Opinion: Obama's Nuclear Policy -- An Opportunity for Bipartisanship

(April 6) -- In today's polarized political debate -- with congressional Republicans refusing to cooperate on much of anything and their Democratic counterparts not terribly inclined to include them anyway -- finding common ground on any issue has been nearly impossible. But this coming week might highlight one issue that could galvanize long-overdue bipartisanship: nuclear security.

On Tuesday, the administration released its Nuclear Posture Review, which charts a new course on the use of nuclear weapons. On Thursday, President Barack Obama travels to Prague, where he'll sign the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. And early next week, the United States will play host to more than 40 world leaders at a nuclear security summit.

These events all aim to work toward the long-held promise of a world without nuclear weapons, a goal the president outlined a year ago this week in the Czech Republic.

After that speech, some conservatives jumped at the opportunity to cast the new president as green on weighty foreign policy issues. But Obama wasn't driven by some fanciful naivety, as he was crystal clear that as long as others possessed the weapons, so would America. And it was a necessary reorientation -- the work of ridding the world of nuclear weapons needed to be taken up anew after being sidetracked under Obama's predecessor.

Despite ideological differences with Obama, even the most ardent Republicans would probably acknowledge that a long-term "no nukes" policy inherently makes the world safer. And those on the right would be in good conservative company -- Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, two Republican secretaries of state, have lashed themselves to a bipartisan zero-nuke team that includes Democrats Sam Nunn and former Secretary of Defense William Perry.

Then there's conservative hero Ronald Reagan, who sat down with Mikhail Gorbachev and advanced the cause of nuclear disarmament by nearly agreeing to sweeping nuclear arms limits in Reykjavik in 1986. As Reagan and Gorbachev must have sensed in their meetings, the Cold War would be over soon, and the landscape of international security would change with it.

President Obama's focus on arms control embraces this reality. The new START treaty begins to limit the number of deployed weapons and launching mechanisms by 30 percent -- down to 1,500 and 700 for each, respectively.

But it's the new Nuclear Posture Review that is the key to detailing how America's remaining nuclear warheads could be used. Most importantly, the document acknowledges that because current American conventional military capabilities are so much better than the rest of the world's, the role of nuclear weapons deterring non-nuclear attacks can be reduced.

At the same time, it reaffirms that nuclear weapons could be used to defend against a nuclear attack on the U.S. or its allies, and provides money to maintain our current arsenal. The new posture also signals the beginning of a new partnership with Russia and China -- the world's other large nuclear powers -- to control rogue warheads that could fall into the hands of terrorists.

America's new security posture is cagey to boot. It declares that the U.S. military won't attack any country that doesn't have nuclear weapons, assuming that country is a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That caveat snares Iran in its tracks, sending a strong message that Iran might find itself in America's crosshairs, and giving Tehran an incentive to swear off nuclear weapons.

It's this sort of smart and gradual walk-back from Cold War-era brinkmanship that reduces the danger of an inadvertent nuclear explosion. It will leave America with a strong deterrent against its nuclear near-peers, while eyeing the ultimate prize of a nuclear weapon-free world.

We may not reach that goal within our lifetime, but President Obama's new strategy begins that international dialogue, and that should make Republicans, Democrats and independents sleep a bit more soundly.

Jim Arkedis is the director of the Progressive Policy Institute's National Security Project. He writes daily at ProgressiveFix.com.


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