Journal articles on the topic 'International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy'

This article examines the relationship between transnational and intergovernmental organizations in the formation of the international nuclear order in the 1950s. It focuses on three major events in September 1958: the second United Nations (UN) International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva, the third Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs (held in Tyrol), and the second General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. The three nuclear conferences of 1958, linked closely in time and location, were shaped by interplays of science and politics at a unique moment in nuclear history. The analysis here sheds light on the organizational and institutional beginnings of the Cold War nuclear order and the evolving distinction between transnational and intergovernmental organizations that shaped it. The article shows that competitive dynamics affected relations between the IAEA and the Pugwash organization and between the IAEA and other organizations of the UN.

Prior to the 1968 National power plan, which identified the need for nuclear power in New Zealand, the New Zealand government entertained serious proposals for nuclear power generation. Peaceful uses of atomic energy were seen as the answer to post-war power shortages. This paper will examine the context and the architecture which promoted the building of atomic and nuclear power plants in New Zealand during the 1950s, including the international models considered, and the "proposed atomic power plant for Auckland."

The article analyzes the content of the concept of «information cooperation in the field of peaceful uses of atomic energy», defines the semantic meaning of its constituent features, establishes the role of each of them in the development of legal regimes of various types of information cooperation in the field of peaceful uses of atomic energy. The authors present the results of the study of the current system of legal regulation of international information cooperation in the field of atomic energy use and substantiate the need for further improvement of this type of activity by eliminating the existing drawbacks of its legal support. The article contains a systematic description of international acts aimed at regulating the issues of information cooperation in the field of atomic energy use. Types, levels and forms of information cooperation in this field are consistently disclosed.

The article provides an analysis of substantive features of the concept of "international cooperation in the field of ensuring the safety of peaceful uses of atomic energy". For this purpose the doctrinal approaches to the definition of levels and forms of international cooperation are considered and the substantive content of the legal support of this activity is established, as well as the peculiarities of institutional and non-institutional levels of international cooperation is established. The authors present the results of the study of internal interrelation of the acting international documents in the field of ensuring safety of the peaceful uses of atomic energy. The article characterizes the measures aimed at eliminating the threat to the safety of the use of atomic energy arising due to the anthropogenic factor. The authors describe the content of legal instruments used both at the global and regional levels to establish effective forms of interaction between states in this field.

The terms “atomic law” and “nuclear law” are regularly being (to a certain part as synonyms) used in both scientific and popular literature to refer to a body of legal norms, governing peaceful uses of nuclear energy and ionizing radiation, as provided by sources of international law (“international atomic law,” or “international nuclear law”), national legislation and a complex body of unbinding norms (soft law). Further, several other variations of these terms are also regularly used (such as “atomic energy law,” “nuclear energy law,” “international nuclear law,” “law of the atomic/nuclear energy,” etc.). This contribution aims to identify the origins of this terminological labyrinth and to deal with the perception of these terms in the legal scholarship. Further, this contribution deals with the recent perception of these terms in the legal science of major States, using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. This article aims to clarify the existing terminology, which is to large extent being used in the literature without an appropriate explanation. The author pleads for a consequent use of the term “nuclear law” (droit nucléaire, yadernoe pravo, Nuklearrecht, derecho nuclear, diritto nucleare) and presents arguments for such conclusion.

This article explores a framework for cooperation between Russia and India in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy with a view to providing a comprehensive analysis of the international legal acts in this field. The scientific novelty of the research is a reflection of the fact that it is the study in which international legal framework concerning cooperation between Russia and India in the field of nuclear energy are summarized, systematized and analyzed. It is mentioned that the Moscow-New Delhi relationship is based upon mutual needs: Indian energy needs and Russian strategic economic needs. The main agreements for cooperation in the field of peaceful uses of nuclear energy are the Kudankulam nuclear agreement (1988) and the intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the uses of atomic energy for peaceful purposes (2010). The legal acts on cooperation in the construction of additional nuclear power plant units at Kudankulam site are of special importance. The article finds, moreover, that the increasing of the number of reactors in the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant has been expanding the India-Russian long-term partnership. India continues to view the expansion of its civilian nuclear sector as a critical element in the field of industry and decarbonization. In this regard, developing alternate nuclear fuel resources and civil nuclear cooperation agreements between Russia and India should be concluded.

The Iranian nuclear program was launched before the Islamic Revolution in the 1950s with the help of the United States, under the agreement known as the Cooperation Concerning Civil Uses of Atoms. In 1958, immediately after the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran gained its membership and signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) on its adoption date, July 1, 1968. Two years after, the NPT was approved by the Iranian Parliament and since then, Iran remains a party to this treaty. In Article IV, the NPT endorses the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.

