted K-3 rifles, have been developed and trialled along the misnomic demilitarised zone (DMZ).

Samsung Techwin, the system’s manufacturer, openly advertised the SGR-A1 robot’s autonomous nature on its release in 2006 – it can detect, question and fire upon an intruder without a human operator. However, most people involved with the project have since stressed that decisions on lethality will be taken by soldiers and references to the SGR-A1′s autonomous settings have also been removed from Samsung’s website.

Israel have been experimenting with a similar system along the border with Gaza, but they have been more emphatic about its ‘man-in-the-loop’ status. Clearly, anxiety about deploying autonomous killing machines is a result of political and legal, rather than technological, constraints. Whilstautonomous movement is becoming common in military vehicles, autonomous target acquisition is rarely boasted.

The question is, as the defence industry pumps more funds into robotics, can we ever legitimately use autonomous armed robots?

What’s wrong with autonomy?

Autonomous armed robots strike at the heart of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Firstly, without a human operator, there are difficulties fairly attributing responsibility should a war crime be committed. This is the view of the International Committee on Robot Arms Control (ICRAC), who are campaigning for a blanket ban. Secondly, the Fourth Geneva Convention requires warring parties to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

From a technological perspective, this is simply not possible. Artificial intelligence, shape recognition (‘hands up, this is a war’) and Friend-Foe Interrogation (FFI) programmes are so rudimentary that modern combat robots are little more than advanced land mines. Today or tomorrow, no autonomous robot will have sufficient perspective to operate within IHL.

Some roboticists believe these problems are surmountable, for technological or doctrinal reasons. John Canning, a US Navy engineer, has proposed a more conservative doctrine that will sidestep some of the legal issues raised by autonomy. Canning proposes autonomous weapons systems that only target weapons or enemy vehicles, extending the concept behind the Patriot Air and Missile Defence System to the wider battlefied.

Canning defines anyone with a weapon as a combatant. He believes possession of a weapon could be roughly gauged through infra-red, shape recognition and similar techniques in the near future and large military vehicles already exchange electronic codes and radio messages. He proposes an automated process of interrogation, similar to the South Korean system, to allow combatants the opportunity to surrender.

Canning argues around the US Rules of Engagement (RoE), which normally disallow fighting in cemeteries, mosques and hospitals: places that are not necessarily on maps and whose engagement necessitates a level of human judgement. He argues that it is the responsibility of the enemy to mark these areas prior to the conflict and therefore the programmers or operators would not be responsible should an autonomous system fire on sensitive sites.

Ronald Arkin, a US Army-funded roboticist, has been developing prototype software for use if and when recognition technology is able to discriminate to a decent level. Arkin’s designs allow the robot to reason within IHL: essentially comparing its pre-programmed mission with facts on the ground, IHL and the RoE. Arkin argues autonomous robots have the potential to act more ethically than soldiers, as they have no desire for self-preservation and no tendency to scenario fulfilment.

However, most of Arkin’s examples of how armed robots could be used take place in designated ‘kill zones’ (such as heavily-leafleted villages and South Korea’s DMZ), where intruders are assumed to be enemy soldiers. He is keen to employ acoustic sensors so robots can automatically return fire, but whether somebody firing on a robot should automatically be considered an active combatant is debatable.

Arkin’s work relies not just on technological optimism but on a bizarre interpretation of the Nuremburg trials. He argues that IHL already provides for morality, such that any legal request is by definition moral. Therefore, soldiers and robots have no responsibility to question orders they believe to be legal. According to this interpretation, the blind obedience of robots makes them more ethical than the average soldier.

The problem with Canning and Arkin is that they give false hope: they encourage investment in autonomous combat robots by suggesting the legal problems will be fixed in some technological hereafter. Arkin’s presumption that any complex situation can be formalised is untrue and Canning’s belief in the reliable exchange of codes between military vehicles will result in more tragedies like the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988.

Furthermore, the claim a robot will be able to discern whether a wounded soldier is holding a weapon or lying next to it is so far from the current state of robotics, it is like offering to make a biological weapon that only targets bad people. Even if robotics develops to the unlikely state of Arkin’s fantasy, it would be unfair to place legal responsibility on computer programmers or commanding officers should malfunctions or poor decisions occur. As Jutta Weber has repeatedly argued, autonomy is the point.

Why international treaties?

Intelligent or unintelligent combat robots challenge IHL in myriad ways. However, there is industrial momentum behind them, matched by government support. There also appears to be genuine confusion in some quarters about whether, in certain circumstances, the use of these systems would be illegal. Some have called to regulate the robotics industry, akin to the administration of theChemical Weapons Convention (CWC), to halt these developments.

This is unrealistic. Autonomy is as much a software as a hardware problem and verification is very difficult. Also, robotics is an especially dual-use industry: every advance in industrial and medical robotics contributes to military robotics.

Nevertheless, some kind of international treaty or agreement would provide legal clarity: it would signal to the military and industrial sectors what is expected of them. The Ottawa Treaty on land mines, the CWC and Biological Weapons Convention are all premised on the Fourth Geneva Convention but are still helpful in articulating why those weapons are wrong and to assert consensus. International treaties are the highest form of eyebrow raising; sometimes, that is all we can do.

This article was originally published on LeftFootForward.org. The link is- http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/10/should-killer-robots-be-banned/