View Full Version : U.S. is expected to reveal size of nuclear stockpile
incarcerated
04-30-2010, 23:08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR2010043002950.html?hpid=topnews
U.S. is expected to reveal size of nuclear stockpile
By Mary Beth Sheridan and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 1, 2010
The Obama administration is likely to reveal a closely guarded secret -- the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile -- during a critical meeting starting Monday at which Washington will try to strengthen the global treaty that curbs the spread of nuclear weapons, several officials said.
Various factions in the administration have debated for months whether to declassify the numbers, and they were left out of President Obama's recent Nuclear Posture Review because of objections from intelligence officials. Now, the administration is seeking a dramatic announcement that will further enhance its nuclear credentials as it tries to shore up the fraying nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The numbers could be released as soon as Monday, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is to address the NPT Review Conference in New York, officials said. She will speak after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is likely to repeat his demands for more global controls over the stockpiles of the nuclear nations.
U.S. officials fear he could hijack the conference with such demands, diverting attention from his own nuclear program, which is widely seen as violating the nonproliferation treaty.
Arms-control groups estimate the U.S. arsenal contains 9,000 weapons, with roughly 5,000 of them active and the rest in line for dismantlement.
Arms-control activists and officials in the Energy and State departments have argued that making the numbers public would prove how much progress the U.S. government has made in shrinking its Cold War arsenal.
That's important because, under the NPT, nuclear-weapons countries promise to move toward disarmament, while non-nuclear nations pledge they won't build a bomb. A total of 189 countries are treaty members.
The last NPT Review Conference, in 2005, collapsed in failure, with many countries accusing the Bush administration of shirking its disarmament obligations.
'A major step'
Jeffrey Lewis, director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation, said releasing the U.S. numbers would be "a major step forward in transparency."
"The United States has not gotten enough credit for the reductions it has made," he said. "That's even true of the Bush administration. . . . It makes it easier for us to make the case we are in fact reducing the number of nuclear weapons."
The U.S. intelligence community has been concerned that terrorists or states with nuclear ambitions could use the numbers to figure out how much plutonium or uranium is needed to make a bomb. But Lewis and other arms-control advocates say information on that is easy to find.
Several officials said the announcement on the stockpile numbers will be made during the conference. But one senior official cautioned that no final decision had been made. He noted that legally, such information could be declassified only if it were clear it would not lead to further nuclear proliferation. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
There appears to be only one instance when current figures on the size of the U.S. stockpile were made public. In 1992, Gen. Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, included aggregate stockpile numbers in a chart used at a congressional hearing on a new strategic arms agreement.
The numbers had not been declassified, but the disclosure apparently attracted no news coverage at the time. According to a 2000 Department of Energy document, the Defense Department steadfastly refused to declassify the stockpile figures even after the Powell presentation.
On a nuclear roll
The Obama administration believes it is going into the NPT conference in a position of strength, pointing to a string of recent nuclear achievements -- including an arms treaty with Russia and a nuclear-terrorism summit that drew 46 countries to Washington.
The NPT, which took effect in 1970, is widely seen as one of the world's most successful treaties. But it is facing its greatest strain in a quarter-century, due to the Iranian program and North Korea's decision to quit the pact after having secretly developed a bomb. Iran insists its program is aimed at producing peaceful nuclear energy, but it has hidden its nuclear facilities from inspectors. It has also been sanctioned three times by the U.N. Security Council for defying its orders to stop enriching uranium.
The NPT review conferences, held every five years, have often turned into battles between the nuclear haves and have-nots. Several of the meetings have ended without final declarations, which require consensus.
U.S. officials are trying to lower expectations for this month-long conference, noting that Iran will likely object to any final declaration constraining its program.
"A final document should not be the measure of success," said Ellen O. Tauscher, the undersecretary for arms control, in a speech Thursday at the Center for American Progress.
