Revue de presse Défense, réalisée par l'AR-IHEDN Aquitaine"

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Revue de presse «Défense »,réalisée par l'AR-IHEDN Aquitaine (contact : [e-mail]) Votre avis nous intéresse : si vous voulez réagir à un article de la revue de presse, vous pouvez contacter directement le responsable de thème ou réagissez sur lacommunauté de Défense.  

Date : 2 septembre 2010 ***** Sommaire : (les articles proposés) :

1!          Enjeux de la Défense, Doctrine, Concepts, Missions : En Irak, l’« Aube nouvelle » a commencé

MALGRÉ LA FIN DES OPÉRATIONS MILITAIRES L’Irak est loin d’atteindre la stabilité The cost of weapons

The Nuclear Domino Myth

India Re-Calibrating Af-Pak Strategy

World must prepare for Iran military option: Blair

(!  Relations- Europe de la défense - internationales OTAN : L'ONU OUVRE SON PREMIER BUREAU DE SURVEILLANCE DU RÉFÉRENDUM AU SUD-SOUDAN

Controverse. Après ses propos contre le “pape allemand”. Minc et les souverains poncifs Immigration :L’acceptable chantage de Kadhafi

Irak « Parce que vous pensez que les Américains vont vraiment partir? » Russie-UE: rencontre entre haut-gradés sur la

coopération (Défense)

)!           Armements - Industries - Economie : La facture américaine La Russie veut accélérer la construction de ses sous-marins Pour une politique industrielle - Louis Gallois- Fondation Res Publica (JC Chevene- ment)

Vers un accord définitif pour les Chantiers navals de Scaramanga

New Developments in Military Automation

L’entretien des CF-18 se fera au Québec

Britain and France to pool naval forces?

∗! Les forces armées - Air - Marine - Terre -Gendarmerie

Vers une « Airforce européenne » ? Un commandement du transport aérien militaire européen

French Navy Relies on Egis for its ATC Training Systems

Dernière cérémonie des couleurs de la Jeanne

Brest : la Jeanne d’Arc perd son pavillon et son nom

Le croiseur russe Piotr Veliki visitera le port de Brest

+!           Zones de conflits : Afghanistan Now Has Forces, Resources, Petraeus Says Robert Gates à Kaboul au moment où l'Otan est accusé d'une nouvelle bavure Bombardements au Pakistan 55 morts dont de nombreux civils

La saignée au sein de l’organisation terroriste se poursuit Reddition de 3 “émirs” du GSPC

,!  Renseignements intérieurs extérieurs intelligence économique Israël. Un ex-chef des services secrets israéliens ouvre ses dossiers.

Des problèmes sérieux pour une nouvelle classe de bâtiments américains

−!           Sécurité intérieure

. DCN: fin d'une enquête ouverte pour corruption La Hadopi met en garde contre les faux emails d’avertissement Le fondateur de Wikileaks entendu par la police suédoise Sécurité: les réseaux mal configurés à l’origine de la plupart des intrusions

.!           Menaces Des émeutes de la faim ont fait au moins 7 morts au Mozambique L’Union européenne est moribonde

/!          Energie environnement climat Russie: embargo sur les exportations de blé au moins jusqu'à l'été 2011

10! Histoire, mémoire cinéma

SOS histoire

11! .ntaoinuciComm

Les groupes de réflexion (GRAA) 2010- 2012

1(! Jour après Jour

Le 2 septembre

*****

1/ ENJEUX DE LA DEFENSE - DOCTRINE -  CONCEPTS     - MISSIONS

 En Irak, l’«  ebuAuon llev e  éc  » coa enmm Source journal ou site Internet : L’Orient le Jour Date : 2 septembre 2010 Auteur : Adressé ar :JF Mazale rat

