The End of NATO as We Know It?

By Henry Kissinger Los Angeles Times Syndicate Sunday, August 15, 1999; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-08/15/166l-081599-idx.html

Less than three months after NATO's triumph in Kosovo, a paradoxical but nagging question has become inescapable. Did Kosovo mark the end of NATO, at least as we have known it?

For America, the Atlantic Alliance -- our sole institutional link to Europe -- has epitomized the twin pillars of sound American policy: the buttressing of both security and democratic values. For our European allies, NATO has given Britain the framework for its "special relationship" with America; to Germany a safe haven from European suspicions and Eastern dangers; to France, a safety net against changes in the geopolitical balance it cannot handle by itself; and to Italy, an anchor for the emotional Atlantic commitments of its population.

Yet, unexpectedly, the first joint military operation of the Atlantic Alliance, carried out with extraordinary political cohesion and blessed both with apparent success and involving no allied casualties, has evoked calls for greater European independence, expressed with a vehemence and at a level never heard before. The ink on the agreement ending warfare in Kosovo had hardly dried when, in Cologne on June 15, the 15 leaders of the European Union affirmed the urgency of creating a separate military force capable of acting without the United States and without the approval of NATO: "The [European] Union must have the capacity for autonomous action backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them and a readiness to do so without prejudice to actions by NATO." Carried to its logical conclusion, this implies a revolution in the structure of the West: an all-European chain of command capable of bypassing NATO.

The timing of this sudden quest for autonomy is puzzling, even jarring. The European reaction would make sense if our European allies felt they had been dragged into what, in retrospect, they consider an aberration, or if the NATO allies were squabbling about the consequences.

Neither of these conditions applies. Far from feeling imposed upon, all allied leaders insist that henceforth the pattern of humanitarian intervention displayed in Kosovo is to be the rule, not the exception. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has proclaimed Kosovo a victory for the "progressive" approach to foreign policy, replacing outdated traditional concepts, adding: "This war . . . was fought for a fundamental principle necessary for humanity's progress: that every human being regardless of race, religion or birth has an inalienable right to live free from persecution."

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany said the same more operationally: "The Alliance had to demonstrate . . . that the weak have in NATO a strong friend and ally ready and willing to defend their human rights." President Clinton adopted the most sweeping formulation: ". . . If somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion, and it is within our power to stop it, we will stop it."

When all the allied leaders agree on the significance of their actions, the sole remaining European motive for developing a capacity to act autonomously is to escape American tutelage and increase European bargaining power. If these goals reflected a desire to make a greater contribution to joint action, or to give weight to occasional European warnings against American impetuosity, they would contribute to the effectiveness of the Alliance. To be meaningful, this would require a vast increase in military spending (some experts estimate as much as threefold), or at the very least a major effort of defense modernization and restructuring.

If, however, Europe fails to make a real defense effort, resentments against American dominance will only increase. And if the quest for independence is driven largely by anti-American motives, it will saddle the Alliance with all the compulsive competitiveness that nearly destroyed Europe before the Atlantic Alliance was founded in 1949.

The new European eagerness for autonomy is partly a function of the end of the Cold War and of America's emergence as the sole superpower. But it also reflects and compounds the key Alliance challenge: the growing confusion about what NATO is supposed to accomplish in the first place.

The various allied leaders are correct in treating Kosovo as a watershed. The Alliance abandoned its historical definition of itself as a strictly defensive coalition and insisted on the right to occupy a province of a state with which it was not at war. And it reinforced this unprecedented ultimatum by coupling it with a demand for the right of free movement of NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia.

This abrupt abandonment of the concept of national sovereignty coupled with a truculent diplomacy marked the advent of a new style of foreign policy driven by domestic politics and the invocation of universal moralistic slogans. But to implement such a policy on a permanent basis will not be nearly so simple as the self-congratulatory rhetoric implies. Those who sneer at history obviously do not recall that the legal doctrine of national sovereignty and the principle of noninterference -- enshrined, by the way, in the U.N. Charter -- emerged at the end of the devastating Thirty Years War, to inhibit a repetition of the depredations of the 17th century, during which perhaps 40 percent of the population of Central Europe perished in the name of competing versions of universal truth. Once the doctrine of universal intervention spreads and competing truths contest, we risk entering a world in which, in G. K. Chesterton's phrase, virtue runs amok.

In the Clinton/Blair version of allied policy, NATO must act because it is the only posse in town and because its motives are pure. This is not only incompatible with the notion of a defensive alliance but probably with the notion of alliance altogether. Traditionally, alliances have expressed the aggregate national interests of the member states. They define a special, not universal, obligation. The casus belli is generally the crossing of the national borders of the alliance, or those of a country considered vital to the alliance.

Once borders lose their sacrosanct quality, how is one to define the casus belli for the humanitarian wars of intervention of the new dispensation? Since they reflect a universal, not a special, obligation, they should -- logically -- be implemented by a global consensus. But if NATO is subordinated to the United Nations, its high aspirations will almost certainly be stymied by the Russian/Chinese veto. On the other hand, if NATO insists on defining a universal legitimacy on its own, it will face the opposition of most of the rest of the world.

In the end, the dirty little secret of the allied leaders may be that their sweeping assertions reflect no operating policy. Shaped by protest movements of the 1970s suspicious of alliances and assertions of the national interest, and by the experience of the 1990s, which witnessed the disappearance of the Soviet threat, they treat foreign policy as an aspect of domestic politics and ideological goals rather than as a pursuit of long-range strategic objectives. They undertook the Kosovo operation, at least in part, in reaction to public repugnance at television footage of refugees; but a similar fear of the pictures of allied casualties caused them to adopt a military strategy that, perversely, magnified the suffering of the populations on whose behalf the war was ostensibly being fought.

In the aftermath of the war, the Alliance has learned that even just wars cannot avoid ambiguity and can have political consequences. A war to vindicate the inadmissibility of ethnic cleansing has concluded with replacing one ethnic cleansing with another. It has also projected the Alliance into a political dilemma: whether to carry out the U.N. resolution, in effect making Kosovo a NATO protectorate, or allow it to become independent. The former course guarantees clashes with the local population on the model of Somalia; the latter course will produce a long-term Balkan crisis when the quest for a greater Albania threatens the stability of Macedonia and perhaps of other states.

