LAST YEAR’S declaration by President Obama of his desire to work for a nuclear-free world has now been given expression in the administration’s much-awaited and welcome (though limited) Nuclear Posture Review. It sets out the rationale for investment and war planning for the next five years, and both refocuses deterence theory for a new age and reduces the threat of nuke use by the world’s largest nuclear power.
Appropriately it comes as the US and Russia sign the replacement for the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty , agreeing to cut armouries by up to 700 missiles – though retaining 20,000 between them. The review also comes at a key time in the disarmament callendar, days before a Washington summit on safeguards against terrorists acquiring nukes, and weeks before the New York conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The US also hopes for further talks with Russia on short-range nuclear weapons and those held in reserve or storage.
Central to the review is shifting the primary focus of nuclear policy away from arms competition with Russia and China and the threat of a nuclear exchange between nations. “For the first time, preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism is now at the top of America’s nuclear agenda,” Mr Obama said on Monday. The “fundamental role” of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the US and allies, and the review rules out the use of nukes against non-nuclear countries, even if they attack the US with conventional weapons.
But only as long, the review inists, as they remain non-proliferators. So Iran and North Korea are not off the hook as potential targets, as secretary of defence Robert Gates says bluntly: “If you’re not going to play by the rules, if you’re going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you.” That clearly includes the possibility of using the nuclear arsenal to counter efforts to sell or transfer a rogue country’s nuclear technology to terrorists.
That muscular approach to proliferation and threat reduction, combined with a repudiation of new warhead development and a pledge to further reduce stockpiles, make for a robust opening US position for the NPT review. It goes some way to meeting non-nuclear states’ concerns about the real commitment to disarmament by the nuclear states. But, in not moving to an outright “no first use” position, and in leaving untouched unnecessary battlefield missiles in Europe, Mr Obama’s “realism” also disappoints.