This essay examines the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA’s) role in the entry of hydrological isotopic analysis techniques into the developing world. The notion of using radioisotopic tracers for hydrological study came from the initiative of individual scientists, many of whom were interested in measuring the uptake of hydrogen-bomb deposited tritium in the global environment. Their proposals to include isotope hydrology among the range of IAEA activities sparked debate in the IAEA Scientific Advisory Committee and Board of Governors. At stake was not merely the future support of the technique, but the diplomatic role of the IAEA as a provider of atomic energy to the developing world, the relationship of the IAEA to other international institutions, and the articulation of what ‘peaceful uses of atomic energy’ really meant. In the end, the IAEA opted to render conditional support for the landmark Global Network of Isotopes in Precipitation and undertook sponsorship of expert panels that brought together isotope specialists and hydrologists. As the essay shows, the IAEA’s agenda for isotope hydrology was not only a matter of technology, linked to instrumentation and technique. As a form of policy entrepreneurship, it also gave the IAEA a new diplomatic role in the larger network of international institutions.

Investigating the historical origins of a well-accepted health program across a region, such as newborn screening in Latin America, has the potential to reveal the role of historically-specific drivers in shaping national health policy. We reviewed published reports on NBS in Latin America and interviewed newborn screening experts with experience in the region. We found trends suggesting that the decrease in infant mortality may be a prerequisite to investing in nationwide screening for rarer conditions. We also note the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency in boosting newborn screening programs in developing nations as a legacy of Cold War diplomacy to promote peaceful uses of atomic energy. Further research in charting demographic trends and in contrasting nations that engaged with the Agency with those that did not has the potential to reveal critical issues in health policy development.

The article provides information about the legal consequences of Brexatom after the entry into force on January 1, 2021 of the Agreement between the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the European Atomic Energy Community for cooperation on the safe and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. After the signing of the international agreement, a new stage of relations began for the Euratom and the UK, based on the provisions of international law and the IAEA’s “soft law” norms; although the peculiarity is that, the Parties recognized the four freedoms of internal nuclear common market of the EU. At the same time, the norms of English case law and EU law also formed the basis of bilateral relations between the UK and Euratom. Settling topical legal issues such as export controls, physical protection, nuclear safety, nuclear safeguards, enrichment, reprocessing, trade, procurement of equipment and devices, supply of nuclear material, nuclear transfers, the Euratom and the UK laid the basis law for further bilateral cooperation on nuclear research and development, exchange of information and technical expertise on matters within peaceful uses of nuclear energy. However, the UK maintains its participation in a number of European programs and projects. The European Commission and the Euratom began to rebuild the legal system for the supply of nuclear materials and to make changes to the work of the European nuclear fuel cycle. Further development of relations between the Great Britain and the Euratom will depend on London’s position and interests in the world nuclear market. If there is a clash of British interests for the European nuclear market with the companies of France, the USA, China and Russia, then this will lead to the legal regulation of bilateral relations between England and Euratom only based on international law.

Most countries met the promotion of the peaceful uses of atomic energy as a tool for social and economic development with skepticism. In countries where it took hold, its acceptance was driven by a few elite actors. In Mexico the most salient included the Rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Nabor Carrillo, and William Draper Jr., President of the Canadian-based Mexican Light and Power Company. Nuclear technologies for so-called less-developed countries became a key niche for non-governmental actors such as the Michigan Memorial–Phoenix Project, the Atomic Industrial Forum, and the Fund for Peaceful Atomic Development, Inc., which played a relevant role in the implementation of the new foreign atomic policy after 1954 in close consonance with US governmental offices like the Foreign Operations Administration, which was superseded by the International Cooperation Administration in 1955. Without signing a manifest government-to-government agreement, Mexican officials were able to overcome domestic obstacles and historical distrust with her northern neighbor to get nuclear expertise and commodities. Apparently restricted to universities and private industries, this negotiation justified and backed the education and training of the first generation of Mexican nuclear engineers as part of the Phoenix Project at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. At the same time, the Mexican Program provided a learning experience in nuclear and technical assistance diplomacy for industrialists and private interests in the implementation of the Atoms for Peace initiative abroad. This paper is part of a special issue entitled “Revealing the Michigan Memorial–Phoenix Project.”

International agreements concluded during various historical periods between Canada and the European Union, European communities, as well as acts of domestic law of Canada adopted for the implementation of relevant rules of the international law, are the subject of this research. The aim of the study was to define models for the implementation of bilateral agreements between Canada and the European Union, the forms of their implementation in domestic law, and classification of existing and void agreements. The methodology used in the study includes formal juridical and legal, historical research methods, and the method of comparative law analysis. The author draws the conclusion that Canada concluded bilateral agreements at all stages of the European integration development since the 1959 Treaty between the Government of Canada and the European atomic energy community on cooperation in the peaceful uses of atomic energy and treaties between Canada and the European Economic Community about common and high-quality wheat, concluded in 1962. Currently, there are about 40 bilateral agreements between Canada and the EU (Communities), mainly in the sphere of economic, customs and scientific cooperation, carried out by Canada through “indirect implementation”.