No more important task confronts the Atlantic Alliance than to bring the rhetoric of its leaders in line with realistic choices. Various declarations and "spins" since Kosovo have stated, or implied, that humanitarian military intervention is not contemplated against major powers (China, Russia, India), against allies, against allies of major powers or countries far distant from Europe. Then what is left? It would be an odd revolution that proclaimed new universal maxims but could find no concrete application except against a single Balkan thug.

To be sure, concern for human rights has become a major component of the foreign policies of the democracies, and it is supported by powerful domestic constituencies. Undemocratic governments court trouble when they ignore this reality. But the leaders of the Alliance need to keep in mind that they have obligations not only to the emotions of the moment but to the judgments of the future.

Joseph Nye Jr., in a thoughtful article in Foreign Affairs, has put forward four principles for humanitarian intervention with which I generally agree: having a just cause in the eyes of others; proportionality of means to ends; high probability of success; and, wherever possible, reinforcement of the humanitarian cause by the existence of other strong national interests.

Thus more narrowly defined, the rhetorical distinction between humanitarian and national interests erodes. But the task of NATO's leaders is to be even more concrete and to supply answers to questions such as these: Where and for what humanitarian causes will NATO project its military power? What risks is it prepared to run? What price is it prepared to pay?

Even more important is to reverse the hollowing out of the traditional purposes of the Alliance. Some of this has occurred because, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War threats have largely disappeared. But allied leaders, systematically deprecating historical notions of national interest, bear a heavy responsibility as well.

No wonder that NATO headquarters is increasingly preoccupied with peripheral, essentially psychological, activities such as the Partnership for Peace program and a plethora of activities far removed from the basic NATO mission which water down the functions of the Alliance. Meetings of NATO heads of government are turning more and more into preludes to G-8 summits or to public spectacles of all the various associates, numbering some 50 nations.

If the Atlantic Alliance is to continue as more than a relic of a fading period, it must answer these questions: How do we define strategic threats to world order? What political changes will we resist for security reasons? Above all, and especially in light of the sweeping political goals recently enunciated, the political structure of NATO must be broadened and strengthened.

But this cannot happen unless there is a reaffirmation of the centrality of the Alliance, not for liturgical purposes at periodic formal meetings but as a living institution systematically adapting itself to new realities.

The writer, a former secretary of state, is president of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm that has clients with business interests in many countries abroad.

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Yugoslavia Faces Ecological Disaster, Group Warns

01:42 a.m. Aug 15, 1999 Eastern
http://www.dogpile.com - search newswires

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslavia faces ecological disaster from 11 weeks of NATO bombing unless urgent measures are taken in the worst affected areas, an international humanitarian group was quoted Saturday as saying.

The Beta news agency said a team of Russian, Austrian, Greek and Swiss experts from the Focus organization visited Yugoslavia last month and carried out chemical and radiological analysis in towns that had suffered most damage.

``The most dangerous ecological consequences arose from the bombing of the industrial complex in Pancevo, the oil refinery in Novi Sad, the fuel depots in Smederevo and Pristina and the transformer stations in Nis and Bor,'' the team said in its preliminary report.

``Based on the analysis results, the expert team concluded that the release of extremely toxic and carcinogenic substances poses an extreme ecological threat in the FRY (Yugoslavia),'' it said.

The report said that some eight tons of mercury had seeped out of a bomb-damaged electrolysis plant in Pancevo, near Belgrade, ``which poses a danger to human health and the environment in the central regions of the FRY and the Danube basin.''

``The release of petroleum, oil, diesel and artificial fertilizers into the soil and water reservoirs has resulted in the contamination of nearby facilities, towns, villages, water and mud in channels and rivers, including the Danube. This could result in changes in the ecological balance in the region and irreversible mutation in plants and animals,'' the report said.

The team called for international organizations to resume their activities in Yugoslavia as soon as possible in order to prevent ``a possible ecological collapse.''

They also recommended that urgent measures be taken to seal off the polluted areas and prevent the transfer of toxic substances to settlements and the flow of polluted sewage water into the Danube.

It was the second such international team to visit Yugoslavia since the end of the NATO air war. A United Nations team that arrived last month said there was no evidence the bombing had caused an ecological catastrophe but called for urgent action to deal with some of the damage.

The U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) said Thursday it was investigating possible damage to human health caused by NATO's use of shells tipped with depleted uranium during the Kosovo conflict.

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Japan, U.S. To Pay $36m. For Missile Research -Paper

Updated 5:10 AM ET August 15, 1999
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990815/05/international-japan-missile

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan and the United States are ready to pitch in $36 million each for joint research on a ballistic missile defense system, a Japanese daily reported Sunday.

The money would cover about two years' research but that could be extended to five years, the Asahi Shimbun reported citing Japanese government sources.

Last week, a Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman said the two countries were close to signing a pact after broad agreement on the joint defense system was reached last year following North Korea's test-launch of a long-range missile over Japanese airspace.

The move comes as concerns mount that Pyongyang, which said last August's launched was a satellite, is believed poised to test fire a new, longer-range rocket which is believed capable of reaching parts of the United States.

Japan has allocated $8.28 million (960 million yen) for its part of the joint research in the budget for the fiscal year to next March 31, and the Defense Agency has estimated that the research will cost around 20-30 billion yen over five to six years.

Meanwhile, Japanese Defense Minister Hosei Norota said he saw no indication a North Korean missile launch was imminent, the Mainichi Shimbun and other national dailies reported Sunday.

Norota told reporters in northern Japan it would take North Korea about two to three weeks to gather the personnel and materials needed for a test launch.

The Mainichi cited a report from Russia quoting an unidentified North Korean diplomat as saying Pyongyang had no plans to test-launch a ballistic missile.

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With Missile, North Korea Casts Fear Upon Japan

By By CALVIN SIMS, August 15, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/081599japan-nkorea.html

TOKYO -- With no apparent diplomatic solution in sight and no military ability to defend themselves, the Japanese are growing increasingly jittery over North Korea's threat to test-fire a long-range ballistic missile.

