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Arms control advocates in a letter this month urged President Barack Obama to protect his nuclear disarmament goals from possible contradictory assertions in a forthcoming Defense Department-led review of U.S. nuclear strategy (see GSN, Jan. 25).
(Feb. 17) -
Assembled and disassembled versions of the U.S. B-61 gravity bomb. Nuclear experts urged President Barack Obama this month to ensure that a forthcoming U.S. nuclear policy review does not conflict with his nuclear disarmament agenda (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration photo).
The letter's 13 signatories stressed the importance of ensuring that the Nuclear Posture Review "advances the highest security priorities: preventing terrorists or additional states from obtaining of using nuclear weapons; reducing global stockpiles, and moving toward a world without nuclear weapons."
The letter notes concern that the review could "preserve rather than put an end to Cold War thinking, and undermine the important agenda you (President Obama) set forth in Prague" (see GSN, April 6, 2009). The letter's signatories included National Medal of Science recipient Richard Garwin, former State Department Policy Planning Director Morton Halperin and former National Defense University head Lt. Gen. Robert Gard.
The authors urged Obama to pursue "transformational rather than incremental changes" in four major areas of U.S. nuclear policy:
"The new NPR should clearly narrow the purpose of nuclear weapons to deterring nuclear attacks on the United States and our allies," the letter states. "Ambiguity about the purpose of U.S. nuclear forces provides little deterrent value at a high cost; it undermines the credibility of our conventional deterrent, complicates our nonproliferation diplomacy, and can be used by other countries to justify their pursuit or improvement of nuclear weapons."
"If the United States adopted a core nuclear deterrence posture, it would facilitate a shift to a stockpile of hundreds rather than thousands of nuclear weapons," the authors wrote. "The NPR should make clear ... that the United States is able and willing to undertake further significant reductions in its deployed nuclear warheads provided that Russia is a willing partner."
In addition, Obama should curb U.S. preparations to retaliate immediately to a nuclear strike, the letter argues: "We conclude ... that the existence of large, alert U.S. forces trained and ready to launch on a few minutes notice does not serve the purpose of making war less likely. Restructuring our forces to provide high confidence that our weapons and command and control would survive an attack would remove the requirement for a prompt response and put you in a better position to manage a crisis."
Finally, the president should "clarify his January 2009 pledge 'not to authorize new nuclear weapons' by establishing that it is U.S. policy not to develop or produce newly designed warheads, or to modify existing warheads for the purpose of creating new military capabilities," the letter says.
"Efforts to pursue newly designed warheads are technically unnecessary and would undercut our efforts to convince other nations to forgo nuclear weapons or to refrain from developing new and more advanced types of nuclear warheads," the document states (Arms Control Association release I, Feb. 9).
Meanwhile, the Arms Control Association yesterday issued a separate report urging the United States to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (see GSN, Jan. 27).
"Today, there is no military justification to resume U.S. nuclear testing. The United States does not need nuclear tests to maintain an effective nuclear arsenal," the report states. "It is in the U.S. national security interest to prevent nuclear testing by others and to improve U.S. and international verification capabilities."
"Even though the United States has already signed the CTBT and thus assumed most treaty-related responsibilities, it cannot reap the full security benefits of the treaty until the Senate approves it by a two-thirds majority," the organization said.
"U.S. ratification of the CTBT is an essential first step to rebuilding international support for measures
to prevent the use and spread of nuclear weapons," the report states. "In 1995, the United States and the other nuclear powers promised to deliver on the CTBT in exchange for the indefinite extension of the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty]. Action on the CTBT would give the United States additional leverage to win international support for tougher nuclear inspections and more effective responses to cases of NPT noncompliance.
"A global, verifiable ban on nuclear testing would substantially constrain the ability of nuclear-armed
states, such as China, to develop new and more deadly nuclear weapons," it adds. "Without nuclear weapon
test explosions, would-be nuclear-armed nations -- like Iran -- would not be able to proof test more advanced, smaller nuclear warhead designs that could be used to arm ballistic missiles."
"U.S. ratification would spur other key nations, such as China, to ratify and would reinforce the global taboo against nuclear testing. Without positive U.S. action on the CTBT, the risks of nuclear weapons proliferation and the resumption of testing will only grow," the document asserts (Arms Control Association release II, Feb. 16).