Discussing the reduction or elimination of nuclear weapons

Last week I went to a fascinating panel discussion in Washington, DC at which three longtime experts in strategic affairs debated what policies the next US president should adopt regarding our country's own large arsenal of nuclear weapons.  One of the presenters, Barry Blechman of the Henry Stimson Center, made a robust argument that the next president should fairly rapidly bring together all the world's nuclear powers to negotiate an agreement on the elimination of all nuclear weapons by a date certain.

Blechman suggested that this date should probably be at least 20 years or more into the future. But he produced some strong arguments as to why a broad, inclusive negotiation like that might be the best way forward. (More details, below.)

The two other presenters, Arnold Kanter of the Scowcroft Group and Morton Halperin of the Open Society Institute both argued against that proposal. These two men have been members of a continuing study group convened by the DC-based New America Foundation (NAF) that has been looking at the nuclear-policy options for the next president.  Their group-- which spans a fairly broad ideological spectrum-- has not yet reached final agreement on a proposal. But Kanter and Halperin rteported that their group has reached a large measure of agreement on a proposal that, rather than aiming at the kind of worldwide agreement that Blechman talked about, the next president should rapidly announce and undertake a unilateral reduction of the US nuclear arsenals. 

Jeffrey Lewis, the convenor of the NAF group, chaired the panel discussion I was at, which was hosted by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and also made a short presentation of his own. He and the two NAF group members explained that the aim of the group's emerging proposal would be to stimulate similar actions on behalf of other nuclear powers, and to reduce the incentive for non-nuclear powers to cross the nuclear-weapons threshold.  Only after the original US reductions had been undertaken, and the international reaction to them gauged, should the US move toward negotiating further reductions with other powers.

The NAF's group plan would thus take considerably longer than Blechman's plan to reach the point of the US engaging in any negotiations over nuclear arms reductions with other powers; and Kanter and Halperin made fairly clear that they thought that even those negotiations should not aim at the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. (At one point, Halperin seemed to get a little carried away when he even referred to "the specter of elimination." Pardon me?)

This panel discussion came just a few days after I'd finished reading Hans Blix's elegantly argued little book titled Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters. Blix, as you may know, is the long-time Swedish arms control negotiator (and former Swedish Foreign Minister) who in 2002-03 was the head of UNMOVIC, the body that the UN set up to monitor, inspect, and verify the state of Saddam Hussein's alleged-- but in the event, no longer existing-- WMD programs.

Echoing an argument I made in Re-engage!, Blix wrote (p.58):

A crucial mark oif a civilkized society is that the citizens have given up the personal possession of arms and conferred upon public authorities a monopoly on the right to possess and use arms in accordance with the law... In the international community, states continue to possess their own arms and the possibility of using them.  We need to identify and promote changes that will transform this community of individually armed states into a society in which the states have disarmed drastically, and common institutions control the use of force in accordance with agreed rules.

Blix is not, obviously, a US citizen.  But one of the recommendations he describes for how the world's nuclear powers should deal with the arsenals they now have is broadly similar to Barry Blechman's.  Blix writes (p.64):

The General Assembly should convene a new World Summit on disarmament, non-proliferation, and the use of weapons of mass destruction by terrorists.  Since thorough preparations would be be necessary, planning should start as soon as possible.

The whole of Blix's little book is well worth reading. Maybe you could get your local library to order in a copy at the same time as they order Re-engage! for their patrons.

But the discussion among Kanter, Blechman, and Halperin was interesting, too.

Kanter explained the background to the NAF group's emerging proposal for unilateral US nuclear-force reductions in the following terms.

1. The reason the US needs nuclear weapons in the current era is because others have or seek them.
2. The primary objective of the US must be to prevent any use of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world, and to prevent the p[roliferation of nuclear weapons technology.
3. Our country's current nuclear policy needs some radical re-thinking.
4. The main reason to change our policy is to affect the judgments and behavior of others.  The goal is to encrouage others, especially the Russians, to take similar steps.
5. The US needs to keep "the capabilityies required to protect our vital interests, and to provide a hedge force against ubncertainties... This rtequires that we keep a nuclear-weapons production/modification complex in operation, that can give us the capability to "respond to the unforeseen."

