Your Guide to National Nuke Policy History Month Posted by David Shorr

Busy times indeed for our friends involved in US nuclear weapons policy. The administration today released the first Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in eight years (and the first ever to be published as an unclassified document). On Thursday, President Obama and Russian President Medvedev rendezvous in Prague to sign the recently concluded (and newly named) New START agreement. Next week, the US will host more than 40 world leaders for a Nuclear Security Summit. Meanwhile, negotiations continue over possible new UN sanctions against Iran, and the quinquennial Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference convenes next month. Got all that? It's definitely a lot nuclear policy to keep straight, so let me try to help.

Posture Review

The job of the NPR is to give a strategic framework for all of these issues, and the following passage lays out the major national security priorities: 

In coming years, we must give top priority to discouraging additional countries from acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities and stopping terrorist groups from acquiring nuclear bombs or the materials to build them. At the same time, we must continue to maintain stable strategic relationships with Russia and China and counter threats posed by any emerging nuclear-armed states, thereby protecting the United States and our allies and partners against nuclear threats or intimidation, and reducing any incentives they might have to seek their own nuclear deterrents.

Three pillars, then. Nonproliferation efforts to keep new nations from becoming nuclear-armed (e.g. Iran and North Korea). Second,stricter security measures to keep nuclear material from getting into terrorist hands, the subject of next week's summit. And third, doctrines and policies of deterrence to address the strategic and military calculus associated with nuclear forces and nuclear and other threats.

It was that third area -- particularly the declared purpose of the United States' nuclear arsenal -- that drew the most focus while the review was in process. In order to strengthen the taboo distinguishing nuclear arms as not having any war-fighting utility, many of us wanted the NPR to curtail the stated role of US weapons as narrowly as possible to deterrence against nuclear attack.

As forewarned in a series of leaks and reports, the NPR did not include the kind of categorical statement that would have really bolstered the nuclear taboo. On the other hand, the new declaratory stance does (also as promised and previewed) narrow the role of n-weapons in a way that will facilitate nuclear disarmament. If the hope was to confine nuclear arms to a single function, the fear was that they'd retain enough varied functions to justify keeping a lot more than we really need.

From this vantage, a major problem was the previous cultivated ambiguity about US potential use of nuclear weapons, and the NPR certainly clears things up. The major move was a new promise that the United States will not threaten or attack with nuclear weapons any nation that does not possess nuclear arms and is a party in good standing to the NPT.

In the case of countries not covered by this assurance – states that possess nuclear weapons and states not in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations – there remains a narrow range of contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW attack against the United States or its allies and partners.

Yet this does not mean that our willingness to use nuclear weapons against countries not covered by the new assurance has in any way increased. Indeed, the United States wishes to stress that it would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.

As you can see, the tension between the lattitude of the first passage and the self-restraint of the second is visible to the naked eye. This is then combined, even more oddly, with the promise to respond with conventional weapons in response to a chemical or biological attack by a NPT-complying state. Whatever the contradictions, this is the (clear, narrowed) remaining issue of declaratory policy, and it won't give much basis for anyone who might try to advocate preserving an outsized arsenal.

New START, New New START, and Future Arms Control

New START is the first binding US-Russian strategic arms control treaty in nearly 20 years. I'd point to three sets of issues: the agreement's substantive provisions, its ratification, and the direction of subsequent disarmament measures. For reasons I'll elaborate in a forthcoming article, the most important question is how bloody the Senate ratification battle will be.

In a nutshell, while New START is a very useful step, the next arms control agreement slated for Senate debate, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, is much more significant for nonproliferation. Ratification of New START should be a no-brainer -- though as Max Bergmann explains, this hasn't kept ideological arms control opponents from twisting themselves into pretzels of self-contradiction. If they succeed in hyping up controversy around New START, that could ratchet up the difficulty of ratifying the CTBT.

