1
Forthcoming in Le Monde Diplomatique, April 1
By Selig S. Harrison
With eleven potent words in a Prague speech on April 5, 2009, Barack Obama set
the stage for his Nobel Peace Prize and became both the hero of nuclear disarmament
advocates and the bête noire of true believers in nuclear weaponry. His Prague speech
laid down the gauntlet before three powerful adversaries: the Pentagon bureaucracy, the
defense establishments of Japan and other countries covered by the U.S. “nuclear
umbrella,” and the U.S. defense industries lobbying to sustain or increase U.S. nuclear
weapons deployments.
It was no surprise when Obama pledged to renew and extend an existing nuclear
arms control agreement with Russia known as the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or
START, that would modestly reduce their nuclear arsenals. But it was toxic for the true
believers when he declared at Prague that “we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in
our national security strategy.” The reason for their alarm was that he had just embarked
on the formal Nuclear Posture Review conducted by each new administration. When he
repeated the very same words in his September 23, 2009 United Nations speech, their
concern grew, focusing primarily on what the Review would say about five key issues.
Would it renounce the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States, as China
and India have done and as the Clinton administration promised to do in its controversial
1994 nuclear freeze agreement with North Korea, later abrogated by the Bush
administration?
In the event of a chemical or biological weapons attack, would the United States
henceforth rule out a nuclear response, relying on conventional weapons instead?
2
Given Germany’s recent demand for the removal of NATO-controlled U.S.
nuclear weapons from its soil within the next four years, would Obama withdraw tactical
nuclear weapons from the seven European countries where they are stationed?
Most important to the defense contractors, would he reduce the number of
nuclear-capable bombers in U.S. forces? Trident nuclear missile-firing submarines?
Land-based ICBMs?
The Norwegian Nobel Committee clearly hoped and expected that Obama would
side with the disarmers on most of these issues, explaining in its announcement of the
Peace Prize that it had “attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a
world without nuclear weapons.” But it is increasingly clear from conversations with
officials and advisers closely involved in the Review that Obama will give the true
believers most of what they want when it is formally unveiled on March 1. Furious
internal battles are continuing within the administration over the specifics of nuclear
force levels, which directly affect the U.S. posture in the continuing START negotiations,
but it is already clear that the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. strategy will not be
significantly reduced.
The United States first asserted its right to initiate the use of nuclear weapons
against conventional forces during the cold war, when the Soviet bloc enjoyed an
overwhelming advantage in troop strength and conventional firepower in Europe. NATO
warned of an irresistible “human wave” attack by numerically superior Soviet forces, and
a similar rationale was used to justify the threat of “first use” in deterring North Korea.
But as former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has argued, “there are no longer
tank divisions along our border that can break through within 48 hours. The first use
3
policy was a response to a situation that has fundamentally changed.” As for North
Korea, its once formidable army is now no match for the sophisticated South Korean
forces that have been developed with U.S. help in recent decades.
Proposals for “no first use” pledges are often dismissed as the naïve dreams of dogooders who do not understand the harsh realities of international politics. But insisting
on the right of “first use” is itself unrealistic because it is incompatible with the goal of
non-proliferation. “If we are serious about non-proliferation,” Fischer observed, “the
existing nuclear powers must create a climate of disarmament to reduce the incentive on
the part of others to go nuclear.” Article Six of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
provides for the reduction of existing nuclear arsenals in return for the non-nuclear
powers remaining non-nuclear. But if the nuclear powers threaten “first use” of the
nuclear weapons still in their possession while reductions proceed at a glacial pace spread
over decades, the non-nuclear states can hardly be expected to feel bound by their
promise.
In the case of North Korea, where I have visited 11 times, the harsh reality is that
the egocentric policies pursued by the United States will simply not work. Although the
United States has unilaterally removed its tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea, it
continues to deploy ICBMs and nuclear-capable aircraft on its Pacific aircraft carriers
within striking range of the North. For this reason, Pyongyang agreed to suspend its
nuclear weapons program in its 1994 nuclear freeze agreement with the Clinton
administration only after the United States pledged in Article Three, Section One of the
agreement that the United States would “provide formal assurances against the threat or
4
use of nuclear weapons” coincident with the completion of the North Korean
denuclearization steps envisaged in the agreement.