The process of the establishment and development of the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons regime is analyzed in the article. The author divides this process into three periods: 1) 1945-1968 – time, when all attempts to halt or slow down the proliferation process had been futile; 2) 1968-1995 – the period of the establishment and functioning of the basic principles of non-proliferation regime as a result of the conclusion of the “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” of the 1st of July, 1968; 3) from 1995 – until nowadays, when the new threats and risks for te regime appeared. The author pais attention to the division of the states to “nuclear” and “non-nuclear” states by the Non-Proliferation Treaty after 1995, when it was prolonged to indefinite term. In author’s opinion, such measures further world security and make positive changes in international relations. The author considered the Summary Document, which became a result of few security conferences. The Summary Document names the states, that are not the members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and contains an appeal to India, Israel and Pakistan to join the Treaty as non-nuclear states. 8th conference was being held from 3rd to 28th May, 2010. Summary of this conference contain 64 recommendations, that should have been implemented by 2015 – negligible, but still positive result. The author claims, that NPT, despite its some weaknesses, without exaggeration became the most universal international treaty. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – is the only international organization serving the peaceful usage of nuclear energy. Yet, this organization is not able to give a political evaluation of the activity of any state. The author is concerned of the modern condition of the non-proliferation regime and insists to find ways for the conclusion of new international agreements.

AbstractIn this work, we study the solvability of a boundary value problem for the magneto-hydrostatic equations originally proposed by Grad and Rubin (Proceedings of the 2nd UN conference on the peaceful uses of atomic energy. IAEA, Geneva, 1958). The proof relies on a fixed point argument which combines the so-called current transport method together with Hölder estimates for a class of non-convolution singular integral operators. The same method allows to solve an analogous boundary value problem for the steady incompressible Euler equations.

Abstract Nuclear technology is often “dual-use,” having both peaceful and military applications. This is widely regarded as a lamentable fact, as states can pursue nuclear weapons under the guise of peaceful intentions. However, this article proposes an upside to the nuclear dual-use dilemma: the deniable nature of dual-use technology makes it more amenable to coercive counterproliferation. Caught proliferators are more likely to come into compliance if they can elude audience costs by denying that they were ever out of compliance. Thus, the dual-use dilemma is both the bane of the nonproliferation regime and a boon to its coercive enforcement. Poor knowledge of past nuclear programs can hamper future verification. Counterintuitively, however, the effectiveness of nonproliferation regime institutions created to promote transparency—the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—may be enhanced by not directly challenging the denial of past nuclear activities. This research uses interviews and archival evidence from the IAEA, US government, and South African apartheid government. At a time when ongoing nuclear disputes revolve around questions of transparency and admissions of guilt, this article contributes to scholarly and policy debates about secrecy, face-saving, counterproliferation strategy, and the role of international institutions in coercive bargaining.