Des soldats américains et irakiens lors de la cérémonie de passation de commandement qui a été organisée hier près de l’aéroport de Bagdad, dans une immense salle d’un ancien palais de Saddam Hussein tapissée de marbre. Lors de la cérémonie, Joe Biden a appelé les dirigeants irakiens à « être à la hauteur du courage de la population en formant un gouvernement ». Thaier al-Sudani/Reuters Irak Le vice-président américain, Joe Biden, et le chef du Pentagone, Robert Gates, ont annoncé hier lors d’une visite en Irak le lancement de l’opération « Aube nouvelle » qui prend le relais de l’opération « Liberté en Irak ». Le vice-président Joe Biden a officiellement lancé hier la nouvelle opération de l'armée américaine en Irak, tournant la page de la mission de combat entamée avec l'invasion en 2003. « La libération de l'Irak est termi- née, mais notre engagement va continuer au travers de l'opération "Aube nouvelle" », a déclaré Joe Biden lors d'une cérémonie sur la base américaine Camp Victory, près de Bagdad, en présence du chef du Penta- gone Robert Gates, de ministres irakiens et de généraux irakiens et américains. Il a également appelé les diri- geants irakiens à « former vite un nouveau gouvernement », six mois après les élections législatives. Devant plusieurs centaines de personnes, dans une immense salle tapissée de marbre d'un ancien palais de Saddam Hussein, le général Lloyd Austin a pris dans la foulée le commandement des forces américaines en Irak en remplacement du général Ray Odierno. Ce dernier, salué par une longue salve d'applaudissements, a assuré que « les forces de sécurité irakiennes étaient prêtes » à assumer la sécurité du pays. « Il est temps pour l'Irak d'avancer », a lancé le haut gradé.

Auparavant, depuis la base militaire américaine de Ramadi, à l'ouest de Bagdad, Robert Gates avait indiqué que le changement de mission pour les troupes américaines, qui vont désormais se consacrer à la formation

des forces irakiennes, signifiait que la guerre était terminée pour les États-Unis. « Je dirai que nous ne sommes plus (en guerre) », a déclaré M. Gates. Dans un discours solennel à la nation prononcé mardi soir depuis le bureau Ovale, le président Barack Obama avait annoncé la fin officielle de la mission de combat en Irak. « L'opération "Liberté en Irak" est terminée, et les Irakiens sont désormais responsables de la sécurité de leur pays. L'Irak a l'occasion d'aller vers un nouveau destin, même si beaucoup de défis demeurent », avait déclaré M. Obama. De fait, après plus de sept ans de guerre et de violences, la situation est loin d'être apai- sée. Quand des journalistes lui ont demandé si la guerre en valait la peine, M. Gates a estimé que la réponse ap- partenait aux historiens. « Le problème de cette guerre pour tous les Américains, c'est que les raisons avan- cées pour la justifier ne se sont pas avérées valides », a-t-il affirmé, en référence à la menace des armes de destruction massive irakiennes qui avait été invoquée par l'administration de George W. Bush. « Même si les résultats sont bons du point de vue des États-Unis, ils seront toujours assombris par ces débuts », a-t-il jugé. Les effectifs de l'armée américaine sont récemment passés sous la barre symbolique des 50 000 soldats, contre 170 000 en 2007. Plus de 4 400 ont péri en Irak depuis 2003. L'ensemble des forces américaines doit avoir quitté le pays d'ici à fin 2011. Août a encore été un mois très meurtrier. Au total, 426 Irakiens, dont 295 civils, ont été tués dans les vio- lences, selon un bilan officiel. Mais le Premier ministre irakien Nouri al-Maliki a jugé que ses forces étaient capables de prendre le relais des Américains. Une évaluation nuancée par son ministre de la Défense Abdel Qader al-Obeïdi, selon lequel, en 2012, les forces irakiennes ne seraient prêtes qu'à 95 %.

MALGRÉ LA FIN DES OPÉRATIONS MILITAIRES L’Irak est loin d’atteindre la stabilité Source journal ou site Internet : L’Expression Date : 2 septembre 2010 Auteur : RI Adressé par :JF Mazaleyrat «Les Irakiens sont désormais responsables de la sécurité de leur pays», estime le président Obama.  