A similar pledge, together with steps to normalize relations, would be necessary
now to get a new denuclearization agreement with Pyongyang. But such a pledge has
been explicitly ruled out by the Pentagon committee that has conducted the Nuclear
Posture Review in consultation with the White House and outside expert panels. Barring
last-minute intervention by the President, the Review will accept the long-standing
Pentagon premise that any restriction on “first use” would deny U.S. generals the
necessary element of unpredictability and surprise in countering Pyongyang’s possible
use of chemical weapons.
Pentagon military exercises in South Korea based on this premise, known as
“Nimble Dancer,” have explicitly envisaged retaliatory nuclear strikes if North Korea
should ever use chemical weapons. Significantly, the Posture Review Committee rejected
the counter-arguments that have been made both by former Defense Secretary William
Perry and by a blue-ribbon Brookings Institution expert panel. Perry has declared that
“the United States could make a devastating response to a chemical attack without the use
of nuclear weapons.” The Brookings panel concluded that chemical weapons “production
and storage sites and delivery vehicles could be destroyed preemptively” with
conventional weapons in the event of a war with North Korea, and should any chemical
or biological weapons survive these strikes, “massive conventional assaults against
military targets could limit the scope of chemical and biological attacks without resorting
to nuclear weapons.”
5
The deadlock between the Pentagon and the proponents of a “no first use” pledge
has been part of a broader impasse over how to define the purpose of nuclear weapons.
The Pentagon wants a definition stating that “the purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter
and respond to the use of weapons of mass destruction (italics added), against the United
States or its allies,” thus lumping together chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. But
the White House would prefer language ambiguous enough to suggest a reduction in the
role of nuclear weapons, as pledged at Prague, which has led to a Talmudic debate
between the proponents and opponents of “no first use” over a compromise formulation.
At one extreme, the proponents are pushing for a pledge that “the sole purpose of
nuclear weapons is to retaliate against the use of nuclear weapons by others against the
United States or its allies.” The word “retaliate” makes this language tantamount to a “no
first use” pledge. Moreover, this language would clearly exclude the use of nuclear
weapons in response to an attack by conventional weapons as well as chemical weapons,
and would thus upset Japanese hawks who believe that the U.S. “nuclear umbrella”
should cover any North Korean or Chinese attack using either nuclear, chemical, or
conventional weapons.
One compromise variant of this language would permit a nuclear response to a
conventional or chemical attack by a country not in compliance with the NPT, such as
North Korea. Another variant would replace “retaliate” with “respond to.” This is more
acceptable to the hawks in Washington and Tokyo because it implies that a U.S. response
could hypothetically be initiated as soon as preparations for an enemy attack are
discovered.
6
After Obama’s Prague speech, a delegation of influential hawks in the Japanese
Defense Agency lobbied Congress and the Administration, warning that Japan would
develop its own independent nuclear weapons if the United States actually ruled out “first
use” against China and North Korea or failed to deploy what Japan considers adequate
nuclear forces. The Japanese delegation pushed in particular for continued deployment of
the nuclear-tipped version of the Tomahawk cruise missile, now scheduled to go out of
service in 2013. The U.S. Navy feels that the Tomahawks are no longer necessary, given
the efficacy of the Trident missile-firing submarines and the long-range bombers
assigned to protect Japan. Eight Tridents constantly patrol the North Pacific within range
of designated targets, seven of them constantly on “hard alert” with a 12-minute response
time.
Both the true believers in the Pentagon and the Japanese hawks want the U.S.
nuclear umbrella over Japan to be based on a concept of “extended deterrence,” in which
U.S. forces respond with nuclear weapons to any attack, whether with nuclear, chemical,
biological, or conventional weapons, as distinct from “core deterrence,” in which nuclear
weapons are used solely against a nuclear attack.
“Extended deterrence” is a fancy name for the hard line posture toward China and
North Korea pursued during the past five decades by the succession of Liberal
Democratic Party governments that have ruled Japan until the election last August
brought a new Democratic Party government into power. Before the election, the Obama
Administration had to take the lobbying by Japanese hawks seriously, but now the
Democratic Party government is strongly supportive of Obama’s Prague vision.
