Carp diem

Shorter Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) from Saturday: if the Obama administration does what the New York Times suggests vis-à-vis nuclear weapons policy and does “not update its remaining stockpile of nuclear weapons to make them safer and reliable,” then Senate approval of New START and the Test Ban Treaty is “unlikely” and “in doubt”. Inhofe also wrote that “While some reduction in our nuclear arsenals may be warranted, deep cuts would be destabilizing and would encourage other countries to enter the nuclear competition.”

Since New START will not enact deep cuts, will not include all of the NYT’s recommendations, and has already been paired with a significant budget increase for safety and reliability work by the nuclear labs, it appears that Inhofe’s preconditions will be satisfied when it comes to New START. He may oppose portions of the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review, as well as the Test Ban, but that opposition will have nothing to do with the merits of New START, which will include modest nuclear weapons reductions that Inhofe himself grudgingly accepts are warranted.

Inhofe is not the only lawmaker to espouse “OBAMA’S ARMS CONTROL AGENDA IS HORRIBLE (p.s. New START seems mostly ok).” So too does Sen. John Thune (R-SD), whose own Policy Committee admitted that “the triad may be able to sustain certain cuts in warhead and delivery vehicle numbers.” Tritto (ditto +1) Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who in 2009 endorsed “a move, as rapidly as possible, to a significantly smaller force.” Even Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) anti-arms control MO has not included explicitly opposing New START. Of course, this could all change once New START actually exists. But at this point, the core purpose of the treaty--modest reductions--still seems to enjoy wide bipartisan support.

In other words, Kingston’s analysis from December still rings true:

The approach of some vocal Republicans to the “New START” negotiations goes something like this: suggest a dozen different ways that a new arms control agreement with Russia could be detrimental to U.S. security without actually opposing a new arms control agreement with Russia.

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Nukes on a Blog, Congress, New START, CTBT, Posture Review, FY 2011 Budget Request, Senate (all tags)

Remarks of Vice President Biden
National Defense University
Washington, DC
February 18, 2010
The Path to Nuclear Security:
Implementing the President’s Prague Agenda

Ladies and gentlemen; Secretaries Gates and Chu; General Cartwright; Undersecretary Tauscher; Administrator D’Agostino; members of our armed services; students and faculty; thank you all for coming.

At its founding, Elihu Root gave this campus a mission that is the very essence of our national defense: “Not to promote war, but to preserve peace by intelligent and adequate preparation to repel aggression.” For more than a century, you and your predecessors have heeded that call. There are few greater contributions citizens can claim.

Many statesmen have walked these grounds, including our Administration’s outstanding National Security Advisor, General Jim Jones. You taught him well. George Kennan, the scholar and diplomat, lectured at the National War College in the late 1940s. Just back from Moscow, in a small office not far from here, he developed the doctrine of Containment that guided a generation of Cold War foreign policy.

Some of the issues that arose during that time seem like distant memories. But the topic I came to discuss with you today, the challenge posed by nuclear weapons, continues to demand our urgent attention....

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Nukes on a Blog, Obama Administration, New START, CTBT, 2011 Budget Request (all tags)

Today, Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech on nuclear weapons that badly needed to be given. Delayed completion of the U.S.-Russia New START agreement has endangered the Obama administration’s tightly-sequenced arms control agenda (New START, Nuke Summit, NPT RevCon, CTBT…FMCT/deep cuts?) During the time since START I’s lapse in December, opponents of the administration’s agenda have become more organized and more vocal, threatening to block progress before it even starts. Yet Biden’s speech today should help the administration reverse these negative trends and regain control over what has become one of its signature foreign policy objectives.

What did Biden do well? He spoke movingly about the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons, something that gets forgotten in the transaction-oriented culture of Washington and the theory-oriented culture of strategic policy. “The very existence of nuclear weapons leaves the human race ever at the brink of self-destruction,” he said. “The destroyed world Oppenheimer feared must not ever become a reality.” [All quotes from my notes and not official]

Biden also achieved something very important: he clearly delineated how the Obama administration’s priorities—nuclear reductions, nonproliferation, strategic stability—can provide the U.S. nuclear weapons labs with a reinvigorated mission and sense of purpose. The labs are “true national treasures that deserve our full support,” said Biden. He lauded the labs’ historical role and explained how the bigger FY 2011 nuclear weapons budget “reverses the last decade of dangerous decline” under the Bush administration, when “nuclear facilities were neglected and underfunded.” Biden concluded that “responsible disarmament requires versatile specialists” who provide the scientific and technical expertise to achieve the nation’s national security goals.

