Guest Post: The Nuclear Posture Review - The Long View

by Cheryl Rofer

There are a number of ways to look at the NPR, and I hope to hit several of them in several posts. But I think that the most important aspects of this NPR are broad and long-term.

The first NPR was in 1993; the idea of such a review came from the demise of the Soviet Union, the loss of that strategic rivalry, and the much-reduced probability of general nuclear war. This is the third NPR, and the first to begin to reorient away from the Cold War.

The mood in 1993 was naively festive; there was an expectation that all that Cold War hostility would just melt away. The US and Russia have many reasons to be wary of each other, so that early mood would have dissolved in any case. But George Bush and the neocons he put in positions of power went much further.

The Bush administration took a generally belligerent stance, along with an unwillingness to discuss nuclear strategy beyond wanting new nuclear weapons, combined with its embrace of preventive war and the apparent neocon desire for a renewed rivalry with Russia. For these and other reasons, relations between the United States and Russia deteriorated. Even so, the Russians continued to press for arms control negotiations, particularly toward replacement of the START I agreement that lapsed last December, and the Bush administration blew them off. Other negotiations, for example, in the Conference on Disarmament, got short shrift from the United States, as did the 2005 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review conference.

Barack Obama came to the presidency with the intention of moving toward no nuclear weapons, but first he had to tone down both the rhetoric and fears between the two nations. The simple fact of being willing to negotiate a new START agreement began that process. Achieving an agreement that reduces numbers of warheads and delivery vehicles and keeps improved verification procedures in place was the next step, confirmed in Prague by the two presidents today.

The NPR is another step along the way. A number of specifics, like the qualified no-first-use pledge and the statement that there will be no new weapons designed, move away from the saber-rattling of the Bush years and reverse the destabilizing ambiguity that President Bush favored. That’s significant; the direction has been turned 180 degrees.

Jeffrey Lewis sees this as a pivot point where nuclear policy begins to catch up with the reality of the end of the Soviet Union and that today’s dangers are nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. He sees this pivot point as extending across the many current nuclear happenings: New START, the NPR, and the upcoming nuclear summit and NPT Review Conference.

Ward Wilson sees the NPR as what President Obama wanted, and that what he wanted was a consensus. That’s important, and it leads into what I see as some of the important things about this NPR.

The entire document is unclassified and on the Web. There will be no smirking of “all options are on the table.” The options are there and readable by everyone. If the administration strays too far from what it has said, we can point that out. It means that within the bureaucracy there will be no excuses that they had the wrong classified annex when they made that decision or that they couldn’t find page 273 of their copy. It is a message that this administration thinks that accountability is important and intends to stand by its words.

The rollout on Tuesday was explicitly interagency, with the Secretaries of Defense, State, and Energy and their question-answering representatives all there. The interagency nature of the document was emphasized, too, with listing of the task forces and committees that contributed. That’s an important message, too: the whole administration is on board with this. No secret meetings in the basement of the Pentagon, no cabals at the National Laboratories. Well, some of the latter might show up after a while, but they will have been marginalized by this interagency solidarity.

The administration, as is becoming customary, held a phone conference for bloggers with some high-up officials. They are happy to talk to everyone.

And a prosaic, but I think important, point. he words “work plan” were repeated at the rollout and in the phone conference. I’ve both used and resisted project management. It has its place and its appropriate level of application, and the developers of the NPR have applied it well. I have to admit to having read only the Executive Summary and skimmed the rest at this point, but the Executive Summary is a gem of project management. All the issues are neatly broken down (as neatly as anything like this can be), and the bullet points are clear and relevant, linked to actions.

So the overall message is that we are working toward a nuclear-free world with the Russians, arms control and more is back on the table, and we’re doing it in a serious way that will direct actions.

Cheryl Rofer currently blogs at Phronesisaical, after a career that included research and practical experience in the nuclear fuel cycle, fossil fuel, lasers and environmental cleanup, including collaborations in Estonia and Kazakhstan.

Comments

[Awesom0]

Thank you for these incredibly informative posts. I don't know enough about the specifics to offer comment, but I feel like I know a lot more than before I read it.