7
In one statement after another, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada has made this
support crystal clear. At the inauguration of the DPJ Cabinet on September 16, 2009, he
questioned “whether countries that declare their willingness to make first use of nuclear
weapons have any right to speak about nuclear non-proliferation.” During an October 16
meeting with visiting Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Okada told Gates that he would
like to discuss the “first use” issue with him. Gates avoided the issue, the Japanese media
reported, but responded later at a press conference by emphasizing the need for a
“flexible deterrent.” On the same day, Okada, speaking in Kyoto, underlined the
contradiction in Japan’s past policy on nuclear weapons. “Hitherto,” he said, “the
Japanese government has said to the United States, ‘we don’t want you to rule out first
use because it will weaken nuclear deterrence.’ However, it cannot be said to be
consistent for Japan to call for nuclear abolition in the world while requesting the first use
of nuclear weapons for ourselves.”
Answering critics, Okada argued that if the United States should adopt a no first
use policy, “that does not mean that Japan would be outside the nuclear umbrella. In the
unfortunate event that Japan suffers a nuclear attack, we are not ruling out a nuclear
response to it.”
The conflict between Tokyo and Washington over the first use issue was
underlined when the visiting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike
Mullen, echoing Gates, emphasized the need for flexibility in response to a press
conference question about first use, but went on to say that “in a region where the threat
continues to grow, I think we have to be very careful with respect to that.”
8
On top of his heresy on the “first use” issue, Okada has outraged hawks in both
Tokyo and Washington by stating that “we do not necessarily need a nuclear umbrella
against the threat of North Korea,” since “conventional weapons are enough to deal with
it,” and that “a Northeast Asia Nuclear-Free Zone,” presumably barring U.S. nuclear
deployments, would be desirable.
To be sure, the DPJ Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has been more circumspect
than Okada, and it is not clear whether the Foreign Minister speaks for his more hawkish
party boss, Ichiro Ozawa. There are deep divisions within the DPJ and within Japanese
society as a whole not only over security relations with the United States, but also over
whether Japan should have its own nuclear weapons. In many cases, the hawks who favor
first use and an “extended deterrent” are also advocates of an independent Japanese
nuclear weapons capability, and would like to use a breach with the Obama
Administration over the Posture Review to strengthen their case for a nuclear-armed
Japan.
To many hawks in Washington, both Okada in Japan and German Foreign
Minister Guido Westerwelle, who has repeatedly called for the removal of U.S. tactical
nuclear weapons from Germany, are not to be taken seriously. The hawks view them as
passing figures who will sooner or later be overruled by a pro-U.S. in-group. During his
tenure as Chairman of the State Department’s Policy Planning Council in the Clinton
Administration, Morton H. Halperin told me, a “senior official” of the Department’s
European Bureau dismissed anti-nuclear statements by German leaders, saying, “That’s
not the real German government.” I have often heard a similar attitude expressed
concerning the new DPJ government in Tokyo.
9
An analysis by Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists shows
that the United States still keeps “10 to 20” B61 free fall nuclear bombs at Buchel Air
Force Base in western Germany and has a total of 150 to 240 nuclear weapons in
Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. The Nuclear Posture Review is
expected to reject proposals for their withdrawal for two reasons: Turkey wants to keep
them to deter a hypothetical future nuclear attack by Iran, and the Pentagon argues that
since a NATO Strategic Review is scheduled for next year, it would be “premature” to
withdraw them now unilaterally.
Another argument used for keeping U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe is
that the START agreement will address only the strategic nuclear arsenals of the two
sides and will leave Russia with an advantage in tactical nuclear weapons. Estimates of
U.S. tactical nuclear weapons usually range from 500 to 1,200, including those in Europe,
as against some 2,000 deployed by Russia and up to 6,000 more in reserve. Groundlaunched tactical nuclear weapons have a range of 300 to 400 miles.
