Disarmament Diplomacy

In the News

Contrasting US Perspectives

Including:

• A New Beginning for Nuclear Diplomacy? Remarks of Senator Barack Obama, Chicago, 2 October 2008, excerpts.
• Nuclear Deterrence, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Speech at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington, D.C.), 28 October 2008, excerpts.
• Let's Commit to a Nuclear-Free World, Senator Dianne Feinstein, 3 January 2009

A New Beginning for Nuclear Diplomacy?

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama, Chicago, 2 October 2008, excerpts.

...Make no mistake: we must always be prepared to use force to protect America. But the best way to keep America safe is not to threaten terrorists with nuclear weapons - it's to keep nuclear weapons and nuclear materials away from terrorists. That's why I've worked with Republican Senator Dick Lugar to pass a law accelerating our pursuit of loose nuclear materials. And that's why I'll lead a global effort to secure all loose nuclear materials during my first term in office.

But we need to do much more. We need to change our nuclear policy and our posture, which is still focused on deterring the Soviet Union - a country that doesn't exist. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan and North Korea have joined the club of nuclear-armed nations, and Iran is knocking on the door. More nuclear weapons and more nuclear-armed nations mean more danger to us all.

Here's what I'll say as President: America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons.

We will not pursue unilateral disarmament. As long as nuclear weapons exist, we'll retain a strong nuclear deterrent. But we'll keep our commitment under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty on the long road towards eliminating nuclear weapons. We'll work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair-trigger alert, and to dramatically reduce the stockpiles of our nuclear weapons and material. We'll start by seeking a global ban on the production of fissile material for weapons. And we'll set a goal to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global.

As we do this, we'll be in a better position to lead the world in enforcing the rules of the road if we firmly abide by those rules. It's time to stop giving countries like Iran and North Korea an excuse. It's time for America to lead. When I'm President, we'll strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that nations that don't comply will automatically face strong international sanctions.

This will require a new era of American diplomacy. To signal the dawn of that era, we need a President who is willing to talk to all nations, friend and foe. I'm not afraid that America will lose a propaganda battle with a petty tyrant - we need to go before the world and win those battles. If we take the attitude that the President just parachutes in for a photo-op after an agreement has already been reached, then we're only going to reach agreements with our friends. That's not the way to protect the American people. That's not the way to advance our interests.

Just look at our history. Kennedy had a direct line to Khrushchev. Nixon met with Mao. Carter did the hard work of negotiating the Camp David Accords. Reagan was negotiating arms agreements with Gorbachev even as he called on him to "tear down this wall."

It's time to make diplomacy a top priority. Instead of shuttering consulates, we need to open them in the tough and hopeless corners of the world. Instead of having more Americans serving in military bands than the diplomatic corps, we need to grow our foreign service. Instead of retreating from the world, I will personally lead a new chapter of American engagement.

Source: Barack Obama website, www.barackobama.com.

Nuclear Deterrence

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Speech at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington, D.C.), 28 October 2008, excerpts.

...I should start by noting that three presidents I worked for during the Cold War - Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush - genuinely wanted to eliminate all nuclear weapons and said so publicly. More recently, George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn echoed that sentiment in The Wall Street Journal. But all have come up against the reality that as long as others have nuclear weapons, we must maintain some level of these weapons ourselves: to deter potential adversaries and to reassure over two dozen allies and partners who rely on our nuclear umbrella for their security - making it unnecessary for them to develop their own.

The Cold War is over, and with it, much of the need for a massive nuclear arsenal of the same size and composition as that period warranted. Our policies reflect a new set of post-Cold War requirements:

• We have taken numerous weapons systems out of service - including the Peacekeeper ICBM, half our Minuteman ICBMs, and a number of ballistic missile submarines. Our B-1 heavy bombers and four Trident submarines no longer have a nuclear mission.
• In 1992, we unilaterally stopped nuclear testing, and developed the Stockpile Stewardship Program to improve the safety, security, and reliability of our stockpile in the absence of further testing - a subject to which I'll return later.
• We have completed all the reductions required under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty - or START.
• We are planning to reach the limits of the Moscow Treaty - a two-thirds reduction of our deployed nuclear force levels of eight years ago - by 2010, nearly two years early.

All in all, within a few years we will have 75 percent fewer nuclear weapons than at the end of the Cold War.

......We must be realistic about the world around us - about the challenges we face and about our ability to predict what other nations will do. President Clinton called his nuclear arms reductions part of a "lead and hedge" strategy: We'll lead the way in reducing our arsenal, but we must always hedge against a dangerous and unpredictable world.

That is still true today, and maybe even more so. Rising and resurgent powers, rogue nations pursuing nuclear weapons, proliferation, international terrorism - all demand that we preserve this "hedge."

