2010: Battle Royale?

For the nonwonks of the world, there is a peculiar item showing up on the "what's hot" lists of 2010: arms control. As Colin Clark noted in DoD Buzz:

The sleeper issue of 2010, the one issue that almost no one who follows defense these days knows much about, is arms control. And it looks likely, says defense analysts and congressional aides, to be the single hottest defense topic on Capitol Hill this year . . . Today, the scent of battle is in the air. Arms controls experts on both sides of the aisle flash brighter smiles and deeper scowls these days than they have in years.

For those that have been working these issues for years, the message seems clear: game on. As reported by the Cable yesterday:

With Barack Obama's pledge to rid the world of nuclear weapons faltering out of the starting gate, leaders of the arms-control community convened a major meeting Tuesday to gear up for their biggest fights in years. The next few months will be critical, insiders say, with a number of key international treaties up for renewal and battle lines being drawn in Washington and abroad. About 50 senior think tank and advocacy executives packed the K Street conference room of the Ploughshares Fund to strategize and rally the troops for the upcoming policy war. "This is going to be the fight of our lives," Ploughshares President Joe Cirincione told The Cable shortly after the meeting concluded.

Looking forward, there are two major questions to answer about nuclear issues at the beginning of the not aughts:

How big is 2010?

There's no doubt that 2010 is important to a degree. START follow-on will invigorate an arms control process that has largely been dormant over the last decade, the NPR will be working from much different Presidential preferences than its predecessor, and the Nuclear Security Summit and NPT Review Conference will provide opportunities for the U.S. to try to regain some leadership on nuclear issues internationally. At the same time, if significant progress is not made on all fronts of the Prague agenda in the next couple of months it will likely not be the end of the world as we know it. START will warm up the arms control engines but even negotiating this fairly modest agreement has been tough and very well could be foreshadowing of the difficultly of the next round of talks which will have to tackle much tougher questions.  The NPR will have important changes from 2001 but change is slow on these issues, much to the chagrin of those in favor of more visionary attempts to capture the Obama Prague agenda. The Nuclear Security Summit, delayed until April, will be an important marker in Obama's very ambitious and difficult effort to secure materials in four years, which may be perceived more as an effort to lock-up materials than a key landmark on the road to eliminating nuclear weapons. The Review Conference, which will be handled in a follow-up post, matters but expectations of just how much can be accomplished within the bureaucratic and time constraints of the Maylong meeting should be tempered.

It should not be a given that the next few months make of break the entirety of the administration's nuclear agenda. For example, the Cable explains:

The next six months will see either the significant advancement or the defeat of a host of arms-control priorities. The Obama administration has been occupied with other crises and not eager to take on nuclear issues despite a heartfelt belief in their merit, Cirincione said. "They want to play it safe." The administration's window for action is open but small. By the end of summer, the congressional elections will crowd out Washington's bandwidth. "If it doesn't get done by July, it doesn't get done," he said.

Congressional elections could, although won't necessarily, make Obama's life on nuclear issues tougher by titling power balances but there are so many key nuclear priorities converging at once that some may have to put off for another day.  In addition to No First Use, CTBT is another example.  Nobody thinks a CTBT can be ratified by the Review Conference, even though there may be something like a symbolic hearing that the U.S. can cite as evidence of moving towards ratification at the Review Conference. If not before the Review Conference, some have argued summer ratification is key before election season heats up.  The importance of this July or never logic may be overstated.  Two senior nuclear experts I have spoken with, for example, are convinced that CTBT ratification is a 2011 issue for the Hill.  A summer vote could provide a slightly more favorable power balance but unlike Health Care, this issue can't be done on strictly partisan lines. The Inhofe/Sessions/Kyl team will be in full force whenever the treaty comes up, whether in summer 2010 or 2011. The important issues for ratification will be providing substantial lead time for thorough Hill briefings and hearings, a fatal flaw of the last go round, and perhaps more critically the compromise of safeguards that will be arranged. The administration has been clear it is not going ahead with CTBT until the votes are there and so setting an arbitrary play clock for the end of summer may be an unwise suggestion that could prompt an ill-advised false start penalty that may be the death nail of the Treaty and a huge blow to Obama's nuclear agenda.

War: What Is It Good For?

With nuclear issues and arms control back on the agenda in a back way, those on both sides of the issues are furiously ramping up for a battle royale. While those at the Ploughshares meeting "gear up for their biggest fights in years" and "rally the troops for the upcoming policy war" that will be "the fight of our lives," the pending "battle" in Congress will be far from an easy victory. The Kyl led opposition will be out in full force arguing for a robust modernization program and against the START treaty, the CTBT, and Obama's vision of zero, amongst other things. The disagreements on both sides of the issue are far from new but it begs an important question: should this be viewed as battle? I'm not so sure. The war plan for those gearing up for battle in favor of the Prague agenda includes:

Push out facts and talking points supporting nuclear-weapons reductions into the press, increase the profile of the military, business, and religious leaders who back lower numbers of nuclear weapons, push sympathetic senators to be more active, and rally potential allies to the cause.