The U.S. strategy is to get a supermajority of countries to agree to a plan to pursue new ways to punish nuclear cheaters and encourage the adoption of more nuclear safeguards. U.S. officials said it could provide momentum for seeking change in other venues, such as at the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Staff writers Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch contributed to this report.
We should publish the location and security info as well. If we are going to compromise our National Defense we might as well do it right.
meh... show of hands: who is surprised ?
You have to give credit where credit is due.
Even Pres Clinton didn't do that.
what an interesting way to undermine your Nation...
This is the wrong subject matter in which to be "transparent". :rolleyes:
Utah Bob
05-01-2010, 12:32
I would like to go on record saying that I don't have any here.
Now move along.
*sigh*
So last year the Obama administration releases the details of CIA interrogation methods - and now this? I'm sure our enemies would love guided tours (photos allowed!) of NSA, DIA and CIA along with GPS coordinates of our missile sites.
Obama is just bitter he can't legally enter Arizona anymore...
I'm glad we still have our Boomers at sea.
Is the concept of 'strategic transparency' the problem or is the problem the current president who advocates this approach?:confused:
By railing repeatedly at the 'mistakes' and 'failures' of previous administrations, he deprives himself (and the American people) of opportunities to benefit from the insights and experiences of his predecessors. (I really cannot stand the guy. Not even a little.)
<<SNIP>>
The American people are determined to maintain and if necessary increase this armed strength for as long a period as is necessary to safeguard peace and to maintain our security.
But we know that a mutually dependable system for less armament on the part of all nations would be a better way to safeguard peace and to maintain our security.
It would ease the fears of war in the anxious hearts of people everywhere. It would lighten the burdens upon the backs of the people. It would make it possible for every nation, great and small, developed and less developed, to advance the standards of living of its people, to attain better food, and clothing, and shelter, more of education and larger enjoyment of life.
Therefore the United States government is prepared to enter into a sound and reliable agreement making possible the reduction of armament. I have directed that an intensive and thorough study of this subject be made within our own government. From these studies, which are continuing, a very important principle is emerging to which I referred in my opening statement on Monday.
No sound and reliable agreement can be made unless it is completely covered by an inspection and reporting system adequate to support every portion of the agreement.
The lessons of history teach us that disarmament agreements without adequate reciprocal inspection increase the dangers of war and do not brighten the prospects of peace.
<<SNIP>>
I propose, therefore, that we take a practical step, that we begin an arrangement, very quickly, as between ourselves--immediately. These steps would include:
To give to each other a complete blueprint of our military establishments, from beginning to end, from one end of our countries to the other; lay out the establishments and provide the blueprints to each other.
Next, to provide within our countries facilities for aerial photography to the other country--we to provide you the facilities within our country, ample facilities for aerial reconnaissance, where you can make all the pictures you choose and take them to your own country to study, you to provide exactly the same facilities for us and we to make these examinations, and by this step to convince the world that we are providing as between ourselves against the possibility of great surprise attack, thus lessening danger and relaxing tension. Likewise we will make more easily attainable a comprehensive and effective system of inspection and disarmament, because what I propose, I assure you, would be but a beginning.
<<SNIP>>
The successful working out of such a system would do much to develop the mutual confidence which will open wide the avenues of progress for all our peoples.
The quest for peace is the statesman's most exacting duty. Security of the nation entrusted to his care is his greatest responsibility. Practical progress to lasting peace is his fondest hope. Yet in pursuit of his hope he must not betray the trust placed in him as guardian of the people's security. A sound peace--with security, justice, well-being, and freedom for the people of the world--can be achieved, but only by patiently and thoughtfully following a hard and sure and tested road.---Dwight David Eisenhower, Statement on Disarmament Presented at the Geneva Conference, July 21, 1955. (Source is here (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=10306)).
Green Light
05-01-2010, 17:01
That proves it. Left wing extremists don't play poker. Whata dope!
H. Obama indicated that he may grant a visa to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - What was that quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero :mad:
Assuming he will be a one term president, it will take years to fix what he has already screwed up, not to mention what he screws up in the next couple of years.
