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C H A P T E R 3 Through a Glass Darkly Estimative Uncertainties and Policy Trade-offs The spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and their attendant delivery systems is better viewed as a dynamic process than as discrete events or particular outcomes. Forecastingtrends, divining intentions, and estimating capabilities are central to understanding the proliferation enterprise. The intelligence community is charged with assessingthis changing landscape, collecting information on and analyzing events in particular countries, the transactions between them, and their interactions with subnational actors of concern. Yet as former NIC Chairman Joseph Nye cautions, "In a world where rapid change has become the norm, uncertainties abound."1 Fragmentary or inaccurate data, key information gaps, active deception and denial measures, and evolving intentions by actors of concern present substantial challenges to intelligence analysts in the WMD arena. As former Deputy Director of the CIA John Gannon suggests, "In a perfect world, intelligence always heads off the bad guys at the pass before they can do any damage. In an almost perfect world, we catch them red-handed with the smoking gun. But,in our far less than per fect world, no matter how hard we work or how many assets we bring to bear, we still may be able only to find pieces of an ominous puzzle/'2 When faced with an absence of significant information or when facing acute time constraints, the analytic community often tries to determine the larger picture as if all the facts were available. Analyzingthe known facts and structuring the remaining uncertainties, estimative intelligence deals in the realm of possibility, presenting a plausible range of alternative scenarios, often with probabilities assigned, in an effort to "help policymakers interpret the available facts, to suggest alternative patterns that available facts might fit, [and] to provide informed assessments of the range and likelihood of possible outcomes/'3 This is a time-tested process; Sherman Kent, the father of modern USintelligence, argued in the earliest days of the CIAthat such estimates may have great value when they are "soundly based in reliable descriptivedata, reliable reporting, and proceed from careful analysis/'4 58 Combating Prolifera tion At the same time, close observers such as Mark Lowenthal have criticized important gaps as "annoying" at best and "both crucial and frightening" at worst.5 While there isno guarantee that better intelligence necessarily leads to better decisions, policy debates often hinge on input provided by the intelligence community. Notable factual or interpretive uncertainties, critical information gaps, and discrepancies in intelligence judgment between intelligence producers frequently bump up against the "rough and tumble" of the policy process.6 The often acrimonious debates in the 1990s over the evolving scope and nature of the ballistic missile threat to the United States, USfriends and allies, and forward-deployedUSforces are a clear case in point (see chapter 1). Important estimative uncertainties and difficult policy judgments interacted significantly in two other relatively recent high-profile proliferation-related cases: the extent, capability, and status of the North Korean nuclear weapons program and the Soviet (and perhaps Russian) offensive biological weapons program, discussed in turn below. North Korea and Nuclear Weapons In addition to its aspirations for advanced ballistic missile technology (see chapter 4), North Korea maintains a longstanding interest in nuclear weapons.7 As with Pyongyang's pursuit of ballistic missiles, there is considerable uncertainty about nuclear weapons development efforts. Although technical and other means provide important details, key gaps evidently exist in US information regarding the status and scope of North Korea's efforts, particularly over how much plutonium the DPRK has produced and whether it has produced a nuclear weapon. These uncertainties had become a source of disagreement within the intelligence community and between the intelligence and policy communities by the early 1990s, when it appeared that North Korea was preparing to undertake a major expansion of its efforts. Bydefault, when the DPRK threatened to withdraw from the NPTin 1993, that state had become, in essence, the world's smallest de facto nuclear power. Over time, imagery, inspection data, and human reporting have provided important information on North Korea's evolving capabilities. AsRobert Carlin suggests, "The process of discovery has not been easy; in fact, it is more complex than is often realized."8 The North Korean nuclear program originated in the 1950s, and although uncertainties abound, some aspects of this program are evident.9 Over the years, considerable attention has focused on the Yong- [18.224.59.231] Project MUSE (2024-04-20 03:30...

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