Does he substantially advance his bold pledge to seek a world free of nuclear weapons by declaring that the "sole purpose" of the U.S. arsenal is to deter other nations from using them? Or does he embrace a more modest option, supported by some senior military officials, that deterrence is the "primary purpose"?
The difference may seem semantic, but such words, which will be contained in a document known as the Nuclear Posture Review, have deep meaning and could dramatically shift nuclear policy in the United States and around the world. The first option would scale back the arsenal's war role, potentially leading to a smaller U.S. stockpile and taking weapons off alert. The second option would be less of a change, holding out the nuclear threat but still permitting a reduction in weapons. The president was briefed on the document this week and requested additional intermediate options, officials say.
Team Obama will apparently jettison the Bush 43 policy of not ruling out nuclear use in response to a biological or chemical warfare attack--odd, in that in 1991 James Baker, Bush 41's Secretary of State, warned Saddam on the eve of the Gulf War that if Iraq used such weapons the US might respond with nuclear retaliation. But the President reportedly will reject more drastic measures: removing one leg of the strategic triad (land-based missiles, submarine-based missiles & bombers), or declaring a "no first use" nuclear policy. The latter policy would undermine America's pledge to defend NATO territory against an attack by Russian conventional forces.
A prime Team 44 consideration--rightly--is that of allies who fear losing a secure American nuclear umbrella:
The review, more than a month overdue, reflects the tension in seeking to advance the president's sweeping agenda without unnerving allies dependent on the U.S. nuclear "umbrella." The Pentagon is also wary of losing options in a world with emerging nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran, officials say.
America's huge stockpile infuriates many non-Nuclear Club nations:
U.S. diplomats hope the final document will establish the Obama administration's credibility before a nuclear security summit in April and a crucial meeting in May on the fraying nonproliferation treaty. That treaty is at the heart of Obama's strategy to combat the most urgent threat today: the spread of nuclear weapons to unstable states and to terrorists. The last such session, in 2005, ended in failure, with many countries accusing the Bush administration of trying to scotch their nuclear programs while maintaining one of the world's most massive stockpiles.
"The United States can't go around and ask others to give up their nuclear weapons while we maintain a list of official purposes for our nuclear weapons" that necessitate a large arsenal, said Jan Lodal, a senior Defense Department official in the Clinton administration.
The current world nuclear weapon stockpiles have been compiled by the Federation of American Scientists, a prominent liberal disarmament group. The FAS website has a Nuclear Information Project sub-page, with a deeper sub-page presenting more detail on global nuclear arsenals. (Here is yet more detail on the US arsenal, which shows that only 2,700 of America's total 9,400 nuclear warheads are operational--yet another example of how treacherous nuclear arms data can be.)
As reported in summary form in the WP article, world nuclear arsenals stand as follows, comparing 1986 with today:
USSR/Russia - From 45,000 in 1986 to 12,000 in 2010, 73 percent.
United States - From 24,401 in 1986 to 9,400 in 2010, down 62 percent (ignores that US arsenal peaked at 32,000 in 1967, from which the decline to 2010 is 71 percent--plus that many current stockpiled warheads do not have missiles to fit them on).
France - From 355 in 1986 to 300 in 2010, down 15 percent.
China - From 425 in 1986 to 240 in 2010, down 44 percent.
United Kingdom - From 200 in 1986 to 185 in 2010, down 38 percent.
Israel - 80 in 2010. (Israel attained weapons capability circa 1966, never acknowledged officially.)
Pakistan - 70-90 in 2010. (Other estimates place the range at 60-120. Pakistan officially joined the Nuclear Club in 1998.)
India - 60-80 in 2010. (India joined the Nuclear Club in 1974.)
North Korea - Fewer than 10 in 2010. (North Korea joined the Nuclear Club in 2006.)
WORLD TOTAL - From 70,481 in 1986 to 22,385 in 2010, down 68 percent. (Counting the 8,000 US warheads dismantled between 1967 & 1986 the decline in total nuclear warheads extant worldwide has been 71 percent.) One authority on China, Gordon Chang, recently questioned the estimate given for China's nuclear arsenal:
How big is China's arsenal? Beijing, sticking to its long-held policy of ambiguity, is not telling. Western analysts have been guessing, with wildly divergent assessments. Older estimates had put the number at around 400, though the current consensus is much lower. The highly respected Federation of American Scientists, for instance, believes the People's Liberation Army now has 240 nuclear devices, of which 180 are strategic in nature.
