The New Rules: Nuclear Posture Review Fixes What Ain't Broke
Thomas P.M. Barnett | 12 Apr 2010
For those wondering how President Barack Obama planned to justify his Nobel Peace Prize, two developments last week strongly suggest that it will be by way of his dream of a "world without nuclear weapons." The first was his successful conclusion of a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, which takes almost a third off the top of both sides' massive nuclear arsenals. The second was Obama's new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which declared that "preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism" was the nation's No. 1 strategic priority. At the same time, the review offers a striking new pledge not to use nuclear weapons to retaliate against states in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- even if they attack America with chemical or biological weapons.
It's hard to argue against reducing the number of nuclear weapons. But Obama's new posture document goes even further than that, proposing a substantial reduction in the role of nuclear weapons in America's national security. The difference might seem esoteric, but it's not.
The reduction in numbers is pre-determined by Russia's still-massive, but rapidly decaying arsenal. The new treaty merely codifies what was an inescapable reality for the cash-strapped Red Army, by signaling America's willingness to follow Moscow "downward" on sheer quantity. But, if anything, Russia's shriveled conventional forces leave its security strategy more dependent than ever on nuclear weapons, meaning that for Moscow, shrinking numbers equate to a larger role. As for rising China, the NPR notes that Beijing is engaging in a "qualitative and quantitative modernization of its nuclear arsenal." So while China's nuclear forces are still a mere fraction of our own arsenal, they are clearly growing in both numbers and role.
So why is Obama seeking to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in America's national security, especially now, when nuclear newbies like North Korea and Iran have the world's great powers, in both the West and East, on edge? The answer lies in the NPR's many escape clauses: Nukes still figure prominently in our strategic relationships with other nuclear powers. And the "carve-out" exceptions for North Korea and Iran essentially lump them into the nuclear club, meaning we can still use nukes on them for all the usual reasons.
The only thing that the new NPR really changes is our strategic ambiguity regarding non-nuclear, NPT-compliant states launching significant biological, chemical or cyber attacks on our nation. In these situations, we promise "devastating conventional military responses," but pledge no nuclear retaliation. The NPR also reserves the right to revise this doctrine if anybody from this admittedly limited pool of potential enemies generates substantially more powerful capabilities at any time in the future.
This seemingly trivial change gets us to the heart of Obama's expressed commitment to make the "prevention of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism" America's no. 1 strategic priority -- a shift that, in effect, updates "the hierarchy of our nuclear concerns and strategic objectives" for the post-Cold War era.
Does this reduction in America's strategic ambiguity accomplish anything? My overwhelming sense is that it does not. Iran and North Korea seek nuclear weapons primarily to counter America's overwhelming conventional capabilities. The same would be true for any other hostile state. So while they are unlikely to use nuclear weapons in a first strike, they could very well feel the need to do so in response to our now-promised conventional retaliation.
Does this new doctrine make non-state actors any less likely to attack America with weapons of mass destruction? No. The NPR reiterates America's intense desire to hold accountable anybody who aids non-state actors in their acquisition of WMD, but it basically avoids any clear statement of how it will strategically respond to the successful use of WMD by terrorists against the United States. All that non-state actors can infer is that any non-nuclear WMD attack verifiably launched from an NPT-compliant state would not automatically trigger a U.S. nuclear retaliatory strike. Since al-Qaida and other extremists would probably welcome such a reflexive nuclear retaliation, they might judge this new doctrine a mild disappointment, but hardly a strengthened deterrent.
So we're left with this underwhelming effect: States not currently seeking nuclear weapons are assured that America won't mindlessly "go nuclear" on them if non-nuclear, but still-strategic attacks are launched from their soil. If such states actually harbored a huge and growing fear about this kind of scenario -- a fear so great that it was keeping them from cooperating with the West on stemming nuclear proliferation -- then I would say that Obama had accomplished something real with this change. But as no such dynamic is at work, I instead spot the latest example of Obama's occasional penchant for exquisite rhetoric masquerading as "change you can believe in."
Obama has tackled health care, and he has promised a similar effort on education. Virtually no one denies that these two national sectors are in need of repair, even as we might argue vociferously about solutions. But what exactly was broken with America's longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity regarding the use of nuclear weapons? Clearly, it's a major reason why we got through the Cold War unscathed, and it's arguably the primary reason why no warfare between great powers has occurred since 1945, despite all the tempting proxy conflicts.
Other strategic benefits can likewise be credited to our historic posture of strategic ambiguity, such as the fact that no nuclear power has ever used WMD on a smaller state, or the stunning decline in state-on-state war in general in recent decades. America's enormous conventional military capability, when combined with its fearsome strategic arsenal, has made our nation's security "umbrella" guarantees the most potent pacifying influence on international security in the history of humanity.
Despite all the hyperbolic fears of looming "hyper-proliferation," we enter this decade with a mere nine nuclear states, with Iran's looming achievement finally pushing us into the double digits. Two to three more states may follow Iran's lead (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt), but no Asian state appears destined to follow North Korea. So in terms of proliferation risks, we're basically looking at a nuclear Middle East and nothing more. Does anybody think that reducing America's strategic ambiguity will influence that pathway significantly? If anything, it will arguably make Iran's regional rivals all the more eager to join the nuclear club, because it suggests that America's old strategic umbrella "just ain't what it used to be."
Of far more significance is the simultaneous rise of numerous great powers -- some nuclear, some not -- that the world system is now witnessing. This transformation is being accomplished with virtually no appreciable rise in strategic uncertainty, meaning no heightened risk of great-power war. Indeed, Obama's NPR is entirely predicated on that larger reality.
But here's the catch: By reducing the role of nuclear weapons in our strategic arsenal, America is naturally forced to fill in with something else -- to wit, greater reliance on missile defense (touted extensively in the NPR) and the use of missiles for what the Pentagon's increasingly calls "prompt global strike" (code for someday catching unawares that tall, bearded terrorist leader in his cave). In an era of simultaneously rising great powers, the increasing role of non-nuclear missiles in America's strategic toolkit may ultimately destabilize the international landscape by prompting or further encouraging "catch-up" arms races and/or the development of asymmetric capabilities by these emerging powers -- to say nothing of the risk posed by dual-use ICBMs.
And this is where I fundamentally find fault with Obama's too-clever-by-half clarification of our nuclear declaratory policy: It extends and even expands Bush-Cheney's terror-centric national security vision by elevating nuclear terrorism to the top of the strategic heap. Consider the political capital that Obama is investing in next week's Nuclear Security Summit. Then ask yourself: Do you think history will look back on these decades as the "age of nuclear terrorism" or the "age of rising great powers"? And if it's the latter, why then must Obama seek to fix that which ain't broke?
America's willingness to maintain a frighteningly vague nuclear declaratory policy has allowed the world to reach this historic point of truly inclusive globalization, without ever having employed nuclear weapons -- except for our own precedent-setting use in 1945. As Obama dreams of someday completely detaching the United States from this world-shaping role of nuclear Leviathan, Americans just might want to ask whether or not it's worth it to enshrine al-Qaida as the centerpiece of American grand strategy -- and what we may be sacrificing as a result. |