That was the background to the suggestion of having the three-stage proces of (a) undertaking unilateral reductions; (b) assessing the reactions; and then (c) seeking multilateral negotiations.

Kanter said the group had not yet reached agreement on how bold the unilateral reductions proposed under (a) should be.

Blechman spoke next.  Like Sen. Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, and former cabinet members George Shultz and William Perry in their January 2007 op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal, Blechman situated his argument in the context of the greatly increased risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism in the modern world.

He also based his argument to some degree on an assessment of the domestic US politics around any proposal to reduce or eliminate the US nuclear arsenal.  He said,

Until now, all the proposals made for arms control by successive presidents have run into foreseeable opposition from at least twenty senators as well as from huge vested interests in this country. But there has never been any equally strong group that has supported these proposals.  What has shown the ability to really moblize people in this country, however, is a proposal to go to zero nuclear weapons.

He noted that the next review conference of the NPT is coming up in 2010, and that the US should be prepared to go to that conference with a compelling proposal.

Regarding the process of reducing the world's nuclear arsenals to zero, he said, "We would do it gradually without harming anyone's security." He also said there would have to be certain conditions attached:

1. All the signatories to the proposed agreement would have to declare all their NW-related facilities.  He noted that some NW possessors, like Israel, might be holdouts at first., but they could be included in the process further along. "At a minimum, though, to make it work, we would need the US, Russia, China, and India to take part."
2. The phased reductions-to-zero of the arsenals of participating states would be monitored and verified by a multilateral agency, "perhas the IAEA."
3. The first states to start reducing their arsenals under this plan should be the US and Russia.
4. The treaty should guarantee access by all countries to peaceful nuclear technology, but would keep all the world's nuclear fuel cycles under multinational, not national, control.
5. There should be specified sanctions for cheaters, including holding personally responsible any of the government officials involved.
6. There shouold be specified "off-ramps" to allow signatories to leave the treaty under certain circumstances, including if the whole treaty seemed to be coming apart.

Blechman also said there might be some role of "a reserve, multilaterally controlled, force of disassembled nuclear weapons," to be retained as an international hedge against future acts of proliferation.

Anyway, he said he and colleagues at the Stimson center are contoinuing to flesh out their proposal, which will be published sometime in the fall. He noted that pursuit of this plan wouldn't rule out thre US also undertaking some unilateral reductions of its nuclear arsenal, or some restructuring of the US nuclear weapons complax-- but the main focus should be on the multlateral negotiation aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons.

After Blechman spoke, Halperin weighed in to say that his proposal would be not just ineffective but also "dangerous." His main argument was this:

If the president proposes this, he wouldn't get anything else done on nuclear weapons... The US political system would be overwhelmed by this.

No-one believes it is realistic to negotiate the elimination of all nuclear weapons!

One of the pieces of evidence he adduced for this last judgment came from Russia. "The Russians probably see a greater need for nuclear weapons now than they did during the Cold War, because their conventinal weapons are so weak."

Though Halperin was firmly opposed to the idea of any rapid or even medium-term move toward elimination of nuclear weapons, he did say that as part of its "opening" unilateral move, the US should move to reducing its nuclear arsenal to "less than 1,000 warheads-- perhaps a lot less."  He also said that if it is generally agreed that the US only has nuclear weapons in order to deter their use by others, then we should publicly announce a "No first use" policy and sign and ratify the Comprehenisve Test Ban Treaty-- while makng sure that the US nuclear arsenal is in fact resilient enough to survive any first use by others.

He also said the US should do a lot to back the nuclear posture considerably away from its present, almost hair-trigger stance. "Most Americans would be astonished to know how ready the US still is to launching a massive nuclear strike."

Anyway, it was all a fascinating discussion.  While doing the research needed for the links above, I found a couple of other really helpful online resources.  The Nuclear Security Project has a new website that provides resources about the continuing campaign by Nunn, Kissinger, Shultz, and Perry to work toward a world free of nuclear weapons.  And the Nuclear Threat Initiative has this handy on-line tutorial on the NPT.