Obama aiming for a nuclear-weapons-free world

In a speech held in Prague , US President Barack Obama became the first president in more than 20 years to publicly state that the US should aim for a world free of nuclear weapons.

“Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked—that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction,” said Obama. “Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.”

The speech confirms statements Obama made on the campaign trail when he stated, “Here’s what I’ll say as president: America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons.” Obama said that as the only nation to have used an atomic bomb in warfare, the US has a “moral responsibility” to start taking steps now.

Nearly every president since Harry S. Truman has tried to reduce the reliance on nuclear weapons in US foreign policy. Obama is not the first president to consider the idea of abolishing them altogether—President Reagan was a keen proponent and said as much in his second inaugural address in 1985, much to the chagrin of secretary of state Alexander Haig, national security adviser John Poindexter, and US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency director Kenneth Adelman. His proposals, in negotiation with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, almost came to fruition in 1986 at the Reykjavik Summit, but the talks collapsed over US refusal to stop working on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) space-based weapons system. Reagan called nuclear weapons “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.”

How possible?

The US, like all nuclear-weapons states that signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT), is supposed to be working toward the complete elimination of its NW stockpile, but few have done so. The UK claims to have reduced its NW stockpile by 25% through keeping the same number of warheads for the trident missile system as the polaris missile system it replaced. The US and Russia have reduced their number of NWs through the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties, START I and START II. Under the Bush administration, an additional set of warheads were put into storage but without the verification regimes of START. France and China have kept or slowly increased the number of warheads they have, but only South Africa, a non-signatory of the NPT, has abandoned and dismantled its entire nuclear-weapons program.

So how realistic is Obama’s goal of reaching an NW-free world? The thinking among policy analysts has changed since the 1955 Russell-Einstein manifesto —calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons--was labeled optimistic and naive. Today former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former defense secretary William J. Perry, and former senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) have signed editorials and statements in major international newspapers, arguing that such a goal is realistic with the latest advances in verification techniques. A number of advisers to candidate Obama, including Perry, helped persuade the candidate to make reducing NWs a policy goal as part of his campaign.

The core tactics

The key elements of Obama’s Prague speech were splitting the goal into short-, medium-, and long-range tasks. Obama emphasized that “a world without nuclear weapons” won’t be reached soon, “perhaps not in my lifetime.”

In his speech Obama announced his short term goal: “to put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same. Make no mistake: As long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies—including the Czech Republic. But we will begin the work of reducing our arsenal.”

Also among the short-to-medium-term tasks were the following:

• Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty ;
• Renewal of NPT and START;
• New global initiative to secure all vulnerable nuclear material, which would expand on the work done in the 1990s by the Nunn-Lugar bill to secure former Soviet Union facilities;
• A revamping of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which would include new controls on the production of weapons-grade materials;
• Creation of an international fuel bank.

In addition, groups formed under the Bush administration such as the Proliferation Security Initiative , an ad hoc team of countries that intercept ships believed to be smuggling dual-use nuclear materials, would be strengthened.

Ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) may be possible once Al Franken of Minnesota is finally seated in the Senate , which would bring the Democratic majority in the Senate to 59—requiring only eight Republican votes to ratify it. Despite the US and China not ratifying the CTBT, the verification program set up in Vienna, Austria, has been successful in detecting the North Korean, Pakistan, and Indian nuclear tests, which implies the monitoring network setup to verify the treaty could detect a 0.4 kiloton-yield device (one-tenth the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima). A 2002 National Academies of Sciences report on the CTBT , chaired by current science adviser John Holdren, came to the same conclusions.

The day after Obama’s speech at a conference sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (a Washington-based think tank), James Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, said that the proposals would be dealt with at the highest levels of government. “As a measure of the president’s continuing commitment to this vital nonproliferation agenda, he has asked for Vice President Joe Biden’s help to lead the administration’s nonproliferation efforts,” said Steinberg.

Biden will be in charge of getting the CTBT ratified (he tried to shepherd it through in 1999 under a Republican Senate) and of helping persuade China to do the same. Biden will also work on the proposed fissile material cutoff treaty , which will limit the production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium and which has been stalled for more than a decade.

A new START treaty between Russia and the US looks more likely with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in charge although an end-of-the-year timetable looks ambitious.

But it was Obama’s comments on Iran and North Korea (which pulled out of the NPT) that distinguished a new diplomatic engagement.

“Rules must be binding,” said Obama. “Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response, and North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons. All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime. And that’s why we must stand shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans to change course.”

“Iran has yet to build a nuclear weapon. My administration will seek engagement with Iran based on mutual interests and mutual respect. We believe in dialogue. But in that dialogue we will present a clear choice. We want Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations, politically and economically. We will support Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy with rigorous inspections. That’s a path that the Islamic Republic can take. Or the government can choose increased isolation, international pressure, and a potential nuclear arms race in the region that will increase insecurity for all.”

The international fuel bank, an idea that has been pushed by both UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei, is believed to be part of the solution to dealing with Iran’s nuclear program and a way of encouraging states wishing to rely on nuclear power to do so without developing a uranium enrichment program. According to the Wall Street Journal , “A senior Obama administration official disclosed Sunday that, as part of that effort, the White House has had high-level contact in recent weeks with Kazakhstan to serve as host for such a proposed fuel bank.” A few days after Obama’s speech, the US announced that it was participating in talks with Iran , in a direct departure from the policies of the Bush administration.

Obama ended his speech on the following note:

“Now, I know that there are some who will question whether we can act on such a broad agenda. There are those who doubt whether true international cooperation is possible, given inevitable differences among nations. And there are those who hear talk of a world without nuclear weapons and doubt whether it’s worth setting a goal that seems impossible to achieve.”

“But make no mistake: We know where that road leads. When nations and peoples allow themselves to be defined by their differences, the gulf between them widens. When we fail to pursue peace, then it stays forever beyond our grasp. We know the path when we choose fear over hope. To denounce or shrug off a call for cooperation is an easy but also a cowardly thing to do. That’s how wars begin. That’s where human progress ends.”

Paul Guinnessy