Le président Barack Obama a invité, mardi dernier, les Américains à dépasser leurs désaccords sur l’Irak, soulignant, en annonçant la fin de la mission de combat américaine, que des patriotes s’étaient trouvés à la fois parmi les défenseurs et les opposants de la guerre. La grandeur de notre démocratie est fondée sur notre capacité à dépasser nos désaccords, a-t-il déclaré dans son discours, après avoir indiqué qu’il avait téléphoné dans la journée à son prédécesseur George W. Bush, qui avait décidé en 2003 l’invasion de l’Irak. «Il est bien connu que lui et moi avons été en désaccord à propos de la guerre dès le début», a expliqué le président: «Mais personne ne peut douter du soutien du président Bush à nos troupes, ni de son amour du pays ou de son engagement pour notre sécurité». Le président a encouragé les responsables irakiens à former rapidement un gouvernement. «J’encourage les responsables irakiens à progresser rapidement pour former un gouvernementreprésentatif de tous les Irakiens, a dit le président américain.» qui soit Obama a ensuite assuré que lorsque le gouvernement sera en place, «il n’y a pas de doute, les Irakiens auront un partenaire fort: les Etats-Unis». «pas notre engagement pour l’avenir de l’IrakNotre mission de combat prend fin, mais », a affirmé Obama qui s’exprimait depuis le cadre solennel du Bureau ovale de la Maison- Blanche pour la deuxième fois depuis le début de son mandat. Près de six mois après les élections législatives, l’Irak n’a toujours pas de gouvernement, les négociations entre différents partis n’ayant jusqu’ici pas abouti. Les troupes américaines ont officiellement achevé mardi leur mission de combat en Irak à la date fixée par le président Barack Obama, qui a appelé ses compatriotes à tourner la page malgré des inquiétudes lancinantes quant à la stabilité politique à Bagdad. «Aujourd’hui, j’annonce que la mission de combat en Irak est terminée. L’opération Liberté en Irak est terminée, et les Irakiens

sont désormais responsables de la sécurité de leur pays», a affirmé le président. «Il s’agissait de ma promesse aux Américains lorsque j’étais candidat à ce postequi s’était opposé à la guerre. «», a rappelé M.Obama Nous avons retiré près de 100 000 soldats américains d’Irak. Nous avons fermé des centaines de bases ou les avons transférées aux Irakiens», a rappelé M.Obama. Il a souligné que son pays avait payé un prix énorme en Irak. Plus de 4400 soldats américains sont morts dans ce pays depuis l’in- vasion de mars 2003, lancée par le prédécesseur de M.Obama, George W.Bush, afin de renverser le régime de Saddam Hussein, soupçonné, sur la base de renseignements qui s’étaient révélés faux, d’entretenir un arsenal d’armes de destruction massive. Oba- ma a promis de donner désormais la priorité au rétablissement de l’économie américaine. A Bagdad, le Premier ministre irakien Nouri al-Maliki a estimé que l’Irak était désormais un pays souverain et indépendant et a as- suré que son armée était capable d’assurer la sécurité, dans un Etat qui reste cependant en proie à la violence et à l’instabilité poli- tique. Obama, qui a rencontré des anciens d’Irak à la base militaire de Fort Bliss (Texas), a reconnu que l’heure n’était pas encore venue de crier victoire. «d’honneur, ce ne sera pas de l’auto-Je vais prononcer un discours à la nation ce soir. Ce ne sera pas un tour congratulation. Nous avons encore beaucoup de travail pour faire en sorte que l’Irak soit un vrai partenaire», a-t-il prévenu. A partir d’hier, les Américains seront chargés de conseiller et d’aider l’armée irakienne. Selon le calendrier énoncé par M.Obama, ils devront être partis à la fin 2011.

The cost of weapons Source journal ou site Internet : Farnborough and washington Date : 26 août 2010 Auteur : avec enjeux Adressé par :Y de Prémorel

Defence spending in a time of austerity The chronic problem of exorbitantly expensive weapons is becoming acute

THERE were the starlings: aerobatic teams with mesmerising group displays. There were the albatrosses: Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner and Airbus’s A380, heavy airliners that still manage long, effortless flight. And there were the buzzing propeller-driven military transporters, including the latest, the Airbus A400M. But the star turn was reserved for the birds of prey, the jet fighters. At this summer’s Farnborough air show, outside London, America’s most advanced fighter, the F-22 Raptor, announced its power with a thunderous roar. Many think of fighters in terms of speed, altitude and agility. But even more impressive is to see the Raptor at low speed, hovering almost stationary in the air, its nose pointing upwards, like a child’s toy strung up to the sky. In mock battles, its stealth and sensors allow a lone Raptor to kill a flock of any other kind of aircraft. But the fighter is an endangered species. One threat comes from success: in Iraq and Afghanistan, Western forces have been uncontested in the air, if not on the ground, so sophisticated fighters seem less relevant. Another comes from technology: the advance of robotic warfare may, at some point, make the pilot in the cockpit redundant. The aircraft that American field commanders most clamour for is not the F-22 but helicopters and the Predator, an unmanned drone able to stay aloft for a day. The fighter pilot seems to be losing his dash. Farewell Tom Cruise in “Top Gun”. Goodbye Biggles, the British adventure-book hero. In their place, welcome the faceless drone operator sitting in a windowless container in the Nevada desert. Well, eventually perhaps. The extent to which unmanned aircraft could or should supplant piloted ones will