Yet the smaller numbers are probably way off. For one thing, the lower estimates do not take into account the possibility that China loaded its older DF-5 missiles with multiple warheads, something the Pentagon alluded to in 2003. If half of China's 30 or so DF-5s carry between seven to 10 newly miniaturized warheads as some analysts believe, that's 105 to 150 weapons for that missile class alone.
Moreover, the lower estimates mean the Chinese have expanded their nuclear forces at a much slower pace than their conventional ones. Yet if there has been one thing we have seen recently, China has consistently surprised us with its advances in military capabilities. As Admiral Robert Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, noted in October, "In the past decade or so, China has exceeded most of our intelligence estimates of their military capability and capacity every year."
However many warheads the Chinese possess at this moment, it's clear they have substantially upgraded the capability of their nuclear missiles in recent years. Last October, at its massive National Day parade in Beijing, China rolled out ballistic missiles of the Second Artillery Force, the country's "core force of strategic deterrence."
The most noticeable feature of these weapons, which official media describe as China's "trump card," is that they were carried on mobile launchers, thus making them survivable in the event of an attack on Chinese soil. This gives Beijing a critical second-strike capability, which is not only a powerful deterrent but also a temptation to launch a first strike on a non-nuclear state. Although Chinese leaders have maintained a no-first-use policy and promise not to launch nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, they are the only people in history who have threatened to nuke territory they consider their own, specifically non-nuclear Taiwan.
The People's Liberation Army, characteristically, did not show all its new missiles on National Day. Not displayed were the JL-2 submarine-launched missile and a new land-based one that might carry more than 10 warheads. As China military analyst Richard Fisher points out, the latter weapon potentially gives Beijing the ability to reach parity with the U.S., especially if President Obama, who favors complete disarmament, reduces American warheads to the much-discussed 1,000-level.
Choices for the President. While the five original nuclear powers have pledged to ultimately dismantle their nuclear arsenals, there is no time deadline for reaching Nuclear Zero. In fact, for the foreseeable future--decades, at minimum under any plausible scenario--it is impossible to verify total disarmament. Thus clandestine accumulation of small arsenals in a nuclear-free world--"breakout" in strategic jargon--could suddenly empower the world's worst actors.
Put simply, the North Korean and Iranian regimes would see a Nuclear-Zero America as a strategic opportunity, as might well China. To believe otherwise is to engage in the the strategic fallacy strategists call "mirror-imaging"--projecting one's own values onto that of adversaries who in fact operate according to different values. With growing nuclear arsenals facing sharply shrunken American forces China might act more aggressively towards Taiwan, confident that its arsenal--which might eventually exceed America's if drastic reductions are implemented by Team Obama--will enable it to throw its geopolitical weight around as the Soviet Union did in the 1970s--but with a strong economic base the USSR lacked. But China's export dependence upon the US could well impede its efforts to expand with impunity in Asia.
A second key issue is "extended deterrence"--the nuclear umbrella we protect our allies with. In its absence any number of highly-advanced allies would likely go nuclear, aware that breakout could not be prevented: Think Germany, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and Sweden. Britain, France and Israel have nuclear weapons in part due to lack of full confidence in America's protection; Israel, for example, converted its commercial nuclear power program to one aiming also for weapons capability after the United States refused to back Israel, Britain & France during the 1956 Suez Crisis; without US backing the three countries backed down from their aim to remove Egyptian President Nasser in the face of Soviet nuclear intimidation. (Nasser wreaked havoc until his death in 1970, another consequence of failing to back our allies in 1956.)
Bottom Line: President Obama must choose prudence (muddling through) over idealism (total or near-total disarmament). Otherwise he will set in motion rising threats that will place America and its allies in potentially mortal peril.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Nuclear Proliferation, Arms Control, WMD, Foreign Policy, Conservative Politics
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