The Animal Production and Health section (APH) of the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture at the International Atomic Energy Agency has over the last 58 years provided technical and scientific support to more than 100 countries through co-ordinated research activities and technical co-operation projects in peaceful uses of nuclear technologies. A key component of this support has been the development of irradiated vaccines targeting diseases that are endemic to participating countries. APH laboratories has over the last decade developed new techniques and has put in place a framework that allows researchers from participating member states to develop relevant vaccines targeting local diseases while using irradiation as a tool for improving livestock resources.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and most particularly since 9/11, the government of the United States has used its security services to enforce the order it desires for the world. The US government and its security services appreciate the importance of creating the ideological environment that allows them full-scope in their activities. To these ends they have turned to the movie industry which has not been slow in accommodating the purposes of the state. In establishing the parameters of the War Against Terror after 9/11, one of the Bush Administration’s first stops was Hollywood. White House strategist Karl Rove called what is now described as the Beverley Hills Summit on 19 November 2001 where top movie industry players including chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, Jack Valenti met to discuss ways in which the movie industry could assist in the War Against Terror. After a ritual assertion of Hollywood’s independence, the movie industry’s powerbrokers signed up to the White House’s agenda: “that Americans must be called to national service; that Americans should support the troops; that this is a global war that needs a global response; that this is a war against evil” (Cooper 13). Good versus evil is, of course, a staple commodity for the movie industry but storylines never require the good guys to fight fair so with this statement the White House got what it really wanted: Hollywood’s promise to stay on the big picture in black and white while studiously avoiding the troubling detail in the exercise extra-judicial force and state-sanctioned murder. This is not to suggest that the movie industry is a monolithic ideological enterprise. Alternative voices like Mike Moore and Susan Sarandon still find space to speak. But the established economics of the scenario trade are too strong for the movie industry to resist: producers gain access to expensive weaponry to assist production if their story-lines are approved by Pentagon officials (‘Pentagon provides for Hollywood’); the Pentagon finances movie and gaming studios to provide original story formulas to keep their war-gaming relevant to emerging conditions (Lippman); and the Central Intelligence Agency’s “entertainment liaison officer” assists producers in story development and production (Gamson). In this context, the moulding of story-lines to the satisfaction of the Pentagon and CIA is not even an issue, and protestations of Hollywood’s independence is meaningless, as the movie industry pursues patriotic audiences at home and seeks to garner hearts and minds abroad. This is old history made new again. The Cold War in the 1950s saw movies addressing the disruption of world order not so much by Communists as by “others”: sci-fi aliens, schlock horror zombies, vampires and werewolves and mad scientists galore. By the 1960s the James Bond movie franchise, developed by MI5 operative Ian Fleming, saw Western secret agents ‘licensed to kill’ with the justification that such powers were required to deal with threats to world order, albeit by fanciful “others” such as the fanatical scientist Dr. No (1962). The Bond villains provide a catalogue of methods for the disruption of world order: commandeering atomic weapons and space flights, manipulating finance markets, mind control systems and so on. As the Soviet Union disintegrated, Hollywood produced a wealth of material that excused the paranoid nationalism of the security services through the hegemonic masculinity of stars such as Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Seagal and Bruce Willis (Beasley). Willis’s Die Hard franchise (1988/1990/1995) characterised US insouciance in the face of newly created terrorist threats. Willis personified the strategy of the Reagan, first Bush and Clinton administrations: a willingness to up the ante, second guess the terrorists and cower them with the display of firepower advantage. But the 1997 instalment of the James Bond franchise saw an important shift in expectations about the source of threats to world order. Tomorrow Never Dies features a media tycoon bent on world domination, manipulating the satellite feed, orchestrating conflicts and disasters in the name of ratings, market share and control. Having dealt with all kinds of Cold War plots, Bond is now confronted with the power of the media itself. As if to mark this shift, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) made a mockery of the creatively bankrupt conventions of the spy genre. But it was the politically corrupt use to which the security services could be put that was troubling a string of big-budget filmmakers in the late 90s. In Enemy of the State (1998), an innocent lawyer finds himself targeted by the National Security Agency after receiving evidence of a political murder motivated by the push to extend the NSA’s powers. In Mercury Rising (1998), a renegade FBI agent protects an autistic boy who cracks a top-secret government code and becomes the target for assassins from an NSA-like organisation. Arlington Road (1999) features a college professor who learns too much about terrorist organisations and has his paranoia justified when he becomes the target of a complex operation to implicate him as a terrorist. The attacks on September 11 and subsequent Beverley