be debated for decades. For the moment, though, a third danger is more immediate: the economic crisis, which is forcing Western countries to cut expensive military equipment. Robert Gates, America’s defence secretary, has ordered that production of the F-22 should end this year, capping the fleet at 187—a final cull for the Raptor, whose numbers were once supposed to reach about 750. In Europe orders for the Typhoon—a fighter made by Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain—will fall. And on both sides of the Atlantic the rising cost of the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter means its order book could shrink sharply. On August 9th Mr Gates announced a new set of money-saving measures: among them cutting at least 50 of the 900-plus generals and admirals; eliminating the joint-forces command, which promotes integration among the services; cutting funds for contractors; and reducing staff in Mr Gates’s own office. There are sound military reasons for this internal cost-cutting, especially the need to redirect money to the war in Afghanistan. But Mr Gates knows that after a decade of ever-rising defence spending, “the gusher has been turned off”; now his greatest fear is that defence spending will be cut to curb the budget deficit. His dread is already reality for many European colleagues. This week Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany’s defence minister, said he favoured suspending conscription, with the option of resuming it later, in order to create a “smaller but better and more operational” army that would shrink by a third, to about 165,000. The move is part of Germany’s plan to cut €8.3 billion ($10.5 billion) from the defence budget by 2014. Even Britain, which has the largest European force in Afghanistan, is likely to cut defence spending by 10-20% over the next five years, following an overdue defence review in the autumn. Spain cut defence spending by 9% this year; Italy will chop by 10% next. Less drastically, France is freezing defence expenditure.  To Americans, it all looks like a dis-arms race. NATO’s longstanding call for allies to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence has been lost in the clamour over wider public-spending cuts.

Is the constraint on military spending evidence of a general decline of the West? Critics of Mr Gates argue that he is hollowing out the armed forces and accepting a diminished position for America in the world. In a seminal book of 1987, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers”, Paul Kennedy of Yale University popularised the notion that a country’s military power flows from its economic strength; the global pecking order is determined as much by economic performance in peacetime as by martial abilities in wartime. By this measure, China’s economic strength should give the West cause for concern. China is also fast building up its naval power (see chart 1).

Instead of strategy  Andrew Krepinevich, director of the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a think-tank in Washington, DC, argues that America is at a crossroads of the sort that faced imperial Britain at the turn of the 20th century, as it contended with a rising America, an expansionist Russia and fast-industrialising Germany and Japan. Britain’s choice, then, was to surrender its interests in Latin America to the United States, support Japan to check Russia in the East and make up with France so as to confront Germany. “Strategy is what you need when you don’t have any more money,” says Mr Krepinevich. “Britain was a declining power but it managed to hang on for quite a long time with intelligent strategy.” The beginnings of a sound policy today, he argues, might be for America to withdraw from a costly war in Afghanistan and pull forces out of Europe. Such a move would shock Europeans who hope that the impact of their own defence cuts will be softened by American help in times of need. For the moment, though, America is not giving up any of its commitments. Mr Gates wants his forces to become better at fighting insurgencies; to preserve enough might to protect allies from, say, North Korean aggression or Chinese hegemony; and also to maintain “all options” for dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme. That means finding new money within constrained budgets. Mr Gates is grappling with the conundrum faced by many of his predecessors: the rising costs of military manpower and equipment, which strain even America’s gargantuan $700 billion defence budget (almost as

much as the defence spending of the rest of the world put together). Just to keep up America’s existing combat units, he notes, costs 2-3% more each year. But the annual budget is rising by only 1-2%. Mr Gates wants the Pentagon to save 1-2% a year in overheads. A study of defence bureaucracies by McKinsey, a global management consultancy, suggests that American forces, though the most potent in the world, are among the least efficient, at least in terms of the “tooth-to-tail” ratio, the proportion of fighting forces to support personnel (the best were Norway, Kuwait and the Netherlands). American forces deploy and fight globally, so need more support than those only defending national borders. Nevertheless, the study suggests there is flab to be trimmed.