TOMAHAWK9521
05-02-2010, 09:52
Obama is just bitter he can't legally enter Arizona anymore...
I'm glad we still have our Boomers at sea.
He'll probably hand out their freqs and transponder codes so everyone can feel safer by being able to track their movements. :mad:
...at least the POTUS didn't loose a thumb drive in the bazaar!
Find the silver lining fellas - don't be 'haters' !!!
What I do find unique is how quick we see the media educate the American public on the FACT that the oil rig disaster is not the fault of the POTUS.
The POTUS loves us and wants to help.
Yet when 'Dubya" was the POTUS, he was somehow able to command the heavens and and the very forces of nature, then direct natures full power against poor people.
...didnt see any oil well disasters when Bush was POTUS did ya' !!!
Thats cause Dubya LOVES oil wells, but hates poor people.
(George Bush hates poor people)
...just my two cents, I could be wrong
greenberetTFS
05-03-2010, 06:08
...at least the POTUS didn't loose a thumb drive in the bazaar!
Find the silver lining fellas - don't be 'haters' !!!
What I do find unique is how quick we see the media educate the American public on the FACT that the oil rig disaster is not the fault of the POTUS.
The POTUS loves us and wants to help.
Yet when 'Dubya" was the POTUS, he was somehow able to command the heavens and and the very forces of nature, then direct natures full power against poor people.
...didnt see any oil well disasters when Bush was POTUS did ya' !!!
Thats cause Dubya LOVES oil wells, but hates poor people.
(George Bush hates poor people)
...just my two cents, I could be wrong
Billy,makes sense to me..................;)
Big Teddy :munchin
2007 Annual Report on Implementation of the Moscow Treaty
http://www.state.gov/t/vci/rls/rpt/88187.htm
U.S. Nuclear Weapon Enduring Stockpile
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Wpngall.html
Estimates of the US Nuclear Weapons Stockpile, 2007 and 2012
http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2007/05/estimates_of_us_nuclear_weapon.php
And so it goes...
Richard
Assuming he will be a one term president, it will take years to fix what he has already screwed up, not to mention what he screws up in the next couple of years.
I remember over and over how people (Rush, Dick Morris, etc...) said this very exact same thing about what would happen if Hillary Clinton was elected. They constantly opined that legislation she would enact in her forst 100 days would take a decade to correct. WOW!! Right now, to me, she is definitely looking like the lesser of two evils.
IMHO, Rush really, really, messed up with "Operation Chaos".:munchin
IMHO, Rush really, really, messed up with "Operation Chaos".:munchin
A predictable side-effect of illegal pain-killer use on the judgment of middle-aged males... :rolleyes:
Richard
A predictable side-effect of illegal pain-killer use on the judgment of middle-aged males... :rolleyes:
Richard
Spoken like two people who have no clue what "Operation Chaos" was or what it's goal was.
If you guys are going to rag on Rush you really need to listen to the show and not just listen to what the MSM tells you he said.
Short story - Operation Chaos was to drag out the primary process for the D's. Up front Rush said the MSM was never going to go after Obama and the only way to do it was to keep HRC in play and swinging at him.
How effective it was and how many people participated can be argued but it was dicey all the way up to the primary - when HRC fell in line.
And it rattled a number of D's.
Oooppssss... ;)
And so it goes...
Richard
Spoken like two people who have no clue what "Operation Chaos" was or what it's goal was.
If you guys are going to rag on Rush you really need to listen to the show and not just listen to what the MSM tells you he said.
Short story - Operation Chaos was to drag out the primary process for the D's. Up front Rush said the MSM was never going to go after Obama and the only way to do it was to keep HRC in play and swinging at him.
How effective it was and how many people participated can be argued but it was dicey all the way up to the primary - when HRC fell in line.
And it rattled a number of D's.