There is no way to ignore efforts by rogue states such as North Korea and Iran to develop and deploy nuclear weapons, or Russian or Chinese strategic modernization programs. As long as other states have or seek nuclear weapons - and potentially can threaten us, our allies, and friends - then we must have a deterrent capacity that makes it clear that challenging the United States in the nuclear arena - or with other weapons of mass destruction - could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic response.

There is little doubt that some nations will continue to think that possession of nuclear weapons is the best way to preserve their regime or threaten their neighbors. We remain concerned that this is the case with North Korea and Iran today, as it was with Libya and Iraq in the past.

At the same time, demographic and budgetary concerns have led other countries to rely heavily on their nuclear forces. This is a strategy that resembles President Eisenhower's "New Look," during the 1950s, where nuclear weapons became the top priority for defense budgeting and strategic planning, as Eisenhower feared that trying to compete with Soviet conventional forces would either bankrupt America or turn it into a garrison state.

Ironically, that is the case with, Russia today, which has neither the money nor the population to sustain its Cold War conventional force levels. Instead, we have seen an increased reliance on its nuclear force, with new ICBM and sea-based missiles, as well as a fully-functional infrastructure that can manufacture a significant number of warheads each year.

China is also expanding its nuclear arsenal. It has increased the number of short-, medium-, and long-range missiles - and pursued new land-, sea-, and air-based systems that can deliver nuclear weapons.

To be sure, we do not consider Russia or China as adversaries. But we cannot ignore these developments - and the implications they have for our national security.

Our nuclear arsenal also helps deter enemies from using chemical and biological weapons. In the first Gulf War, we made it very clear that if Saddam used chemical or biological weapons, then the United States would keep all options on the table. We later learned that this veiled threat had the intended deterrent effect as Iraq considered its options.

While some may not see a real nuclear threat to the United States today, we should be mindful that our friends and allies perceive different levels of risk within their respective regions. Here, our arsenal plays an irreplaceable role in reducing proliferation.

Ever since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1968, the international community has recognized that the fewer nuclear-armed states, the better. In recent years, this concern has been highlighted by the grim realities of ideological terrorism, revelations about scientists selling nuclear know-how to the highest bidder, and information exchanges between irresponsible regimes.

Our goal continues to be to keep the number of nuclear states as limited as possible. And to this end, non-proliferation and arms-control efforts have had real successes over the last 45 years. South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, and Libya have all forsaken nuclear weapons for a variety of reasons. And our nuclear umbrella - our extended deterrent - underpins our alliances in Europe and in the Pacific and enables our friends, especially those worried about Tehran and Pyongyang, to continue to rely on our nuclear deterrent rather than to develop their own.

Our nuclear arsenal is vital for a final reason I mentioned earlier: We simply cannot predict the future. Who can tell what the world will look like in 10 to 20 years? As someone who spent most of his career in the intelligence business, I can assure you that our track record for long-term guesswork hasn't been all that great. We have to know our limitations. We have to acknowledge that the fundamental nature of man hasn't changed - and that our adversaries and other nations will always seek whatever advantages they can find. Knowing that, we have to be prepared for contingencies we haven't even considered.

Try as we might, and hope as we will, the power of nuclear weapons and their strategic impact is a genie that cannot be put back in the bottle - at least for a very long time. While we have a long-term goal of abolishing nuclear weapons once and for all, given the world in which we live, we have to be realistic about that proposition.

What seems to work best in world affairs, historian Donald Kagan wrote in his book On the Origins of War, "Is the possession by those states who wish to preserve the peace of the preponderant power and of the will to accept the burdens and responsibilities required to achieve that purpose." Now, if we accept that nuclear weapons are still relevant - and indeed, necessary - then we also have to accept certain responsibilities.

You are well aware of problems over the last year or so with the Air Force's handling of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons-related material.

These problems are being addressed as I speak:

• The Air Force is standing up a new headquarters office at the Air Staff that will focus exclusively on nuclear policy and oversight. This office will report directly to the Air Force Chief of Staff.
• The Air Force has also proposed a Global Strike Command that will bring all its nuclear weapons and materiel supporting U.S. Strategic Command - the nuclear-capable bombers and ICBMs - under one entity that can focus solely on the nuclear enterprise.
• The Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base is being revitalized and expanded - with a focus on sustainment and clearing up ambiguous chains of command that have created problems in the past.
• During the 1990s, supply-chain streamlining folded some nuclear-related components - such as the nose cones sent to Taiwan - into the regular supply chain. The Air Force is undergoing a top-to-bottom review of which items need to be taken out of that chain and placed under control of the Nuclear Weapons Center.
• And finally, the Air Force is developing a stronger, more centralized inspection process to ensure that nuclear material is handled properly - an effort that will be bolstered by expanded training for security personnel assigned to nuclear duties.