In recent opinion polls and interviews, many Japanese have expressed deep dismay over the planned missile launching, which could occur despite strong efforts by Japan, the United States and South Korea to dissuade Communist North Korea.

Many say they have felt particularly vulnerable since August 1998, when North Korea launched a medium-range version of the Taepodong missile that flew over the Japanese mainland and into the Pacific Ocean.

Intelligence officials from Western and Asian countries said their latest surveillance information showed that North Korea was continuing preparations to launch the second missile, a Taepodong-2, and that rocket fuel had been delivered to a launching pad in North Hamkyong Province.

Kanako Omotani, a 30-year-old office worker, who was passing through Tokyo's busy Shinbashi train station, said she was worried about the missile "because we don't know where it's going to drop," adding, "We are not sure whether they are aiming at us or not,."

Mrs. Omotani's husband, Tomoji, 41, agreed. "Even if they have a target," he said, "they will fail to hit it because their technology is very bad, and the missile could fall on us. I'm very afraid."

In a recent opinion survey by Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest daily newspaper, about 70 percent of 3,000 people questioned said they feared that war in the region could jeopardize their country's security. About 60 percent said they feared a direct attack on Japan.

Akio Watanabe, a military expert at Aoyama Gakuin University, says that perhaps more than any other country Japan feels susceptible to North Korea's missiles because it has no means to protect itself, and many Japanese have little faith that a system proposed by the United States as a defense against missiles will work.

"The main reason people are afraid is because the first Taepodong missile flew over our heads," Watanabe said. "Why didn't North Korea point it in some other direction? Apparently that was some message for us."

Indeed, despite Japan's history of pacifism since its devastating defeat in World War II, many Japanese now believe that their country should greatly expand its defenses against missile attacks and invasions.

Takeo Kawai, a 54-year-old executive, put it bluntly: "If we are attacked by them, then we should be prepared to counterattack. It would be better to have a dialogue, but that's impossible with North Korea."

Mie Sakamoto, 21, a college student, said, "We should develop our own military capacity, especially since the United States won't do it for us. Japan is America's dog. We do anything they tell us, but in the end, they won't take care of us."

On Friday, the Japanese Cabinet approved an agreement to conduct research with the United States to develop a system to detect incoming ballistic missiles and destroy them with intercepting missiles or by other measures.

Sadaaki Numata, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, acknowledged that there was "a high degree of concern on the part of the Japanese people," but he said the government was continuing its diplomatic efforts with the United States and South Korea and remained hopeful that a resolution could be reached.

Some American and Japanese officials say a launching does not appear imminent because it will take days if not weeks for North Korea to outfit the missile for firing. But Japan's Defense Agency is taking no chances of being caught off guard, as it was last year when the first Taepodong was launched.

The agency has stepped up its reconnaissance by deploying ships and aircraft in the Sea of Japan, and it has promised to inform the public immediately in the event of a launching.

On Monday, two U.S. Navy ships equipped with missile-tracking radar systems left a naval base in southern Japan, causing speculation that they were on their way to monitor a possible launching.

Not all Japanese were worried. Sou Uchida, 38, an office worker, said, "The fact that Japan considers this North Korean missile so scary is very troubling because there are so many other important things to be concerned about. Japanese people are overreacting. Instead of worrying, we should help North Korea and make them rich and happy."

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Yeltsin Sees No Opposition to Putin

By Sergei Shargorodsky Associated Press Writer Friday, August 13, 1999; 3:19 p.m. EDT
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990813/V000226-081399-idx.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- President Boris Yeltsin said Friday he expected no real opposition from the Communist-dominated lower house of parliament when it meets to approve his newest candidate for prime minister.

In a Kremlin meeting, Yeltsin formally instructed Alexander Kotenkov, his envoy to the State Duma, to submit Vladimir Putin's bid for the post at Monday's Duma session.

Yeltsin abruptly sacked former Premier Sergei Stepashin on Monday, and named Putin, a former KGB spy, as his successor -- the fourth Cabinet reshuffle in 17 months.

If the Duma rejects Yeltsin's candidate three times, Russian law dictates that it be disbanded. Kotenkov, however, told reporters that Yeltsin would ``never'' disolve the Duma.

Speaking in a hoarse voice, Yeltsin said that if Putin is not approved in Monday's vote, there would be no tragedy. ``He will pass on the second try,'' he said confidently.

Communists and other hard-liners recently have seemed reluctant to defy Yeltsin, presumably because they need their offices and other privileges during their campaigns for December's parliamentary elections.

Communist leader Gennady Zuyganov seemed conciliatory, saying he saw no ``crucial differences'' between Putin and Stepashin, who as a candidate also won overwhelming Duma approval.

The Communists on Monday plan to demand that Putin guarantee fair parliamentary elections and an increase in the nation's living standards, Zyuganov said.

At their Kremlin meeting, broadcast on television, Yeltsin and Kotenkov also discussed ways to speed up Duma approval of 64 presidential bills, 28 of which are high priority.

Among these is the START II nuclear arms reduction treaty, ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1996. Hard-liners have repeatedly rejected the treaty, saying its ratification would hurt Russia's security.

The Duma's Communist speaker, Gennady Seleznyov, said this week that ratification was unlikely, as lawmakers did not trust the United States.

Another issue for Yeltsin was the 2000 annual budget, to be submitted to the Duma on Aug. 25.

``The Duma should pass the budget before its powers expire,'' Kotenkov said.

Kotenkov also said the government needed a bill on states of emergency to more effectively confront crises, such as the Islamic uprising in Dagestan, a southern region bordering breakaway Chechnya. The government is now trying to uproot the rebellion.

Russian media and politicians have expressed concern that Yeltsin may use a state of emergency to put off parliamentary and presidential elections, but the Kremlin has assured that elections will be held on schedule.

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Pakistan's Limits Leaders Will Engage India in Kashmir But Avoid Larger War, Experts Say

By Pamela Constable and Kamran Khan Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, August 15, 1999; Page A19
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-08/15/202l-081599-idx.html

NEW DELHI, Aug. 14Pakistan is likely to foment more guerrilla attacks or provoke India in other ways in coming weeks and months, but it does not desire a broader conventional conflict or nuclear war with its larger, stronger rival, according to military officials and experts in both countries.

