The End of a Nuclear Era

President Barack Obama’s cancellation of his planned meeting next month with President Vladimir Putin was followed by a statement at his Aug. 9 press conference regarding a “pause” to “reassess where it is that Russia is going.”

The president had hoped that before his term ended U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons could be limited to ceilings of about 1,000 warheads for each country. That was going to be hard to do even without a pause, given disputes over U.S. ballistic-missile defense programs and Russian short-range nuclear weapons. Now the odds are against any U.S.-Russian treaty calling for deeper reductions than those already achieved in the 2011 New Start treaty during the remaining years of the Obama administration.

It is a lost opportunity, but does it matter? Mutual assured destruction, the essence of U.S. deterrence policy during the Cold War, remains a condition of life in the 21st century. It will remain so for as long as thousands of nuclear weapons continue to exist. Ninety percent of those nuclear warheads are held by the United States and Russia. So, yes, that lost opportunity makes a difference.

In his April 2009 speech in Prague, President Obama laid out an agenda that included the vision of a world without nuclear weapons, a dream of Ronald Reagan, who successfully made that goal one of his major policy interests. In recent years, that vision and the steps necessary to make it happen have had powerful advocates from both political parties. Today’s global stockpiles of nuclear weapons are less than one-third of what they were in 1986. But negotiations with Russia have stalled and now a “pause” is in effect.

The fact is, the era of U.S.-Soviet/Russian negotiations as the main driver of reducing nuclear threats is nearly at its end, in any case. For many years, the conventional wisdom has been that after the United States and Russia reduced their holdings to 1,000 warheads each, other nations that possessed nuclear weapons must join in nuclear restrictions. Political and security considerations alike suggest that U.S. and Russian nuclear reductions will stop, somewhere between 1,000 to 1,500 warheads apiece, if other states possessing nuclear weapons are not involved in some way.

It is comforting to think that U.S.-Russian negotiations might have helped us “move beyond Cold War nuclear postures,” as the president said recently in Berlin, but creating a new global security commons that reflects current realities means that the concerns and outlooks of other nations will have to be an important part of the process.

The pause in serious U.S.-Russian negotiations can be put to good use. Creating a new nuclear security paradigm is not an easy task. Just as Obama called for a pivot to Asia in U.S. defense thinking, so must nuclear diplomacy also shift to Asia. Threats of nuclear war all lie in an arc of Asia, running from Iran in the West to the Koreas in the East. For this reason among many, China is an indispensable strategic partner for the United States if Asia-based threats are to be successfully managed.

Intensifying talks on nuclear issues with China and the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council is in order. The aim should be to build a coalition that could work together to create the conditions for a world where means other than nuclear devastation provide security assurances.

A joint enterprise like this is something the administration could begin to construct while relations with Russia are being mended. Such a coalition could devise and carry out a coordinated program of actions that would reinforce U.S.-Russian bilateral efforts. It would have a better chance than current mechanisms of engaging the nations that have resisted nuclear constraints.

A joint enterprise does not require turning away from U.S.-Russia negotiations, and it certainly does not imply downgrading the ties that have bound together American and its allies. It does mean that a more proactive role must be played by Japan, South Korea, China, India, Pakistan and other Asian nations. It means a greater emphasis on multilateral negotiations that will bring all of the nuclear-armed states, and others, into a common agreement.

The Obama administration, and particularly Secretary of State John Kerry, will have their hands full with this agenda, but this is the fate of presidents who intend to make a difference. In recent years, U.S. arms control policies have been overly preoccupied with the tried and true process of negotiating with Russia. It is time to challenge that status quo and link arms control more closely with the national strategy it is supposed to support.

James E. Goodby served as an arms control negotiator in the Reagan administration and is now an Annenberg distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

Deja una respuesta

Tu dirección de correo electrónico no será publicada. Los campos obligatorios están marcados con *