Does the NPR define the nuclear agenda?

Marc Ambinder provided an update on all things Nuclear Posture Review Friday at the Atlantic. There was some good news out of the report for those worried about the nuclear priesthood slow rolling the administration's policy agenda:

But this NPR achieved a bureaucratic hallmark that none of its post-Cold War predecessors could brag about: it has become a true interagency project . . . A few debates have been settled, and the degree of consensus on several contentious issues would surprise outsiders . . . One theme in recent press reporting -- that the White House is fighting to win control of the document from the entrenched nuclear bureaucracy -- may have been true earlier in the process, but the National Security Council seems to have a handle on it now.

While the NSC is reported to firmly have the reigns of the effort, the NPR process is far from over. According to press reports, topics such as our declaratory policy, which begs the fundamental question of the purpose of nuclear weapons, remain unanswered as the deputies begin to turn their attention to the issue. As a result, Ambinder argues the stakes are high for the NPR:

An NPR that too closely hews to the status quo and/or is largely indistinguishable from its 2002 Bush-era predecessor document will be a wasted opportunity. And, remember, the administration only gets one shot at a NPR, even if the president is reelected. For better or worse, this document will shape the future course of the Obama Presidency's nuclear weapons agenda.

There’s something to be said for the once in an administration lifetime argument but viewing the 2010 NPR as the fork in the road between success and failure of Obama's nuclear agenda may be premature. For starters, it is important to lay the markers of what the NPR will and won’t do. It seems unlikely the 2010 NPR goes down in history as “largely indistinguishable from its 2002 Bush-era predecessor document.” The administration will work hard to try to play the ‘not Bush’ card as it spins the NPR as a move away from pre-emption and the perceived blurring between nuclear and conventional weapons that haunted the perception of the last NPR internationally. At the same time, there will also be similarities between the documents in some areas as they grapple with challenges like nuclear deterrence in the 21st century, nuclear terrorism, and the proliferation of WMD, even if the ways deal with each turn out to be a bit different. As argued here previously, NPR progress needs to be measured in feet not miles so as to reduce the perception that the NPR will be labeled a failure should it not include x, y, and z.

These tempered expectations of how far the NPR will move in either direction are also why it may be too soon to determine that the NPR "will shape the future course of the Obama Presidency's nuclear weapons agenda." To be fair, the NPR is an important symbol, particularly at the Review Conference given timelines, of how the Defense Department and interagency process answer the "reduce roles and maintain deterrence" question. That said, consider the following two hypothetical scenarios:

Scenario 1: The NPR is perceived as a failure in no small part because calculated ambiguity or something similar stays in place. However, the administration is able to get a START follow-on, ratify the CTBT, secure all the loose nuclear material in 4 years, get a FMCT back on track, and begin discussion on another round of bilateral reductions with Russia.
Scenario 2: The NPR is perceived as a success in no small part because of its endorsement of a substantial move away from calculated ambiguity. Despite this, the administration is unable to get START follow-on or CTBT ratified, fails to secure all the loose nuclear material in 4 years, and cannot resuscitate FMCT talks in a meaningful way.

Which would the administration rather have? The question is a bit of a false choice but serves to highlight an interesting point: Obama's ambitious nuclear agenda has a number of major components that are related but not necessarily co-dependent on another. The NPR is important to "establish U.S. nuclear deterrence policy, strategy, and force posture for the next 5 to 10 years" which clearly matters but doesn’t mean that the NPR automatically defines his nuclear agenda. Whether he is able to get a number of the initiatives above will likely depend as much if not more on domestic politics, made even tougher by Brown’s win last night, than on where the NPR comes out on some of the purported sticking points. The NPR is a piece of the Obama administration’s nuclear Rubik’s cube but it should not be assumed that he strikes out on the Prague agenda should the NPR not come out as progressive as some hope.