Pakistan's military is determined to keep pressure on India over the disputed Kashmir region, where the countries recently fought a small, two-month border conflict in the Kargil region. Pakistani military officers say openly they will seek new "Kargil-like" situations to exploit, as well as other ways to punish India.

But Pakistani and Indian officers agree that Pakistan has no desire to provoke a regional conflagration and little strategic interest in doing so. Militarily, Indian officials and experts say that while Pakistan may well be able to incite guerrilla violence indefinitely and cause trouble along the border, it is no match for India's armed forces and thus would be highly unlikely to risk starting a wider war it would inevitably lose.

Pakistan aims to "confine things to a proxy war on the ground, but it wants to keep the pot boiling in Kashmir for all time," India's director of military intelligence, Lt. Gen. R. K. Sawhney, said. He added that because of the growing influence of radical Islam on Pakistani security forces, "they have a dangerous sense of mission. They are erratic and prone to rash acts, but I don't think they'd go to the extent of using nukes."

Pakistan is predominantly Muslim while India is mostly Hindu. As the two countries celebrate the anniversaries of their independence from Britain this weekend, tensions are high following 10 weeks of fighting that began in May with the Kargil war and included a series of Islamic guerrilla attacks in Kashmir and northeast India. This week, India and Pakistan fired missiles at each other's military aircraft; in one of the incidents, India downed a Pakistani surveillance plane near the border, killing 16.

Indian authorities have stepped up military alerts and taken extra security precautions for Sunday's annual Independence Day rally, which will feature a traditional outdoor speech by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. They said they will use bomb-sniffing dogs and patrol helicopters to prevent possible attacks by Islamic militants or Pakistani agents.

"We are taking precautions. There are tensions . . . there may be some retaliation. But escalation? No. There is no risk that this will go any further," said Indian air force Vice Marshal S. K. Malik.

In Islamabad, meanwhile, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today praised the Pakistani troops and "freedom fighters" who battled Indian forces in the Kargil sector between May and July. He added that after India's downing of the Pakistani surveillance plane, "the world should realize who aspires for peace and who wants to destroy peace."

As Pakistan celebrated the independence it won from Britain in 1947, military officials bestowed honors on more than 100 soldiers and officers who fought in Kargil. Until now, Pakistan has not acknowledged its troops occupied the remote mountainous zone, insisting they were Kashmiri rebels.

Today's military ceremony in Islamabad appeared to be aimed at appeasing the armed forces, who are reportedly upset that civilian leaders, under U.S. pressure, called off the Kargil operation. Officials said this frustration did not stem from the armed forces' desire to pursue a full-fledged war with India, but from their belief that if they kept fighting, India eventually would have agreed to negotiate on Kashmir rather than risk a nuclear confrontation.

"Backtracking from an advantageous position against the Indian army was a big psychological blow to the troops," said one senior Pakistani officer. He asserted that by fall, had Pakistan's fighters remained entrenched and Indian casualties risen, India would have been "forced to discuss a viable resolution of the Kashmir crisis."

American and United Nations officials have expressed concern that the recent military flare-ups could escalate into a conventional or even nuclear war. India and Pakistan each successfully tested nuclear weapons last year. Washington has called for restraint and a prompt return to negotiations on Kashmir.

But Pakistani military officials insist they want to avoid a larger war and seek only to promote their strategic claim to Kashmir. The scenic, largely Muslim region was divided into Indian and Pakistani sectors in 1948, and both countries have claimed rights to the entire area ever since.

In the past two weeks, there has been a sharp resurgence of guerrilla rocket and bomb attacks against military targets in Kashmir, which India says are orchestrated by Pakistan. Before dawn today, suspected militants attacked an Indian army camp there, killing at least five soldiers and injuring 14 others. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

"There is absolutely no other solution to Kashmir than a military solution," said Maj. Gen. Ahmed Rafiuddin, a former director of Pakistani intelligence. It is "not an emotional issue for Pakistan," but a strategic one, he said. If the world remains unwilling to step in and mediate the conflict, he suggested, only continued violence will call attention to it.

Whatever Pakistan's ambitions, Indian officials and experts say its government is not in a military, diplomatic or economic position to take on India's far larger military forces. It is deeply in debt, and the International Monetary Fund has just delayed releasing its latest loan payment because of the recent aggression. Diplomatically, Pakistan is under heavy foreign pressure to lower tensions with India.

"There is no way there can be a war. Pakistan is smarting under its defeat in Kargil, and it could react in frustration, but if they do anything irrational, they won't get far," said Jasjit Singh, director of the Institute for Strategic and Defense Studies and a retired air force officer. "Pakistan would gain nothing from a full-fledged war, and we have no reason to start one."

Still, after three months of military tensions that have already led to hundreds of deaths, Indian military planners say they are eyeing Pakistan ever more warily and are taking greater precautions against attacks of all kinds.

Constable reported from New Delhi, Khan from Islamabad.

REGIONAL RIVALS:

PAKISTAN

Area: 307,400 square miles
Population: 147 million
GDP, 1997: $65 billion
Economic growth rate, 1998: 5.3%

MILITARY STRENGTH

Total armed forces: 587,000
Defense budget, 1998: $3.2 billion
Air forces: 410 combat aircraft including Mirage-15 IIIEP, Mirage-5, F-16B
Nuclear capability: Tested nuclear device last year and is believed capable of making nuclear warheads

Missiles:

* M-11: Surface-to-surface, range 170 to 190 miles. Pakistan reportedly has 30 of these missiles, supplied by China.
* Haft-3: May be under production; range 370 to 500 miles. Tested in July 1998. Could reach New Delhi.
* Ghauri: Reportedly under development; range 930 miles. One was tested in April 1998.

INDIA

Area: 1.2 million square miles
Population: 987 million
GDP, 1997: $385 billion
Economic growth rate, 1998: 5.2%

MILITARY STRENGTH

Total armed forces: 1.2 million
Defense budget, 1998: $9.9 billion
Air forces: 772 combat aircraft, including MiG-21, MiG-29, 32 armed helicopters, 5 air command aircraft
Nuclear capability: Tested nuclear device last year and is believed capable of making nuclear warheads

Missiles:

* Prithvi: Surface-to-surface, range 93 miles. The missile, based on the Russian Scud, is under domestic production and could reach Lahore.
* Agni: Surface-to-surface, range 1,250 miles. Latest version, the Agni-II tested in April, has a range of 1,500 miles and could reach Beijing and Shanghai.

