For the last decade, leaders from both parties have agreed that the gravest danger facing the U.S. is the threat of the use of a nuclear bomb by a terrorist group or rogue state. But while nonproliferation has long been the provenance of governments, there is a clear role for industry to play as well.

Many of the components used to build a nuclear bomb — including the technology to create a uranium enrichment program — are inherently dual-use. This means that the same technology used for innocuous industrial purposes can also be used to help build a nuclear weapon. Some of these items, such as high-quality steel and bearings for centrifuges, are now well-known to be dual-use. Others, such as “triggered spark gaps” or very high-speed switches with medical purposes, are somewhat less well-known.

The U.S. and other countries use a series of restrictions on the export of certain goods — very high-speed computers, for example — to prevent adversaries from developing better weapons. But too often, both state and industry are slow to realize the dual-use nature of some products. When Iran started its centrifuge program, it was unable to acquire the ultra-high grade maraging steel typically used to build the rotors due to export controls. Instead, it purchased the highest quality steel it could buy — and that turned out to be good enough.

Further, there is little to no sharing of information among companies about who is trying to purchase what from whom. While some individual companies have internal compliance programs, a broader approach is required to share information among companies and industries. The sharing of information would ultimately prevent those who shouldn’t have access to such items from shopping around to find a company that will sell the technology with little concern for who the final customer may be. Some claim that Iran was able to use a series of front companies to eventually purchase the maraging steel that it needed, in addition to the “good enough” stuff.

Fixing this problem will not be easy. Companies exist to generate profit, and denying potential customers never makes shareholders happy. And one could imagine that some customers would lodge discrimination complaints. Further, information about sales, both actual and potential, is naturally considered commercial proprietary information.

How can this problem be solved? Two models spring to mind. In the first, government collects and analyzes information from applications for export licenses. In the second, industry leads the effort. From my perspective, the latter is preferable.

Government leadership on this problem would probably raise more concerns than it would solve: Which government would collect the data? How would governments share data? How would government gain access to information not contained in export license applications — especially for rejected sales? And how could industry be guaranteed that commercial secrets would not be leaked?

Having industry lead this effort would solve many of these problems. For starters, companies know about sales in progress and about sales denied, so they would be able to identify problems earlier. Industry also already collects much of this data to track sales, identify future markets and stay ahead of the competition. And it’s possible to come up with schemes where the information is not shared between companies until it’s needed. This would also reduce the role and intrusiveness of government, while probably being a cheaper regulatory regime than a government-run one.

Granted, industry leadership would also raise some questions — Who would fund the effort? How would information be protected? — but an important model already exists: Las Vegas casinos. This intensely competitive industry has learned how to share information about problem gamblers and cheaters between casinos in a way that helps them all earn more. No casino wants the competition to know how much profit it is making or how much money it is losing. But if an individual or a small group has found a way to beat the casinos and win large stakes, it helps all of the casinos to identify them and keep them from winning even more. What’s more, this is completely driven and funded by the industry, which realized that it could reduce losses through cooperation. Just as casinos can keep track of problem customers collectively, so can companies that supply dual-use materials.

The challenge, of course, is to convince those companies that they would serve themselves and their legitimate customers by working together to develop such an oversight system. After all, the promise of a nuclear-free world – a collective good – isn’t quite the same incentive as preventing cheaters from winning in your casino. While an industry-run regulatory system is the best solution, it may take the specter of an intrusive government regulatory scheme to spur companies to act in our shared interest and perhaps prevent the next Iran.

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As the administration’s Nuclear Security Summit takes place in Washington this week, CNN has a new look at public opinion on a variety of issues related to nuclear weapons policy. And it’s safe to say that there is strong public support for what the President’s is proposing, if not always for the utopian-sounding goals he has articulated.

The latter problem is not new. In a May 2009 Democracy Corps survey that found remarkably strong support for Obama’s foreign policy and national security leadership — strong enough, in fact, to all but erase the traditional “national security gap” between Democrats and Republicans — Obama’s stated goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons got a decidedly lukewarm reaction, with 60 percent of Americans agreeing that “eliminating all nuclear weapons in the world is not realistic or good for America’s security.”