Manpower in all-volunteer armies, as most Western ones are these days, is expensive. Pay has to be competitive. In America, moreover, a big burden is the cost of health-care programmes for current and former servicemen, and their families. “Health-care costs are eating the defence department alive,” complains Mr Gates. Yet he has a hard time restraining Congress’s generosity to soldiers and veterans. One response to high manpower costs is to rely on technology. But that does not come cheap. Study after study shows that the price of combat aircraft has been rising substantially faster than inflation, often faster than GDP. The same is true of warships. In a book published in 1983, Norman Augustine, a luminary of the aerospace industry, drafted a series of lighthearted “laws”. In one aphorism, he plotted the exponential growth of unit cost for fighter aircraft since 1910 (see chart 2), and extrapolated it to its absurd conclusion: “In the year 2054, the entire defence budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3½ days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.” Nearly three decades on, Mr Augustine says, “we are right on target. Unfortunately nothing has changed.” These days Raptors go for $160m apiece ($350m including the cost of developing the jet), compared with $50m-60m for the venerable F-16. In the long run, high unit costs must limit numbers. Since 1970 America’s fleets of combat aircraft and major warships have shrunk, even as defence spending rose (see chart 3).

Much of the performance of modern weapons lies in their computing power and software. So why do weapons not follow Moore’s Law, which predicts the rapid fall in the cost of computing power? For one thing, military equipment lacks the huge scale of consumer electronics, which drives down unit costs. Military software is often bespoke. The need to keep it secure makes it hard to upgrade and to develop the “plug and play” functionality of PCs. Instead of choosing products in the open market, big countries develop weapons from scratch. And instead of negotiating fixed-price contracts, governments typically bear the risk of designing advanced systems in “cost-plus” arrangements. Even aerospace giants such as Boeing and Europe’s EADS, which compete to produce expensive civil airliners, are wary of developing a military jet on their own.

The spiral  The rising cost of military equipment is an old curse. Philip Pugh, author of “The Cost of Seapower”, a 1986 study of shipbuilding costs since the end of the Napoleonic wars, argues that the industrial revolution made the problem more acute: the rapid pace of technological change set off a race to build bigger, more powerful, more heavily armed and better-protected battleships. At some point, as unit prices rise, one of two things must happen: countries must either scale back their ambition, or seek game-changing technology, as they did when the battleship gave way to the submarine and aircraft-carrier. Mr Pugh also identified another intriguing trend: the race for bigger, better weapons is fiercest in peacetime but tends to fall once war actually breaks out. At that point, he argues, quantity takes precedence over quality. So the fact that the cold war never turned hot may help explain why Western ministries of defence got into the habit of developing weapons slowly and expensively. “You cannot optimise cost, performance and development-time at the same time,” says Mr Krepinevich. “In the cold war everything was sacrificed to

performance.” Cost was secondary, and time was least important of all, given that there was no shooting war. The F-22 began development before the end of the cold war; so did the Typhoon. Few would disagree with another of Mr Augustine’s laws, that “the last 10% of performance generates one- third of the cost and two-thirds of the problems.” Moreover, the quest for the best is often allied to a “conspiracy of optimism”, whereby bureaucrats and contractors underestimate the likely cost of weapons, wittingly or unwittingly. Once approved, military projects are hard to kill. Such are the ingredients for a spiral of cost and delay: technological stumbles hold up development; delay raises costs; governments postpone work further to avoid busting yearly budgets, incurring greater long-term costs. With time, technology becomes outdated, so weapons must be redesigned, giving the top brass a chance to tinker endlessly with requirements. In the end, governments cut the size of the purchase, so driving up unit costs further. There were supposed to be 132 stealthy B-2 bombers but only 20 were built. They cost $2 billion each. Repeated reforms have failed to break this dire cycle. According to the last full report by America’s Government Accountability Office (GAO), the cost of 96 of America’s biggest weapons programmes in 2008 had risen on average by 25%, incurring an average delay of 22 months.