Hills Summit had a major impact on movie product. Many film studios edited films (Spiderman) or postponed their release (Schwarzenegger’s Collateral Damage) where they were seen as too close to actual events but insufficiently patriotic (Townsend). The Bond franchise returned to its staple of fantastical villains. In Die Another Day (2002), the bad guy is a billionaire with a laser cannon. The critical perspective on the security services disappeared overnight. But the most interesting development has been how fantasy has become the key theme in a number of franchises dealing with world order that have had great box-office success since 9/11, particularly Lord of the Rings (2001/2/3) and Harry Potter (2001/2/4). While deeply entrenched in the fantasy genre, each of these franchises also addresses security issues: geo-political control in the Rings franchise; the subterfuges of the Ministry for Muggles in the _Potter _franchise. Looking at world order through the supernatural lens has particular appeal to audiences confronted with everyday threats. These fantasies follow George Bush’s rhetoric of the “axis of evil” in normalising the struggle for world order in term of black and white with the expectation that childish innocence and naïve ingenuity will prevail. Only now with three years hindsight since September 11 can we begin to see certain amount of self-reflection by disenchanted security staff return to the cinema. In Man on Fire (2004) the burned-out ex-CIA assassin has given up on life but regains some hope while guarding a child only to have everything disintegrate when the child is killed and he sets out on remorseless revenge. Spartan (2004) features a special forces officer who fails to find a girl and resorts to remorseless revenge as he becomes lost in a maze of security bureaucracies and chance events. Security service personnel once again have their doubts but only find redemption in violence and revenge without remorse. From consideration of films before and after September 11, it becomes apparent that the movie industry has delivered on their promises to the Bush administration. The first response has been the shift to fantasy that, in historical terms, will be seen as akin to the shift to musicals in the Depression. The flight to fantasy makes the point that complex situations can be reduced to simple moral decisions under the rubric of good versus evil, which is precisely what the US administration requested. The second, more recent response has been to accept disenchantment with the personal costs of the War on Terror but still validate remorseless revenge. Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill franchise (2003/4) seeks to do both. Thus the will to world order being fought out in the streets of Iraq is sublimated into fantasy or excused as a natural response to a world of violence. It is interesting to note that television has provided more opportunities for the productive consideration of world order and the security services than the movies since September 11. While programs that have had input from the CIA’s “entertainment liaison officer” such as teen-oriented, Buffy-inspired Alias and quasi-authentic The Agency provide a no-nonsense justification for the War on Terror (Gamson), others such as 24, West Wing _and _Threat Matrix have confronted the moral problems of torture and murder in the War on Terrorism. 24 uses reality TV conventions of real-time plot, split screen exposition, unexpected interventions and a close focus on personal emotions to explore the interactions between a US President and an officer in the Counter Terrorism Unit. The CTU officer does not hesitate to summarily behead a criminal or kill a colleague for operational purposes and the president takes only a little longer to begin torturing recalcitrant members of his own staff. Similarly, the president in West Wing orders the extra-judicial death of a troublesome player and the team in Threat Matrix are ready to exceeded their powers. But in these programs the characters struggle with the moral consequences of their violent acts, particularly as family members are drawn into the plot. A running theme of Threat Matrix is the debate within the group of their choices between gung-ho militarism and peaceful diplomacy: the consequences of a simplistic, hawkish approach are explored when an Arab-American college professor is wrongfully accused of supporting terrorists and driven towards the terrorists because of his very ordeal of wrongful accusation. The world is not black and white. Almost half the US electorate voted for John Kerry. Television still must cater for liberal, and wealthy, demographics who welcome the extended format of weekly television that allows a continuing engagement with questions of good or evil and whether there is difference between them any more. Against the simple world view of the Bush administration we have the complexities of the real world. References Beasley, Chris. “Reel Politics.” Australian Political Studies Association Conference, University of Adelaide, 2004. Cooper, Marc. “Lights! Cameras! Attack!: Hollywood Enlists.” The Nation 10 December 2001: 13-16. Gamson, J. “Double Agents.” The American Prospect 12.21 (3 December 2001): 38-9. Lippman, John. “Hollywood Casts About for a War Role.” Wall Street Journal 9 November 2001: A1. “Pentagon Provides for Hollywood.” USA Today 29 March 2001. http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/2001-05-17-pentagon-helps-hollywood.htm>. Townsend, Gary. “Hollywood Uses Selective Censorship after 9/11.” e.press 12 December 2002. http://www.scc.losrios.edu/~express/021212hollywood.html>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Stockwell, Stephen. "The Manufacture of World Order: The Security Services and the Movie Industry." M/C Journal 7.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/10-stockwell.php>. APA Style Stockwell, S. (Jan. 2005) "The Manufacture of World Order: The Security Services and the Movie Industry," M/C Journal, 7(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/10-stockwell.php>.

