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From: edhall@randvax.UUCP (Ed Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: poll  (nuclear disarmament verifiability)
Message-ID: <2331@randvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Mar-85 11:50:55 EST
Article-I.D.: randvax.2331
Posted: Fri Mar  1 11:50:55 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Mar-85 05:32:03 EST
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Organization: Rand Corp., Santa Monica
Lines: 40

Cruise missiles and various other things make complete verification
of all nuclear weapons impossible.

One approach I've seen proposed is a restriction on weapons-grade
materials (plutonium, U-235, tritium).  It still takes a lot of heavy
(and messy) industry to produce these things, making verification
simpler.  There are (at least) three problems with this approach,
although they don't completely invalidate it. (It was proposed, by the
way, in a Scientific American article a couple of years ago, and by some
of the more thoughtful freeze groups):

(1) Power-plant fuel processing can look an awful lot like weapons
    material processing--and in the case of breeder reactors, they can
    be one and the same.  The fuel cycle for nuclear power plants would
    have to be restricted, and breeders eliminated.

(2) Existing stockpiles can still be used, and old weapons can be
    reprocessed into new ones.  However, an upper bound is placed on
    things.

(3) No bounds are placed on delivery systems.  This goes along with
    (2)--there would be nothing to prevent the USSR from using their
    existing weapons and materials from their ICBM's and putting them on
    cruise missiles, or depressed-trajectory SLBM's, or whatever (and
    I'll give you one guess what they might do if we actually deployed a
    ballistic-missile defense system...)

Not particularly water-tight, no?  Alone, no one system can assure
verification, and there are some things that simply cannot be verified.
As much as I hate to say it, technology is making any ultimate form of
arms control impossible (even as it makes some parts of arms control
easier).  We are stuck with deterence for the forseeable future; I think
arms control, and weapons planning in general, should be aimed at making
it a stable deterence.

		-Ed Hall
		decvax!randvax!edhall

Of course, the Rand Corporation doesn't even know I'm writing this,
so I have to take full responsibility for the opinions involved.