It’s even worse in Europe  This is not just an American affliction. France is down to one aircraft-carrier. Britain has two pint-sized ones, and they often sail without aircraft. It has ordered two big new carriers, but no sooner had work started than the government slowed down construction. The National Audit Office says this case of “save now, spend later” would save about £450m ($695m) in the first four years, but add £1.1 billion overall. European countries in any case struggle to generate much bang for their money. European states have more troops than America but only a fraction of America’s fighting power. Their budgets are divided among more than two dozen air forces, navies and armies; and many have defence industries to preserve. As a result, their choices are agonising. America may debate how many nuclear weapons it should have, but in Britain even some among the top brass think that nukes are too expensive; Mr Gates wonders whether America needs 11 aircraft-carrier groups; some people in Britain and France ask whether they can buy new ones at all. The Netherlands has given up maritime reconnaissance; Denmark has abandoned submarines. The Baltic states have no air force to speak of, relying instead on NATO allies to police their skies. Plainly, Europe needs economies of scale. But how to achieve them, short of an implausible single European army? One option would be for Europeans to specialise. But the bigger military powers do not want to depend too much on others, so they try to keep a bit of everything. Some NATO allies are sharing the cost of new C-17 military transporters but such examples of pooling are few and far between. Jointly developing weapons carries considerable costs: decisions are arduous and work has to be shared out. Reconciling the needs of each can result in building countless variants, or in piling multiple requirements on a single aircraft. This happened to the A400M, which suffered a cost overrun of more than €11 billion. Germany wanted it to skim over treetops, Britain needed it to lift (now-scrapped) new armoured vehicles. Both Britain and France said it had to operate from rough airfields. One Airbus insider calls the A400M an eierlegende Wollmilchsau, or “egg-producing wool-milk- ” sow . Perhaps Europeans should just buy American kit off the shelf. But those with their own military industries want to preserve high-tech manufacturing and software skills, protect an important export industry and maintain some independence. So is there any way of developing weapons more cheaply? More transatlantic co-operation would help. The F-35 fighter, despite disputes over rising costs, still looks less expensive than Augustine’s law would predict. It inherits technology from the F-22, and three variants are being built for the American air force, navy and marine corps. Several countries have joined the programme. It would also help to use more off-the-shelf technology—as has been done with the mine-resistant vehicles rushed to the battlefield in recent years. In general, countries need to take smaller technological steps, build quickly to minimise disruption and upgrade when technology is ready. One might argue that the mounting price of weapons does not matter given that modern equipment is so

much more effective than older kit. Maybe, but in a disordered world of diffuse threats, having a widespread presence is valuable. In Iraq and Afghanistan numbers matter more than firepower. The same applies to warships fighting pirates off the cost of Somalia; a ship cannot be in two places at the same time. As Stalin reputedly said, quantity has a quality all of its own. Quantity, quality or technology?   At Farnborough this year, the big aerospace companies still enjoyed the best chalets. But they were looking over their shoulder at an insurgent: Neal Blue, CEO of General Atomics. Better known for its work in nuclear physics, General Atomics stole a march on the big firms by producing the Predator drone. Early models were powered by snowmobile engines. The first flying cameras evolved into armed versions that could strike targets at short notice, then into a bigger plane, the Reaper, able to carry more weapons. Now Mr Blue is showing off a jet-powered, stealthier version, called the Avenger. I say, Algy, what’s that unmanned thingy at 12 o’clock? Getting the pilot out of the cockpit, he says, is the best way to keep prices down. He claims the cost of an Avenger is about a tenth of a new “hyper-expensive” manned jet. The future, he reckons, lies in cheaper, expendable drones that can swarm or spread out as circumstance requires. Mr Blue’s critics argue that drones only fill a niche. Pilotless planes require more people on the ground, are slow and vulnerable, and hungry for satellite bandwidth. “If your data links are jammed, do you really want to be without an air force?” asks Steve O’Brien of Lockheed Martin. Developing drones able to fight autonomously in high-end combat will make them much more expensive and much less expendable. Mr Blue thinks technology will provide both quality and quantity. But if history is any guide, Augustine’s law will one day strike the drones as surely as it has already done with Biggles     Jean-Claude Tourneur   Rédacteur en chef d'Enjeux   [e-mail]   Tél: [phone]   Fax: [phone]   www.enjeux.org     The Nuclear Domino Myth Source journal ou site Internet : Enjeux Date : 2 septembre 2010 Auteur : Adressé par : Yannick de Prémorel

Dismantling Worst-Case Proliferation Scenarios Johan Bergenas JOHAN BERGENAS is a Research Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center.   When considering the dangers of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, those who differ on political ideology find rare common ground. According to nearly everyone, if Iran develops nuclear weapons, its neighbors will inevitably do so, too. Former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), for example, said earlier this year, "The governments of the world must understand what a threat it is if the Iranians get nuclear weapons, because there are probably 10 other countries in the Middle East over the next 10 to 20 years that would follow down that road." U.S. policymakers from John Bolton, the conservative former U.S. ambassador to the UN, to Vice President Joe Biden all seem to agree with this dark prediction.

