Debate: On the Right Nuclear Weapons Track

(March 8) -- President Barack Obama has resumed a vital post-Cold War chore interrupted by his predecessor -- reducing America's nuclear arsenal. The White House reportedly is putting the final touches on its Nuclear Posture Review, which aims to reinforce the world's nonproliferation regime without undercutting deterrence.

The new strategy reverses the Strangelovian course pursued by George W. Bush during the heyday of conservative infatuation with unilateralism and pre-emptive strikes. For example, rather than build on the momentum of previous arms-reductions efforts, Bush funded research on a new line of nuclear weapons -- "bunker-busters" -- intended to take out underground nuclear facilities or command centers.

Under Obama's strategy, America will develop no new nuclear arms. Instead, Obama is contemplating a new system, called "Prompt Global Strike," that would enable the United States to hit targets anywhere with non-nuclear weapons. And where Bush rejected the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban as an infringement on U.S. sovereignty, Obama, who backs the treaty, will invest in efforts by U.S. weapons laboratories to ensure the reliability of a smaller stockpile.

Expect conservatives to attack these changes as fresh proof of Obama's "naïve" quest for a world without nuclear weapons -- a vision he offered in his first address to the United Nations in September. The right found an improbable ally in French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who reproved Obama for dreaming while rogue states like Iran and North Korea are bent on expanding the nuclear club.

But Obama's critics don't explain how the United States can stem the spread of nuclear arms by holding on to many more than we need. Russia also wants to get rid of its superfluous nukes, which is why it's been pressing Washington for a new arms-reduction treaty. What's more, under the 1965 Non-Proliferation Treaty, the nuclear powers are obliged to reduce their nuclear stockpiles in return for agreement by nuclear "have-nots" to forgo building nuclear weapons.

Obama reasons that, by holding up its end of the bargain, the United States can strengthen global nonproliferation norms and intensify pressure on Tehran and other regimes that may be thinking about acquiring nuclear weapons. And as White House officials have stressed, the nuclear "zero option" is a policy aspiration, not something anyone believes is achievable anytime soon.

If Obama is naïve in embracing that goal, he's in good company. In 2007, Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and George Shultz -- hardly a gang of utopian dreamers -- also teamed up to call for a world free of nuclear weapons. They argued that reducing reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence would diminish the chances of a conflict escalating to a nuclear exchange and lower the odds that nuclear materials and weapons would fall into dangerous hands.

As it happened, the Gang of Four echoed the strategic logic of a prescient mid-1990s Progressive Policy Institute report by Robert Manning, which likewise endorsed the goal of zero nukes. Manning noted that with the end of the East-West standoff, "nuclear weapons are de facto being devalued as the currency of power."

Obama is also right to resist pressure from his left to weaken the deterrent value of America's arsenal as it shrinks. The traditional arms-control lobby is demanding that the administration declare that the "sole purpose" of the country's nuclear arsenal is to deter a nuclear attack. The White House counters with "primary purpose," which would leave open the possibility of using nuclear weapons against enemies who threaten us with other weapons of mass destruction, biological or chemical.

Such calculated ambiguity will keep our foes guessing, without inhibiting the president's ability to lead the way internationally toward nuclear disarmament. Together with efforts to boost the reliability of our remaining nuclear warheads, and develop new, non-nuclear weapons, it will leave America with a strong deterrent that relies less and less on the grotesque logic of mutually assured destruction.

Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute.


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