I am an avid listener. ;) I just don't think back in FEB 08 he really thought Obama would prevail in a McCain/Obama match up. My rememberation (Bushism) had it as Rush wanted republican voters to keep Hillary in the race so there would be continuing negative campaigning between the DEMs. Rush’s goal was not a HRC nomination…he was pulling for Obama, as he felt there would be more voter swap-over from DEM to REPUB as the result of an HRC loss. The result would be a diminished, but victorious Obama…with HRC voters moving to McCain. Whether that scenario is tee-totally accurate…that’s the version I remembered…hence my comment.
I wasn't ragging on him...I think Rush is awesome...but awesome folks aren't always correct. Well, he is...99.1% of the time. :D
Utah Bob
05-03-2010, 14:34
While he's in the country, perhaps someone from DOD should take the opportunity to give Monsieur Ahmadinejad a tour of a really big nuke storage area.
And then tell him to stfu.
ArmyStrong
05-03-2010, 17:41
Source:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704342604575222351143435766.html?m od=WSJ_latestheadlines
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should get out more. We mean that without irony. The Iranian President spoke yesterday in New York at the start of the U.N. conference reviewing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and nothing could have done more to expose the folly of relying on arms control to maintain global security.
The Iranian couldn't have been clearer that his country intends to ignore any and all U.N. pressure to stop building its bomb. He averred that the world has "not a single credible proof" that Iran intends to build a bomb, notwithstanding the world's discovery of its secret uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz in 2002 and its secret underground facility near Qom last year. He even said the U.S. should be suspended from the U.N. atomic agency's board because "it used nuclear weapons against Japan" and depleted uranium weapons in Iraq.
Delegates from the U.S., U.K. and France walked out during the speech, to their credit. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs chimed in that the remarks were "wild accusations, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took to the podium later in the day to accuse Iran of "flouting the rules" and declaring it is "time for a strong international response."
This is all true enough, but it ignores Mr. Ahmadinejad's real message, which is that Iran won't be deterred by a stricter world antiproliferation treaty, or by one more U.N. Security Council resolution, or by the moral example, as President Obama likes to put it, of a new U.S.-Russian arms treaty. Iran wants the bomb in order to become a more potent Mideast power that can do as it pleases without having to worry about opposition from the world's largest nations.
Give Mr. Ahmadinejad credit for lack of artifice. He says what he and the ruling class in Tehran believe and thus betrays what they intend, however "wild."
The truly humiliating spectacle is the sight of the world's leading powers devoting a month to updating a treaty designed to stop nonproliferation even as Mr. Ahmadinejad makes a mockery of that effort before their very eyes.
If Iran does get a nuclear weapon, or even the capacity to make one at a moment's notice, it would be the most damaging act of proliferation since Stalin got the hydrogen bomb. The event would set off a regional nuclear arms race, as Turkey, Egypt, the Saudis and perhaps even the Gulf states seek their own nuclear deterrent. The rest of the world would see that Iran was able to face down the world's leading powers—and prevail. The damage to world order would be traumatic. And that is before the increased risks of global nuclear terrorism from Iranian proliferation.
If Mr. Obama and other world leaders were serious about Iran, they wouldn't merely walk out on Iran's president. They would rally the world to stop him, explaining the grave stakes to the public, and making clear to Iran that there is a deadline to diplomacy and that military force will be used if diplomacy fails. The only serious person at the U.N. on Monday was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
incarcerated
05-29-2010, 18:27
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/our-nuclear-posture
Our Nuclear Posture
Under the Obama administration? Supine.
BY Michael Anton
April 19, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 29
During the course of the 1991 Gulf war, Iraq fired 88 Scud missiles at targets in Israel and Saudi Arabia. All of them were armed with conventional warheads. This despite the fact that Iraq then possessed large stocks of chemical and biological weapons. Indeed, after the war, U.N. chief weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus found that Iraq had armed 25 missile warheads and 166 bombs with biological weapons. None of them were used, even as the Iraqi military faced the overwhelming might of a U.S.-led international coalition in a war Iraq was sure to lose.