The DCorps question on this subject combined skepticism about a nuclear-weapons-free world with opposition to the idea on national security grounds. But CNN separates the two issues, and while respondents split right down the middle (with significant differences based on age, as over-50s who remember the Cold War tend to be negative) on the desirability of eliminating nuclear weapons, the percentage thinking this can actually happen has dropped from one-third in 1988 to one-fourth today.

But the big difference between May 2009 and today in terms of nuclear weapons policy is that the President is now taking concrete steps to address the “loose nukes” issue, to build-down nuclear weapons in conjunction with Russia, and to strengthen the international non-proliferation regime (in conjunction with efforts to isolate Iran’s defense of its nuclear program). And CNN finds strong support for Obama in every tangible area, even if his long-range goals still produce skepticism.

Most importantly, 70 percent of Americans — including 68 percent of independents and even 49 percent of Republicans — think the Senate should ratify the START Treaty with Russia, despite the predictable charges of “weakness” against Obama that have been emanating from many conservative circles since the treaty was signed. With a two-thirds Senate vote being required for ratification of the treaty, that’s probably just enough public support to keep Republican defense hard-liners (and/or obdurate Obama-haters) from launching a big Senate fight.

Moreover, by giving high-profile attention to the “loose nukes” issue, Obama is tapping a deep well of public anxiety about the possibility of nuclear terrorism. By a 7-to-1 margin, respondents to the CNN poll said “preventing terrorists from getting nuclear weapons” should be a high priority than “reducing nuclear weapons controlled by unfriendly countries.” One of the great ironies of the Bush years was that his administration constantly promoted fears about nuclear terrorism while making nuclear security a very low priority, even in bilateral relations with Russia. Dick Cheney, in particular, treated truculent and unilateral behavior towards potential adversaries as the sole means of preventing nuclear terrorism. By unpacking nuclear security from other issues and making it a focus of bilateral and multilateral initiatives, Obama is linking diplomacy with a national security concern that Americans care about passionately.

Public support for the president’s nuclear weapons policies will get its strongest test beginning next month with the beginning of a scheduled review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As Steven Clemons notes in an excellent overview of Obama’s “nuclear wizardry” at Politico today, that’s where the rubber will need to start meeting the road in terms of the administration’s efforts to round up the world community for an effective united front towards Iran’s nuclear program. But it’s clear the president’s nuclear initiatives are off to a very good start despite generic conservative carping.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

The other day, I wrote a column about how the president’s focus on nuclear weapons was a solid opportunity to finally achieve some bipartisanship. I won’t rehash those arguments here, but I encourage you to read the piece. Much of the conservative intelligentsia actually agrees with me, and some have noted that any objections to the president’s moves are simply rooted in politics because there is “no substantive disagreement with what Obama has done.” But that hasn’t stopped some from favoring politics over good governance and — as Kevin Sullivan at RCW points out – start a new “silly season.”

So here, friends, are the five most ridiculous conservative lines about this week’s focus on nuclear security:

5. “[T]he real threat today is proliferation and terrorism. This treaty, of course, doesn’t have anything to do with that.” — Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ)

Au contraire — the New START has EVERYTHING to do with proliferation and terrorism. The key to convincing the Irans, North Koreas and Pakistans of the world that building and/or selling nuclear weapons isn’t necessary is to have demonstrable proof that the big nuclear nations are serious about arms control themselves. So we have to start (no pun intended) with the idea that the U.S. and Russia are making a real commitment to limit their own arsenals over time. Don’t expect Tehran and Pyongyang to bite on this immediately, but this is a decades-long project and New START is a good step in this direction.

4. “[W]e don’t need the treaty, we are willing to do these things unilaterally and the Russians will probably do it unilaterally themselves.” — Doug Feith, former Bush Undersecretary of Defense for Policy

Okay, fair enough…maybe both sides would do things unilaterally. But when I bought my house, I felt a lot better knowing the terms of the deal were actually written down. Feith spent a good chunk of his career negotiating arms control treaties for a living, so it’s curious why he’d slap down his former profession. Also, see #5 again.