As to the substance of New START, I will leave it to real arms control experts to explain the significance of what reductions are and are not mandated. I recommend Jeffrey Lewis and Kori Schake -- noting only that Kori wrote her post before all the agreement's details had come to light and that while both are excellent explainers, be sure to bring your fascination with dual-capable bomber counting rules.

While New START is clearly valuable in resuming the arms control enterprise after a fallow period, reducing US and Russian forces, and establishing some strategic premises, it hardly counts as a major stride towards fulfilling nuclear weapon states NPT obligation to disarm. Which brings us to some very interesting questions of what next, and the clues offered in the posture review.

The NPR calls for further negotiations with Russia on a treaty mandating additional cuts in their arsenals. There are also references to holding running strategic security dialogue with both Russia and China. (Maybe they can talk about those "contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW attack," see above.)

But I was particularly intrigued by the lack of any reference to two key countries: France and the United Kingdom. It's a question, as I say, of nuclear weapon states' NPT obligation to disarm -- their half of the core nonproliferation bargain. The reason for all the focus on Russia and the US is that they have the lion's share of the weapons. Where it'll start to get interesting is when arms control talks start among all five of the traditional nuclear powers: the US, Russia, China, UK, and France. And where it will get really interesting is when those five conclude an agreement. Why? Because that brings us to the nouveau nuclear: India, Pakistan, and Israel. (I'm clinging to hopes that North Korea will be non-nuclear by then.)

The other intriguing area is unilateral reductions beyond the cuts mandated by New START. A section of the NPR describes the strategic and technological reasons the United States keeps a set of nuclear "spares" on hand. The report goes on to explain that the increased funding for the Energy Department's nuclear laboratories will help build a more precise picture of the actual need:

The non-deployed stockpile currently includes more warheads than required for the above purposes, due to the limited capacity of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) complex to conduct LEPs [life extension programs] for deployed weapons in a timely manner. Progress in restoring NNSA’s production infrastructure will allow these excess warheads to be retired along with other stockpile reductions planned over the next decade.

It will be interesting to see what these cuts amount to.

Nuclear Materials Security

Next week's Nuclear Security Summit of over 40 nations will deal with one of the most urgent security challenges the world faces: keeping key nuclear components and ingredients out of the hands of terror networks. Compared to some of the other issues described above, it is much less political complex or divisive -- hence the 40 plus leaders who will be in attendance in Washington. This is a matter of carrying out the to-do list of measures to tighten control and security for global stocks of nuclear material. We actually know how to lock this stuff down. Hence the short several-year timeline in which this broad coalition aims to secure all the world's nuclear material.

Now, when I say 'we' actually know how to do this, I don't mean that I actually know how to do this. I do, however, mean that the Stanley Foundation has convened very smart people to elicit their ideas on the matter (as is our wont). My colleagues also work closely with the Fissile Material Working Group, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has a special page of the Working Group's ideas. Plus, Ken Luongo laid out everything the summit should do in an Arms Control Today article last winter. Oh, and the Stanley Foundation also made this cool video; see a snippet on our YouTube channel and order the DVD / event-in-a-box so you can hold a discussion of the issue.

I'll wrap up with a few notes about what separates and what connects the NPT and nuclear materials security. The NPT focuses on the high politics and technical verification of keeping nations from acquiring nuclear weapons. While security measures overlap somewhat in disrupting smuggling networks like AQ Khan's and North Korea's, nuclear security is largely a matter of keeping nuclear material stockpiles and facilities locked away from non-state terrorist networks.

But the two sets of issues also have a couple important things in common. Both are concerned with reducing nuclear dangers. And while there's no guarantee of a nonproliferation payoff to the nuclear security efforts, a demonstration of effective international cooperation i's bound to be beneficial for the domestic and international politics of peace and security.

Comments

[m3 ds real]

There were no ground breaking shifts in U.S. strategic posture the U.S. has a credible nuclear deterrent into the foreseeable future. All the "noise" being emitted over this issue is silly since reality has changed little. Another grand Obama announcement, until you read the details.The timing of the announcement was meant to coincide with the signing of a useless treaty with Russia in the next couple of days and the nuclear summit next week.