So what stayed Saddam Hussein’s hand? As the Iraqis tell it, they feared an American nuclear response. They had reason to.
In the run up to the war, senior officials—from—made a series of barely ambiguous and sufficiently ominous threats to Iraqi leaders. The president sent a letter to Saddam which informed the Iraqi tyrant that “the United States will not tolerate the use of chemical or biological weapons. . . . The American people would demand the strongest possible response. You and your country will pay a terrible price if you order unconscionable acts of this sort.” Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney was equally blunt: “Were Saddam foolish enough to use weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. response would be absolutely overwhelming and it would be devastating.”
The Iraqis took those threats seriously. Four years later, Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz told Ekeus that Iraq had been deterred from using its WMD because it interpreted these (and other) American threats as promises of nuclear retaliation.
This episode is arguably the most successful example of deterrence in action in recent history. Could the United States repeat that performance if we had to? Not if we were to follow the letter of the Obama administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, released (after many delays and much hype) last Tuesday.
Among the changes to American nuclear strategy announced in the review, the United States has now promised not to threaten or use nuclear weapons in response to a chemical or biological attack by a nonnuclear state. It is the worst element of a document that could in fact have been much worse.
The arms controlling left had high hopes for this report. Indeed, many of them—studded throughout the National Security Council staff, the State Department, and in civilian positions at the Pentagon—helped to draft it. But despite the numerous items on their extensive wish list, what they got were mostly stocking stuffers. They sought a pledge that the United States would never be the first to use nuclear weapons; a declaration that the “sole purpose” of the American nuclear arsenal is to deter nuclear attacks; elimination of one leg of the “strategic triad” of nuclear-armed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers; a pledge to withdraw the few remaining forward deployed American nuclear weapons from Europe; “de-alerting” more of our nuclear forces—and this litany is by no means exhaustive. They got none of it.
Much of what they did get turns out to be something like a cheap, Canal Street knockoff of the object of their desire. Consider the pledge to renounce the use of nuclear weapons in response to biological threats. It is immediately followed by a caveat: “Given the catastrophic potential of biological weapons and the rapid pace of bio-technology development, the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment in the assurance that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of the biological weapons threat and U.S. capacities to counter that threat.”
So will we or won’t we? To say that the policy is now muddled would be an understatement. Who knew that Obama was a believer in strategic ambiguity?
This caveat pointedly does not apply to chemical weapons, however. Hence a repeat performance of our Gulf war deterrence of Saddam would seem to be off the table. Or is it? The Nuclear Posture Review for the first time links two formerly separate policies: “negative security assurances” (promises not to attack nonnuclear states with nuclear weapons) and implicit or explicit threats to wield nuclear weapons in response to nonnuclear attacks. The United States has always reserved the right to respond to conventional or chemical-biological warfare (CBW) attacks with nuclear weapons. Now, apparently, we won’t even threaten a nuclear response to biological (unless we decide otherwise; see above) or chemical attacks if the attacker is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in good standing. Got it?
Iraq signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in the treaty’s first year (1968); hence, had the new policy been in place at the time of the first Gulf war, we could not have made the threats that we actually did use to good effect. But wait! Was Iraq “in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations”? If not, then the assurance would not have applied. We now know, thanks to the war and the inspections that followed, that Iraq maintained a secret and extensive nuclear weapons program. We realized little of this before the war, when the threats were made. So would they have been allowed or not?
In any case, why the two concepts are now linked is not clear. One of the rationales for the United States’ forswearing the development of biological and chemical weapons (apart from their inherent repugnance) was that our nuclear arsenal remained the surest guarantee against CBW attack. Well, not if we explicitly renounce the use of nuclear weapons in such circumstances.