SOURCES: Military Balance, World Bank

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Nuclear Plant Grounds Proposed as Park Site
Utility Calls Decommissioned Facility 'Unthreatening,' but Skepticism Remains

By Amalie Young Associated Press Sunday, August 15, 1999; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-08/15/207l-081599-idx.html

RAINIER, Ore., Aug. 14--The ill-fated nuclear reactor that many locals believe inspired the oozing, green-glowing plant on "The Simpsons" is now the inspiration for an offbeat plan: turning the reactor grounds into Oregon's newest state park.

Six years after closing the Trojan nuclear plant, its owners want families to roll their RVs onto the property and camp out in the shadows of a 500-foot cooling tower and a fortified tank of spent radioactive fuel.

Some state officials reacted with Homer Simpson-like laughter.

"We'd never need electricity at night," joked state parks department spokesman Jim Lockwood, "because the place glows."

But Portland General Electric, which is offering the land for free, sees the proposal as a way to emphasize "responsible environmental stewardship" and show that a decommissioned nuclear plant can be safe. Utility executive Fred Miller called the site "unthreatening."

As far as parks go, it would indeed have a little bit of everything: nearly 500 acres of woods and wetlands, creeks and lakes, access to the Columbia River and 200 species of wildlife.

Still, skeptics wonder how eager campers would be to visit.

"I don't think I'd want to be camping in the park," said longtime reactor opponent Lloyd Marbet of the group Don't Waste Oregon. "I wonder how many people would like to camp next to a repository for spent fuel with no place to go."

In defense of its safety claims, the utility has taken steps to protect the proposed park area from the vestiges of the largest commercial reactor ever taken off line in United States. Earlier this month, tugboats hauled the 1,000-ton nuclear reactor up the Columbia River to a burial site in the eastern Washington desert.

The 800 spent uranium fuel rod assemblies that have been removed from the reactor over the years are kept on a 134-acre site that PGE would retain. They are submerged in 40-foot deep, concrete-and-steel pools until they can be prepared for transport to a yet-to-be-built federal dump site.

Visitors to the area acknowledge feeling a bit leery about coming so close to a nuclear facility, closed or not.

"It's kind of an eerie feeling here," Julie Etringer said, glancing up at the tower as she watched her husband and two children fish at a lake on the Trojan grounds already accessible to the public for day use.

David Vosper, a 9-year-old who often fishes for rainbow trout in Trojan's lake, said he's heard whispers about eight-legged frogs and three-armed turtles in the marshland.

Those are the kind of images fostered on the animated series "The Simpsons," which depicts the nuclear plant where Homer works as an accident-prone place of leaking toxins, glowing goo and green steam.

Although "Simpsons" makers deny any connection to Trojan, people here have long believed that the plant was the inspiration for the show because its creator, Matt Groening, grew up 40 miles to the south in Portland and has peppered his scripts with other local references.

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Iowa, Nebraska and N. Dakota Are First Y2K-Ready States

Associated Press Sunday, August 15, 1999; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-08/15/208l-081599-idx.html

SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 14Only Iowa, Nebraska and North Dakota have completely tested their computer systems and are ready to face the new year without fear of potentially dangerous Year 2000 glitches, according to a federal report released today.

The rest of the states have only 139 days to guarantee reliability of their systems that run everything from law enforcement agencies to utilities.

"No one can predict what might, or might not, happen once the clock ticks past midnight this New Year's Eve," said Rep. Stephen Horn (R-Calif.). "The only certainty is that this Jan. 1 deadline cannot be extended."

The report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, was released at a congressional subcommittee hearing held in Silicon Valley.

While all 50 states have some type of plan in place, most said they will not be fully ready until next month, and 14 states said their deadline to have all systems tested is not until October or later.

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22 NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS WILL PUSH Y2K READINESS ENVELOPE

FULL TESTIMONY AVAILABLE AT WWW.SENATE.GOV/~Y2K/hearings/990804

August 4, 1999, U.S. Senate - Y2K News
http://y2k.senate.gov/news/pr990804.htm
Index of articles since April 1998: http://y2k.senate.gov/news/

WASHINGTON, DC -- The chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said today that six nuclear power plants in the United States will remain unprepared for possible Year 2000 computer problems after November 1, and according to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), at least three of those plants have Y2K readiness deadlines in mid-December. Also identified by NEI were 16 additional plants with deadlines in late October.

"Setting a late deadline for Y2K readiness in a nuclear power plant may not allow enough time to address unforseen problems in such an immensely complex and potentially dangerous facility," said U.S. Senator Robert F. Bennett, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on the Y2K Technology Problem. "Total Y2K readiness of the nation's nuclear power plants is vital to keeping the lights on in certain areas, and is absolutely necessary to guarantee public safety during the millennium date change."

"Nuclear power plants shouldn't play Russian roulette when it comes to Y2K - where they wait until the last minute and then hope for the best," said U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Vice-Chairman of the Senate Y2K Committee. "It is essential that there be adequate time left so systems can be tested in order to assure a safe and continuous power supply."

In testimony posted on the web site of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, NRC chair Greta Joy Dicus said that the two D.C. Cook plants in Berrien County, Michigan would not be Y2K ready until after November 1, and would remain shut down during the Y2K transition. The plants are currently in the midst of an extended shutdown, and have Y2K readiness deadlines of December 15.

Dicus also said that four other plants with November-or-later deadlines would require outages to complete Y2K activities. Those plants are the Brunswick Unit 1 near Wilmington, N.C.; Comanche Peak Unit 1 in Sommervell County, Texas; Salem Unit 1 in Salem County, N.J.; and Farley Unit 2 near Dothan, Alabama, which has a December 16 deadline.

"These outages have been scheduled, and each of the licensees have experience on sister units in completing the most significant Y2K remediation activities," she said.