3. “A friendly reality check for exuberant Democrats on the first day of the Nuclear-Zero Pax Obama — this treaty is almost certainly dead on arrival.” – Michael Goldfarb, Weekly Standard

Actually, Michael, I don’t think it is. Here‘s Sen. Richard Lugar (IN), the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee: “I remain hopeful that it will be signed and that there will be time assigned on the floor for debate and a vote this year.” And here‘s Henry Kissinger and George Shultz supporting it, too. Ratification will be a tough fight — two-thirds of the Senate is needed — but it’s hardly DOA.

2. “Does anyone think that the Obama administration will use force — much less nuclear force — against Iran? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad certainly doesn’t, to judge by his reaction to the Nuclear Posture Review.” — Max Boot, Commentary

Actually, I think Ahmadinejad does. Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons program over the last decade is the act of a country that’s convinced America would use force against it. After all, we’ve only invaded both of their next-door neighbors. Obama’s nuclear policy only isolates Iran more. Boot says that Robert Gates’ assertion that all options are on the table against Iran is not true. But actions speak louder than words. Judging by Iran’s actions, they still seem pretty convinced of America’s willingness to use force, Ahmadinejad’s bluster notwithstanding.

1. “(Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs, and other conventional munitions.)” – Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

Boasting more nonsense than a Phish show, Krauthammer’s piece imagines a scenario where hundreds of Americans are dead due to a nerve gas attack in Boston. Then he claims that the new Nuclear Posture Review ties the U.S. president’s hands because America couldn’t respond with a nuclear strike, and would have to — sigh – respond with just bullets, bombs and the like. Yeah, that’s right – apparently, the only good deterrent is a nuclear one. Really, why would anyone be scared of a conventional military that spends more on bullets, ICBMs and other conventional weapons than the rest of the world combined?

Last week, I wrote that the terrorist events in Moscow meant that Russia was about to choose between two distinct paths for its democratic aspirations. Either Vladimir Putin would reincarnate his 2004 persona and use the attacks to further retard Russian democracy, or new President Dmitri Medvedev would leverage the blasts as a catalyst that liberates him from Putin’s yoke and parries his attempts at a new power-grab. At the time, I was hopeful for the second outcome, but betting on the first.

Unfortunately, this op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times slid me more towards the Putin-power-grab outlook. I had failed to appreciate that, well, there’s a different political culture in Russia that protects the “czar” and blames his underlings:

In other countries, leaders might pay a political price for not preventing a startling attack like the suicide bombings in the Moscow subway last Monday. Not here, at least not so far. If anything, terrorism and unrest in Russia’s predominantly Muslim regions have long served to strengthen Mr. Putin’s hand.
[…]
He plays on a piece of Russian folk wisdom that is roughly translated as “the good czar, bad advisers” — the belief that, throughout history, a Russian leader with the right intentions is often betrayed by underlings. That is why Mr. Putin, the prime minister and former president, is often shown in public scowling and lecturing other officials.
[…]
“When it comes to terrorism, Putin knows how — and this is a very important aspect of his political mastery — to protect himself from what might otherwise be considered his responsibility,” said Sergey Parkhomenko, a political commentator and radio talk show host in Moscow.
[…]
On Thursday night, he headed to Venezuela to see President Hugo Chavez for a visit that was intended to display the Kremlin’s muscular foreign policy and its warm relations with an antagonist of the United States. It was less than two days after a Chechen extremist had claimed responsibility for the subway attacks, and had promised there would be more.

It’s an important reminder that learning what’s in the political DNA of our partners and rivals is essential if the U.S. is to craft effective long-term partnerships and exert its influence wisely on the global stage.

America’s hot-and-cold relationship with China just blew a little warmer. Last Wednesday, Beijing for the first time agreed to take part in drafting a UN Security Council resolution for new sanctions against Iran.

