The Obama Administration's Nuclear Weapon Strategy

The Promises of Prague

Aiden Warren

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135093945
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book comprehensively outlines and evaluates the key Obama nuclear weapons policies, developments and initiatives from 2008–2012. Beginning with the administration's vision and goals posited in the 2009 Prague Speech and reaffirmed in the National Security Strategy of 2010, the book assesses the congressionally mandated Nuclear Posture Review, the New START Treaty, the pursuit of Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty ratification, the Proliferation Security Initiative, the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference, the Global Nuclear Security Summit – and the extent to which Obama, in the context of such initiatives, has actually upheld the lofty goals posited in Prague and differentiated himself from the nuclear path pursued by the Bush Administration. Additionally, the book evaluates the Obama Administration's dealings with other states in the context of its nuclear weapons policy – in particular, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, India, and China.

Offering a comprehensive analysis of the current status of the US nuclear weapons strategy, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and students of American foreign policy, security studies and international relations.

1 The vision of Prague

In contrast to the Bush Administration, the election of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States promised significant changes in US nuclear policy and priorities. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama pledged to set a new direction in US nuclear weapons policy and to show the world that America believed in its existing commitment under the NPT, while also emphasizing the ultimate goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons. This chapter will outline the key goals of the April 5, 2009 Prague speech as a means to establish the platform on which to assess the extent that Obama’s vision has transformed the international security context and shifted the United States—as well as other key states—towards the goal of total nuclear disarmament. In the president’s dual pledge, he vowed on the one hand to take definitive actions towards the abolition of nuclear weapons, and to “put an end to Cold War thinking” by reducing “the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same.” On the other hand, he pledged that until such goals were reached, the United States would “maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies.”¹ As a means to reduce US warheads and stockpiles, his administration articulated the need to negotiate a new version of START with the Russians in 2010; to achieve a global ban on nuclear testing, the administration would immediately and “aggressively” pursue US ratification of the CTBT; and finally, Obama would attempt to strengthen the NPT as a basis for co-operation. The positive impression he left on his Prague audience was viewed by many in the international community as a sharp break from policies of the previous administration, which had banished the term “disarmament” from its official statements and vied for an expanded role for nuclear weapons in US security strategy. As a necessary foundational pillar, this chapter will define and articulate the “promises” and “vision” of Prague, thereby providing the base on which the remainder of this book can efficiently evaluate the extent to which the Obama Administration has truly transformed policy into practice.

The global context of Prague

Unlike his predecessor, and well before his election victory in 2008, Barack Obama was very clear in his convictions on nuclear weapons. Like many arms control/non-proliferation proponents, he believed that they were the most inhumane military devices conceived and were intrinsically indiscriminate in relation to those that they could kill and the infrastructure that they could destroy. For Obama, whether it was by misfortune, miscalculation or a deliberate design, the ramifications of nuclear warfare would be nothing short of catastrophic. They are the only pieces of military hardware created with the capability of destroying the planet—particularly considering their blast, radiation and potential “nuclear winter” ramifications. And given the stockpiles that are still in place—some even growing—they have the capacity to destroy the planet many times over. While climate change has been considered the defining issue confronting the international community, the ongoing concern posed by nuclear weapons—and their associated material—can be considered on equal terms, and perhaps more dire, given the immediacy of their potential impact.² The danger connected with the failure of existing nuclear-armed states to disarm, the inability to thwart new states from obtaining nuclear weapons, and the failure to prevent any non-state actor from gaining access to such weapons is a real possibility.³ Indeed, it exceeds any imaginable benefit that one may associate with the sustained custody of these weapons and challenges the complacency with which they have—for the main extent—been held since the demise of the Cold War.⁴ As a US senator and presidential candidate, Obama made nuclear non-proliferation the centerpiece of his national security agenda. When he came into office, he inherited two key legacy issues to address: the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the Middle East and the fallout from the deepest domestic and global financial crisis since the 1930s. The president was, however, determined not to be complacent and pursued an affirmative agenda: “of what the United States, and American leadership, would stand for in the world. And at the center of that affirmative agenda was a new nuclear strategy for the United States.”⁵

When Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, the United States and Russia still possessed 22,000 of the world’s 23,000 nuclear weapons. With nearly half of all those weapons being operationally deployed and, alarmingly, over 2,000 of such weapons on high alert,⁶ the (in)security scenario that many considered a Cold War relic was very much intact. Moreover, in the years preceding the 2008 election victory, there appeared to be an apparent breaking down of the non-proliferation system. Indeed, despite many forebodings—not to mention the non-participation of France and China until 1992—the regime had held together relatively well for the first 30 years of existence of the NPT. However, when India and Pakistan, who had never signed the treaty, joined the undeclared Israel as fully-fledged nuclear-armed states in 1998, the regime was greatly challenged. Of course, combined with North Korea’s tests and withdrawal from the NPT, as well as Iran’s uranium enrichment program and alleged weapon-making capability, the regime became well and truly under strain. In fact, one could argue that there was an arms control crisis when Obama came to power. With such developments taking place in some of the most capricious regions, waning confidence in weapons security and the command systems of the longer-established nuclear powers, and the very real potential for a surge in proliferation—particularly given the scenarios in Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, India and China—the notion of a misunderstanding occurring was not implausible.⁷

Aside from the threat posed by both NWS and new nuclear weapon states (NNWS), there can no longer be any illusions pertaining to the intention of certain clandestine actors and their preparedness to wield massive destruction on non-combatant civilians. And while the probability was minimal and lower than many exaggerated accounts have indicated, their capacity to construct and detonate a basic nuclear device is not stretching the bounds of our imagination. Of course, for such actors a much simpler device—referred to as the “dirty bomb”—that combines conventional explosives with radioactive materials such as medical isotopes, could be also devastating.⁸ While not having the capacity to cause the same sort of damage as a fission or fusion bomb, the psychological impact could be immense, and no doubt has been the core thrust behind the Obama-led Nuclear Security Summits of 2010 and 2012. Additionally, the likely growth of civil nuclear energy, not least in response to climate change concerns, will pose some further proliferation and security risks; particularly if accompanied by the building of new state amenities for enrichment at the front end of the fuel cycle and reprocessing at the back end. This would entail a substantial amount of fissile material that could potentially become accessible for destructive intent.⁹

For the Obama Administration, the only absolute solution to the issue of nuclear weapons is to press for their complete elimination, and secure the very stockpiles of the highly enriched uranium (HEU) or separated plutonium on which they are reliant. This has been an elongated and multifaceted route and its end will require all existing nuclear-armed states to reassert their commitment to abolition, and actually mean what they say. Indeed, if one considers the disarmament and non-proliferation efforts¹⁰ over the last two decades, it has been quite evident that new momentum for change has been difficult to maintain when positive inroads can so easily be erased. The Cold War’s demise saw a brief but relatively industrious phase of nuclear disarmament and threat reduction action. This encompassed the decommissioning of thousands of warheads and brought the global total into the vicinity of the current level; far from the astonishing level of 70,000 weapons that:

peaked in the mid-1980s … With the Cold War ended, the number of nuclear weapons has been significantly reduced, yet they continue not only to exist, but also to be central to the security doctrines of those States that possess them.¹¹

Still, during the early 1990s, there were assertive unilateral reductions undertaken by states on their respective arsenals in the United States, Russia, United Kingdom and France. These cuts were evident in initiatives such as the 1991 START Treaty that produced significant reductions in the number of offensively deployed strategic weapons;¹² the elimination of intermediate range nuclear forces; the removal of ground-based battlefield nuclear weapons from Europe; and the French and UK removal of all ground-based nuclear weapons of all ranges from their inventories. In 1992, the United States sanctioned the progressive threat reduction programs designed to secure perilous weapons and materials, and specifically, to diminish the possibility of such materials being attained by terrorist groups, or states that permitted terrorism.¹³ Further positive developments were also evident when South Africa relinquished its weapons program and joined the NPT, while three states of the former Soviet Union—Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine—abandoned nuclear weapons and also joined the NPT as non-NWS. In addition, the nuclear enmity between Argentina and Brazil was controlled when Argentina ratified the regional nuclear weapon-free zone (the Treaty of Tlatelolco) and both subsequently joined the NPT. Of course, one of the definitive successes for non-proliferation proponents was the indefinite extension of the NPT, formalized during the 1995 conference of NPT parties.¹⁴