Additionally, 15 plants have late October deadlines: Browns Ferry Units 1 and 2 near Decatur, Alabama; Comanche Peak Unit 2 in Sommervell County, Texas; Diablo Canyon Units 1 and 2 near San Luis Obispo, California; Hope Creek in Salem County, New Jersey; North Anna Unit 2 in Louisa County, Virginia; Peach Bottom Unit 3 in York County, Penn.; Salem Unit 2 in Salem County, N.J.; Sequoyah Units 1 and 2 near Chattanooga, Tenn.; South Texas Project Units 1 and 2 near Matagorda, Texas; Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Penn.; Vermont Yankee in Vernon, Vermont; and Watts Bar in Rhea County, Tennessee.

Currently 30 of 103 U.S. nuclear power plants remain unprepared for Y2K. The NRC expects most to be Y2K ready by September 30, when it will make a determination whether certain facilities will remain operational.

Dicus said, however, that she believes all plants Awill be able to operate...safely during the transition from 1999 to 2000, and we do not anticipate the need for the NRC to direct any plant-specific action.@

Today=s hearing also addressed the Y2K preparedness of gas utilities, upon which 60 million homes and businesses rely for heat. Statements by the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America and American Gas Association indicate that natural gas industries plan to be Y2K ready by September 30, but did not offer specifics on current levels of Y2K preparedness. Bennett and Dodd said they would be asking for additional information regarding current readiness and industry progress toward the September deadline.

"I am pleased that the natural gas industry has set a goal of 100 percent compliance this fall," said Bennett. "But more specifics are necessary in order for Congress and the American public to be assured that this goal can be met."

"The natural gas industry's testimony today shows a good faith effort is being made to become Y2K compliant," Dodd said. "I look forward to receiving more detailed information so we can be sure the public won't be left out in the cold."

The Y2K technology problem, also called the Y2K or Millennium bug, prevents computers from reading the year 2000 correctly and can potentially cause wide ranging system failures.

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Dogfight Over a Must-Win Contract

By LESLIE WAYNE, August 15, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/fighter-planes-build.html

PALMDALE, Calif. -- Here in the Mojave Desert, in huge hangers guarded by armed sentries and high fences, the government and its two biggest defense contractors are engaged in a high-stakes, high-risk experiment aimed at building a fighter aircraft that will dominate the skies and protect the nation's security for decades to come.

The project is still in its early stages, with the competing airplanes given the code names X-32 and X-35 and workers admonished not to utter a word.

But at the end of what the Pentagon promises will be a "winner-take-all" contest, either the Boeing Corp. or the Lockheed Martin Corp. will land what should be the biggest military contract ever. For both companies, this is a must-win competition: The winner will collect nearly a third of a trillion dollars -- and the loser could be out of the military aircraft business altogether.

For now, the companies' competing teams of engineers, test pilots, computer experts and factory workers are at work here, where the scrub soil gives way to an outpost of chain motels and fast-food restaurants, preparing for a flyoff early next year.

After that, and another year of testing and analysis, the Pentagon will make its pick. The winner will build a Joint Strike Fighter in three versions: one able to fly off carriers for the Navy, another to land on ground for the Air Force and a third that can hover into hot spots for the Marines. Nearly 5,000 of these planes are expected to be made, to replace nearly all the fighter planes flying today.

"This plane is the future," said Richard Aboulafia, director of aviation for the Teal Group, a Fairfax, Va. consulting firm. "It will be the fighter plane for all the services. It will be the fighter plane for all the world."

More than an airplane, the Joint Strike Fighter is an unprecedented test of cutting-edge technology, of how the Pentagon does business, of how wars will be fought. And it has profound implications for both the domestic military-industrial base and the nation's security well into the 21st century.

Faced with an increasingly skeptical Congress -- just last month, the House voted to delete funding for the Air Force's new F-22 fighter from next year's defense spending bill -- and a history of eye-popping cost overruns, the Pentagon decided it needed a fresh approach to procurement. And it is starting with the largest contract it has.

The order is a tall one: Design a single-engine, single pilot fighter that can be used by all three services and sold to overseas allies. It must fly faster than the speed of sound, be invisible to enemy radar -- and be produced for the bargain-basement price, by fighter aircraft standards, of around $30 million an airplane.

In building this plane, the Pentagon for the first time is making cost as important as performance. Boeing and Lockheed are being told not to build the best plane they can, but the best the government can afford -- both in terms of its initial price tag and in maintenance costs over time.

Rather than being the Cadillac of the air, the Joint Strike Fighter is designed more as a Chevrolet -- but with a Saturn-style attention to innovation and cost control.

"This program is about building an affordable fighter plane," said Gen. Michael A. Hough, the Pentagon's director of the Joint Strike Fighter program. "It's the real deal. The country is going broke trying to pay for the latest airplane. We want to build it like your car -- just put gas in it and go."

The program is an attempt to break one of Augustine's Laws, a not entirely satirical calculation developed by Norman R. Augustine, the former Lockheed chief executive, that says the price of military aircraft is growing so fast that by the year 2054, the nation will be able to afford only one airplane.

The Joint Strike Fighter will replace a generation of planes, some of which are 30 years old: Lockheed's workhorse F-16 and Northrop-Grumman's A-10 attack planes for the Air Force; the Marines' Harrier short take-off and vertical landing planes, built by Boeing and British Aerospace; and the Navy's carrier-based F-14 from Northrop and F/A-18 from Boeing.

It is designed to work in tandem with the F-22, a far more expensive ($80 million) and sophisticated two-engine plane designed to eliminate enemy aircraft in initial air-to-air combat. The Joint Strike Fighter is designed to follow as part of a "hunter-killer" team, dropping bombs once the F-22 clears the skies.

"We needed to replace older and outmoded aircraft for all three services, and we could not afford to develop three different planes," said Darleen Druyun, the Air Force's top acquisition executive. "So it made sense to make a family of vehicles -- three planes with the same motor, the same avionics and 60 to 80 percent common parts, but with variations for all three services."

The comparison with earlier aircraft development programs is stark.

"In the past, I threw the requirements over the fence and a plane came back, and we didn't think about costs," said George K. Muellner, a retired Air Force general who once headed several acquisition programs, including the Joint Strike Fighter program, and is now a Boeing employee.

Still, for all the Pentagon's sentiments, questions remain.