This would be the fourth round of UN sanctions aimed at pressuring Tehran to halt its nuclear program. So far, efforts to give those sanctions real bite have foundered on the implicit threat that China (and perhaps Russia) would veto them in the Security Council. Both countries have extensive economic ties with Iran, and China, invoking its own unhappy experience with European imperialism, traditionally has championed “non-interference” in other countries’ internal affairs.

So it may be significant that, having tried and largely failed to “engage” Iran on the nuclear standoff, the White House has apparently successfully engaged China to deepen Tehran’s international isolation. But there are already signs that Beijing is not quite ready to jump this particular Rubicon.

Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, wasted no time in jetting off to Beijing for meetings with Chinese officials. “Many issues came up in talks on which China accepted Iran’s position,” Jalili told reporters. “We jointly emphasized during our talks that these sanctions tools have lost their effectiveness.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement that offered no hint that Beijing has changed its attitude toward Iran’s drive for nuclear capabilities, instead calling on all parties to “step up diplomatic efforts, and show flexibility, to create the conditions to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiation.”

All this suggests we’re in for protracted haggling in the Security Council over language that, in the end, probably won’t induce the Islamic Republic to stop enriching uranium in defiance of UN strictures. The fundamental problem is not that China is indifferent to nuclear proliferation or intent on “protecting” a valuable trading partner. The fundamental problem is that China doesn’t seem ready yet to assume the responsibilities of global leadership, as we would define them.

From Sudan to Iran, China puts the amoral pursuit of its own interests – in these cases, assuring access to the energy it needs to fuel its rapid growth – ahead of larger conceptions of international cooperation and order, or even its own undoubted interest in stemming nuclear proliferation. The idea of “enlightened self-interest” that underpins U.S. internationalism has an unnatural and vaguely sinister ring to officials in the Middle Kingdom. For now at least, it’s hard to imagine the historically self-contained and inward-looking Middle Kingdom spending trillions of renminbi, say, to support a Pacific analogue to NATO, or an architecture of international institutions dedicated to collective problem-solving.

The Obama administration nonetheless deserves credit for nudging Beijing toward an outward view of global obligations commensurate with its growing geopolitical weight. But in the crunch – pressuring Iran to forsake nuclear weapons – we’d do well to have realistic expectations of how far China is really prepared to go.

While the Moscow bombings have brought out fighting words and suggestions of a scorched-earth response from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin – a reaction that I cautioned against in my previous post – President Obama’s has been perfectly pitched. He has expressed solidarity with the Russian people and sympathy for the killed and injured. The president has made a notable attempt to distance himself from overly emotional Bush/Putin-style rhetoric about terrorism, reasoning (correctly in my mind) that pounding a fist on the table and screaming about revenge only plays into the terrorists’ hands.

I would urge one note of caution, however. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, appearing on Canadian television, compared the Moscow terrorist attack to those in the West: “We face a common enemy, whether you’re in a Moscow subway or a London subway or a train in Madrid, or an office building in New York, we face the same enemy.” I’d counsel the State Department to be a bit more nuanced here. True, one can argue that the ultimate motivation in all these attacks was to establish part of the Muslim caliphate that stretched from North Africa to Southeast Asia. But it’s a tricky argument to make when part of the history of that motivation is independence from Moscow (whether you’re a pure separatist or one motivated by Muslim ideology).

Endorsing a “common enemy” might encourage the Kremlin to continue heavy-handed tactics against its own people, not to mention attempting to retroactively justify, say, the invasion of Georgia by conflating it with terrorist motivations. Or, to continue Putin’s 2004-2005 precedent, throw language like this back into American faces when he uses it to justify another power-grab…like his return to the presidency. Seriously — he’s not above it, and this might be exactly what’s coming.

Foggy Bottom should be clear on these distinctions about a common enemy, particularly when there’s no evidence of direct al Qaeda involvement in the Moscow bombings.

Nearly 36 hours after the attacks in Moscow’s subway system, reports indicate that nearly 40 are dead and more than 70 have been injured. As of this writing, no group has claimed responsibility, though heavy suspicion has fallen on Muslim separatist groups based in southern Russia’s Caucasus region, the primary source of terrorism in Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. More on that in a second.