Also, the point of the negative security assurance is to encourage regimes to live happily without nuclear weapons. This is not entirely fanciful. Tom Reed and Danny Stillman, in their history of nuclear weapons The Nuclear Express, tell how the reluctance of some of the former Soviet republics to return to Russia the legacy weapons of the USSR was overcome. Some Ukrainian generals were invited to StratCom headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, whereAir Force brass, poring over maps of their guests’ country, explained in vivid detail what it meant to be on the American target list in the event of nuclear war. The Ukrainian visitors turned white, returned to Kiev and recommended that all nuclear weapons in their country be repatriated to their motherland.
So, if promises not to use nukes against the nuclear-chaste encourages states to swear off nukes, how does promising not to use nukes against CBW-capable states discourage the development of the latter weapons? Wouldn’t that rather encourage it? If the clear consequence of being nuclear-armed is to place your country on the American nuclear targeting list, why shouldn’t the clear consequence of seeking, possessing, or using CBW not be the same?
No doubt the Obama officials who drafted this document believe that its many caveats, exceptions, and trapdoors leave sufficient flexibility for the president to do whatever he may think he needs to do in any contingency. And they may be right. But that misses a larger point. Deterrence is not always, or even mostly, effective in the midst of a crisis. It is also a function of an enemy’s impression of how far its intended victim can be pushed, and how hard he might push back if pushed too far.
By that standard, the new policy is a failure. It amounts not so much to strategic ambiguity as to strategic obfuscation. The new policy is deliberately designed to sound softer than the old, but is also qualified to the point that the new softness will appear to any semi-careful reader to be highly questionable. What is the real policy? It’s impossible to say simply from reading the report. What will an enemy take away from it? That we deeply desire to cultivate a reputation for dovishness while we reserve the right to revert to hawkishness at a moment’s notice. Whom is this supposed to scare or impress, much less deter?
Thankfully, the truly bad news pretty much ends there, at least in the Nuclear Posture Review. There is however a bit of bad news in the New START treaty, the text of which was finally released after Thursday’s Prague signing ceremony. The administration has repeatedly sworn that the treaty places no constraints on missile defense. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates: “Missile defense is not constrained by this treaty.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “The treaty places no constraints on our missile defense plans—now or in the future.” Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher: “There is no limit or constraint on what the United States can do with its missile defense systems... definitely, positively, and no way, no how.”
And yet, there is this in the treaty’s preamble:
"Recognizing the existence of the inter-relationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms, that this interrelationship will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced, and that current strategic defensive arms do not undermine the viability and effectiveness of the strategic offensive arms of the parties ... "
There are two possible ways to interpret this: (1) Who cares? It’s just the preamble. (2) It is the first-ever formal linkage between offensive and defensive systems and an implicit promise to limit the latter in the future. Russian president Medvedev’s foreign minister believes interpretation Number 2. “Linkage to missile defense is clearly spelled out in the accord and is legally binding,” Sergei Lavrov said. He would appear to be at least partly right. The linkage is there for all to see, though it’s a stretch to say that the preamble language is legally binding.
incarcerated
05-29-2010, 18:29
Part 2
Linkage, however, is bad enough. For two decades, the United States has deliberately refrained from designing missile defense systems that could counter the Russian (or Chinese) nuclear arsenals. Moscow’s response has been to unceasingly complain about a system deliberately limited so that their huge arsenal could easily overwhelm it. Now we have the worst of both worlds: a missile defense system designed not to defend against a Russian strike but nonetheless formally linked to Russia’s nuclear posture. Worse, the Russian foreign minister has hinted that his country may invoke the treaty’s otherwise standard withdrawal language if “the U.S. strategic missile defense begins to significantly affect the efficiency of Russian strategic nuclear forces.” Given that the Russians publicly insist (though cannot possibly believe) that virtually anything we do on missile defense affects their strategic forces, this was not encouraging news.
It gets worse. Article V, paragraph 3:
Each party shall not convert and shall not use ICBM launchers and SLBM launchers for placement of missile defense interceptors therein. Each party further shall not convert and shall not use launchers of missile defense interceptors for placement of ICBMs and SLBMs therein.