Notwithstanding some of the aforementioned positives, the momentum has not been sustained. In 1998, having rejected recurring appeals for them to join the NPT, India and Pakistan became explicit nuclear-armed states, while it became accepted that Israel was nuclear active despite never confirming its status. In the same year, multilateral discussions pertaining to a fissile material production cut-off treaty broke down in the Geneva Conference on Disarmament (CD) and have stayed that way for well over a decade and a half. In 1999, the US senate failed to ratify the CTBT and despite Obama’s Prague assertions, it still faces an uphill battle. While the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT, also referred to as the Moscow Treaty) of 2002 provided, albeit defective, legal strength to earlier announced unilateral cuts, it was the last “action” shown in arms control by the Bush Administration that would later seek new avenues of reinvigorating the nuclear option via “bunker busters” and the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. Moreover, the Bush Administration unilaterally withdrew from the ABMT, ensuring that many problems for future disarmament negotiations would again arise. While there was a concerted effort to reinvigorate new non-proliferation regulations in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, such efforts were greatly challenged with the revelation of the AQ Khan clandestine ring, concerns over the alleged Iraq nuclear program, and the materialization of the North Korea and Iran issues.¹⁵ But even more than this, when it came down to firm and robust disarmament decisions, responses from the core nuclear-armed states were nothing short of neglect, and in some instances, sheer disinterest. This was clearly evident with the 2005 NPT RevCon that produced no substantive consensus on any proliferation items and was defined by Harald Müller as “the biggest failure in the history of this Treaty.”¹⁶ Similarly, at the UN World Summit of the same year, there was also nothing in the form of consensus, or even a well-intentioned nuclear non-proliferation or disarmament statement.¹⁷

Defining the vision

With the nuclear non-proliferation regime under immense challenge, the momentum shifter came in the form of four US statesmen: secretaries Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and senator Sam Nunn and their defining January 2007 Wall Street Journal opinion article. They argued that while nuclear weapons were crucial to maintaining international security, as during the Cold War, the doctrine of mutual Soviet–American deterrence was now obsolete. Although deterrence would continue to be a pertinent consideration for many states—with regard to threats from other states—the dependence on nuclear weapons for this purpose was becoming increasingly perilous and ineffective. As a means to embolden the non-proliferation regime for the twenty-first century and ultimately the attainment of “global zero,” a joint enterprise encompassing a series of steps would need to be undertaken.¹⁸ The steps, they argued, would entail changing the Cold War posture of deployed nuclear weapons to one that encompassed an increase in warning time, and therefore, markedly reduce the danger of an accidental or unauthorized use of a nuclear weapon. Naturally, the steps should also include the—continued and substantial—reduction in the size of nuclear forces in all states that possess them and the elimination of short-range nuclear weapons designed to be forward-deployed. Moreover, the pursuit of the highest possible standards of security for all stocks of weapons, weapons-usable plutonium, and HEU everywhere in the world should also be considered an imperative. Similarly, attaining control of the uranium enrichment process combined with the guarantee that uranium for nuclear power reactors could be obtained at a reasonable price—via the NSG and then from the IAEA—was also flagged. In the US context, they called for a bi-partisan process with the senate that would emphasize greater mutual understandings, while taking advantage of recent technical advances so as to attain ratification of the CTBT.¹⁹

Further steps were also conveyed pertaining to halting the global production of fissile material for weapons. This would involve phasing out the use of HEU in civil commerce and removing weapons-usable uranium from research facilities around the world. Achieving the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons, they continued, would also necessitate proficient actions to hinder or counter any nuclear-related conduct that was potentially threatening to the security of any state or peoples. In alluding to the potential impact US leadership could have in this context, Kissinger, Shultz, Perry and Nunn maintained that reasserting the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be a “bold initiative” that “could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations.” As further stated:

without the bold vision, the actions will not be perceived as fair or urgent. Without the actions, the vision will not be perceived as realistic or possible. We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal, beginning with the measures outlined above.²⁰

The statement of the four former US statesmen had a significant impact around the world, and was followed by many similar and supportive statements from groups of highly experienced and influential former officials in Europe and elsewhere. In the months during his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama also endorsed the sentiments of Kissinger, Shultz, Perry and Nunn when discussing his own weapons-related security position. In a September 2008 interview, Obama conveyed what he deemed would be “a new direction in nuclear weapons policy” that would attempt to show “the world that America believes in its existing commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to work to ultimately eliminate all nuclear weapons.” He fully “reaffirmed” the goal as called for by the above statesmen as well as the “specific steps they propose to move us in that direction.”²¹ Obama emphasized that America would not disarm unilaterally and as long as states retained nuclear weapons, the United States would maintain a nuclear deterrent that is strong, safe, secure and reliable. However, under his watch, he would not authorize the development of new nuclear weapons and would make the global goal of eliminating nuclear weapons a core pillar of US nuclear policy.²²

In giving a preliminary insight into his Prague speech, Obama stipulated the necessity of seeking “real, verifiable reductions in all US and Russian nuclear weapons”—deployed or non-deployed, strat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations and acronyms
• Introduction
• 1 The vision of Prague
• 2 The Obama Administration and the Nuclear Posture Review
• 3 The Obama Administration and the New START Treaty
• 4 The Obama Administration and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
• 5 The Obama Administration and other nuclear initiatives
• 6 The Obama Administration and Iran, North Korea and Pakistan
• 7 The Obama Administration and India, China and Israel
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index