Not Saved by “Zero”

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

arack Obama ran for the presidency in 2008 on a platform of change and hope. Now that he occupies the White House, President Obama has unveiled his intention to effect the most sweeping change in the U.S. security posture since the end of World War II. Namely, he proposes to rid the world of nuclear weapons—including, of course, those of the United States.

Within hours of Mr. Obama’s inauguration, a posting on the White House web site declared: “[President] Obama and [Vice President Joe] Biden will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it... [They will] show the world that America believes in its existing commitment under the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty to work to ultimately eliminate all nuclear weapons.”1

This goal is now the object not only of Team Obama, but of a well-funded international initiative dubbed the “Global Zero Campaign.” It is all about hope. Hope that every nuclear nation and wannabe will agree to embrace denuclearization. Hope that an agreement can be fashioned that will be verifiable, as well as universal. And, not least, hope that the world will be a safer place, rather than a more dangerous one.

But in fact, under present and foreseeable circumstances, the idea of global nuclear disarmament brings to mind Samuel Johnson’s characterization of second marriages, which he called “the triumph of hope over experience.” Analysis rooted in hard experience leaves little basis for such hopes—and abundant grounds for fearing that American security and that of many others who rely upon our nuclear deterrent for their security will be gravely and adversely affected by such a denuclearization campaign.

Unfortunately, there is a dirty little secret about the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Even in the absence of a Global Zero outcome, the United States is on a glide slope towards the inexorable denuclearization of the American arsenal.

Erosion by design

To be sure, it is difficult to point to any single action taken by President Obama’s three immediate predecessors, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush—certainly any public one—that officially, formally declared it to be the policy of the United States to go out of the nuclear weapons business.

To the contrary, there have been numerous documents issued by administrations of both parties—notably, President George W. Bush’s 2002 Nuclear Posture Review and a White Paper jointly released by the Defense and Energy Departments late in his second term—that insist we will need effective nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future. Needless to say, we also still have thousands of these weapons in our stockpile.

Yet, there is no getting around a portentous fact. Since we stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1992, we have systematically, if incrementally, pursued a path the late Rep. Floyd Spence, then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, once called “erosion by design.”2

As a practical matter we have, over the past seventeen years, unilaterally observed what amounts to the sort of “nuclear freeze” promoted by anti-nuclear activists in the early 1980s and adamantly rejected at the time by President Ronald Reagan. And just as the former intended, and the latter warned, this de facto freeze has had a devastating impact on our nuclear posture and the deterrent it is supposed to constitute.

During this period, we have: undertaken no underground nuclear testing; allowed the steady obsolescence without replacement of the stockpile; and looked the other way as our capability to engage in new weapons production atrophied, the industrial complex deteriorated and virtually everyone in that enterprise who once had direct experience with the design, testing and production of nuclear weapons either died or retired. The cumulative effect has been indisputable: Today, whether we acknowledge it or not, we have put ourselves as a nation squarely on the path to unilateral denuclearization. All other things being equal, it is just a matter of time until we are effectively finished as a nuclear power.

Many have been responsible for this state of affairs, including successive administrations and Congresses under both political parties. Particularly insidious, however, has been the role played by the past and present chairmen of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, Reps. David Hobson and Peter Visclosky, respectively. These legislators have used their positions on Capitol Hill to block—mostly out of public view—such modest measures as were sought by the George W. Bush team to help keep our nuclear arsenal a going concern, notably: the development of a “Reliable Replacement Warhead”; the construction of a new manufacturing facility for the “pits” at the core of thermonuclear weapons; and the implementation of steps needed to improve our nation’s readiness for resumed underground nuclear testing.

The cumulative effect of these congressional actions, and the failure of the Bush administration to reverse them while in office, has been, as a practical matter, to preclude modernization of the U.S. nuclear stockpile—and to render the scientific and engineering personnel critical to the industrial complex upon which it depends under-employed, demoralized and with good reason to seek more engaging work elsewhere. Taken together, the end result is as ominous as it is predictable: The hollowing out and irreversible obsolescence of our nuclear arsenal.