-- Can a plane that is three variations on a theme -- 80 percent the same for all, and otherwise modified to meet each service's special needs -- actually work? Or will it be a compromise that satisfies no one -- like the F-111, a Vietnam-era plane for all three services that was both costly and wildly unpopular.

-- Will the Pentagon really stick to it's "winner-take-all" strategy, an approach that some analysts say would most likely leave the Defense Department with only one tactical aircraft supplier? Or will the military -- or Congress -- feel that the work must be split to keep two military aircraft makers in business, even if this increases program costs and reduces efficiency gains?

Everyone involved is mindful of the fate of the McDonnell Douglas Corp., which was cut from the Joint Strike Fighter program and, as a result, forced to merge with Boeing in 1997 -- in spite of rosy statements at the time from Harry Stonecipher, then McDonnell's chief executive and now Boeing's president, that "this does not mean we are out of the military aircraft business."

-- Can the Pentagon really shed its old, expensive ways? It says it wants an aircraft designed and produced using the best commercial practices to simplify the plane and lower costs over its operating life. But will the military begin to tinker and increase the price tag?

For instance, if the F-22 program is canceled or drastically reduced from the 339 planes now on order, would the Joint Strike Fighter's capabilities be upgraded in ways that could make it more expensive? Just this month, Michael Ryan, the Air Force chief of staff, warned that cancelling the F-22 could lead to a costly redesign of the Joint Strike Fighter.

-- Are Boeing and Lockheed up to the task? Boeing has already been forced to drastically redesign its plane to provide better control on carrier landings, trading a swept-wing design for a more conventional one. Lockheed, meanwhile, has had few design changes, but has faced cost overruns in the $100 million range and been forced to scramble its plans for next year's demonstration tests to stay within budget.

-- Will the plane sell? Plans call for the Air Force to buy 1,783 planes, the Marines 609 and the Navy 408, along with 150 for Britain's Royal Navy, which has invested $200 million in the program.

The Pentagon estimates that other countries will buy an additional 2,000 planes. But European countries might decide instead to support European offerings -- the French Rafale, the Swedish Gripen or the British Eurofighter -- even with their higher price tags and lower performance capabilities.

And Congress, in another round of budget-cutting, could cut back on Joint Strike Fighter purchases, raising the price for each plane.

"In theory, the Joint Strike Fighter is a good idea," said Eugene Carroll, a retired two-star admiral, who is deputy director of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington nonprofit organization that has been critical of military spending. "So far, it's retained an air of common sense that we are looking for in an era when we are not facing a high-tech major power."

But Carroll sounded a note of caution: "If we can build this meat-and-potatoes airplane, let's press on. But let's not do the same thing to it that we've done in the past and get the requirements jazzed up so much its goals can't be met."

In a setting that seems lifted from the "X-Files," the two companies are building competing "concept demonstration models" to show the government early next year. Spy planes and space shuttles are designed in utmost secrecy here, but it's hard to hide the Joint Strike Fighter program.

On the highway coming into town from Los Angeles, there's a huge billboard of a fighter zooming over the motto: "Boeing, the Best. JSF." Leaving town, you come upon Lockheed's billboard -- its fighter with the single word "Imminent."

Inside two huge hangers -- one at Lockheed's Skunk Works, the other at Boeing's Phantom Works -- each company is making a pair of airplanes, one of which will be reconfigured during the Pentagon's flyoff to demonstrate the requirements for different services.

Right now, they are only carcasses of titanium and composite, electronics and wires. But by year-end, they will become airplanes -- at a cost of about $500 million for each pair. The government's total tab for the development process is about $2.2 billion, including $832 million to Pratt & Whitney for the engines for all the planes.

The real question here is just how serious the Pentagon is about "winner-take-all." Can the Pentagon come to the desert, hand one company a golden prize and leave the other empty-handed?

The Pentagon says yes. "I've been ordered to pick a winner," said Hough. "I don't know how you can have two winners."

Officially, both companies take the Pentagon at its word, though observers argue that the nation cannot afford to be reduced to a single supplier of tactical military aircraft. Or, they say, political pressures will be such that both companies will get some business. That, though, could sharply escalate the costs of the aircraft.

"If you split it down the middle, you lose economies of scale," said Loren Thompson, a military industry analyst at the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va., research group. "But if you get a tactical aircraft monopoly, the presumption is you would get less innovation, higher prices and lower performance."

Yet the Air Force's Ms. Druyun says a winner can be picked without harming the nation. "We're always concerned about the industrial base," she said. "But when I look out and see what will be there in 2010 and 2015, it is still apparent that there will be a viable industrial base in the fighter aircraft business."

Lawrence Korb, a military analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations, said the project was so large that no matter which company won, the other would get plenty of subcontracting work. "It's not a winner-take-all, but a winner-will-do-better program," said Korb.

There is, however, a critical difference between being a prime contractor and being a subcontractor. The prime has control over the project. It gets the most money. And, since it is where all the engineering, design, computer and high-end action is, it is where all the creative and talented people want to work.

"The guy who gets the money is the guy who makes the decisions," said Harry Blot, Lockheed's deputy program manager for the fighter. "If you lose, you may make as many parts as you want, but you won't have the design authority. It's interesting work that keeps engineering teams together."

Meullner of Boeing, the former Air Force acquisitions head, questioned whether the government "has the guts" to pick just one producer.

"I'm hoping it will be winner-take-all," he said. "Our defense budget cannot sustain two production lines."

So far, Wall Street has not focused on the contest. The final payoff is at least a decade away -- an eternity for Wall Street. And the market's conventional wisdom is the program will be split: Lockheed will build the Air Force version and Boeing the Navy and Marine planes.

"There is no clear indication as to which way the program is going," said Paul Nisbet, an analyst with JSA Research in Newport, R.I. "So there's nothing of this program reflected in either company's stock."

For the military, the focus is much clearer. Driving the program is the Marine Corps, which wants its own new plane not dependent on Navy carriers for takeoffs and landings. The Navy, happy with the F-18, and the Air Force, going all out for the F-22, were more reluctant converts. The key in getting them on board, according to Muellner, was to minimize "scar penalty" -- the price that one service pays for the requirements of another.