Please keep them coming.

[Jacob Davies]

The best thing about the new NPR is that Obama really seems to get the degree to which the US sets international norms. The declaration that the US will not use nuclear weapons against conventional attacks set the norm for the rest of the world, which will both influence their weapons development programs, and would have a great effect in the aftermath of the use of a nuclear weapon by another state in defending against a conventional attack. The new posture basically says, you can't use nukes against people who don't have nukes; and if you never want to get nuked, the best way to accomplish this is never to develop nukes. That's kind of a big f-cking deal, as Biden might say, because none of that was true under the previous doctrine.

The (admittedly few) people I have seen who are focusing on the "handcuffing" of US nuclear power really do not seem to get this. In reality the US cannot be handcuffed and the NPR would be just so much paper if a real crisis ever came about*. It matters almost exclusively as a way to communicate to the world what the US thinks are acceptable and unacceptable uses of nuclear weapons (well, and to save money on maintaining a peacetime arsenal far larger than necessary). The moral authority of the US may have been undermined in recent years (see recent threads here...) but Americans should understand that the world looks first & foremost to the US for guidance on norms. In part that's because of its military power, but that's not enough; Russia has plenty of military power and no authority whatsoever when it comes to setting norms. What the US says and does sets the tone to a far greater degree than any other country.

* The whimperers tend to be particularly focused on reductions in weapons systems, which is pretty silly to me; the US could build an endless supply of new delivery systems at very short notice in a real crisis. A favorite statistic of mine: between 1936 and early 1941 the US built 134 B-17s; between late 1941 and 1945 it built 12,597. The only important functions of peacetime weapons systems are, 1) ensuring a second-strike capability (which the SLBM arm does), and 2) maintaining technological capability in design and manufacturing should the need arise for mass production.

[Marty]

"..The declaration that the US will not use nuclear weapons against conventional attacks set the norm for the rest of the world, ..."

I am pretty sure I don't think this is true.

[John Thullen]

"Cheryl Rofer currently blogs at Phronesisaical, after a career that included research and practical experience in the nuclear fuel cycle, fossil fuel, lasers and environmental cleanup, including collaborations in Estonia and Kazakhstan."

Yeah, but Sarah Death Palin will say in her Presidential Inaugural Speech .... "How's that nukey, mushroomy thingy goin now Kenya boy" .. as she snaps her gum and hangs the red telephone around Vice President Erick Erickson's favorite goat's neck for a later romp under the covers in the Lincoln bedroom, with Moe Lane standing by in a hoop skirt in case Erick's tastes run beyond the ruminant.

Any policy not vetted and determined by dumbasses dressed in crotchless cracker pants Confederate uniforms taking time out from their lesbian roadhouse shows while simultaneously waving shotguns in the faces of gummint employees won't pass muster in this ignorant, tacky country and its enabling entertainment media.

[wj]

Does Mr. Thullen's comment above advance the discussion in any significant way? (Not to mention being rude and abusive....)

[hairshirthedonist]

Mr. Thullen creatively gives us all (or at least most of us) a few laughs on occasion, usually keeping the discussion from getting too self-important in the process. There's no accounting for taste, but I like it. His posts provide a unique and quirky aspect to this blog. YMMV, of course.

[John Thullen]

Mr Thullen simply could have said it's a shame for the country and the so-called national conversation that knowledgable people like Cheryl Rofer and other thoughtful folks in the OBWI commentariat don't run for office and/or are invited to appear on talk news shows, rather than the sorry ilk in the Republican Party (and some in that other Party) who seem to get all the good gigs.

But that would be a boring way to put it.

My apologies and thanks to wj and hstd.

[Geoff Blankenmeyer]

If I were Obama,I would be in Lindsey Graham's hip pocket the moment I got off the plane. Unfortunately he will have to do some horse trading to get Graham's unconditional cloture vote. Graham has been making bipartisan overtures, Obama should force him to put up or shut up. And Liberals have to chill when any pet is traded to get that vote.