There were two bombings, conducted quasi-simultaneously (about 40 minutes apart) at two busy metro stations in Moscow’s city center. The Lubyanka station is located near the headquarters of Russia’s Federal Security Service (the legacy organization of the KGB), which points to a message the attackers may have been hoping to convey; the second scene at the Park Kultury Station is located a few stops to the south along the same metro line. If you’d like to see some interesting citizen-journalism of the attacks’ aftermath, click over to the NYT’s The Lede blog.

Much has been made of the attackers’ identity — two women dressed in black robes with explosives and shrapnel packed underneath their garments. Female suicide bombers have been used by Chechen separatists dating back to 2002 and are commonly — and disturbingly — referred to as “black widows.” Furthermore, female suicide bombers are hardly a new phenomenon. If memory serves, they’ve been used as long ago as the early 1990s by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Terrorist groups — even those with no formal ties to one another — observe each others’ tactical successes and adopt the effective ones. The use of unsuspecting women has made the rounds in terrorist circles, even if Western audiences still find the tactic shocking.

It’s important to appreciate the dynamic nature and motivations of the Caucasus’ separatist groups over the last decade and the Russian government’s response to them. Boris Yeltsin first installed the then-little-known ex-KGB chief Vladimir Putin as prime minister in 1999, and Putin vowed to crush the Chechen separatist movement. In the early-to-mid 2000s, the group was a relatively structured militia that was responsible for mostly large-scale terrorist attacks. The group most famously conducted the 2004 siege at the Beslan school that killed over 300 people, many of whom were school children; it was also responsible for the 2002 siege at a Moscow theater.

In large part, Putin was responsible for successfully dismantling the organizational hierarchy behind those acts, killing leaders like Shamil Basayev and Abdul Khalim Sudalayev in 2006. He used victories like those to consolidate power behind the Kremlin, saying political power-grabs like eliminating the direct election of regional governors were necessary to defeat terrorism. Can you imagine if Bush had eliminated the election of state governors after 9/11? Just a bit of a stretch, right?

But as often happens with insurgent organizations, cutting off their head rarely kills them. Moscow’s success only caused the resistance to morph over the last four or five years from a top-down military-style structure to more of a flat, non-hierarchical, Islamic-based motley crew. Here’s an excellent run-down on the insurgency’s changing nature and motivation from WaPo’s Philip Pan late last year:

Russia has long blamed violence in the region on Muslim extremists backed by foreign governments and terrorist networks, but radical Islam is relatively new here. In the 1990s, it was ethnic nationalism, not religious fervor, that motivated Chechen separatists. That changed, though, as fighting spilled beyond Chechnya and Russian forces used harsher tactics targeting devout Muslims.

In 2007, the rebel leader Doku Umarov abandoned the goal of Chechen independence and declared jihad instead, vowing to establish a fundamentalist Caucasus Emirate that would span the entire region. After Moscow proclaimed victory in Chechnya in April, he issued a video labeling civilians legitimate targets and reviving Riyad-us Saliheen, the self-described martyrs’ brigade that launched terrorist attacks across Russia from 2002 to 2006.

It would appear on the surface that the Kremlin has failed to appreciate this change. In my mind, the new shape and motivations of the Chechen insurgency would call for more of a counter-insurgency style strategy that has been adopted by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, Putin has vowed a continued heavy hand, saying, “The terrorists will be destroyed!” This is of course what any national leader must say to placate a fearful and confused domestic audience, but may begin to ring a bit hollow in light of Putin’s similar rhetoric of 1999:

“Putin said [before these attacks], ‘One thing that I definitely accomplished was this [stopping the Chechen threat],’ and he didn’t,” said Pavel K. Baev, a Russian who is a professor at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo.

“My feeling is this is not an isolated attack, that we will see more,” Mr. Baev said. “If we are facing a situation where there is a chain of attacks, that would undercut every attempt to soften, liberalize, open up, and increase the demand for tougher measures.”

In my next post, I’ll take a look at how the U.S. has responded to the attacks.

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