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Obamas Nuclear Vision

By David S. McDonough

This article was originally published as Obamas Nuclear Vision, The Foreign Exchange (online),

Canadian International Council, 19 April 2010.

On 12-13 April 2010, world leaders from 47 different countries gathered for two days of meetings at US

President Barack Obamas Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC. As President Obama made clear

on the eve of this unprecedented meeting, the threat posed by nuclear terrorism remains the single

biggest threat to US security, both short-term, medium-term and long-term.

At the conclusion of this summit, a number of technical agreements and individual commitments by

Ukraine, Russia, Canada and others were made on securing the roughly 2-million kilograms of fissile

material enriched uranium and plutonium worldwide. Nuclear proliferation amongst states,

especially North Korea and Iran, was not officially on the agenda. But delegates were still able to discuss

such matters on the sidelines, most notably the US and China on the question of further sanctions

against Iran. A final communiqu committed the attending countries to work towards securing allvulnerable nuclear material within four years.

This summit was one of the initiatives announced on 5 April 2009 in Prague, where President Obama

famously declared his intention to take steps towards a world without nuclear weapons. Some of the

presidents more idealist supporters will see such summitry as further evidence that his lofty rhetoric

has indeed been matched by concrete action a preliminary first step to even more significant changes

in the future. Ironically, this view is also shared by some of his harshest critics. They may not directly

object to the summit itself, but they remain wary, to put it mildly, of this presidents commitment to US

national security. Indeed, they envision that such summitry will only lead to an unwise American

preoccupation with disarmament, at the inevitable expense of a strong US strategic deterrent.

Yet both dovish supporters and hawkish critics have made the critical mistake of conflating President

Obamas idealist rhetoric on nuclear disarmament with his more modest and incremental policies. True,

this may all be a prelude to more significant changes in the future. Such prognosis would be better

informed, however, not by simply taking President Obamas eloquent rhetoric at face value, but rather

by examining the actions undertaken under his watch.

It is certainly fortunate that the summit follows closely on the heels of a number of other nuclear-

related announcements. These provide a hint, nothing more, of what Barack Obama will likely achieve in

the coming years of his presidency. In the world of politics, as in most things, actions still speak much

louder than words.

First, after several months of difficult negotiations, President Obama and Russian President Dmitry

Medvedev signed the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on 8 April 2010 in Prague. Once

ratified by Congress, the New START agreement will supplant the Bush administrations 2002 Strategic

Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT). Notably, it places limits on the US and Russian nuclear arsenals to

1,550 deployed strategic warheads each, and replaces and streamlines the verification regime provided

by the START I agreement that expired last December.

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This arms control treaty is certainly a step in the right direction. After all, the SORT agreement had

placed limits of 1,700-2,200 deployed warheads for the US and Russia and did not feature much in the

way of verification provisions. New START also counts the actual warheads deployed through additional

on-site inspections, as opposed to simply attributing the number of warheads based on the type of

delivery vehicle.

But it is equally important to not exaggerate the importance of this treaty. It does not place limits on

either tactical nuclear weapons or the stockpiles of both Russia and the US. American plans for missile

defence remain largely unrestrained, so long as ballistic missile silos are no longer converted to carry

missile defence interceptors. The high alert levels of both sides nuclear arsenals are meanwhile left

untouched. And if one takes the lower SORT levels into account, the deployed warhead limits set by

New START seems modest indeed. In fact, these reductions may be even less than they seem. As nuclear

expert Hans Kristensen notes, by counting bombers as only one deployed warhead when they can in fact

carry multiple warheads, hundreds of nuclear weapons are effectively hidden by each side.

Second, after a three month delay, the Obama administration finally released its own Nuclear Posture

Review (NPR) on 8 April 2010. This is the third Congressionally-mandated review in the post-Cold War

period, the other two being released in 1994 and 2001, and the first such review released to the public.Given President Obamas stated intention to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US national

security strategy, the contents of the 2010 NPR provide crucial insight into Obamas nuclear vision.

At first glance, there is certainly reason to be optimistic. The review for the first time places priority on

strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime, which certainly bodes well for the forthcoming Non-

Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. It declares that the fundamental role of US nuclear weapons,

with the intention of making it the sole purpose, is to deter a nuclear attack on the US, its allies and

partners. This point is reiterated in the NPRs clarification of US negative security assurances to not

use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states that are party to the Non-

Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations. And unlike

previous administrations, this review has more explicitly spelled out that a chemical or biologicalweapon attack would only result in a massive conventionalresponse.

Yet, much like the New START agreement, there is more to this review than meets the eye. The US

nuclear force structure remains largely unchanged and will continue to be modernized. It will also be

joined with prompt, conventional global strike capabilities, missile defence systems and a strengthened

nuclear infrastructure; in other words, all the main elements of what President George W. Bushs 2001

NPR described as the New Triad.

The renewed US commitment to restrict the role of nuclear weapons also has an important qualifier

the non-nuclear state needs to be in compliance with its non-proliferation obligation, a caveat that will

assuredly be used at the discretion of the United States. Iran and North Korea, for example, are already

listed as countries that are not in compliance. It would not be a stretch to imagine countries like Syria

and others being added. And in the event of a biological attack, the US also reserves the right to makes

adjustments to this assurance, which essentially opens the door to a possible nuclear response.

The Obama administration has therefore pursued through the New START agreement and as codified

in the 2010 NPR largely modest and incremental policies. Indeed, it remains to be seen what has

actually changed. The US will continue to pursue gradual reductions in nuclear weapons, much as it has

done over the last two decades. The size of its nuclear arsenal is unlikely to dramatically decrease, and

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there are no signs of any significant alteration to the triad force structure. And irrespective of any

negative security assurances, the US still sees utility in threatening to use nuclear weapons on non-

nuclear states. In all likelihood, this trend will continue to shape US nuclear targeting policies and strike

options in the years ahead.

President Barack Obama, despite the penchant for soaring rhetoric in describing his vision, has so far

produced a nuclear reality that is far more realist than idealist, gradual than transformative. This is true

with the Obamas arms control agreement with Russia; it is true with his approach to US nuclear

strategy and posture; and given the modest agreements on preventing nuclear terrorism that came out

of Washington this week, it is equally evident with the Nuclear Security Summit. This conclusion will

assuredly disappoint supporters hoping for more significant steps on the path to nuclear disarmament,

surely as it will allay the worst fears of Obamas critics, so long as their ideological hostility does not

blind them to this reality.

This is not to say that Barack Obama does not sincerely wish to achieve nuclear zero at some point in

the future. But it does mean that the president like some of his more idealist predecessors, Ronald

Reagan not least among them has balanced such high-minded inclinations with a much more realistic

set of policies. With such pragmatism on display so far, it would be surprising indeed to see significantsteps towards either nuclear disarmament or even a transformed US nuclear posture in the future.

David S. McDonough is a Doctoral Candidate in Political Science at Dalhousie University, a Doctoral

Fellow at Dalhousies Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, and is presently a Visiting Research Associate at

the Centre for International Policy Studies, University of Ottawa. He is a recipient of a SSHRC Canadian

Graduate Scholarship (2006-2009), the SDF Dr. Ronald Baker Doctoral Scholarship (2009-2010), and the

Killam Doctoral Scholarship (2008-2011). He was chair of the CIC Working Group on Nuclear Strategy at

the Halifax Branch. Currently, he is the editor of the CIC Strategic Studies Working Groups forthcoming

book, titledCanadas National Security in the Post-9/11 World: Strategy, Interests and Threats.