This will undoubtedly be a long-term process, but I have confidence that the Air Force is now moving in the right direction. And I thank all the Airmen who are currently working to return the Air Force's nuclear mission to the standards of excellence for which it was known throughout the entire Cold War.

Beyond changes currently underway, I asked former Energy and Defense Secretary James Schlesinger to form a task force to review the organization of both the Air Force and the Department of Defense as a whole to ensure that we have proper leadership and oversight of the nuclear enterprise. And I look forward to receiving his report and recommendations in December.

There is another element equally important to our arsenal's credibility: the safety, security, and reliability of our weapons.

Let me first say very clearly that our weapons are safe, reliable, and secure. The problem is the long-term prognosis - which I would characterize as bleak.

No one has designed a new nuclear weapon in the United States since the 1980s, and no one has built a new one since the early 1990s.

The U.S. is experiencing a serious brain drain in the loss of veteran nuclear weapons designers and technicians. Since the mid-1990s, the National Nuclear Security Administration has lost more than a quarter of its workforce. Half of our nuclear lab scientists are over 50 years old - and many of those under 50 have had limited or no involvement in the design and development of a nuclear weapon. By some estimates, within the next several years, three quarters of the workforce in nuclear engineering and at the national laboratories will reach retirement age.

Our nuclear weapons were designed on the assumption of a limited shelf life and that the weapons themselves would eventually be replaced. Sensitive parts do not last forever. We can and do re-engineer our current stockpile to extend its lifespan. However, the weapons were developed with narrow technical "margins." With every adjustment, we move farther away from the original design that was successfully tested when the weapon was first fielded. Add to this that no weapons in our arsenal have been tested since 1992 - so the information on which we base our annual certification of the stockpile grows increasingly dated and incomplete. At a certain point, it will become impossible to keep extending the life of our arsenal - especially in light of our testing moratorium. It also makes it harder to reduce existing stockpiles, because eventually we won't have as much confidence in the efficacy of the weapons we do have.

Currently, the United States is the only declared nuclear power that is neither modernizing its nuclear arsenal nor has the capability to produce a new nuclear warhead. The United Kingdom and France have programs to maintain their deterrent capabilities. China and Russia have embarked on ambitious paths to design and field new weapons. To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program.

For several years, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy have pursued a Reliable Replacement Warhead program - a program to field a safer, more secure warhead. New designs build in enhanced safety features and high reliability that can be assured without actual underground testing. The program would reinvigorate and rebuild our infrastructure and expertise. And it could potentially allow us to reduce aging stockpiles by balancing the risk between a smaller number of warheads and an industrial complex that could produce new weapons if the need arose.

The Congress has so far refused to fund the program beyond the conceptual phase - and this year funding was cut for even that. The reason, I believe, lies in a deep-seated and quite justifiable aversion to nuclear weapons, in doing anything that might be perceived as lowering the threshold for using them, or as creating new nuclear capabilities. Let me be clear: The program we propose is not about new capabilities - suitcase bombs or bunker-busters or tactical nukes. It is about safety, security, and reliability. It is about the future credibility of our strategic deterrent. And it deserves urgent attention. We must take steps to transform from an aging Cold War nuclear weapons complex that is too large and too expensive, to a smaller, less costly, but modern enterprise that can meet our nation's nuclear security needs for the future.

I've spent most of my time talking about our nuclear arsenal. Before closing, I want to take a step back and discuss, briefly, some of the broader implications of deterrence in the 21st century.

There can be little doubt that the post-Cold War world offers a new strategic paradigm for nuclear weapons, and particularly for the concept of deterrence. As our 2008 National Defense Strategy puts it, "the challenge is one of deterring or dissuading a range of potential adversaries from taking a variety of actions."

Deterrence has a specific policy goal - and, in this sense, deterrent strategies can be applied to many situations. A few examples come to mind.

Rogue regimes that threaten their neighbors and our allies, potentially with nuclear weapons, are a problem today and will be in the future. Our goal is, in part, to reduce their ability to hold other nations hostage, and to deny them the ability to project power. The New Triad I mentioned earlier, with a conventional strike force and ballistic missile defense, helps achieve this. A conventional strike force means that more targets are vulnerable without our having to resort to nuclear weapons. And missile defenses reinforce deterrence and minimize the benefits of rogue nations investing heavily in ballistic missiles: They won't know if their missiles will be effective, thus other nations will feel less threatened. And let's not forget the deterrent value of other parts of our conventional military forces.

