When it comes to
fleshing out President Obama's vision of a nuclear-free world, the rubber meets
the road in a single document -- the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). For months, teams
from the White House, the Department of Defense, the Energy Department and the
State Department have been debating the United States nuclear strategy, from
the size of the stockpile, to the technology and infrastructure needed to preserve
current weapons to the quality and depth of the deterrent that our nuclear
arsenal is supposed to provide.
An NPR that too closely hews to the status quo and/or is largely
indistinguishable from its 2002 Bush-era predecessor document will be a wasted
opportunity. And, remember, the administration only gets one shot at a
NPR, even if the president is reelected. For better or worse, this
document will shape the future course of the Obama Presidency's nuclear weapons
agenda.Publication has been delayed
by one month -- not a huge deal, given that government reviews
invariably fall behind schedule. (The principals here are focused on
the crises of the day, and they don't have time to pay sufficient
attention to long-term reviews until the very end, when it suddenly
occurs to them that real decisions must be made.)
The NPR process has seemed to some in the arms control community to be biased in favor of Department of Defense equities. This is not entirely a false perception, and it is not entirely the fault of the administration. By statue, the DoD is the principal author of the document. When work began on the NPR in late spring, the DoD had staff ready; key State Department staff weren't even in place. Accordingly, the work on such basic questions as why does the U.S. have nuclear weapons and under what circumstances would the U.S. would contemplate their use was backloaded to the end of the process.
The first task was to develop guidance that START negotiators could use as they attempted to complete a follow-on agreement to replace the expiring START agreement, with an impending deadline of December 2009. But this NPR achieved a bureaucratic hallmark that none of its post-Cold War predecessors could brag about: it has become a true interagency project.
In an ideal world, one would figure out the value and purpose of nuclear weapons first, then make corresponding decisions on force levels and structure. This process was generally inverted because the administration inherited an existing stockpile and an existing force structure.
A few debates have been settled, and the degree of consensus on several contentious issues would surprise outsiders. President Obama has envisioned an NPR that alters the conditions under which the U.S. government will publicly declare that it would use nuclear weapons. (This is known as the "declaratory policy.") Idealists want the president to endorse a policy that states that the U.S. would only use nuclear weapons to respond to another nuclear attack -- a no first-strike policy. That option will probably not win out.
This question, in fact, will be debated at a deputy-level meeting in Washington next week.
One theme in recent press reporting -- that the White House is fighting to win control of the document from the entrenched nuclear bureaucracy -- may have been true earlier in the process, but the National Security Council seems to have a handle on it now. Doubtless, there are different perspectives on different issues, from the planners at the Defense Department's Strategic Command to the regional desks at the State Department, who worry that any departure from the "calculated ambiguity" that characterizes current nuclear policy would undermine the security of countries like Germany and Japan. (Ironically, the German and Japanese governments are among the most ardent states in encouraging the U.S. to move faster on nonproliferation and disarmament commitments.)
The current posture of calculated ambiguity allows the U.S. to brandish its weapons in response to pretty much any kind of attack. It helps with leverage, but it hurts the nonproliferation message. Obama wants a policy where weapons are only used for deterrence purposes without undermining the leverage, because he believes that brandishing nukes for purposes other than deterrence encourages proliferation.
Early on, the key debate revolved around the concept of "stockpile modernization," a phrase that, as The Cable notes, is ambiguous enough to have sparked a letter from Republicans and Joe Lieberman about what it must include, including funding for a "modern warhead." That line probably won't be crossed by the administration, but, to win approval of START, two thirds of the Senate are needed. In February, the administration's FY 2011 budget request will contain funds for the nuclear stockpile. For the most part, it will be debated in metaphors. (If you bring your car to a mechanic, you might be able to get your engine running more smoothly and your bumpers fortified -- you can get up to 60 miles per hour more quickly, but you can't exceed the maximum speed.) For nuclear weapons, the metaphor applies, but the arms control community worries that any refurbishment that makes current warheads and delivery systems and missiles more efficient will essentially increase their capacity. The NPR is a classified document, but the gist of what it says will be clear, and what message will it send if the U.S. is seen as enhancing its current stockpile while simultaneously changing its deterrent language? Here, presidential communication will, in some sense, translate these policy planks into reality -- as will the reception of its readers.
Key players in the process include Tom Donilon, the deputy national security adviser; Barry Pavel, an NSC official who served at the Pentagon under President Bush; Tom D'Agostino, currently the head of the Energy department agency that designs, builds and maintain the nuclear weapons; Ellen Tauscher, the undersecretary for nonproliferation at the State Department; Karin Look, a Tauscher deputy; Jim Miller, the Pentagon's policy deputy; Brad Roberts, its nuclear and missile policy chief; Rear Admiral Philip Davidson, the NPR director; Jon Wolfstahl, a senior aide to Vice President Biden; and secretaries Gates, Clinton and Chu.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/01/debating-declaratory-policy-on-nuclear-weapons/33451/
