US President Barack Obama has launched his long-expected campaign to reduce the threat of global nuclear war and nuclear terrorism. Last year, Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize based on expectations that he would make great achievements in this area. Although the Prize decision may have been premature then, the president has definitely earned his award during the past month.
President Obama’s nuclear campaign consists of four core components. The first element was Obama’s speech in Prague last year recommitting the United States to eliminate all nuclear weapons. The second was the signing earlier this month in Prague of the New START Treaty. The third component was the administration’s Nuclear Security Summit aimed at enhancing the safety and security of nuclear materials. The fourth core element will occur next month with the convening of the NPT Review Conference in New York.
The new Nuclear Posture Review, released at the beginning of April, provides an overarching conceptual framework for integrating these elements. In principle, all four elements will work together to decrease the risks of nuclear war, nuclear terrorism and nuclear non-proliferation. Unfortunately, one man, no matter how great, cannot achieve nuclear nirvana when so many forces are beyond his control.
The Prague speech served to rally popular support for the new administration’s arms control agenda in many countries, but several of the world’s nuclear powers do not seem to have received the message. The first signs of trouble became evident in the fall and winter when the United States and Russia failed to negotiate a new strategic nuclear arms control agreement before the original START Treaty expired in December 2009. Administration officials now acknowledge that they underestimated the complexities of negotiating even the modest reductions achieved in the recently signed New START Treaty.
The initial plan, developed even before Obama assumed office in January 2009, was to proceed quickly to negotiate a new treaty with much deeper reductions that would also address some of the issues left out in New START, which was originally seen as a simple bridging agreement pending its replacement by something more comprehensive. Now that the New START Treaty looks to be a more enduring accord, supporting a stable and predictable US-Russian nuclear relationship in some areas but not others, the Obama team is rethinking the entire bilateral arms control process inherited from the Cold War. The new thinking could endorse a more multilateral process that would involve additional nuclear weapons states or closer linkages between offensive and defensive weapons.
The Nuclear Security Summit in April was seen as a personal triumph for President Obama even if it accomplished little in practice. Most of the announced agreements simply confirmed, or at best accelerated, projects that already were accepted. The most important decision was to hold a follow-on conference in Seoul in 2012, which will likely ensure continued attention and progress regarding the nuclear security issue. Nuclear terrorism is a low probability but high-risk danger that has the potential to devastate the international economy and paralyze world trade even more effectively than Iceland’s volcanoes.
The administration’s ability to secure the attendance of so many world leaders, representing 47 countries with advanced nuclear technologies, for the first Nuclear Security Summit to discuss an issue that until now has been largely left to technical experts demonstrated the potential power of President Obama to shape the international political agenda. The White House is now debating what issue to focus global attention on next—climate change, international financial reform or Middle East peace.
Tensions within the greater Middle East threaten to undermine the administration’s plans for next month’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. The original hope was that demonstrating progress in reducing Russian and US nuclear forces as well as in improving the security of loose nuclear materials would enhance Washington’s leverage to restrict further the number of countries that develop sensitive nuclear technologies, such as uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, which can be misused to make nuclear weapons. A key priority is to mobilize support among NPT parties for limiting nuclear cooperation with Iran.
But many Arab countries want Washington to exert greater pressure to compel Israeli nuclear concessions before they will consent to other NPT-related changes. Having now fought and failed twice to force a change in Israel’s settlement policies, the Obama administration is not eager for yet another confrontation with Israel, at least until after this November’s congressional elections.
In addition, the Obama administration, like everyone else, has yet to find a solution to Iran’s pursuit of unauthorized nuclear activities. Neither diplomacy nor sanctions nor military force provides good options in this case. Next month’s NPT Review Conference will likely not solve this problem either. Regime change is increasingly seen as the best hope for Tehran, though people continue to debate what if any role the United States can and should play in promoting it.
Richard Weitz - Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute, Washington DC.
