A secret meeting in the White House today will set US nuclear policy. It will also test Barack Obama's sincerity and determination.
Today an interagency working group on nuclear policy will meet at the principals level to finalize the administration's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). This document will set US nuclear policy for the next five to ten years. It has been managed by the Department of Defense for most of last year. Today, the secretaries of defense, state, energy, and the national security advisor as well as top military and intelligence officials will gather to agree on the final wording. The President and Vice President may join them.
The meeting may slip a day or two, but it must take place soon to get the NPR to the Congress by its scheduled date of March 1.
The question is: Will this document chart a new strategy for the 21st century or will it continue to rely on 1940's weapons and a Cold War game plan? Will it do what President Obama has promised: "put an end to Cold War thinking" and "reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy"?
A lot is riding on the outcome. Our failure to finalize a new nuclear reductions agreement with the Russians--originally promised for last December 5--and a $2 billion increase in the budget for new nuclear weapon's facilities means that the president has few tangible products to show for the ambitious agenda he laid out in Prague last April and reaffirmed in the State of the Union this January.
It has raised doubts among supporters that he has the strength to buck the entrenched nuclear bureaucracy, whose jobs and profits depend on keeping nuclear weapons policy just the way it is. It has raised claims of hypocrisy among some nations, whose support we need to restrain Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs and prevent terrorists from getting bomb materials.
This means the Nuclear Posture Review must present a transformational doctrine. It must establish the "narrative" for everything that is to follow this year. It must explain the budget, the new START treaty, why we must permanently end nuclear testing, how we are truly reducing nuclear weapons... and why other nations should, too.
Nuclear Secrets
If you are wondering why you haven't heard of this important policy debate before, it is because democracy does not apply to nuclear weapons policy. It never has. No nation has ever had a vote on whether to go nuclear. These decisions are made in secret. They don't have to be. There is no reason why the meetings on the Nuclear Posture Review could not have been on CSPAN. Most of the discussions have nothing to do with atomic secrets, locations, or weapons.
But the secrecy aids the status quo. It keeps it in the hands of the nuclear laboratories and contractors. It makes it harder for the public to have its voice heard.
These views are clear. In a recent poll 84 percent of Americans said they would feel safer in a world where no nation, including the United States, had nuclear weapons. Americans have consistently supported mutual, balanced and verifiable reductions in nuclear weapons. In a time of economic crisis it is hard to believe that Americans want to spend the $53 billion each year we lavish on this obsolete stockpile--let alone increase this budget.
Stand by Your Policy
President Obama should heed the words of a group of top experts organized by the Arms Control Association whose letter to him last week urged a change in course. They favor a nuclear policy that "advances the highest security priorities: preventing terrorists or additional states from obtaining of using nuclear weapons; reducing global stockpiles, and moving toward a world without nuclear weapons."
This means:
1. Narrowing the purpose of nuclear weapons to the fundamental role of deterring nuclear attack on America and its allies. Not the Cold War strategy of using them for a first strike or even in conventional battles.
2. Reducing our nuclear arsenal to hundreds of weapons, instead of the thousands we now hold. We have more than 9,000 thermonuclear bombs today.
3. Getting rid of the 300 or so weapons stationed abroad. Our German and Japanese allies now tell us they don't need or want the weapons we say we station to protect them.
4. Standing by the President's pledge "not to authorize new nuclear weapons." Our existing weapons work well and scientists say they can last another 100 years.
It is time for the President to put into policy what he has put into his speeches. He and the Vice President must stand up for what they believe. Half steps now when bold action is needed could sabotage the nuclear policy both men have worked so long to enact.
It is time to do the right nuclear thing.
Follow Joe Cirincione on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Cirincione
Yikes......................
How ironic to watch President Obama leading the charge to nuclear energy while offering lip service to alternatives. He declared another victory today--this one on the stimulus package. Another job well done, he said. It would have been worse without it, he says. He gives himself a B+. What do you give him?
However, I don't know where the author got the 9,000 number, but that's not completely accurate. Not all of those 9,900 warheads are active and of the 5,500 or so that ARE active, only a portion of them are deployed at any one time. From Wikipedia, "These break down into 5,021 "strategic" warheads, 1,050 of which are deployed on land-based missile systems (all on Minuteman ICBMs), 1,955 on bombers (B-52, B-1B, and B-2), and 2,016 on submarines (Ohio class), according to a 2006 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council." The other 500 are tactical nukes on Tomahawks and P61 bombs.
While that's still a huge arsenal, it's not as big as indicated.
Indeed.
Has he not seen Three Mile Island which is still contaminated after all these years and many more to come.
I certainly don't like the idea of it. There are too many safer alternatives.
Here you go, enjoy!
http://www.democracynow.org/
Our Oil purchases are financing Iran's EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE Nuclear Weapons program. Hezbollah, financed by Iran's Oil, has an exploding Nuclear Bomb as their Symbol. Religious Extremists - will use Nuclear Weapons. They can only afford them because of OUR RELIANCE ON OIL for Energy.
It was British Petroleum, which created the Iran crisis by buying politicians, getting the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected gov’t of Iran, replacing it with the Hated Shah. Result the present disastrous situation in the Middle East. See Operation Ajax:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
Reduce the role, reduce the stockpile, use excess Pu for power.
Human beings have to agree to stop waging wars, first, and disarm. Until then, nuclear disarmament not only won't happen, but would be folly if it did. We have spent trillions upon trillions on "defense," bankrupting us domestically, and now we are willing to give up the only truly solid deterrent we have against aggression? What utter nonsense.
The thing is ending war is a long way off if it will ever happen. Actually so is banning nuclear weapons. Experience has shown that you don't reach those goals by saying "ok we won't do anything until we are ready to do it all the right way" That way nothing gets done. You have to take incremental steps and the ones he outlines here seem like an excellent start to me.
My prediction is that Obama will get a short sighted plan that only outlines our actions absent the context of the larger picture. That is the politically expedient posture. What we need is a resolve to bring the WORLD into line. We can take small and even just symbolic steps in a unilateral manner, but if nothing happens elsewhere, or worse yet (as I fully expect, since I doubt we as a Nation have the Resolve needed to make it happen otherwise) the number of warheads worldwide *climbs*, those symbolic steps will be retracted no matter how much you scream.
;'{P~~~