We also still face the problem of weapons passing from nation-states into the hands of terrorists.... Today we also make clear that the United States will hold any state, terrorist group, or other non-state actor or individual fully accountable for supporting or enabling terrorist efforts to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction - whether by facilitating, financing, or providing expertise or safe haven for such efforts. To add teeth to the deterrent goal of this policy, we are pursuing new technologies to identify the forensic signatures of any nuclear material used in an attack - to trace it back to the source.

As we know from recent experience, attacks on our communications systems and infrastructure will be a part of future war. Our policy goal is obviously to prevent anyone from being able to take down our systems. Deterrence here might entail figuring out how to make our systems redundant, as with the old Nuclear Triad. Imagine easily deployable, replacement satellites that could be launched from high-altitude planes - or high-altitude UAVs that could operate as mobile data links. The point is to make the effort to attack us seem pointless in the first place.

Source: US Department of Defense. www.defenselink.mil

Let's Commit to a Nuclear-Free World

Senator Dianne Feinstein

When Barack Obama becomes America's 44th president on Jan. 20, he should embrace the vision of a predecessor who declared: "We seek the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth."

That president was Ronald Reagan, and he expressed this ambitious vision in his second inaugural address on Jan. 21, 1985. It was a remarkable statement from a president who had deployed tactical nuclear missiles in Europe to counter the Soviet Union's fearsome SS-20 missile fleet.

President Reagan knew the grave threat nuclear weapons pose to humanity. He never achieved his goal, but President Obama should pick up where he left off.

The Cold War is over, but there remain thousands of nuclear missiles in the world's arsenals - most maintained by the U.S. and Russia. Most are targeted at cities and are far more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Today, the threat is ever more complex. As more nations pursue nuclear ambitions, the world becomes less secure, with growing odds of terrorists obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The nuclear aspirations of North Korea and Iran threaten a "cascade" of nuclear proliferation, according to a bipartisan panel led by former U.S. Defense Secretaries William J. Perry and James R. Schlesinger.

Another bipartisan panel has warned that the world can expect a nuclear or biological terror attack by 2013 - unless urgent action is taken.

Nuclear weapons pose grave dangers to all nations. Seeking new weapons and maintaining massive arsenals makes no sense. It is vital that we seek a world free of nuclear weapons. The United States should lead the way, and a President Obama should challenge Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to join us.

Many of the world's leading statesmen favor such an effort. They include former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, former Defense Secretary Perry, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, and former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn.

Unfortunately, for eight years the Bush administration moved in another direction, pushing aggressive policies and new weapons programs, threatening to reopen the nuclear door and spark the very proliferation we seek to prevent.

President Bush made it the policy of the United States to contemplate first use of nuclear weapons in response to chemical or biological attack - even against non-nuclear states.

He changed the "strategic triad" - which put nuclear weapons in a special category by themselves - by lumping them with conventional weapons in the same package of battlefield capabilities. This blurred the distinction between the two, making nuclear weapons easier to use.

And he advocated new types of weapons that could be used in a variety of circumstances against a range of targets, advancing the notion that nuclear weapons have utility beyond deterrence.

Mr. Bush then sought funding for new weapons programs, including:

- A 100-kiloton "bunker buster" that scientists say would not destroy enemy bunkers as advertised, but would have spewed enough radiation to kill one million people.

- The Advanced Concepts Initiative, including developing a low-yield nuclear weapon for tactical battlefield use.

- The Modern Pit Facility, a factory that could produce up to 450 plutonium triggers a year - even though scientists say America's nuclear triggers will be good for years.

- Pushing to reduce time-to-test readiness at the Nevada Test Site in half - to 18 months - signaling intent to resume testing, which would have broken a test moratorium in place since 1992.

- A new nuclear warhead, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which could spark a new global arms race.

I opposed these programs, and Congress slashed or eliminated funding for them.

But President Bush had sent dangerous signals world-wide. Allies could conclude if the United States sought new nuclear weapons, they should too. Adversaries could conclude acquiring nuclear weapons would be insurance against pre-emptive U.S. attack.

Here's how President-elect Obama can change course. By law he must set forth his views on nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy, in his Nuclear Posture Review, by 2010. In it, he should commit the U.S. to working with Russia to lower each nation's arsenal of deployed nuclear warheads below the 1,700-2,200 the Moscow Treaty already calls for by 2013.

It would be a strong step toward reducing our bloated arsenals, and signal the world that we have changed course.

I was 12 when atomic bombs flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 200,000 people. The horrific images that went around the world have stayed with me all my life.

Today, there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world hundreds of times. And we now face the chilling prospect of nuclear terrorism.

The bottom line: We must recognize nuclear weapons for what they are - not a deterrent, but a grave and gathering threat to humanity. As president, Barack Obama should dedicate himself to their world-wide elimination.

Dianne Feinstein is a Democratic Senator from California. This essay was originally published in the Wall Street Journal, 3 January, 2009.

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