Each of these strategies can provide some value but for every fact or superstar in favor of the Prague agenda there will be another fact or heavy hitter saying the opposite.  That is not to say an effective PR campaign, quantitatively or qualitatively speaking, can't tip the scales in one direction but rather that an overemphasis on trench warfare may not be the most effective way to fight the battle.  Instead, there should be a congruent focus on a strategy that looks at how best to craft an armistice, wherein may lie the answer to who truly "wins" the battle.  Nuclear issues in particular are an area where many experts work from deeply engrained fundamental assumptions that are unlikely to change anytime soon.  Some people will be opposed to reductions. Period. Others will be unconvinced at claims made about the importance of extended nuclear deterrence. Period.  

They key to trying to break the logjam for both sides is not necessarily to stack up op-ed after report in opposing trenches but to find some politically feasible trade space within which the administration can work these issues. Modernization provides an excellent example. It is the golden key that will determine whether START follow-on and perhaps also CTBT will succeed or fail. The problem is that this debate often times boils down to two sides largely talking past each other. See DoD Buzz's explanation of the situation where they detail:

A congressional aide — one of the few with experience in arms control issues — admitted that Democrats must do a better job of being prepared for GOP criticism as the State Department finishes its START follow-​​on treaty, due out sometime this month. “We need to make sure that we are ready, and we weren’t ready last time. We are doing lots of education since half the Senate wasn’t even here when we had the vote last time,” this aide said. And the START effort must be successful “because it will be a strong indicator of whether we can get CTBT passed.” The people to watch are roughly 20 senators — most of them Republican — this aide said “are violently opposed to CTBT. They worry we are going to unilaterally disarm. We are not going to unilaterally disarm. That is outrageous.” The key issue that this group — led by Sens. Kyle, Sessions and Inhofe — will focus on is whether the US needs and can field something like the Reliable Replacement Warhead. Many in the GOP believe one is necessary. Democrats generally accept the findings of several studies that the US warhead stockpile is stable and reliable. David Wright, co-​​director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, believes even discussing RRW is unproductive. “I don’t see it as a legitimate argument. As people continue to make the case that we need new warheads it really sends a bizarre signal to the rest of the world. As soon as you step back and look at what message we are trying to send to the world you can see that that’s a bad idea,” he said. However, there are key nuclear components that need refurbishing, the congressional aide said. And the administration’s February budget will be a key indicator of just how serious the Obama administration is about pursuing arms control solutions. The focus is on two facilities, the uranium facility at Y-​​12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge and one at Los Alamos. They are going to cost a great deal — roughly $3 billion each. So, if you want to stay ahead of the arms control debate, watch the president’s budget to see if it contains funding to get those started. “If you don’t see good support in the NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) budget for those two buildings and for surveillance and for labs to be maintained that’s going to be worse than difficult to get something passed,” the congressional aide said.

Part of this may be chalked up to the journalistic effort to include opposing quotes in a story but the arguments marshaled by each side in this instance aren't really directly at odds with one another.  As we noted recently, modernization discussions typically suffer from a conflation of warheads, delivery vehicles, and infrastructure (with little to no attention paid to the people).  Here, there is a quote about the international harm of discussion an RRW with some language about the importance of refurbishing components and the upgrading of facilities.  Educating people, particularly the Hill, on the issues at play can play a valuable role in ending the sleepwalking on nuclear issues but it important not to underestimate the role politics will play in these debates.  There are examples of influential Senators being willing to listen to the arguments, such as McCain and Lugar on the CTBT, but if health care is in indication expect partisan politics to be out in full force during the ratification efforts.  Therefore, as Michael Krepon detailed in September, it seems much more likely that success of ratification attempts by the administration will be determined much more by what the compromise agreements hammered out look like than whether a couple senators can be persuaded to change their mind.  As such, it may be unwise to put too many eggs in the education basket.  A strategy of focused on "pushing out facts" needs to be complemented by an assessment of possible compromises enough people on each side of the issue could live with.

Modernization, or "Stockpile Management Program," is a great place to start.  For every study validating status quo LEP approaches there will be an argument that reductions increase risk and hedging is required given uncertainties imposed by foregoing testing and RRW.  For every argument that moving beyond current LEP efforts will hurt international credibility you will have people that people that it won't or that international credibility is not important.  Resolution of these debates isn't going to happen any time soon, if ever.  Due to the substantive arguments and political realities of the debate, the answer to these controversies will lie not in absolute decisions one way or another but rather questions like what kinds, what types, and what funding levels of stockpile management?  Can those opposed to replacement or even refurbishment options live with upgrading of the infrastructure?  And the delivery systems?  Should the U.S. pursue modest efforts to modernize its warheads, infrastructure, and delivery systems how should it sell and explain such decisions internationally?  These are some of the critical questions that will have to be thought about as the administration moves ahead with ratification efforts.  The focus has to include determining ways to craft the best acceptable compromise.   Education plays a role in created an informed discussion on the issue but efforts to convert people can't lose sight of the armistice agreement that will have to involve compromise and ultimately be the true determinant of whether the administration will get START follow-on and CTBT.