Such actions are extraordinarily reckless, given their negative impact upon the country’s ability to continue to field a safe, reliable and effective nuclear deterrent. The fact that they have largely been taken without public scrutiny or appreciable debate only compounds the damage they will inflict upon the national interest.

Matters are made still worse by the geostrategic context in which these trends are being allowed to continue and accelerate: We live in a world in which, far from seeing widespread movement towards global nuclear disarmament, every other declared nuclear weapons state is modernizing its nuclear forces. Of particular concern is the fact that the Russian and Chinese strategic force modernization initiatives are being accompanied by more assertive foreign policies.

Meanwhile, various nuclear wannabes—including the planet’s most dangerous rogue states—are acquiring the means to produce such arms. And the likelihood is growing by the day that terrorists will get their hands on “dirty” radioactive bombs and perhaps crude atomic weapons.

The mirage of “global zero”

The obvious danger posed by such proliferation has prompted some, including a number of former senior U.S. government officials who should know better (such as former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz) to insist that—rather than take corrective action—we should formally embrace the course of denuclearization upon which we have unofficially embarked. By so doing, they insist, we can persuade others to follow our example.

This sentiment is animating, and such eminences are providing political cover for, the Global Zero Campaign as a means of achieving this outcome via an international treaty. At a conference convened in Paris in December 2008, a gaggle of former officials and retired military officers from around the world endorsed the idea of negotiating a treaty we are assured will be verifiable and result in the elimination of all nuclear weapons by a date certain. Press reports from the meeting suggest that that date may be 20-25 years hence.

How such an agreement would be achieved remains unclear at this writing, as do virtually all of the details. Clearly, the Global Zeroists anticipate having all the world’s nations sit down and negotiate an accord replete with timetables for dismantling arsenals and intrusive verification arrangements for ensuring that it is done universally and, presumably, irreversibly.

The problems inherent in such an undertaking are legion. Just to mention two: the improbability of all nations’ agreeing to give up their nuclear arms or ambitions and the inherent difficulty in verifying compliance. With respect to the first, even a Global Zero enthusiast like former U.S. arms control negotiator Richard Burt felt constrained to acknowledge during a press conference after the Campaign’s conclave in Paris in December: “It’s a real showstopper” for this initiative if Iran gets a nuclear weapon.3

Regarding the second, the chances of negotiating the sort of on-site inspections that would be essential if there were to be any hope of truly monitoring a global ban on nuclear weapons are slim, to say the least. It is instructive that, last year, North Korea refused to entertain far less intrusive verification arrangements as part of the so-called “Six-Party” disarmament talks. Given the stakes involved—there would be an enormous premium on cheating, as any nation that retained nuclear weapons after all the others had given theirs up would be uniquely powerful—anything less than perfect assurance of compliance would have to be seen as a “showstopper,” too.

It seems likely that even a Democrat-controlled Senate would have difficulty getting a treaty ratified that, by definition, amounted to a program for unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament, since one that is truly universal and verifiable cannot be negotiated. After all, just 34 Senators are needed to reject a treaty. Even with their depleted ranks following the 2008 elections, the Republican caucus should be able to muster sufficient GOP votes—and perhaps even a few from across the aisle—to defeat a manifestly defective Global Zero treaty.

Plan B

The Global Zeroists may opt, therefore, for an alternative approach known as the “Ottawa” model, after the location of its first application: the 1997 conclave that produced the so-called “global ban” on anti-personnel land mines.

At Ottawa and in a number of subsequent gambits, activist non-governmental organizations (NGOs) joined forces with official delegations from various nations for the purpose of formally establishing “international norms.” These norms purport to place beyond the pale whatever weapons the sponsors find morally repugnant or otherwise objectionable.