The Obama Administration’s decision to seek START reductions of deployed
strategic nuclear warheads from 2,200 to 1,500-1,675 came as a disappointment to arms
control advocates. Russia has signaled that it is ready to go down to 1,000 to reduce its
defense budget and there has long been a widespread consensus in Washington that this
would be a safe level. Even John Deutch, a hard-liner who headed the Clinton
Administration’s Posture Review, has pushed for 1,000. But more important than the
number of warheads and delivery systems, as such, in the eyes of experts, is how the
nuclear “triad” on each side will be configured, that is, the number of strategic bombers,
land-based and sea-based nuclear missiles respectively that will make up each side’s
10
nuclear deployments. The mix recommended in the Posture Review must be the same as
that pursued in the START negotiations, and a bitter struggle over whether to cut
bombers, ICBMs, or Trident submarines has added to the continuing delays in unveiling
the Review resulting from broader differences between the Pentagon and the White
House.
Surprisingly, even the Air Force Association, which usually lobbies for Air Force
interests, recommended in a recent study that the 114 nuclear-armed B-52 and B-2
bombers now in service should be phased out and primary reliance placed on ICBMs and
nuclear-armed submarines because they are more likely to survive a first strike than the
bombers. Such a sweeping change is unlikely, buts the number of ICBMs, now 450, is
likely to be reduced as part of the START reductions. Only the 13 nuclear-firing
submarines, each with 24 Trident missiles, appear likely to go unscathed.
Congressional allies of the Pentagon true believers are unhappy with the START
reductions. They would prefer to see the U.S. nuclear arsenal become bigger and better
and have threatened to hold up ratification of the START agreement unless they are
satisfied with projected legislation designed to “modernize” existing U.S. nuclear
weapons. The Bush Administration tried unsuccessfully to push through a controversial
“Reliable Replacement Warhead” program frankly intended to upgrade the existing
arsenal. Obama says that his “Stockpile Management Program” will merely “refurbish”
the existing weapons to make them safe and reliable without upgrading them, but the
devil will be in the details. All 40 Republican Senators, plus Independent Joseph
Lieberman sent a letter to Obama on December 17, 2009, stating that “We don’t believe
further START reductions can be in the national security interest of the U.S. in the
11
absence of a significant program to modernize our nuclear deterrent.” Specifically, they
called for “full and timely” upgrading of the B-61 and W-76 warheads.
The respected Arms Control Association has reported that both STRATCOM and
the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), “are pushing for the ability to
design new warheads” and that the Posture Review Committee is still wrestling with this
issue. A leak from the NNSA last year revealed that it has a detailed plan for expanding
the plutonium construction capacity of its Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge,
Tennessee; and Kansas City, Missouri facilities and is seeking Congressional sponsorship
for legislation to begin implementing the program, which would, if carried out, enable the
United States to quadruple its annual production of plutonium warheads from 20 per year
to 80.
So far, the NNSA plan has not surfaced in Congress, but its mere existence
underlines the enormity of the entrenched vested interests that Obama would have to
overcome if he should seriously pursue his vision of nuclear disarmament. In retrospect,
it is clear that he seriously underrated his enemies in the military-industrial complex, just
as he has done in dealing with the pharmaceutical-health insurance complex and with the
banks. In addition to keeping Gates on as Secretary of Defense, he did not appoint any
civilians sympathetic to nuclear disarmament to key Pentagon positions, leaving hawks in
control of the Posture Review. He kept on the Bush Administration’s director of the
NNSA along with the entire staff responsible for the plan to quadruple plutonium
production capacity, and in staffing the White House, the strongest advocate of nuclear
disarmament among his advisors, Ivo Daalder, was sidelined with Obama’s approval in a
12
cushy NATO job to make way for more compliant national security staffers favored by
the Pentagon.
Once Obama started making statements about the need to “maintain a strong
nuclear deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist,” he lost the battle over nuclear
disarmament to the aggressive STRATCOM commander, General Kevin Chilton. On
November 11, 2009, General Chilton predicted that the United States “would still need
nuclear weapons 40 years from now,” and on December 15, 2009, at a conference of 105
military and arms control specialists in Omaha, Nebraska, sponsored by the Program on
Nuclear Information with part of its funding from STRATCOM, he became still more
expansive, declaring that “We will need nuclear weapons as long as there is a United
States.”