So, with careful planning, the Air Force and Navy got what they wanted -- a stealthier plane with more range than existing fighters. And in Congress, where both the Air Force and the Navy have taken their share of hits of late, the leathernecks command great respect.

"The Marines have impressive powers of outlasting their doubters in getting the things they want," said Wolfgang Demisch, a managing director at Wasserstein Perella and Co. "And they really want this plane."

---

Lockheed's Ticket to the Future

By LESLIE WAYNE, August 15, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/fighter-planes-lockheed.html

FORT WORTH, Texas -- The nation's biggest military contractor, Lockheed Martin, has a long history of making fighters, but lately the company has been hammered on a number of fronts.

Its bread-and-butter product, the F-16, is coming to the end of its production cycle, with around 4,000 planes already made. The future of the F-22, on which Lockheed is the prime contractor, is uncertain.

The company has suffered production delays on its C-130J military cargo plane and has experienced costly launch failures in its military missile program.

So the view from Fort Worth, where Lockheed's version of the Joint Strike Fighter is being designed and where the F-16 is made in a mile-long plant that could, someday, turn out the new plane, is that this program is the ticket to the 21st century.

"We are the fighter house of America," said James A. Blackwell, president of Lockheed's aeronautics sector. "The Joint Strike Fighter is the future of this house. Our corporation has made it the top business priority, bar none. There's no one that doesn't work on JSF daily."

Harry Blot, Lockheed's deputy program manager for Joint Strike Fighter, added: "This is the main design effort for the next century in tactical aircraft. Unless you are designing this, there are not many other things out there to design. We need to be prime on this program."

With that level of urgency, Lockheed is spending $719 million in government funds to develop a relatively traditional-looking plane that resembles a scaled-down F-22. Its major innovation is in the Marine version, where the vertical lift-off system allows for a heavier plane with a smaller engine.

Visiting Lockheed's Fort Worth facility is like coming to a military installation. Officers from around the world fill the lobby -- South Africa's defense minister, a delegation from Britain and one from the United Arab Emirates were all there on a single day. Tall, slim men in test pilots' jump suits wander the hallways.

The company says this activity sets it apart from Boeing -- a sign of its longstanding ties to foreign military buyers and its history as more of a military than a commercial airplane maker.

Long dogged by cost overruns on its military projects, Lockheed is engaged in a large-scale re-engineering effort on the factory floor where F-16s are churned out.

Japanese-style production techniques have helped cut the manufacturing cost of each F-16 to around $25 million, a 40 percent reduction in the last decade, even with lower production runs, according to a recent congressional report. Blue-collar workers with Texas twangs now sprinkle their language with terms like kaizan, meaning continuous improvement, and talk about Japanese-style meetings in the workplace.

Despite this new corporate attention to costs, Lockheed still managed to roll up $100 million in overruns on the Joint Strike Fighter program -- some because of accounting problems, some due to production issues. By altering its plans for how it will use its two concept planes to demonstrate the three versions of the fighter in next year's flyoff, the company is back within budget.

With such a strong emphasis on costs in the program, Lockheed knows it cannot win on the plane's performance alone. Just off the factory floor, the company is building a display for workers about the benefits of "lean manufacturing." The final panel? A mock front page of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram with the headline, "Lockheed Wins the J.S.F. Contract."

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Boeing Banks on Low Costs

By LESLIE WAYNE, August 15, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/fighter-planes-boeing.html

SEATTLE, Wash. -- The world's largest commercial airplane maker, Boeing, sees its civilian experience as its ace in the hole in the Joint Strike Fighter competition. It figures it's in a better position than Lockheed to bring a commercially oriented mentality to a program that is heavily cost-driven.

Winning the competition "will allow us to do what we do best for the next 30 to 40 years for the benefit of the free world," said Frank Statkus, Boeing's manager for the program. "We do not anticipate losing the JSF."

Like Lockheed, Boeing has taken its knocks recently. The company was battered by its decision to overproduce commercial jets at bargain basement prices to gain global market share. The strategy boomeranged into billion-dollar losses, even as its rival, Europe's Airbus Industrie, ate into Boeing's sales.

Still, executives at Boeing, which has received $662 million from the Pentagon for its version of the fighter, say they know how to build affordable aircraft that can be maintained at low cost. Already, they say, Boeing can ship parts to any airline anywhere in the world within two hours to cut costly down time, and they have begun a similar program for the C-17 military cargo plane.

They say, too, that the company is well schooled in building a single plane in different flavors for different customers on a single production line. For example, the commercial 777 is available in three versions with many common parts.

"The emphasis this time is not on higher, faster, bigger or better, but on affordability," said David Brower, who is in charge of cost control on the fighter project.

Boeing's campus-like setting here certainly is more civilian than military in its feel, with the aura of a quiet engineering think tank. The uniform is khakis and polo shirts with Boeing logos -- and lots of plastic tags around workers' necks.

The company contends that it is building affordability into its design; for instance, executives say, Boeing's lift system for the Marine version of the fighter is safer, simpler and lower in cost than the Lockheed version.

They dismiss criticism that overall design changes have been so dramatic that the demonstrator plane to be flown next year will look little like Boeing's final proposal. Changing from a bat wing to a conventional tail has saved weight, added flexibility and made the plane easier to land on carrier decks.

"This isn't a design change," said John L. Priday, manager of Boeing's Phantom Works in Palmdale, Calif. "It's a maturation of the design process."

Still, Boeing begs to disagree with anyone who thinks the company has shortchanged design in its jet.

"It's a cool plane," said Brower, a former military pilot. "Pilots want a robust plane to engage and kill a target without putting themselves in harm's way. And if they do get in harm's way, they want to be able to defend themselves. I look at it, and I wish I were an aviator again."

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A Case against Virtual Nuclear Testing

by Christopher E. Paine, September 1999 Scientific American (pp. 74-79)
The following all-too-brief and watered-down summary of excellent article can be found at http://www.sciam.com/1999/0999issue/0999quicksummary.html :

The Department of Energy's stockpile stewardship program aims to keep the U.S. nuclear arsenal secure while replacing actual underground weapons tests with supercomputer simulations. Yet the technical goals of the program might unwittingly contribute to a new arms race.