The Ottawa process works like this: A global conference is convened for the purpose of adopting an accord “ridding the world” of the weapons in question. Participants—whether official or unofficial—typically have nothing to lose from such an agreement. The non-governmental participants, of course, do not have such weapons and can give full expression to their sanctimonious morality in denouncing them. Participants representing governments typically fall into two categories: 1) Those whose nations do not have such weapons either and, therefore, feel free to demand that others who do give them up or 2) those whose arsenals include those arms, but have no intention of eliminating their stockpiles in a verifiable way.

For the latter, typically including the Russians and Chinese, these conclaves are exercises in pure cynicism. Secure in the knowledge that they can block any measure that might actually interfere with their weapons programs and lethal capabilities, these nations exploit such initiatives as opportunities to weaken potential adversaries—most especially, the United States.

Once the parties hammer out what amounts to a hortatory condemnation and wholly unverifiable ban of the particular class of weapons—for example, “eliminating” anti-personnel land mines or, more recently, cluster munitions—they pronounce that all nations should adhere to the accord or risk being deemed uncivilized. The NGOs and their allies in subscribing governments then try to compel holdouts to conform via negative publicity.

For its part, the Obama administration is unlikely to require much pressure to go along with Global Zero, even if the form it takes is an Ottawa-style “norm.” After all, Team Obama is on record as favoring the denuclearization agenda. That being the case, the new President and his subordinates—far from being reluctant adherents—might be inclined to play a leading role in negotiating such an international accord, if only as a stopgap for and catalyst to the negotiation of an actual treaty. At the very least, such a norm would help justify the steps towards denuclearization that Messrs. Obama and Biden have already espoused.

Now, it must be noted that the Obama White House web site insists that “Obama and Biden will always maintain a strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist.”4 Yet, the site also declares that the Obama-Biden team will take actions that belie, or at least are wholly inconsistent with, that commitment.

For example, it declares that the President and Vice President “will take several steps down the long road toward eliminating nuclear weapons. They will stop the development of new nuclear weapons; work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair trigger alert; seek dramatic reductions in U.S. and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material; and set a goal to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global.”5

These pledges are hardy perennials of the anti-nuclear Left. They have long been championed by that community as a means of catalyzing the process of disarming the United States’ nuclear arsenal. Were they to be adopted, the problems associated with the seventeen-year-old unilateral U.S. “nuclear freeze” would be greatly, and probably irreversibly, compounded.

Sanity check

The Obama administration’s promises and proposals for denuclearization give rise to several important questions with which the American people and their elected representatives must swiftly come to grips.

Since the U.S. is disarming anyway, what incentive is there for any—let alone all—of the other declared nuclear powers actually to agree to denuclearize? Even if they all do, will we have confidence that they are living up to their agreements? What about the rogue state nuclear wannabes: Will they verifiably give up their ambitions and programs? Until such time as all nuclear weapons are eliminated, will the continuing attrition of the U.S. nuclear deterrent make an attack on us or our allies less—or more—likely? Assuming we could somehow achieve the sort of denuclearization Mr. Obama seeks and eliminate not only our arsenal but that of all other nations, would we simply make the world safe for conventional war?

The answers to such questions share a common denominator: U.S. security will not be served by perpetuating, let alone formalizing, the denuclearization explicitly espoused by President Barack Obama and his administration. As we have already discussed, there is no chance that a real, effective, global and verifiable ban on nuclear weapons can be negotiated. The Ottawa alternative would be a fraud, a placebo that simply lowers our guard while doing nothing to enhance our security.

Those allied nations and peoples around the world who rely upon our extended deterrent umbrella are rightly anxious that further erosion in our nuclear arsenal will pose a danger to them, as well as to us. Some have signaled that they would feel constrained under the circumstances to develop their own nuclear arsenals in the hope of offsetting our weakness. Such proliferation is the very antithesis of the Global Zeroists’ objective, yet it is a predictable response to their agenda.

