Disarmament Priorities and De-Alerting

According to a recent post by Hans Kristensen on the FAS Strategic Security Blog, the Obama administration is seeking to delay action at the U.N. on de-alerting nuclear forces:

The Obama administration has asked four countries to postpone a resolution at the United Nations calling for reducing the alert-level of nuclear weapons.
The intervention apparently is intended to avoid the Obama administration having to vote against the resolution before the important Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in May 2010 — on an issue Barack Obama promised to support when he ran for president.
The resolution, which was last adopted by the U.N. General Assembly with overwhelming support on December 2, 2008, calls for “further practical steps to be taken to decrease the operational readiness of nuclear weapons systems, with a view to ensuring that all nuclear weapons are removed from high alert status.”

To some, the request might appear surprising.  Obama has been a staunch advocate of nuclear disarmament and a reduced role for nuclear weapons.  And, as Kristensen notes, de-alerting of U.S. nuclear forces was one of Obama’s campaign promises.  So, why would he delay action on something that he previously supported?  There are two possible explanations.  Either the White House changed its mind, or it decided to focus on other issues.

If it’s the latter, the Obama administration is making a smart choice.  A U.N. resolution pushing for de-alerting could create controversy and distract attention from more pressing priorities.  The administration is starting to realize that maintaining priorities is the only way to get things done.  This is true in Congress, where Obama must narrow his agenda to get key votes, but also in international diplomacy.  James Kitfield made exactly this point in an article appearing in the Global Security Newswire:

By launching the nonproliferation initiative while Obama's popularity and stock of political capital remain relatively high, the administration seems to have absorbed the lesson of 1999. "But I see both risk as well as opportunity in the administration's very ambitious strategy," Talbott said. "They obviously hope to get some points on the board with negotiation and ratification of a new START, building a sense of momentum that will translate into Senate ratification of the test-ban treaty. That has a familiar ring, however, because this administration similarly hoped to score some early points with their domestic agenda and then get on a roll where victory begot victory. Then they ran into trouble on health care, which will translate into trouble on other domestic issues. The same thing could happen on their nonproliferation agenda."

Since Obama’s Prague speech, the outline of his disarmament agenda has been clear:  a new START treaty, ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, then begin negotiations on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty.  While there are a number of other potentially important disarmament and non-proliferation objectives (such as de-alerting, strengthening export controls, Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones, universal adherence to the NPT, etc), the administration has tried to focus on only a few issues.

There is a reason there hasn’t been progress on a number of these initiatives.  Each comes with a constituency that is resistant to change and would require negotiations (and at times pressure) to be implemented.  For example, countries may be resistant to export controls because of economic costs on their respective economies.  Universal adherence and participation in the NPT would be resisted by states currently outside of the NPT (like India, Pakistan, and Israel).  In the case of de-alerting, the resistance and negotiations would likely involve Russia.  Recent reports about Russia’s nuclear doctrine reveal that they are as reliant on nuclear weapons as ever.  Therefore, Russia would likely resist measures to decrease the alert level of nuclear forces.

If the U.S. pursued de-alerting, it could cause problems for the Obama’s current top priority:  a new START treaty.  According to Thomas H. Karas in a 2001 Sandia National Laboratories report evaluating de-alerting:

De-alerting measures should foster, not delay the progress of START II ratification and START III negotiation. For example, there is the possibility that unilateral (or reciprocal, but non-binding) reductions in nuclear capabilities will reduce the incentives for Russia to commit itself to the legally binding reductions envisaged in those treaties. There is also the possibility that the negotiation of mutually verifiable de-alerting measures could be at least as lengthy and difficult as the negotiation of deactivation and elimination provisions for START II and III. If that were the case, it seems preferable to make the first order of business deactivation of systems scheduled for elimination, as opposed to de-alerting of systems intended for retention.

The need for priorities was also one of the central takeaways from a recent trilateral dialogue with Track II officials from the U.S., U.K., and France.  The dialogue concluded that, in the time leading up to the 2010 NPT Review Conference, these countries must pursue a common disarmament and nonproliferation agenda if they hope to emerge from the conference with a stronger NPT.  Substantial progress on a narrow set of priorities is better than incremental progress on a broader agenda.

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The last part of Kristensen’s post references a recent report released by the EastWest Institute that takes a look at de-alerting.  The report is based on a conference over the summer that looked at whether or not the U.S. should de-alert its nuclear arsenal.  The conference included commentary from Walt Slocombe (against certain types of de-alerting) and John Steinbruner (in favor of de-alerting).  Whether or not the U.S. should de-alert its nuclear arsenal is certainly an interesting debate…