In response to my question earlier—political co-optation or chastisement?—Biden went with co-optation. He cited Shultz, Kissinger, Perry, Nunn, and McCain as members of the “emerging bipartisan consensus” on nuclear issues. He triangulated between liberal arms controllers concerned with the bigger FY 2011 nuclear budget and conservative deterrence-freaks alarmed by anybody not named Ronald. “We respectfully disagree” with both groups, he noted. In sum, Biden mostly kept his political nose clean, except for the shots at President Bush’s stewardship of the nuclear complex, and stuck to positive justifications for the administration’s plans.

Finally, Biden said relatively little about international concerns, though he did remark that the NPT “consensus is fraying” and needs to be strengthened. Of all the forums where international relations are too wonky to discuss, I thought National Defense University would have been an exception. I guess not.

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Nukes on a Blog, Obama Administration, New START, CTBT, FY 2011 Budget Request, Extended Deterrence (all tags)

Scrappy kid from Scranton

In Washington today at 1 PM eastern time, Vice President Joe Biden will give a major address on U.S. nuclear weapons policy at National Defense University. According to press reports, the speech will complement Biden’s January 29 WSJ op-ed by: 1) elaborating on the rationale behind the FY 2011 nuclear weapons budget increase; 2) previewing April’s Global Nuclear Security Summit and May’s NPT Review Conference; 3) explaining how advances in nuclear weapons science have delegitimized previous concerns about the CTBT; and 4) debunking the straw man criticism that envisioning a future without nuclear weapons somehow negates concrete initiatives that advance U.S. security interests today, such as New START.

Here are three things to look for in Biden’s speech:

Co-opt or chastise? – Does Biden justify the administration’s agenda by co-opting the political middle (i.e. moderates/graybeards) or by chastising critics as out of touch with 21st century security challenges? Or neither? This will forecast how the administration plans to handle New START ratification a few months from now.

Budget and the labs – It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see the FY 2011 nuclear weapons budget increase as “hush money” for the Obama administration’s arms control agenda. This makes for shrewd short-term tactics; however, it does not address the long-term challenges facing the labs on personnel, morale, and more. While we shouldn’t let the laboratory tail wag the U.S. foreign policy dog, let’s not pretend that Obama’s political opponents won’t exploit the labs’ challenges not only to pocket the FY 2011 budget increase, but also to demand more more more.

So, for Biden today: how does the FY 2011 budget increase tie into a long-term vision for what the labs should be doing in the 21st century? How can the administration’s priorities—nuclear reductions, nonproliferation, strategic stability—provide the labs with a reinvigorated sense of purpose?

International community and ED – If there was a flaw in Biden’s WSJ op-ed, it was that he avoided touting the administration’s approach to key allies. Not to carp when an 800 word op-ed doesn’t accomplish everything a 5,000 word essay could, but there is an international component to the administration’s agenda that goes beyond the Nuclear Summit and Review Conference. I’m talking about ED—no, not John Isaacs’s sweetest tie ever, but extended deterrence.

Mr. Veep: how will the Obama administration assure allies of the commitment of the U.S. nuclear umbrella while reducing its arsenal? Providing a positive answer to this question will demonstrate to key allies that the administration’s agenda is not being pursued unilaterally without considering our friends’ interests, too.

UPDATE 12:15 PM: You can watch the speech here or here.

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Nukes on a Blog, Obama Administration, New START, CTBT, FY 2011 Budget Request, Extended Deterrence (all tags)

The Arms Control Association has released the nominees for its third annual Arms Controller of the Year contest. Previous winners include Norway's foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Reps. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.) and David Hobson (R-Ohio).

President Obama is the obvious frontrunner, but he’s already been on an award tour or two this year, hasn’t he?