Now, this is a constraint. On its website, the White House asserts that “the Treaty does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S. missile defense programs.” Possibly the administration could fall back on the “current or planned” qualifier to insist that, since we do not currently plan to reuse retired SLBM or ICBM launchers for missile defense, this limitation is not really limiting. But it might be. The treaty after all calls for steep cuts in delivery vehicles. Absent this provision, we might have reused those retired launchers in the missile defense program. The treaty forbids that. Expect this provision to cause serious problems in the ratification debate, and also to undermine—justifiably—the administration’s credibility. Republican senators Jon Kyl and John McCain have already noticed: “While we were initially advised that the only reference to missile defense was in the preamble to the treaty, we now find that there are other references to missile defense, some of which could limit U.S. actions.” Translation: We were misled.
In the Nuclear Posture Review, there is some good news, though one has to be willing to parse to find it. One of the marquee items on the arms controllers’ wish list was a pledge not to develop any new nuclear weapons. Since the United States has been out of that business for more than 20 years, why make this a priority? The issue is the reliability of the existing stockpile. Nuclear weapons are complicated; the older they get, the less sure you can be that they still work. One way to know is to test them, but there is no appetite in this country to resume testing (which we unilaterally halted in 1992). Another option is to do what we are doing now: conduct an extensive maintenance program to identify problems and replace degraded components. But that doesn’t yield certain knowledge; it only raises confidence.
Yet another way would be to make more warheads. That’s what Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wanted to do when he was serving in the prior administration and reportedly still supports. It’s also what every Republican senator plus Joe Lieberman says will be the price of ratification of the New START treaty.
But the Nuclear Posture Review emphatically says “the United States will not develop new nuclear warheads.” Game over, right? Well, it depends on the meaning of “new.” The approach favored by Gates—called the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW)—would use existing fissile material, parts stripped from decommissioned weapons, and design specifications that were developed decades ago. If a skilled mechanic were to build a car using spare parts, old steel, and blueprints from a 40-year-old file cabinet, would it be a new car? In one sense, yes. In another sense, no.
Arms controllers emphatically answer “Yes!” to that question. While it might appear that they have won the day, a careful reading reveals a few escape hatches. First, the document specifically renounces “new military missions” and “new military capabilities” for the arsenal. But that is like a Catholic ostentatiously pledging not to eat meat on Fridays during Lent. He has to do that anyway. Nobody is talking about building a new warhead for a new mission. The last time such a proposal was floated—the “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator” advocated in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review—it was quickly scuttled owing to intense opposition. The mission of the RRW would be the same as the mission of the warheads in our current strategic arsenal. Moreover, the report specifically allows for the “replacement” of nuclear components—language malleable enough that it could be stretched to look a great deal like RRW.
At a press briefing at the Pentagon the day the report was released, National Nuclear Security Administration head Thomas D’Agostino and Joint Chiefs vice chairman General James Cartwright seemed to confirm this interpretation. Here is the general: “Nobody has ever removed from the commander or anyone else in that chain the ability to stand up and say, ‘I’m uncomfortable; I believe that we’re going to have to test, or I believe that we’re going to have to build something new.’ That’s not been removed here.” And D’Agostino: “So what we want to do is ... create a position or a point in time where we say, if we have to go to that replacement category whereby—because we think it’s the only way or one of the best ways, to achieve the aims that we have—safety, security, reliability, and no underground testing—then we have the flexibility to do that.”
Ellen Tauscher, perhaps the most determined RRW opponent in the administration, stood by mute. So who really won that fight?
The answer would appear to be Gates. He is almost certainly the reason why the arms controllers lost so many key fights, and a living example that sometimes engaging with those with whom you disagree can make a bad policy better or at least less bad. Would that he could have saved us from the dismal policy of strategic obfuscation and the formal linkage of missile defense to Russian strategic forces. But it would be ungrateful to complain. At least about Gates.
Michael Anton served in national security positions in the recent Bush administration.