Photograph by Gonzalo Echeverria (2010)Declaring War Soon after Al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the Bush Administration described its new grand strategy: the “Global War on Terror”. This underpinned the subsequent counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and the United States invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Media pundits quickly applied the Global War on Terror label to the Madrid, Bali and London bombings, to convey how Al Qaeda’s terrorism had gone transnational. Meanwhile, international relations scholars debated the extent to which September 11 had changed the international system (Brenner; Mann 303). American intellectuals adopted several variations of the Global War on Terror in what initially felt like a transitional period of US foreign policy (Burns). Walter Laqueur suggested Al Qaeda was engaged in a “cosmological” and perpetual war. Paul Berman likened Al Qaeda and militant Islam to the past ideological battles against communism and fascism (Heilbrunn 248). In a widely cited article, neoconservative thinker Norman Podhoretz suggested the United States faced “World War IV”, which had three interlocking drivers: Al Qaeda and trans-national terrorism; political Islam as the West’s existential enemy; and nuclear proliferation to ‘rogue’ countries and non-state actors (Friedman 3). Podhoretz’s tone reflected a revival of his earlier Cold War politics and critique of the New Left (Friedman 148-149; Halper and Clarke 56; Heilbrunn 210). These stances attracted widespread support. For instance, the United States Marine Corp recalibrated its mission to fight a long war against “World War IV-like” enemies. Yet these stances left the United States unprepared as the combat situations in Afghanistan and Iraq worsened (Ricks; Ferguson; Filkins). Neoconservative ideals for Iraq “regime change” to transform the Middle East failed to deal with other security problems such as Pakistan’s Musharraf regime (Dorrien 110; Halper and Clarke 210-211; Friedman 121, 223; Heilbrunn 252). The Manichean and open-ended framing became a self-fulfilling prophecy for insurgents, jihadists, and militias. The Bush Administration quietly abandoned the Global War on Terror in July 2005. Widespread support had given way to policymaker doubt. Why did so many intellectuals and strategists embrace the Global War on Terror as the best possible “grand strategy” perspective of a post-September 11 world? Why was there so little doubt of this worldview? This is a debate with roots as old as the Sceptics versus the Sophists. Explanations usually focus on the Bush Administration’s “Vulcans” war cabinet: Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who later became Secretary of State (Mann xv-xvi). The “Vulcans” were named after the Roman god Vulcan because Rice’s hometown Birmingham, Alabama, had “a mammoth fifty-six foot statue . . . [in] homage to the city’s steel industry” (Mann x) and the name stuck. Alternatively, explanations focus on how neoconservative thinkers shaped the intellectual climate after September 11, in a receptive media climate. Biographers suggest that “neoconservatism had become an echo chamber” (Heilbrunn 242) with its own media outlets, pundits, and think-tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and Project for a New America. Neoconservatism briefly flourished in Washington DC until Iraq’s sectarian violence discredited the “Vulcans” and neoconservative strategists like Paul Wolfowitz (Friedman; Ferguson). The neoconservatives' combination of September 11’s aftermath with strongly argued historical analogies was initially convincing. They conferred with scholars such as Bernard Lewis, Samuel P. Huntington and Victor Davis Hanson to construct classicist historical narratives and to explain cultural differences. However, the history of the decade after September 11 also contains mis-steps and mistakes which make it a series of contingent decisions (Ferguson; Bergen). One way to analyse these contingent decisions is to pose “what if?” counterfactuals, or feasible alternatives to historical events (Lebow). For instance, what if September 11 had been a chemical and biological weapons attack? (Mann 317). Appendix 1 includes a range of alternative possibilities and “minimal rewrites” or slight variations on the historical events which occurred. Collectively, these counterfactuals suggest the role of agency, chance, luck, and the juxtaposition of better and worse outcomes. They pose challenges to the classicist interpretation adopted soon after September 11 to justify “World War IV” (Podhoretz). A ‘Two-Track’ Process for ‘World War IV’ After the September 11 attacks, I think an overlapping two-track process occurred with the “Vulcans” cabinet, neoconservative advisers, and two “echo chambers”: neoconservative think-tanks and the post-September 11 media. Crucially, Bush’s “Vulcans” war cabinet succeeded in gaining civilian control of the United States war decision process. Although successful in initiating the 2003 Iraq War this civilian control created a deeper crisis in US civil-military relations (Stevenson; Morgan). The “Vulcans” relied on “politicised” intelligence such as a United Kingdom intelligence report on Iraq’s weapons development program. The report enabled “a climate of undifferentiated fear to arise” because its public version did not distinguish between chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons (Halper and Clarke, 210). The cautious 2003 National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) report on Iraq was only released in a strongly edited form. For instance, the US Department of Energy had expressed doubts about claims that Iraq had approached Niger for uranium, and was using aluminium tubes for biological and chemical weapons development. Meanwhile, the post-September 11 media had become a second “echo chamber” (Halper and Clarke 194-196) which amplified neoconservative arguments. Berman, Laqueur, Podhoretz and others who framed the intellectual climate were “risk entrepreneurs” (Mueller 41-43) that supported the “World War IV” vision. The media also engaged in aggressive “flak” campaigns (Herman and Chomsky 26-28; Mueller 39-42) designed to limit debate and to stress foreign policy stances and themes which supported the Bush Administration. When former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey’s claimed that Al Qaeda had close connections to Iraqi intelligence, this was promoted in several books, including Michael Ledeen’s War Against The Terror Masters, Stephen Hayes’ The Connection, and Laurie Mylroie’s Bush v. The Beltway; and in partisan media such as Fox News, NewsMax, and The Weekly Standard who each attacked the US State Department and the CIA (Dorrien 183; Hayes; Ledeen; Mylroie; Heilbrunn 237, 243-244; Mann 310). This was the media “echo chamber” at work. The group Accuracy in Media also campaigned successfully to ensure that US cable providers did not give Al Jazeera English access to US audiences (Barker). Cosmopolitan ideals seemed incompatible with what the “flak” groups desired. The two-track process converged on two now infamous speeches. US President Bush’s State of the Union Address on 29 January 2002, and US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations on 5 February 