#14
Moscow Times
May 22, 2002
Mr. Bush's Most Excellent Exam Adventures
By Matt Bivens

Logic and Problem-Solving 101 Yale University Midterm Examination

Multiple Choice: Read the problem carefully and choose one of the five answers that follow.

You are the president of the United States. A formidable and highly motivated terrorist group is seeking a nuclear bomb, which it would then use to destroy Washington or Los Angeles. Should the terrorists build or obtain such a weapon, there is, at this point in time, little chance of preventing its delivery by boat, either up the Potomac River or into, say, Marina del Rey.

Naturally, you ask for a briefing: How can we prevent this?

Your intelligence agencies tell you more than 600 tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium sit in poverty-stricken Russia -- enough, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office, to produce a staggering 40,000 nuclear bombs. Some of that material is pretty well secured. But the GAO reports that, incredibly, there are still "hundreds of tons" of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium -- i.e., enough for thousands of nuclear weapons -- stored in about 100 buildings in Russia that lack such basic security as fences (!), surveillance cameras or reinforced doors. This is so despite years of weakly funded and largely orphaned U.S. assistance programs to improve Russian nuclear security and buy up excess weapons-grade materials.

You are shown intelligence that security is also lax around more than 10,000 warheads Russia has in stockpile storage and in quasi-portable "tactical" status. And then there are "research reactors" -- which use some of the best bomb-grade uranium and have some of the worst security. You are briefed on incidents in 1993 when separatists in Abkhazia overran a research reactor in Sukhumi and made off with 2 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, and how scientists at a sister reactor in the town of Mtskheta defended it with rakes and sticks.

As it happens, the terrorists targeting the United States have ties to independence-minded Chechen rebels in Russia's south, and to their leader Shamil Basayev, who once fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Abkhaz separatists. Small world. Those Chechen rebels are experts at gaming the corrupt side of Russian society, so much so that they have bought weapons and ammunition from the very Russian troops they are battling in the field.

All of which suggest that Russia's loosely secured nuclear weapons and weapons-grade materials are vulnerable and available to the terrorists.

However, Russia is your new ally. You have looked into the eyes of Russian President Vladimir Putin and seen his good soul. In fact, you have seen that he is pretty much a doormat and will accept any arms control deal you care to offer. The Russian president has expressed a desire for deep cuts in "strategic" nuclear weapons -- the ones mounted on ballistic missiles. You have 6,000, he has 5,500. You each only need about 200 such weapons to provide a credible strategic deterrent.

Were the United States to assume the financial burden of dismantling or securing all Russian weapons of mass destruction, it would cost billions of dollars -- but would still represent a mere fraction of annual U.S. defense spending. In fact, it would cost roughly what Congress has allocated each year for a national missile defense shield -- a shield that just weeks ago your Pentagon in essence admitted won't work, at least not as sold so far, by sheepishly suggesting it might need to use U.S. nuclear weapons to shoot down incoming hostile missiles.

Logic dictates you should:

A) Offer to reduce your "strategic" nuclear arsenal to about 200 weapons in return for a comparable Russian reduction -- but also in return for Russia publishing how many other kinds of nuclear weapons it has, agreeing to dismantle the vast majority of them and agreeing to work with U.S. experts to dramatically improve security around them. If necessary, point out that your government has only about 1,000 tactical nuclear weapons, including about 180 in European nations, and put them all on the negotiating table.

B) Offer to cancel your ailing national missile defense program in return for Russia ending its nuclear flirtation with Iran -- and also for granting U.S. experts sweeping access to move in and secure Russia's weaponizable nuclear, chemical and biological materials.

C) Tell the Russian president that the seven-year war in Chechnya is no longer "an internal matter," as it now threatens U.S. security. Seek to broker an immediate cease-fire, a withdrawal of Russian troops and a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

D) Invest in a "reverse Manhattan Project" to shut down nuclear power plants worldwide, on grounds they can be used to fuel nuclear weapons. Replace them with cleaner alternatives and develop technology and infrastructure to identify nuclear weapons before they enter the United States' borders, whether delivered by truck or boat or backpack.

E) All of the above.

F) Cut taxes for the rich. Arbitrarily declare some days "red danger" days and others "orange." Wipe your feet on the Kremlin doormat by signing a three-page "treaty" with Putin that comes into effect ten years later -- at which time both sides can collectively have well over 30,000 nuclear weapons of various stripes lying about. Place not a single demand on Russia to report how many thousands of tactical weapons it holds. And since you're giving up nothing, expect nothing in return vis-a-vis biological weapons or chemical weapons. In fact, just for laughs, quietly cripple existing programs to secure Russia's weapons of mass destruction by jerking them around on the funding side, and use bureaucratic maneuvers like declining to "certify" Russia as serious about nonproliferation. Think of a catchy nickname for the Russian president -- Vlad-man, the Vladster, Vlad the Destroyer, Vlad-to-Meetchya, Pootser, Pootie-Poot, Shake-Your-Pootie, Pootin' on the Ritz ... Put out the word, pre-summit, that you are "brushing up on Dostoevsky."

GRADER'S COMMENTS:

Mr. Bush, A very few students got this question wrong by choosing answer A and reading no further. You alone selected answer F, which was included as comic relief. I can only assume you chose it in that same spirit. I have to say, now that I see it checked off, it's not so funny. We are basically chuckling about Washington or New York being vaporized, which will seem absolutely impossible right up until the day it happens. In future years, out of respect for the dead of Sept. 11, I will not include this option on the Logic and Problem-Solving midterm. I am also giving you a failing grade. Please try to approach the final with a bit more rigor and respect.

Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, is a Washington-based fellow of The Nation Institute [www.thenation.com].

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