2010 Nuclear Scholars Initiative: NPR Edition

By Andrew St. Denis

Last Friday, PONI kicked off its 2010 Nuclear Scholars Initiative with a seminar on the Nuclear Posture Reviews, which have shaped not just U.S. nuclear policy, but also international perceptions of U.S. policy. Chaired by director Clark Murdock, the event featured discussions with National Defense University’s Elaine Bunn, the National Institute for Public Policy’s Keith Payne, and Amy Woolf of the Congressional Research Service. Ambassador Linton Brooks also joined in the seminar to provide insights from his long experience in the nuclear community.

The day covered the history of these reviews, starting with the 1994 review begun under then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin. The first Review was initially conceived by Les Aspin in order to asses the U.S. nuclear mission in its totality. Subsequent NPRs have been Congressionally-mandated, oftentimes (at least in-part) to buy time before making policy or, more precisely, budgetary decisions. Since then, NPRs have been mandated and carried out for different reasons. The 2001 NPR was not congressionally-mandated as a new requirement of each incoming president, but rather as a way to tie President Clinton's hands on issues pertaining to the stockpile and various START framework reductions until a new administration was sworn in.  These issues are again at the fore of the policy debate, and the 2010 NPR will seek to provide guidance on what the U.S. approach should be to dealing with issues related to the nuclear stockpile and supporting infrastructure, a topic that has received considerable attention from the Four Statesmen, Vice President Biden, and Congress. At the same time, international perceptions of how the modernization debate plays out will also need to be in consideration, as U.S. goals on nonproliferation depend on international cooperation and avoidance of what other states would consider a buildup of new nuclear weapons.

Indeed, the content of the NPR will be crucial to U.S. efforts to promote a nonproliferation agenda at the upcoming NPT Review Conference. The interagency nature of the review process (i.e. the effort to involve the maximum number of stakeholders within government), while cited as one cause for the NPR’s delay, could serve the purpose of developing a coordinated strategy and thereby  better prepare U.S. officials for the 2010 Review Conference. Following the 1994 review – conducted mainly within the domain of the DoD – U.S. officials attending the 1995 RevCon were able to use the experience of crafting the document to be clearer and more compelling in articulating the U.S. position. This aided efforts leading to the indefinite extension of the NPT. Hopefully, the broad interagency involvement in the 2010 NPR will provide similar benefits as the U.S. prepares for this year’s RevCon.

Also discussed was the role individuals play in shaping the NPR. Rumors of tensions within the interagency process are often inflated; the frictions sometimes come about over issues of who is consulted and when, rather than disagreements over actual policy. Disagreement is inevitable, but the hype over discord, while making for attention-grabbing headlines, is not always an accurate reflection of reality.

Regarding differences between the current NPR and year’s past, it was noted that with President Obama’s Prague speech, this new NPR benefits from a heretofore unknown level of front-end guidance from executive leadership. It is also broader in scope than previous reviews. The 2001 NPR had some guidance to draw upon from Bush’s 2001 speech at National Defense University and, accordingly, considered warhead reductions and the role of missile defense. But the 2010 review will extend even further in its optic to consider the relationship between U.S. nuclear strategy on nonproliferation and arms reduction efforts. In past reviews, consultation with allies was less of a focus, since, following the end of the Cold War, some states and Soviet experts did not emphasize the risks posed by the changing nuclear landscape and didn’t prioritize consultation on nuclear issues through the lens of the NPR. Between the increased prominence of nuclear issues and Obama’s emphasis on diplomacy and cooperation, consultation with allies is likely to play a much larger role this time around.

Finally, the 2010 NPR was discussed in the context of the delay in its release and ongoing negotiations with Russia on the START follow-on. While the NPR may be conducted by a large interagency staff and working group process – brought about by the inclusion of a broader agenda beyond nuclear weapons in this review – the process places intense demands on the group of people in-charge of coordinating that process. However, it is evidently not the case that those who are responsible for negotiating the START follow-on are doing so independent of (or ignorant of) the Nuclear Posture Review. Indeed, the NPR process, involves those who are responsible for other aspects of nuclear policy, including START follow-on. Of course, issues related to missile defense and arms reduction verification are still being hashed out in negotiations with Russia. With today’s news that the U.S. and Russian arms-control negotiators have reached an agreement in principle, including resolution of the disagreements over telemetry on missile flights and inspection at missile production facilities, it looks like the START/NPR dual-approach has paid off for President Obama’s arms control agenda.