2003. Bush’s speech included a line from neoconservative David Frumm about North Korea, Iraq and Iran as an “Axis of Evil” (Dorrien 158; Halper and Clarke 139-140; Mann 242, 317-321). Powell’s presentation to the United Nations included now-debunked threat assessments. In fact, Powell had altered the speech’s original draft by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was Cheney’s chief of staff (Dorrien 183-184). Powell claimed that Iraq had mobile biological weapons facilities, linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Mohamed El-Baradei, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the Institute for Science and International Security all strongly doubted this claim, as did international observers (Dorrien 184; Halper and Clarke 212-213; Mann 353-354). Yet this information was suppressed: attacked by “flak” or given little visible media coverage. Powell’s agenda included trying to rebuild an international coalition and to head off weather changes that would affect military operations in the Middle East (Mann 351). Both speeches used politicised variants of “weapons of mass destruction”, taken from the counterterrorism literature (Stern; Laqueur). Bush’s speech created an inflated geopolitical threat whilst Powell relied on flawed intelligence and scientific visuals to communicate a non-existent threat (Vogel). However, they had the intended effect on decision makers. US Under-Secretary of Defense, the neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz, later revealed to Vanity Fair that “weapons of mass destruction” was selected as an issue that all potential stakeholders could agree on (Wilkie 69). Perhaps the only remaining outlet was satire: Armando Iannucci’s 2009 film In The Loop parodied the diplomatic politics surrounding Powell’s speech and the civil-military tensions on the Iraq War’s eve. In the short term the two track process worked in heading off doubt. The “Vulcans” blocked important information on pre-war Iraq intelligence from reaching the media and the general public (Prados). Alternatively, they ignored area specialists and other experts, such as when Coalition Provisional Authority’s L. Paul Bremer ignored the US State Department’s fifteen volume ‘Future of Iraq’ project (Ferguson). Public “flak” and “risk entrepreneurs” mobilised a range of motivations from grief and revenge to historical memory and identity politics. This combination of private and public processes meant that although doubts were expressed, they could be contained through the dual echo chambers of neoconservative policymaking and the post-September 11 media. These factors enabled the “Vulcans” to proceed with their “regime change” plans despite strong public opposition from anti-war protestors. Expressing DoubtsMany experts and institutions expressed doubt about specific claims the Bush Administration made to support the 2003 Iraq War. This doubt came from three different and sometimes overlapping groups. Subject matter experts such as the IAEA’s Mohamed El-Baradei and weapons development scientists countered the UK intelligence report and Powell’s UN speech. However, they did not get the media coverage warranted due to “flak” and “echo chamber” dynamics. Others could challenge misleading historical analogies between insurgent Iraq and Nazi Germany, and yet not change the broader outcomes (Benjamin). Independent journalists one group who gained new information during the 1990-91 Gulf War: some entered Iraq from Kuwait and documented a more humanitarian side of the war to journalists embedded with US military units (Uyarra). Finally, there were dissenters from bureaucratic and institutional processes. In some cases, all three overlapped. In their separate analyses of the post-September 11 debate on intelligence “failure”, Zegart and Jervis point to a range of analytic misperceptions and institutional problems. However, the intelligence community is separated from policymakers such as the “Vulcans”. Compartmentalisation due to the “need to know” principle also means that doubting analysts can be blocked from releasing information. Andrew Wilkie discovered this when he resigned from Australia’s Office for National Assessments (ONA) as a transnational issues analyst. Wilkie questioned the pre-war assessments in Powell’s United Nations speech that were used to justify the 2003 Iraq War. Wilkie was then attacked publicly by Australian Prime Minister John Howard. This overshadowed a more important fact: both Howard and Wilkie knew that due to Australian legislation, Wilkie could not publicly comment on ONA intelligence, despite the invitation to do so. This barrier also prevented other intelligence analysts from responding to the “Vulcans”, and to “flak” and “echo chamber” dynamics in the media and neoconservative think-tanks. Many analysts knew that the excerpts released from the 2003 NIE on Iraq was highly edited (Prados). For example, Australian agencies such as the ONA, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Department of Defence knew this (Wilkie 98). However, analysts are trained not to interfere with policymakers, even when there are significant civil-military irregularities. Military officials who spoke out about pre-war planning against the “Vulcans” and their neoconservative supporters were silenced (Ricks; Ferguson). Greenlight Capital’s hedge fund manager David Einhorn illustrates in a different context what might happen if analysts did comment. Einhorn gave a speech to the Ira Sohn Conference on 15 May 2002 debunking the management of Allied Capital. Einhorn’s “short-selling” led to retaliation from Allied Capital, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, and growing evidence of potential fraud. If analysts adopted Einhorn’s tactics—combining rigorous analysis with targeted, public denunciation that is widely reported—then this may have short-circuited the “flak” and “echo chamber” effects prior to the 2003 Iraq War. The intelligence community usually tries to pre-empt such outcomes via contestation exercises and similar processes. This was the goal of the 2003 NIE on Iraq, despite the fact that the US Department of Energy which had the expertise was overruled by other agencies who expressed opinions not necessarily based on rigorous scientific and technical analysis (Prados; Vogel). In counterterrorism circles, similar disinformation arose about Aum Shinrikyo’s biological weapons research after its sarin gas attack on Tokyo’s subway system on 20 March 1995 (Leitenberg). Disinformation also arose regarding nuclear weapons proliferation to non-state actors in the 1990s (Stern). Interestingly, several of the “Vulcans” and neoconservatives had been involved in an earlier controversial contestation exercise: Team B in 1976. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assembled three Team B groups in order to evaluate and forecast Soviet military capabilities. One group headed by historian Richard Pipes gave highly “alarmist” forecasts and then attacked a CIA NIE about the Soviets (Dorrien 50-56; Mueller 81). The neoconservatives adopted these same tactics to reframe the 2003 NIE from its position of caution, expressed by several intelligence agencies and experts, to belief that Iraq possessed a current, covert program to develop weapons of mass destruction (Prados). Alternatively, information may be leaked to the media to express doubt. “Non-attributable” background interviews to establishment journalists like Seymour Hersh and Bob Woodward achieved this. Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange has recently achieved notoriety due to US diplomatic cables from the SIPRNet network released from 28 November 2010 onwards. Supporters have favourably compared Assange to Daniel Ellsberg, the RAND researcher who leaked the Pentagon Papers (Ellsberg; Ehrlich and Goldsmith). Whilst Elsberg succeeded because a network of US national papers continued to print excerpts from the Pentagon Papers despite lawsuit threats, Assange relied in part on favourable coverage from the UK’s Guardian newspaper. However, suspected sources such as US Army soldier Bradley Manning are not protected whilst media outlets are relatively free to publish their scoops (Walt, ‘Woodward’). Assange’s publication of SIPRNet’s diplomatic cables will also likely mean greater restrictions on diplomatic and military intelligence (Walt, ‘Don’t Write’). Beyond ‘Doubt’ Iraq’s worsening security discredited many of the factors that had given the neoconservatives credibility. The post-September 11 media became increasingly more critical of the US military in Iraq (Ferguson) and cautious about the “echo chamber” of think-tanks and media outlets. Internet sites for Al Jazeera English, Al-Arabiya and other networks have enabled people to bypass “flak” and directly access these different viewpoints. Most damagingly, the non-discovery of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction discredited both the 2003 NIE on Iraq and Colin Powell’s United Nations presentation (Wilkie 104). Likewise, “risk entrepreneurs” who foresaw “World War IV” in 2002 and 2003 have now distanced themselves from these apocalyptic forecasts due to a series of mis-steps and mistakes by the Bush Administration and Al Qaeda’s over-calculation (Bergen). The emergence of sites such as Wikileaks, and networks like Al Jazeera English and Al-Arabiya, are a response to the politics of the past decade. They attempt to short-circuit past “echo chambers” through providing access to different sources and leaked data. The Global War on Terror framed the Bush Administration’s response to September 11 as a war (Kirk; Mueller 59). Whilst this prematurely closed off other possibilities, it has also unleashed a series of dynamics which have undermined the neoconservative agenda. The “classicist” history and historical analogies constructed to justify the “World War IV” scenario are just one of several potential frameworks. “Flak” organisations and media “echo chambers” are now challenged by well-financed and strategic alternatives such as Al Jazeera English and Al-Arabiya. Doubt is one defence against “risk entrepreneurs” who seek to promote a particular idea: doubt guards against uncritical adoption. Perhaps the enduring lesson of the post-September 11 debates, though, is that doubt alone is not enough. What is needed are individuals and institutions that understand the strategies which the neoconservatives and others have used, and who also have the soft power skills during crises to influence critical decision-makers to choose alternatives. Appendix 1: Counterfactuals Richard Ned Lebow uses “what if?” counterfactuals to examine alternative possibilities and “minimal rewrites” or slight variations on the historical events that occurred. The following counterfactuals suggest that the Bush Administration’s Global War on Terror could have evolved very differently . . . or not occurred at all. Fact: The 2003 Iraq War and 2001 Afghanistan counterinsurgency shaped the Bush Administration’s post-September 11 grand strategy. Counterfactual #1: Al Gore decisively wins the 2000 U.S. election. Bush v. Gore never occurs. After the September 11 attacks, Gore focuses on international alliance-building and gains widespread diplomatic support rather than a neoconservative agenda. He authorises Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and works closely with the Musharraf regime in Pakistan to target Al Qaeda’s muhajideen. He ‘contains’ Saddam Hussein’s Iraq through measurement and signature, technical intelligence, and more stringent monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Minimal Rewrite: United 93 crashes in Washington DC, killing senior members of the Gore Administration. Fact: U.S. Special Operations Forces failed to kill Osama bin Laden in late November and early December 2001 at Tora Bora. Counterfactual #2: U.S. Special Operations Forces kill Osama bin Laden in early December 2001 during skirmishes at Tora Bora. Ayman al-Zawahiri is critically wounded, captured, and imprisoned. The rest of Al Qaeda is scattered. Minimal Rewrite: Osama bin Laden’s death turns him into a self-mythologised hero for decades. Fact: The UK Blair Government supplied a 50-page intelligence dossier on Iraq’s weapons development program which the Bush Administration used to support its pre-war planning. Counterfactual #3: Rogue intelligence analysts debunk the UK Blair Government’s claims through a series of ‘targeted’ leaks to establishment news sources. Minimal Rewrite: The 50-page intelligence dossier is later discovered to be correct about Iraq’s weapons development program. Fact: The Bush Administration used the 2003 National Intelligence Estimate to “build its case” for “regime change” in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Counterfactual #4: A joint investigation by The New York Times and The Washington Post rebuts U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United National Security Council, delivered on 5 February 2003. Minimal Rewrite: The Central Intelligence Agency’s whitepaper “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs” (October 2002) more accurately reflects the 2003 NIE’s cautious assessments. Fact: The Bush Administration relied on Ahmed Chalabi for its postwar estimates about Iraq’s reconstruction. Counterfactual #5: The Bush Administration ignores Chalabi’s advice and relies instead on the U.S. State Department’s 15 volume report “The Future of Iraq”. Minimal Rewrite: The Coalition Provisional Authority appoints Ahmed Chalabi to head an interim Iraqi government. Fact: L. Paul Bremer signed orders to disband Iraq’s Army and to De-Ba’athify Iraq’s new government. Counterfactual #6: Bremer keeps Iraq’s Army intact and uses it to impose security in Baghdad to prevent looting and to thwart insurgents. Rather than a De-Ba’athification policy, Bremer uses former Baath Party members to gather situational intelligence. Minimal Rewrite: Iraq’s Army refuses to disband and the De-Ba’athification policy uncovers several conspiracies to undermine the Coalition Provisional Authority. AcknowledgmentsThanks to Stephen McGrail for advice on science and technology analysis.References Barker, Greg. “War of Ideas”. PBS Frontline. Boston, MA: 2007. ‹http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/newswar/video1.html› Benjamin, Daniel. “Condi’s Phony History.” Slate 29 Aug. 2003. ‹http://www.slate.com/id/2087768/pagenum/all/›. Bergen, Peter L. The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al Qaeda. New York: The Free Press, 2011. Berman, Paul. Terror and Liberalism. 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