But there's one problem with this "nuclear domino" scenario: the historical record does not support it. Since the dawn of the nuclear age, many have feared rapid and widespread nuclear proliferation; 65 years later, only nine countries have developed nuclear weapons. Nearly 20 years elapsed between the emergence of the first nuclear state, the United States, in 1945, and the fifth, China, in 1964. The next 40 years gave birth to only five additional nuclear countries: India, Israel, South Africa, Pakistan, and North Korea. South Africa voluntarily disarmed in the 1990s, as did Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. After Israel developed a nuclear weapons capability in the late 1960s, no regional nuclear chain reaction followed, even though the country is surrounded by rivals. Nor was there even a two-country nuclear arms race in the region. Similarly, it has now been four years since North Korea became a nuclear weapons state, yet South Korea and Japan have not followed suit, despite the fact that they have a latent nuclear weapons capability -- access to the fissile material necessary for nuclear weapons. These countries' decisions to not go nuclear are largely thanks to extensive U.S. efforts to dissuade them. Both South Korea and Japan enjoy firm and long-standing security assurances from Washington, including protection under the U.S. strategic nuclear umbrella, obviating the need for their own deterrents. Following North Korea's 2006 nuclear test, U.S. President George W. Bush immediately assured South Korea and Japan that the United States was unequivocally committed to protecting them. The fruit of these efforts to prevent rapid and widespread nuclear proliferation, then, is the very reason a nuclear domino effect remains a myth. In the Middle East, there are no signs that the nuclear dominos will fall anytime soon. Although many governments believe that Iran could be one to three years away from developing a nuclear bomb, all other Middle Eastern countries (besides Israel) are at least 10 to 15 years away from reaching such a capability. This time frame gives Washington ample opportunity to establish or reaffirm security pacts with countries that might be tempted to develop their own nuclear weapons programs in reaction to a potential Iranian bomb. In fact, that work has already begun. In July 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke of the possibility of the United States extending a "defense umbrella" over the Gulf region and shoring up those countries' military capabilities if Iran goes nuclear. More generally, the United States is trying to reinforce a culture of nonproliferation in the Middle East. In late 2009, Washington concluded an agreement with the United Arab Emirates to forego the enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear fuel -- crucial steps in the development of nuclear weapons. (In return, the United Arab Emirates will receive help developing a civilian nuclear-energy program.) Similar overtures are being made to both Saudi Arabia and Jordan, states that are pursuing civilian nuclear-power programs to diversify their energy supplies. Another achievement came during the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, when the United States endorsed the convening of a regional meeting on establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East. The summit is due to be held in 2012 and, although Israel's nuclear weapons complicate matters, could serve as another step toward cementing a nonproliferation culture in the region. These are major accomplishments in preventing proliferation in the Middle East, and they contradict the worst-case scenarios about a nuclear Iran. Yet they have done little to reassure those who expect a chain reaction of proliferating states. Such mistaken beliefs are due in part to the West's poor understanding of Iran. After more than 30 years of severed diplomatic, cultural, and educational relations with the country, the West knows little about Iran's leadership, national aspirations, and culture. Because of this, policymakers have a difficult time thinking about the implications of a nuclear Iran and resort to simplistic grandstanding, reprising outdated political fears that lack historical nuance or modern perspective. The exaggerated fears have been useful, too: had the United States not presented Iran's nuclear aspirations in the darkest of lights, it may not have been able to gain support for four rounds of UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic in the last few years. Another reason for the persistence of worst-case thinking is that the domino analogy is often discussed interchangeably with bilateral arms races, such as those between the United States and the former Soviet Union, and between India and Pakistan. These are two distinct concepts, however. The Cold War and South