German foreign ministers Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Guido Westerwelle and Japanese foreign minister Katsuya Okada might be good choices because of their willingness to remind everyone that the “beneficiaries” of U.S. extended nuclear deterrence not only have a say in the policy, but also possess serious doubts about whether Cold War-style nuclear deployments are still the best way to deal with 21st century security challenges.

Looking ahead, NOH hopes that the 2010 award goes to Vice President Biden after he helps find a non-retrograde solution for modernization, shepherds a treaty or two through the Senate, and begins operationalizing –through both the budget and the global nuclear security summit – the administration’s plan to secure all vulnerable fissile material within four years.

12 months and counting, Veep. Do it to it.

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Nukes of a Blog, New START, START, Russia, CTBT, Obama Administration, Japan (all tags)

The International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament today released its big report, “Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers.” At over 300 pages and with 76 recommendations and loads of supplemental data, this report is an arms control abbondanza. The commissioners are ballers, too.

Here are five of the report’s more significant recommendations…

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Nukes on a Blog, CTBT, START, Posture Review, New START, Extended Deterrence (all tags)

Following up on the JASON report, que el fu** is NNSA talking about here?

While we endorse the recommendations and consider them well-aligned with NNSA’s long-term stockpile management strategy, certain findings in the unclassified Executive Summary convey a different perspective on key findings when viewed without the context of the full classified report.

Is it that NNSA thinks JASON doesn’t know how to properly write an executive summary? Or is it that NNSA is suggesting that only people privy to the classified report have the knowledge required to make decisions for the rest of us?

Not that policymakers would ever misrepresent classified information in order to advance their preferred policy outcome or anything like that. Just to be safe, however, let’s stay as far away as we can from “we know something you don’t know so do what we say” decision-making.

And yes, before anybody *blockquote*s me to death, I do appreciate the value of nuance on a complex matter, the necessity of secrecy in certain cases, etc.

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Nukes on a Blog, Posture Review, CTBT (all tags)

Not to be overshadowed by his friends in the Senate, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), dean of the Massachusetts delegation and a leading light on nuclear nonproliferation, sent his Nuclear Posture Review recommendations to the White House yesterday.

All Markey wants for Christmas is mission limitation to core deterrence. Well, that and the end of high-alert, a no first use pledge, a stockpile of fewer than 1,000 warheads, no new-design warheads, and CTBT ratification.

As Markey himself might say, once more unto the breach, dear friends.

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Nukes on a Blog, Congress, START, CTBT, Posture Review (all tags)

By Kirk Bansak and Andrew Riedy

Quibbling with the conventions of op-ed form and style aside, PONI’s critique of our article on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty makes a few points that merit a response.

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Nukes on a Blog, Iran Watch, CTBT, North Korea, China (all tags)

Daryl Kimball today offers a comprehensive rebuttal to Sen. Jon Kyl’s recent WSJ op-ed, “Why We Need to Test Nuclear Weapons.”

On Sunday, The Spectrum of southern Utah editorialized in favor of the Test Ban:

As we know in Utah, you don't have to have an atomic bomb land on top of you to kill you. The fallout can be equally deadly as it floats through the atmosphere, causing various cancers that have taken thousands of lives.

[snip]

It's time to put the same principles that proved effective in stopping Divine Strake to pushing for the United States to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Why? We already have a nuclear arsenal that far outweighs any other on the globe. There have been proposals to reconfigure the existing weaponry into newer, "smarter" nukes that have, thankfully, been defeated. The fact is, if this nation was ever to begin launching nukes, there are more than enough to get the job done, even if some are not quite as powerful as others.

Kirk called The Spectrum to find out about its political leanings. It endorsed Republican John Swallow in both (2002, 2004) of his failed efforts to unseat Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson; Republican Sen. Robert Bennett in 2004; Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch in 2006; and Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman in both of his races (2004, 2008). In other words, it ain’t no liberal rag.

In an op-ed in The Hill last week, former STRATCOM commander Gen. Eugene Habiger wrote:

With the very security of our nation at stake, the time for partisan games is over.  The recommendations of the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review should reflect the operational necessities of today’s military. And the Congress should prepare to work with the President on the follow-on to START and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty…The task at hand is serious. So is the President’s policy. We should support it.

The Big Mo rolls on.

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Nukes on a Blog, CTBT, Table Scraps (all tags)