Even if we could somehow achieve the global and verified elimination of nuclear weapons, the best that could be hoped for is not terribly appetizing: A world in which nations can once again contemplate with impunity launching cataclysmic wars in which non-nuclear weapons are employed with devastating effects.

Needed: a sound alternative

These conclusions suggest that a wholesale course-correction is needed with regard to our nuclear posture. Several commissions have been empanelled in recent months by the Defense Department and Congress to evaluate the adequacy of U.S. nuclear deterrent strategy, programs and policies. A new Nuclear Posture Review will be performed within the next year by the Obama administration.

In support of these efforts, a distinguished team of policy and technical experts have joined forces under the sponsorship of the Center for Security Policy in what has been dubbed the New Deterrent Working Group. Last year, the Group submitted to members of these commissions and congressional leaders a White Paper entitled “Towards a New Deterrent.”6 It made the following recommendations for changes designed to promote peace by restoring and maintaining the strength of the U.S. deterrent and its supporting human and industrial infrastructure:

• The President should make forthwith a public statement pronouncing the need for the foreseeable future to maintain a nuclear deterrent that is safe, reliable and effective—and our government’s intention and determination to do so.
• The design and production of the Reliable Replacement Warhead should be approved at once.
• A national debate should be undertaken immediately aimed at engendering consensus regarding: the nature of deterrence; its abiding importance in U.S. foreign and national security strategy; the role of nuclear weapons in that strategy; and the characteristics and quantities of weapons needed today and tomorrow.
• Work should be initiated on advanced nuclear weapons technology, including so-called “fourth-generation” weapons optimized for present and emerging deterrence missions.
• The Defense Department must once again regard the nuclear deterrent mission as a priority, and resource and staff it accordingly. Statements to that effect last year by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Air Force are welcome, as is the recently released White Paper issued jointly by the Defense and Energy Departments entitled “National Security and Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century.”
• A commitment must be made to design, develop and introduce follow-on delivery systems so as to ensure the continued viability of all three legs of the strategic Triad.
• We need a sustained effort by the Pentagon, in conjunction with the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration, to assure that we have the capacity on a continuing basis to design, test and produce new nuclear weapons, as well as to assure over time the viability of our deterrent. That includes a hot production line capable of supporting multiple warhead designs and a new pit facility. It also requires that we reestablish a cadre of nuclear specialists, both civilian and military, with the requisite skill sets to maintain an effective deterrent and the properly funded, modern industrial complex needed to support it.
• Nuclear weapons effects tests are needed, including underground nuclear testing, especially to understand our vulnerabilities to electromagnetic pulse attacks. Under no circumstances should we deny ourselves the right and the ability to conduct nuclear tests—whether in exchange for research and development funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead or on some other pretext.
• We need as well a course-correction regarding proliferation: Instead of what amounts to a preoccupation with dismantling our nuclear forces—which does nothing to discourage the spread of nuclear forces elsewhere, America, as one of the Non-Proliferation Treaty-designated nuclear weapons states, must act to enforce the NPT, doing so unilaterally if other declared states will not. The present approach will lead inexorably to the end of our extended deterrence, a development that will have the effect of promoting proliferation, not curbing it.

Peace in the 21st century will require abiding American nuclear strength rooted in the foregoing measures. We can only hope that President Obama will be open to changes along these lines as he becomes more familiar with present and prospective international realities.

To be clear, such strength is a necessary condition, although not assuredly a sufficient one. On the other hand, unilateral disarmament—whether via continuing, stealthy denuclearization or a Global Zero accord or something in between—is a formula for a world with more and more dangerous nuclear stockpiles elsewhere, and the growing likelihood that such weapons will be used against us and our friends.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., held senior positions with responsibility for U.S. nuclear weapons policy in the Reagan Defense Department. He is currently President of the Center for Security Policy in Washington.